Coraggio Consulting
Albemarle County School Board Regular Meeting, Thursday, September 24, 2026

Date: Thursday, September 24, 2026
Place: Albemarle County Public Schools / School Board meeting, Virginia
Length: 3h 19m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KadH_ymxUfI

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:26] Good evening. I'd like to welcome you to the September 24, 2026 Albemarle County School Board meeting work session. Do we have a closed meeting certification? Yes. Ms. Osborne, 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,

[00:00:58] discussed or considered in the closed meeting second uh can we have a roll call vote ms osborne yes i'm sorry um dr acuff yes mr beard yes mr dylan beck yes dr berlin dr berlin is joining us remotely via phone as that was approved earlier when we went into before we went to the closed

[00:01:34] meeting all right so that motion passes yes can we have a mislay was not inventory but she's on the right i'm on the board yeah okay uh now we'd like to have a roll call um let's start on this side this time and this is so the audience can who is listening online can know who is speaking good evening everyone i'm chief legal officer josiah black good evening chandra hayes acting

[00:02:11] superintendent good evening bob beard samuel miller district jim dylan beck raya district ellen osborne scottsville district judy lay rivana district kate acuff jack jewett district milan mugerji student represented for albemarle high school um charlotte felschess community lab kenny chinchilla monticello high school madeline brand western albemarle high school jacob miller Albemarle High School. All right. And Christine Thompson, our clerk. Clerk of the Board. And we

[00:02:48] have Dr. Berlin. And Dr. Berlin on the phone. Thank you. Now we will stand for the Pledge of

[00:02:56] Allegiance. And now let's take a moment of silence to settle ourselves. Thank you. Our next item is

[00:03:47] the approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion? I move we approve tonight's agenda. Second. Can I a voice vote please all in favor aye all right motion passes announcements so tonight we would like to recognize september 2026 as childhood cancer awareness month colin seaman an eighth grade student at henley middle school brought this to the recognition of the board colin is

[00:04:26] unable to join us tonight but he and his brother Owen recorded a video reading this resolution which we'll play in a moment Colin's mother Allison Lyons is here with us Miss Lyons thank you for joining us where are you thank you Dr.

[00:04:45] Lyons and please let Colin and Owen know how grateful we are that they brought this to our attention we're thankful they shared this with our community let's

[00:04:58] have the video hello my name is colin seaman and i am an eighth grader at henley middle school it's my brother owen who is a fifth grader brownsville elementary school i was first diagnosed with leukemia in kindergarten eight years ago most recently received treatment for

[00:05:38] my third relapse this past summer i want to thank the school board and the alamore county schools for recognizing childhood cancer awareness month here is the resolution whereas one in 285 children in the United States will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20th birthday, whereas approximately 15,000 children between the ages of 0 and 19 are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States, including children in Alamara County.

[00:06:06] Whereas, thanks to advances in medical research and treatment, five-year survival rate for children of cancer has increased from less than 60% to over 85% over the past few decades. Whereas, despite this progress, cancer tragically remains the leading cause of death by disease among children and adolescents in the United States, according to the National Cancer Institute. Whereas treatment for childhood cancer can last for months or years, depending on the type and stage of cancer, including surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy. Whereas children who survive cancer face long-term physical, cognitive,

[00:06:44] and emotional health challenges due to toxicity of these treatments. Whereas due to treatments and side effects children with cancer miss a substantial amount of school and can continue to experience elevated absenteeism after treatment is completed whereas cancer diagnosis and treatment has a significant impact on educational attainment and social well-being of school-age students whereas despite the importance of finding better treatments and cures for childhood cancer only four percent of federal funding for cancer research goes to all childhood cancers combined whereas september has been recognized as national childhood cancer awareness month

[00:07:24] to highlight the impact of childhood cancer to recognize the bravery of children fighting this disease and to honor those who have been lives have been lost now therefore be it resolved that the albemarle county school board hereby proclaims september 2026 as childhood cancer awareness month in albemarle county public schools thank you we we have this printed as a nice resolution that we will give to you when the chair comes back and is able to sign it but thank you for being here

[00:07:55] tonight and for sharing your story with us would dr lyons like to what dr lyons would you like to come up and say anything we really appreciate the board recognizing september's national or its childhood cancer awareness month colin is not the only child in alborel county who's been diagnosed and has gone through cancer treatment while in school we know that there's

[00:08:29] also been many losses especially in like the western school district and we know it affects classmates siblings and so we really appreciate recognizing what these children go through and what their classmates go through what their siblings go through so we really appreciate it because it definitely affects them in the classroom outside the classroom through the course of their entire childhood. So we really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:08:58] Thank you. All right, the next item on our agenda is the appointment of the at-large school board member to fill the vacant seat. This requires a motion and a vote. Do we have a motion to appoint someone to fill this seat? I have a motion, Ms. Osborne. Thank you. Just wanted to point out we had so many applicants for the at-large seat, I think more applicants than

[00:09:34] we've had on the school board in a number of decades, and we want to thank everybody for applying, and I move that the Albemarle County School Board appoint David Storm to fill the vacant at-large seat for a term ending December 31st, 2027. Thank you. Is there a second? Second.

[00:09:58] discussion discussion. Is there a discussion? I think as we're facing many capital issues, and we've heard about many capital issues and discussions of those, I think David's experience on the long range planning and advisory committee, and the county's economic development committee will really help us as we're moving forward.

[00:10:31] And I appreciate the fact that this year he is will be experiencing three different schools with his three children. Good luck with that, David. Just to echo Mr. Beard's comments, there were so many really well-qualified candidates who applied for this position. It's encouraging to see that. And as a couple of people have mentioned, it would be great if we could have this sort of subcommittee of some of these folks who have some fantastic ideas to help us with some of the goals and some of the activities that we're

[00:11:09] we're in the process of doing so again thanks to all those who have applied uh let's take a roll call vote dr acuff yes mr beard yes mr dylan beck yes miss lee yes dr berlin i think we lost dr berlin miss osborne yes motion carries thank you and we look forward to working with you david

[00:11:48] and you will be sworn in at the October 8th meeting and we'll be in touch with you about that. The next item on our agenda is the introduction of the 2026-27 school board representatives.

[00:12:06] That's this crew sitting up here with us. Tonight we're pleased to formally introduce them. These students bring experiences from schools across the county. Their role is to share what students are seeing and experiencing to ask questions and help the board understand how its decisions affect the students that we serve we value their willingness to take on that responsibility and we look forward to hearing from them throughout the year board members will introduce each

[00:12:40] representative and share a little bit about them please join me in welcoming Milan Mukherjee, Kenny Chinchilla, Madeline Braun, Charlotte Belchez, and our alternate rep, Jacob Miller. I'll make the first introduction of our representative. She's from the Community Lab School, Charlotte Belchez. She is a junior at the Community Lab School. They value listening to different perspectives and believe strongly in respectful dialogue and student voice. Through Community Lab

[00:13:18] school's project-based learning model Charlotte has developed skills and public speaking critical thinking and collaboration as a student in a small countywide school community they are able to connect with peers from across Albemarle County and hear a wide range of student experiences Charlotte brings a thoughtful perspective to the role with a particular interest in helping all students feel supported, heard, and represented. Charlotte, we're glad to have you with us.

[00:13:53] Mr. Beard, will you continue with our next introduction? We would also like to welcome Madeline Brand of Western Albemarle to be a student representative on the school board. Madeline is a junior at WAS. She's been connected to ACPS through her elementary, middle, and high school years and brings a strong understanding of the student experience across the division. Madeline describes herself as a dedicated listener who values hearing the needs and concerns of her peers. She also serves on the Youth Council of the League of Women Voters, where she has gained experience representing student perspectives in a civic

[00:14:32] setting. Madeline brings a thoughtful voice to the role with particular interest in student safety, classroom engagement, and ensuring that school policies are balanced and responsive to students. Thank you, Madeline, for taking on this role and welcome. Thank you, Mr. Beard. Ms. Lee? We also welcome Kenny Chinchilla. Kenny is a senior at Monticello High School. He brings a strong desire to represent his school community and help ensure that all students feel included and heard. Kenny has a long-standing interest in student leadership and has previously

[00:15:08] represented his elementary school in discussions about how to improve schools for students and teachers. He's proud of Monticello High School and ACPS and sees this role as an opportunity to give back to a community that has made him feel welcomed and supported. Kenny has particular interest in curriculum, responsible use of technology, and student engagement. Welcome, Kenny. Thank you, Dr. Aiko. I'm ready. I'm introducing Milan Mukherjee. Milan is a senior at Albemarle High School. Since joining ACPS, he has built connections with students from many backgrounds and He brings the perspective of a student who understands both the experience of entering

[00:15:48] a new school community and becoming actively involved in it. He has played on the AHS-JV soccer team and also plays travel soccer with students from across ACPS, giving him the opportunity to hear from peers throughout the division.

[00:16:07] Lalonde describes himself as a thoughtful listener, confident communicator, and team-oriented problem solver. brings a strong interest in student well-being, belonging, college and career preparation, and making sure student voices are part of the decisions that shape ACPS schools. Welcome. Thank you. Mr. Dillenbeck, will you introduce our final student representative? Yes. I'd like to introduce Jacob Miller. Jacob is a junior at Albemarle High School and will serve as the alternate student school board

[00:16:42] representative he's actively involved in a wide range of academic music leadership and student organizations including trium music honor society albemarle acapella and minutemen physics club we the people model un the revolution student newspaper jazz band math honor society national honor society and the albemarle county student senate jacob you really need to be more involved Through these experiences, Jacob has worked with students across many interests, backgrounds, and perspectives. He brings a strong interest in policy, governance, student voice,

[00:17:22] and constructive dialogue to his role as alternate representative. Welcome, Jacob. Thank you, Mr. Dillenbeck. To all five of our student representatives, welcome. We appreciate your willingness to serve and look forward to hearing your perspectives throughout the year. Please join me in giving them a round of applause.

[00:17:43] the next item on our agenda is public comment oh do i not have the latest version do we have next item is school board superintendent and committee updates what updates might we have any um i just want to share that uh we recently uh received information that all of albemarle county public

[00:18:18] schools will be accredited for the 26 27 school year and we are awaiting the final framework results that will be released october the 7th great fantastic like i mentioned a visit last week at monticello high school that was really encouraging i got a chance to spend some time talking with principal beth costa and two reading specialists and we'll give more details in the future but these two uh staff members have done an incredible job with uh literacy in in the high

[00:18:54] school and some of the test score improvements are just mind-boggling so my hat it goes off to casey baber and shannon deegan in particular so it's fun to be a part of that great thank you ms osborne i'd just like to thank the transportation department and jamie gilder for uh moving bus 139 the residents in the uh turner mountain road uh neighborhood off of us 250 ivy road were worried that their kids were being dropped off on a busy road and that bus is now going up

[00:19:30] Turner Mountain Road which is saving families a lot of a lot of time and a lot of stress sorry thank you transportation anything else okay let's move on to public comment Judy I mean miss Lee the Elk Morales County School Board welcomes public input on matters related to school board governance and division operations for tonight's meeting we have four individuals sign to speak, each speaker will have three minutes. When you're recognized, please come forward, state your name and your address or magisterial district for the record. As a reminder, public

[00:20:07] comment should be addressed to the school board as a body and should relate to school board governance or division operations. Speakers may refer to individuals, board members, division leaders, or staff when the comments relate to official actions, decisions, or matters within the authority of the school board. Public comment is not a forum for debate, threats, profanity, obscenity disclosure of confidential student information or personnel matters or conduct that disrupts the orderly operation of the meeting are not permitted we ask that all comments remain respectful and on topic a timer will be used to track each speaker's time when your time has expired please conclude your remarks promptly with written comments and supporting materials may be

[00:20:43] provided to the clerk for the board's consideration to help maintain order and allow each speaker to be heard please do not clap boo or otherwise audibly express support or opposition during public comment. Those wishing to show support may raise a hand or stand. The board will not engage in discussion with the speakers during public comment. Board members may address matters raised during public comment later in the meeting under other business as appropriate. So I'll go ahead and read our four so folks can be ready. First, we'll have Stephanie McNerney, Bill McCaskill,

[00:21:13] then Ryan Nunley, and then lastly, Phil Reese. So Ms. McNerney. Good evening. As you just heard, my name is Stephanie McNerney and I live in the Jack Chewett neighborhood. I am a neurodevelopmental and behavioral nurse practitioner and also a caregiver and I'm speaking tonight about FASD Awareness Month. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder FASD results for prenatal alcohol exposure and causes lifelong differences in brain

[00:21:51] development and functioning. The CDC estimates that 1 in 20 school-aged children may have an FASD. So this isn't rare and ACPS has students with FASD whether or not they have been identified. Its impact reaches every part of the school day.

[00:22:09] FASD can affect working memory, processing speed, language comprehension, executive functioning, emotional regulation, understanding cause and effect. These are children who can tell you the role but often can't follow it consistently. They may look capable one moment and be unable to access the same skill in another setting. Those differences are often mistaken as willful.

[00:22:32] defiance, manipulation, or just not trying. Yet traditional behavior systems often require the very skills FASD can impair. Remembering rules, linking actions with delayed consequences, generalizing learning, and emotional regulation. For children also navigating trauma, disrupted caregiving, poverty, racism, or barriers to assessment and services, these vulnerabilities can compound one another, making uninformed, compassionate school response essential.

[00:23:06] ACPS already has important infrastructure. We're thankful for that. Social-emotional learning, restorative practices, multi-tiered supports, counseling, and intervention teams, and these are really meaningful investments. But FASD informed understanding must be embedded visibly and universally within that infrastructure and not left to individual interest. I'm asking the board to make FASD-informed education a standard part of staff learning in ACPS, so that every educator has the tools to recognize brain-based needs, respond with effective

[00:23:41] support, and help every child with FASD belong, learn, and thrive. Thank you. Thanks very much, Ms. McNerney. Next we have Bill McCaskill. As you heard, my name is Bill McCaskill, I'm from the Samuel Miller District, and I'm here to advocate for this board to consider a weekday religious education for Albemarle County I've

[00:24:15] spoken to you before about life wise which is growing rapidly across the United States they've started in 2020 with one school they're now in 1,500 schools everywhere that weekday religious education or life-wise is implemented. The scores go up, morale improves, and discipline problems go down. This, I'm sure you all know, is the Holy Bible, and parts of this were written over 3,000

[00:24:50] years ago, and a great portion of it was written 2,000 years ago. None of it is less than 1,900 years old. It's been around for a long time. It doesn't have the same respect in the United states of america that it used to have but i can assure you that one day it will have the same respect that it had before even a greater respect and uh it had there's a lot of wisdom in here i

[00:25:21] read this book every day i've read through it several times in my lifetime and um there you can almost open it at random and uh receive some kind of benefit out of it um it's originally in beginning the McGuffey Reader was used to teach children to read from Bible passages and many times on the frontier in the early parts of the United States

[00:25:56] this would be the only book in the settlers cabin children would be taught read from it they would also be taught morality telling the truth character development is one of the things that comes out of weekday religious education

[00:26:17] And this character development is what spills over into the schools and improves as test scores the morale and brings discipline problems down. You may disagree with me about this, but the LifeWise people did a peer-reviewed study of it, had an independent group do a study on it, and they found out that it was true, that every place that it's been implemented, it has improved morale.

[00:26:49] Thank you for your time. Thanks very much, Mr. McCaskill. Next we have Ryan Nunley. Good evening, everyone. My name is Ryan Nunley and I'm a seventh grade science teacher at Henley Middle School, member organizer for the AEA and lead representative of the Western Feeder Pattern of ACPS. I'm standing before you tonight to bring attention to a serious concern within our Henley Middle School community regarding Cree Johnson, our devoted safety coach.

[00:27:28] Cree is beloved by everyone within our school community, faculty, staff, parents, and most of all, students. At one point last school year, he covered the entire safety program by himself, filling the space of two other individuals who weren't there.

[00:27:44] He is passionate about his work and invested in the safety and well-being of everyone at Hanley Middle School. Above all, he has a great rapport with our students. They all respect him and listen to his guidance and direction. For anyone who works with children, gaining their respect is not an easy task.

[00:28:04] He makes it look easy. I know Cree personally, and earning the lead safety coach position has been a personal goal of his for several years running. He exemplifies everything about team play as he repeatedly takes on tasks at our school without complaint to ensure our safety.

[00:28:22] I felt the need to come before you tonight because all of the faculty and staff at Henley Middle School want him to be the lead safety coach. We all feel he is a natural and perfect fit for the lead safety coach at our school We as a community are very upset to learn that his candidacy has been overlooked in favor of someone who while may be Qualified is outside our community It's disappointing that ACPS would ignore the requests of a community in making decisions that ultimately result in negative impact On our community and its valued employees Hearing the voices of us will go a long way in restoring faith in our division leadership.

[00:29:02] Please, support the Henley community by hearing our hearts and voices in support of our brother, friend, colleague, and safety coach, Cree Johnson. He has earned it. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nunley.

[00:29:18] Last, we have Phil Reese. Good evening. My name is Phil Reese. I'm from Rivanna. Yesterday, I attended another hearing in the Michael Sweeney case.

[00:29:35] We learned that there may now be as many as seven alleged victims. Mr. Sweeney is presumed innocent until proven guilty, but what especially troubles me is that if one staff member had made a mandatory report when required, some of this alleged abuse could have been prevented.

[00:29:55] In March 2025, 10 months before police became aware of any allegations, a Hollymead parent told Principal Joe McCauley and Title IX Coordinator Erin Stone and others that Mr. Sweeney had touched her child inappropriately multiple times.

[00:30:13] Three months ago, Ms. Stone told this board in writing that Child Protective Services and Albemarle County Police were contacted out of an abundance of caution and both similarly declined to open cases. But last month, the lead prosecutor told the judge in court that neither police nor CPS were contacted.

[00:30:36] The evidence speaks for itself. Ms. Stone did not report this allegation to police, but she told you that police had been notified and that they declined to investigate. What she told you was false. Mr. Sweeney kept unsupervised access to Hollymead students for 10 more months.

[00:30:57] And court records show the alleged abuse continued through January, 2026. That same prosecutor told the court he questioned whether ACPS could be trusted and that the division had been less than forthcoming during the investigation. When a prosecutor says that in open court, you should ask him why before you become defensive. I take no joy in criticizing a staff member by name at this podium. I raise my concerns by email first, but from what I can tell, you six are content to wait for the investigators to tell you what to do. We didn't elect those investigators.

[00:31:37] We elected you. Allison Spillman told a local newspaper this week that, quote, it's not a bad thing to openly question staff. Restoring trust starts there. Ms. Stone is your assistant legal counsel. She advises you. Have any of you asked her directly why she told you that police were notified in March 2025 when they were not. So here's a simple first step.

[00:32:08] Ask her why she told you something that was false. There are other ACPS staff members who knew about this March 2025 allegation. I won't mention their names here, but you should also ask them what they were told by this parent. It's up to you school board members to get to the truth. Thank you.

[00:32:26] Thanks, Mr. Reese, and all of our speakers during public comments. next on our agenda is approval of the consent agenda i move that we approve tonight's consent agenda second all in favor of approving tonight's consent agenda aye aye motion passes now we'll

[00:33:01] move into a few business items um first up will be mr craig domer on instructional priorities and student scores and i believe chris gilman who will be with you right i think i'm flying solo

[00:33:18] tonight. Good evening members of the board. I'm Craig Domer, Executive Director of Curriculum Assessment and Instruction. Tonight I'm joining you to share our latest Virginia Standards of

[00:33:56] Learning results, review the systemic steps our office has taken over the past few years following the Bellwether report, and outline our forward-looking priorities. Our agenda is pretty focused and tight tonight. We're going to ground ourselves in our strategic plan, review some key academic data, examine our response to bellwether, and discuss our ongoing challenges and leave some time for questions.

[00:34:25] Everything we do in the Office of Instruction is about our strategic plan, learning for all. Tonight's update really specifically reflects how we're trying to end the predictive value of race, class, gender, and special capacity. I keep borrowing this slide from Dr. Hayes.

[00:34:46] She hasn't told me to stop, so I'll wait for that. But she shared this with our leadership team earlier this fall around being anchored in support and driven by excellence but really as she has led the office of instruction over the past three years it really is a mantra that we try to do following the bow weather report in order to change some student achievement results i'd like to ground our presentation with a brief perspective on where we stand i am not an experienced voter but my wife's family has traveled to the saint

[00:35:22] lawrence river on the northern border of the united states for five generations and so every Every summer, I absorb some boating information. When you get caught in a storm in deep water or in the wake of a very large ship, you can't really turn sideways or try to run from the weather.

[00:35:41] You have to steer directly into the incoming waves, taking them head-on so they don't catch you broadside and capsize the boat. Since COVID, I think Albemarle County Public Schools, and maybe before, has been navigating a significant storm of learning disruption and lower than we expect student achievement.

[00:35:58] District statewide, as well as that support to catch up. I think tonight's data shows clear progress as we steer head on into those heavy seas. We certainly have not cleared the rough water and we have a lot of work left to do, but I feel good about our trajectory, the steps we've taken, and I feel like we're moving in the right direction.

[00:36:22] Looking overall at our performance at SOL results last spring, we are progressing above state averages and writing, math, and reading. Some particular highlights as we achieved a five percentage point reduction in the reading gap for black students.

[00:36:37] While that gap remains unacceptable, this marks the first time in several years we've achieved a reduction of that magnitude. That progress in particular was led by an 11 point increase in the third grade reading pass rate for black students, which we feel really indicates our science of reading changes that we've made are taking hold, especially for our youngest students.

[00:37:00] students. Students with disabilities in writing achieved a 10-point gain. We'll talk about some subject area trends that are going on. In grades three through eight and across all grades we see a solid three-year upward trend in math.

[00:37:20] It's showing growth higher than the state average, particularly when we include those high school courses. Our reading shows steady multi-year progress. reading gains naturally compound a little bit more slowly than math but our growth remains consistently positive our science scores show strong increases year-over-year outperforming state trends when high school scores are factored in our average kind of stabilizes and decreases a little that's

[00:37:55] a dynamic I'll discuss a little bit further math pass rates show steady upward growth for our black students in reading performance was fluctuated but Last year yielded that significant gap closure, particularly in the early elementary grades.

[00:38:16] And looking at our students with disabilities, pass rates again in math and reading remain above state averages. It's encouraging. It remains a critical focus area for the school division. Our trends are moving upward with our English learners, but our performance remains well below state averages.

[00:38:36] Accelerating growth for our English learners will be a primary instructional focus moving forward. Again, thinking about some highlights, Algebra I pass rates increased by three percentage points.

[00:38:57] Important to note, we enrolled significantly more middle school students in Algebra I last year, about 50 year-over-year. More were enrolled in Algebra I in eighth grade. Being able to increase enrollment and increase our pass percentage, we found, was particularly encouraging and showed the hard work that we've put into that since the Bellwether audit.

[00:39:19] We saw two to three point gains in fifth and eighth grade science. The K to eight science curriculum and textbook was the first one we adopted four years ago. So seeing those gains really start to take root in fifth and eighth grade science was positive.

[00:39:35] Also sixth grade math and high school reading and writing performance improved well. Despite all the positive, we do have some continuing challenges that I'd like to address.

[00:39:50] So math, reading and science pass rates students with disabilities remained largely unchanged. Differing from the larger division trend of annual improvement, I think this kind of goes to what we saw in the Berkeley Review, and we are working hard with the Office of Special Education to think about how to improve these trends. We saw a high school science drop, six percentage points. We think that this is largely driven by physics first in our scholar studios last year. About 200 ninth graders took physics instead of biology this year those students are taking biology in 10th

[00:40:30] grade and we're expecting a rebound but that is something that we will monitor throughout the year pass rates in seventh and eighth grade math also decreased we think well we know that by moving our most successful students into algebra which was the right move for those students it highlights an area where that we need continued support and the students who are still in math 7 and 8 to understand our current direction we wanted to look at our response to the Bellwether audit. The audit asked a specific question. Why were pass rates for ACPS students

[00:41:08] of color in K-5 reading and math lower than state averages and lower than their peers in ACPS? While that question was intentionally narrow, we realized that our response could not be. And over the past 18 months, we really shifted our mindset in the Office of Instruction and stopped viewing Bellwether as a checklist of tasks to complete, but really started thinking about it as a catalyst for long-term cultural shift, leadership development, and systems alignment.

[00:41:42] To do that, we kind of re-examined the root causes that were identified by the Bellwether report, and they were really focused on the instructional core, which is the relationship between the teacher, the student, and the content, and the tasks that end up on a student's desk.

[00:41:58] There were five root causes identified by Bellwether, three were directly related to this core, and two were in support. The three directly related to the core were really around task rigor, adult learning, and curricular resources.

[00:42:21] And the two in support were about strategic alignment and stakeholder engagement. Bellweather found that parts of our organization were not aligned towards student achievement, and we weren't engaging all stakeholders to that end.

[00:42:38] In the Office of Instruction, we really focused on how to activate and enhance the core over the past two to three years. And in that, we looked at the work of Richard Elmore, who is the researcher behind the core, and he says that if you are to improve, you can really only improve it at capacity three ways.

[00:42:59] And to improve it at scale with 14,000 students and 1,400 teachers, we really need to focus on increasing teachers' instructional knowledge and skill, increasing the level of complexity of the content students must learn, and changing the role of the student in the instructional process.

[00:43:17] To do that, the Office of Instruction developed a strategy around a theory of change, and it really is presented here as a circle, but it's an upward spiral as we seek continuous improvement.

[00:43:34] But in particularly looking at high-quality instructional materials that help us standardize core resources division-wide, making practical curriculum and common assessments that provide clear pacing and assessments that give actual feedback to teachers and help them plan instruction, and align strategies and administrator walkthroughs that ensure that principals, coaches, and division leaders observe and support strategies for teachers that are aligned to the curriculum, and that we embed coaching and feedback loops, utilizing our content advisory teams, our teacher product teams, and our student data continually refine our resources and make sure that they are landing on student desks.

[00:44:15] Some specific highlights over the last three years are our curriculum adoptions that have helped us standardize resources in k-12 english language arts math k-8 science and secondary algebra support and particularly we've systematized our algebra one summer program and during year supports which led to us being able to enroll more students last year we've reimagined the instructional coaching model in a way that supports division priorities and we've tried to streamline our course pathways improve academic planning and launch some cross-curricular scholar

[00:44:51] studios to help us really challenge students at a high level. I would also like to add outside of this slide right we have done a lot of professional learning around the science of reading particularly getting every elementary teacher special education teacher and English learner teacher trained in letters volume one. Thinking ahead about our priorities in the office of instruction and returning to my metaphor you know as we move forward it's important to remember that you're sailing towards your North Star of

[00:45:28] improving teaching and learning. As we consider our immediate next steps in the Office of Instruction, we're trying to continue to build and align systems, furthering academic excellence, and strengthening transparency, communication and partnership. As far as systems and organizational processes, we have taken on some work from the Partners in Leadership and Education at UVA and they helped us develop some big rocks and next steps for both the system and and schools really around creating and aligning organizational processes for instructional leadership and development and continuing to

[00:46:06] strengthen professional learning and while schools are focused on increasing educator capacity to design and deliver tier one instruction and increasing the adoption and use of data-driven instruction protocols as we think about instructional decision making as a leadership team with principals and division leaders we're really focusing on three key questions as we examine our work and think about moving forward, which is, are our instructional practices improving, are our students actively engaged in learning, and are the students who

[00:46:39] need us the most receiving our very best. As we think about improving our academic and instructional excellence, we really need to think about the curriculum that we have not adopted HQIM before, particularly science 9-12, AP and dual enrollment courses, world languages, various electives throughout the school division and math intervention we also have to continue our implementation of previously adopted curriculum because they do not become adopted and implemented in a year and then using those materials to really

[00:47:15] advance our challenging supportive and coherent curriculum particularly looking at vertical alignment cross-curricular learning and challenging experiences and course offerings and thinking about HQIM adoption we this is borrowed from the Virginia Department of Education about a timeline, really thinking that it takes about four years to reach sustainability. I've included some of the key steps that leaders and teachers and coaches take in each year, going from establishing support systems and structures all the way

[00:47:55] to sustainability, where you facilitate and support strategic material adaptations. This is kind of where we are in each of our recent adoptions. Obviously, this is the first year for six to twelve ELA and math. We're kind of moving into year two for K-5 math, math eight, and algebra one. Our K-5 ELA HMH program is heading into consistent implementation and we're moving towards sustainability. As I mentioned earlier, K-8 science and Five Ponds Press, we are in year four. Another

[00:48:30] area that's key as we focus this year is around increasing transparency, communication, and we need to increase our clarity and communication for external stakeholders, the grading policy obviously we've talked about before, but updating that throughout this year using a committee of various stakeholders helps to ensure that it serves as an accurate and clear communication tool of student mastery to families and students.

[00:49:01] we need to work on our website and capturing our work in the office of instruction we are all ex-teachers and we love curriculum and we love building resources but really capturing that so that people can see the work from the outside and participate in the work with us is a goal this year utilizing community partners to deepen curriculum that really has helped as we've developed our scholars curriculum and so bringing that to the k-8 curriculum as well as for our base high schools and continuing to seek user feedback at the student level. In just wrapping up tonight,

[00:49:41] right, steering in troubled waters can be a stormy path. It's important that we remember where we're going and why, and we are just excited that we've had some positive results that reflect the positive work and hard work of our teachers, in particular our students, our families, and our building leaders, and we look forward to continuing the journey in the coming years we thank you for your leadership through this process and are there any questions can you

[00:50:20] just tell me again the issue about physics first and biology and why you believe the biology took a hit and is the physics first that's that's a complete change in the order of the courses taken right for our students who were in scholars studios they took physics first last year for the first time some did take biology concurrently but most of just physics first and the physics aligns well with the other curriculum in most of our scholars

[00:50:57] studio and the feedback we got from students the year previously was they would they would like another cohorted core academic experience so last year being the first year, approximately 200 students who would have normally taken biology and likely been successful on that test took physics instead. There is no SOL for physics. It doesn't go into our high school science. And so those students are now taking biology in 10th grade. We expect them to do very well and kind of return those numbers to normal. I say expect and say that we

[00:51:32] A lot of those who took physics first would have brought the scores up, is that what you're saying? That is, yes. That's your theory? Our scholar students typically are very successful students, and had they taken biology, we expect that they would have passed at a higher rate than we had for the division, but it is an area that we will monitor.

[00:51:55] In terms of instructional materials, do we have up-to-date science materials, K-12? We have up-to-date science materials K through 8, high school science. AP science is next on, and we will, our plan is to do a 9 to 12 adoption starting in January and bringing that to you in budget season.

[00:52:19] Okay. Yeah, I hear rumors about, you know, ancient textbooks and such, and a lot changes in physics and biology year to year. It does, and we've had this conversation before, right? We, I think, value our high-quality instructional materials. We are trying to catch up and prioritize with available funds as much as possible.

[00:52:43] Okay, thank you. I wanted to sort of piggyback off what you said about the teachers' hard work and all this. And I just remember the letters adoption was really, really difficult for teachers, and they took it on.

[00:53:01] And I just want to thank them for doing that hard work. And I feel like this is clear evidence of what that work leads to. So I'm very glad about that. I just had a question, what the big rocks are? Is that like a small mountain, a tiny hill? I don't know what that is.

[00:53:18] I didn't understand that metaphor either. It's so many metaphors, and I tried to limit it. But I think that that comes from the metaphor of if you want to get to your big rocks, you have to put your big rocks in first. Oh, the thing with the container? The thing with the container. And so that's what our schools and district leadership who've worked with UVA, that is their metaphor.

[00:53:39] And so that is what we've identified as our big rocks. You could call them priorities, action steps, all those things would work. i like the geological thing okay thanks and i know we had some issues with kittum i think has that been resolved because i know we put our teachers through adopting that and then we threw the math on top of that and it wasn't perfect i would say that kitum is still not a perfect curricular resource i think that that's not largely different than any elementary math

[00:54:12] curricular resource that's what i would say as a former math specialist and math lead coach myself is just the best school divisions in Virginia often use multiple resources to create their own curriculum and that is a path that we're beginning this year where KITM is the majority of our curriculum it has really great materials KITM is also the publisher illustrative mathematics is the curriculum if you wanted to kind of research the history of it illustrative mathematics sold their curriculum to three publishers KITM is the one who

[00:54:48] aligned it to Virginia standards and got approved by the state. But we're looking to take that illustrative math curriculum as well as take some other resources, particularly around foundational skills, procedural fluency, number sense, and build a strong Elmira County public school elementary curriculum that will continue the trajectory of strong gains. Thank you. Had a conversation with The veteran teacher, ELA teacher at Henley today who had high praise for the reading curriculum, HMH.

[00:55:25] She said some of her colleagues didn't share her enthusiasm, but she feels like it's been very, very helpful. So it's good news. I think we have gotten positive feedback on HMH 6-12, similar to K-5.

[00:55:41] I think change is hard, and a lot of teachers, whenever you take on a new resource, sometimes you have to make room for it by getting rid of some things that you feel as a teacher are tried and true. And so working through that process to enable some consistency across schools and allow teachers to easily talk to one another about how to improve consistent materials leads to more rapid improvement.

[00:56:07] So I'm excited to hear that, and I'm looking to build it out faster. I just want to take a moment to say thank you to not just the Department of Instruction, but to all of the other departments that help support the lift around academic growth, operations, whether that's fiscal, making sure that our contracts are ready to go.

[00:56:29] Our technology department, as a lot of our curriculum have technology components, force instruction, our legal department, as they help look through contracts as well, and definitely professional learning to make sure that our staff, not just our teachers, but teaching assistance our administrators are aligned to support all of the work we do so thank you to all of the departments um that that work to support academics in the division i also don't think you can go without saying that this is a lot of your work dr hayes in instruction and what you've done

[00:57:00] to um just really build that um a team that can work and put this together so i'm very grateful for your work all right thank you thank you next up is mr matt workman building services department annual update and um i want to thank you for the brick it's um it's not often that our party favors

[00:57:37] are bricks but engraved with mountain view upper elementary school 2026 first new school to open in a couple decades oh that's not it sorry i didn't realize it was two screens

[00:58:09] while mr workman is getting uh set up i would be um charged to my my head and not my heart community engagement as well as they supported our family engagement nights um and curriculum nights so thank you ready all right good evening miss osborne dr hayes and members of the school Board. My name is Matt Wertmann, and I am the Director of Building Services. I am joined this evening by Jeff Rohm, who is the Deputy Director and is responsible for our maintenance

[00:58:49] team, as well as Kagan Squire, who is our Assistant Director of Capital Planning and Construction. We are excited to present our annual report on the significant work that has taken place over the last year. Of course, this evening's presentation is rooted in the third strategic goal of providing equitable, transformative resources. Our agenda this evening will be to provide a brief update on this past summer's CIP maintenance projects, an update on the new school projects, and several departmental operational updates.

[00:59:20] I'll now turn it over to Kagan, who will cover the first two topics. Good evening, board. It's a pleasure to be here. Super excited to share with you guys all the work that our team did this past summer, which involved over 40 projects in our maintenance program, as well as opening two new schools. So first, we'll start out at Broaduswood. They had a lot of work going

[00:59:54] on out there on the slide here you'll see some photos of a new walk-in freezer that we installed along with some reach-in refrigerators as well to replace the two side-by-side freezers and refrigerators as well that were previously walk-ins and so one thing I'd like to point out with this is as we do these upgrades to our walk-ins we're updating the equipment and replacing it with more environmentally friendly refrigerants. We also did some roof replacements. Over 35,000 square feet

[01:00:30] of roofing was replaced at two schools. The bulk of that work, though, was done at Broaduswood, and the areas that were replaced consisted of the original building, the cafeteria, and the gymnasium as well. Murray Elementary School also had some work done, so we replaced over 90 doors there and upgraded it with new hardware as well.

[01:00:57] These doors were in pretty rough shape and had aged pretty poorly. So they were underperforming with veneer and the finishes were starting to peel off. So we replaced those. And one thing I'd like to point out with this is that we were able to improve the fire rating on most of these doors with the replacement.

[01:01:18] Alamoral High School's athletic facilities saw a lot of improvements as well. we replace the running track and then as well as the running track we replace the tennis courts and resurface that so with this work we actually improve the subgrade underneath the tennis courts and so with that upgrade we're expecting that it will improve the playability of the tennis court surfacing and also increase its lifespan one other thing I'd like to point out with the track at Albemarle is that that'll wrap up all three high schools tracks being replaced in the last

[01:01:56] three years. So we had several mechanical and electrical upgrades across a numerous amount of schools. And so what you see on the slide here is on the bottom, that smaller photo is some outside air units for the gymnasium at Western Albemarle. And we were able to relocate some of the equipment for this, which improves both accessibility for our maintenance team and safety so they don't have to climb up in high areas.

[01:02:32] On the right side, you'll see that's an air handler unit being removed from Monticello High School. And so you can see there's not a lot of room to get that out of where it was. And so we were able to just squeeze it out and get those replaced as well. From electrical work, we are currently progressing with some work to install Burley Generator there or generator at Burley. And so I'd like to point out with that is that once that work is complete, the only school that will remain that needs a generator is a Trailhead community.

[01:03:05] We did a lot of work with our painting and flooring to increase a lot of the aesthetic looks and just surfaces in our schools. What you see on the right side there is an epoxy floor in the Western Albemarle locker rooms and we've started using this in the past couple years and have had some success so it provides a nice aesthetic look but it also provides an easier surface to maintain for custodial crews and it makes it much easier to clean and keep cleaned

[01:03:41] we also did a lot of signage work at our schools and so in the middle photo there you'll see We were able to install all new signage in Trailhead with them moving in there this past school year. We did bathroom renovations at two of our schools at Broadduswood and Burley.

[01:04:01] All together across both schools, we replaced 11 bathrooms for students and staff. These renovations included, you know, new epoxy flooring, wall tile, new fixtures. And then we also, as we do these projects, we increase the partition height and replace the hardware.

[01:04:19] And that helps provide some more privacy for the users in the bathrooms. We also made some pretty good progress with getting some accessibility upgrades to our buildings that were identified in our accessibility report and review last fall.

[01:04:37] So we currently are working on or have completed 41 items identified in that report. 24 we've identified that we are unable to accomplish because they conflict with school security protocols. And then there's another 60 that require additional funding that it's just too significant of work without getting additional funding to accomplish.

[01:05:04] So a few years ago, we completed a cafeteria addition at Mountain View Primary, and along with that work, there was some leftover funds that the school board then dedicated to address some additional needs identified at Mountain View Primary. And so this past summer, we kind of wrapped up the last phase of that work. What that work included is we renovated the two courtyards there at Mountain View Primary. We also installed bathrooms in six classrooms, as well as we increased the square footage and expanded the art room and did some renovations in the music room. Along with that

[01:05:43] work, though, we also did some signage, which helps improve with wayfinding for students in the building. And it also just kind of helps give the school a nice facelift and kind of be on parity with the new Mountain View upper. Out at Walton Middle School, for those of you that aren't aware, it does house two pumps out there for unleaded and diesel gas. And so those two pumps were failing and having a lot of issues, weren't very reliable. And so we were able to get those

[01:06:18] replaced and get the tanks replaced as well so they can be operational again. With all this work and some of the new projects that we'll talk about next, we were able to remove some trailers at our schools. And so Mountain View had two trailers that had 12 classrooms housed in them that we were able to relocate. And you can see we converted that space where those trailers used to be in the photo there on the slide to a new playing field as well as a walking track. Albemarle High School had a classrooms that we were able to remove because of the connector wing

[01:06:52] project and then the old trailer at building services we reinstalled that VMF to provide them some additional office space for their staff and operations and then some of these trailers that have been removed we actually will need to re and relocate to Western to provide six additional classrooms for spaces out there for students and so that's expected to be completed later this winter this slide is a summary of this spending in our maintenance program so we spent 10 million dollars which is a result of all

[01:07:29] the work or some of the work we just talked about that our team completed this does not include anything with the new schools at Mountain View upper or ACE Academy or the connector wing project so we'll go on to the exciting new stuff here so you can see some photos on here showing the the work progressing over the past you know year and a half at album rolls for the connector wing that work wrapped up this past fall and it welcomes students into those those six classrooms that we added this the school year the other thing

[01:08:06] that this adds to is it completes a circulation loop around the second floor and so provides some some critical egress additions to to that school Mountain View upper elementary school welcomed its first students into its doors this school year. They came in super excited. It's been well received. This 75,000 square foot building is designed to accommodate 500 students. It also utilizes geothermal wells for heating and

[01:08:39] cooling as well as it has solar arrays on its roof. Ace Academy on the Lambs Lane campus is another school that welcomed this first cohort of students into its doors. It also utilizes geothermal well for cooling and heating and has solar arrays on its roof it's designed to accommodate 400 students and this this project kind of had a two-prong approach to help with capacity issues being experienced at our high schools but it

[01:09:14] also helped expand the scholar studios a division offers for students and so it has some pretty unique and cool spaces in it that helps us expand the scholar studios. Some of those spaces include the culinary learning kitchen, some engineering labs, and then a CNA lab as well. And so finally, to be able for the Lambs Lane campus to accommodate that Ace Academy there, we had to redesign a lot of the pedestrian and vehicular infrastructure on the site. And so up

[01:09:53] here on the slide you can see that this photo on the left shows the pickup and drop-off routes for the students that are being utilized and then you can see the new pathways as well and so on the right you can see the new traffic circle that we built and constructed this past summer and so that was super critical because it it helped create a new area for pickup and drop-off that pulled albumarls pickup drop-off operations farther away from hydraulic so you have less backup on the hydraulic which makes it safer and much more convenient for

[01:10:29] for traffic um you know initial feedback that we've gotten is that it's been well received and that it's it's performing as the design was intended so that wraps up all i had i'll hand it back over to matt um again thank you all for for all your support thank you kagan before i move into the operational updates i also want to take a moment to thank the school board for your continued support for these new schools these schools will go a long way in helping with capacity concerns and will provide state-of-the-art resources for our

[01:11:05] students. As Ms. Osborne mentioned, I have distributed to each of you a ceremonial brick to mark the monumental occasion of opening the first new school in ACPS in 22 years, along with thank-you notes from students at Mountain View Upper Elementary School. And I want to thank Principal Dr. Seth Kennard for getting these bricks and the letters and allowing us to present them to you this evening while the long-term impact of your support will be huge this brick is just a small token of staffs and students appreciation so

[01:11:42] thank you for your continued advocacy and support in achieving these huge milestones now this past summer was the busiest this past summer was the busiest and I'll add most chaotic summer that I've been through in the ten summers that I've worked in ACPS however despite this chaos our team managed to accomplish some truly amazing things, not only on the capital side but also within our routine operations. Our work as a department is guided by five core principles: employee development and retention, operational excellence, enhanced customer service and engagement, sustainability and

[01:12:22] environmental stewardship, and innovation. Like the pieces of a puzzle, each of these core principles are interchangeable and work together to ensure continuous improvement and sustained success. That success is rooted and over 200 people that make up our team.

[01:12:39] Between all the custodians that ensure our facilities remain safe and clean, the maintenance team that works tirelessly to keep equipment running, our capital team that facilitates larger construction, our environmental team that ensures we remain compliant with local, state, and federal regulations, and the folks in our office that keep daily operations running smoothly.

[01:13:02] Our department exemplifies the mission of working together to help ensure that every student succeeds. That success is exemplified by this year's work order data. Two major highlights over the last year are the 93% completion rate by a year's end, which is a 25.7% improvement over the previous year, and an average resolution time of about 17 and a half days, which marks a 42% improvement year over year.

[01:13:30] I'm always amazed when I look at these annual statistics to see that our team is handling an average of 26 work orders per day and completes over 1,100 work orders just in the summer period alone. It is truly remarkable work by our team.

[01:13:46] As you know, our buildings are also available for community use. This past year, more than 90 external groups used our buildings and over 2,200 community events were hosted in our schools and over $360,000 in revenue was generated from community use rental fees across all schools.

[01:14:06] Winter gym usage continues to be our biggest struggle with respect to meeting community demand. This past year, we were able to honor 71% of the winter gym usage requests, which is up from prior years. As we do each summer, our custodial crews refinished over 1.2 million square feet of floors to ensure that our schools are equipped to handle the day-to-day impact throughout the school year.

[01:14:30] This past year, through additional training, we were also able to bring the process of refinishing our gym floors in-house, a move that will save us tens of thousands of dollars each year. We were also excited to hold our third annual Custodial Olympics this past spring.

[01:14:46] This is a day our custodial staff looks forward to each year as teams from across the county come together to participate in custodial-themed games. We were very grateful to have Mr. Beard join us for this past year's event, and my personal favorite event each year is the Trash Can Relay Race.

[01:15:02] This is a great opportunity for our custodial teams to come together for fellowship and friendly competition following what was a brutal winter this past season. Now, one important topic that I want to bring to the board's attention is the issue of rising energy consumption and, accordingly, rising energy costs.

[01:15:21] It's no secret that energy costs have been rising across the country, and ACPS has not been immune to that hurdle. For the first time in ACPS history, our annual energy costs exceeded $3 million this past fiscal year. And while rising electric utility rates are certainly one factor, the school division's energy consumption has also seen two consecutive years of increases.

[01:15:45] Energy consumption across the division this past year was 5.1% higher than it was five years ago, and costs have increased by 19.3% over the last five years. In that same period, our square footage has only increased by 2%. While projects such as the solar PPAs that are currently being implemented will certainly help, this is an area that could have major impacts and we are closely monitoring it from both a budgetary and sustainability perspective.

[01:16:15] However, there are certainly some positive sustainability updates, and while the ACES committee will provide a full update to the board later this year, we are currently on track to meet or exceed last year's composting levels, and we have completed or are in the process of completing solar installations at seven additional schools, with two more still to come.

[01:16:38] Other notable environmental updates from last year include conversion of the boilers at Henley Middle School from oil-powered to all-electric, which brings us down to just eight schools that still operate on heating oil. Lastly, over the last decade, we have installed dozens of stormwater facilities to meet DEQ regulations as part of our many addition renovation projects, and many of those facilities are now coming due for larger preventative maintenance work.

[01:17:03] Over the last couple of years, we have been significantly increasing our expenditures in stormwater maintenance projects to accommodate this compliance work. The building services team is one of the most, if not the most, diverse teams in the school division. remain grateful each and every day for the hard work that each person does each day to keep our schools running smoothly and efficiently. Thank you for your support and we're happy to answer any questions you may have. I'd like to know if any of the students have any comments or questions, especially since you came back after the summer. I don't know which of you encountered new things in

[01:17:42] your schools or cleaned up things or what your impression was or if you have questions or comments about what needs to be done next at your particular school. We at Western Albemarle High School, after the end of school, we did see improvements from the HVAC system, so we just wanted to thank you for that.

[01:18:04] We saw the construction and then the finishing after last year. It was really appreciated. Great. That's great to hear. I did have a question about some of the energy usage price, energy usage level and price statistics.

[01:18:21] So going into fiscal year 24, what was the reason for that wonderful decrease in total cost? Yeah, no, that's a great question. I don't know that I have any one particular thing I could pinpoint.

[01:18:37] You know, I think, I'll say this, and it's purely speculative, but I do think the use of AI in the last year or so has probably had a pretty significant increase. It's purely speculative. I think, you know, we have done a pretty good job over the last decade, really, of improving energy efficiency of through equipment replacements.

[01:19:00] Even, you know, Kagan didn't mention it, but even our roofing replacement projects, when we do those, we try to add insulation where possible, which improves the thermal barrier. So I think we've seen, you know, for the last decade, I think we've seen a lot of cumulative work that has resulted in those reductions.

[01:19:19] But I think we're starting to face some hurdles in the most recent years that are starting to reverse that trend. Thank you. But purely speculative. I don't have concrete data before me to give you concrete answers. That's a great question. Regarding the community use of our schools, which is great because we want to serve the community as well, because it's not only because all the county taxpayers help pay for these schools, whether or not they have kids in the schools.

[01:19:48] What is the trade-off between having a lot of community use and having HVAC, having appropriate heating and cooling, or do we just let them sweat it out on the off hours? No. Any community use event that gets scheduled, it comes through our asset management and work order system. And so any community and scheduling system. So any event that gets scheduled, we do schedule the HVAC to run for that event.

[01:20:18] That's part of the reason for the rental fee is to be able to recoup the costs of running those systems as well as custodial fees. So all that's factored in? Yes. Going back to the heat wave in late August, I got text messages from community observers in five or six different schools with thermostats that were ranging between 79 and 81.

[01:20:51] And I understand that may have been related to, I think we had a power outage and storms that came through, especially in the northern part of the county. Has there been discussion of the fact that this was not a one-time occurrence in a lot of cases?

[01:21:11] This is, you know, the HVAC systems are out of date and it's a sort of annual problem. It would be really helpful for me, not speaking for anybody else, but to see an estimate of how much it would cost our division to upgrade the systems that are failing so that we don't have this problem happen every other year.

[01:21:45] certainly this this summer's heat was not completely out of the norm sir question I I will I'll say this I'll push back a little bit gently on the notion that our HVAC systems are aging the reality is I'm trying to find my notes here I apologize we have over 500 HVAC assets across the division that's a

[01:22:19] lot of pieces of equipment of those 542 of those 542 assets only five of them are actually past their current expected age now 43 additional assets will will cross that threshold within the next five years and the average age of our equipment is 8.7 years and two-thirds of our equipment is 10 years or newer what will say is I think you know I think it's there should be some expectation that equipment is going to periodically fail HVAC is a very complex system I know it

[01:22:57] doesn't seem like that because we all have HVAC in our homes and you know we think it should be pretty simple but it's it's very complex because we're dealing with multiple different systems you're dealing with different manufacturers because we do live in a low bid world. And so you're going to have some failures across the system with that many assets. The other thing I'll say, and I'm not suggesting that this is necessarily the sole reason, but I do think that we are running these systems in a time of

[01:23:34] the year when they're being taxed more than they were originally designed for or tax beyond their original design and that is obviously putting additional strain on that equipment which is making it more difficult for it to run and then lastly the thing last thing I'll add the last certainly since COVID the last several years there's been a big push in our HVAC upgrades to improve outside air intake there's a lot of really good benefits for that for example we know there's been tons of studies we know that when co2 reaches certain thresholds in classrooms student learning

[01:24:12] suffers a decline right so a lot of our newer systems have the ability to monitor co2 and then send a controls message to the system to say hey we need to bring more outside air into the building to lower those co2 thresholds um because that's what we've set them up to do um the downside to that particularly when we're coming back in the most humid time of the year is that we're now bringing a lot of extra moisture in our buildings and the humidity levels start to go up right and so when we start talking about um uh comfort level air comfort levels this is what i go back

[01:24:50] back to the very beginning it's it's very complex and it's just as much an art as it is a science and then lastly you know to the art and science thing there's a lot of different factors that go into it everything from and our aging buildings is a big factor because a lot of these buildings do not particularly the buildings that were built 30 40 50 plus years ago do not have the building envelope that is really necessary to be able to combat some of those challenges so

[01:25:25] I think our team um does a phenomenal job um we certainly that's certainly not to be dismissive of the classrooms that were experiencing those upper temperatures where we did have some failures we did have all those storms that came through which was tripping a lot of breakers and unfortunately that's not discovered till the next morning so but we are we were able to dispatch in those cases that same day and resolve the issue same day in most cases um I think our biggest challenge that that we had this year really was Western where the entire second floor of the bane wing went down and we had portable air units and all those classrooms by

[01:26:03] the end of that first day and we had the system back up and running I think in within two business days and we actually sent a crew actually one of the photos and one of the slides was was installing the motor that failed but we actually sent someone all the way to Virginia Beach to pick up that motor to get that system back up and running because that was faster than having it shipped here so I'm not to be dismissive I think you know there's certain some things that we're certainly interested in trying to continually improve where possible but I do think our team given the challenges really does

[01:26:36] rise to the occasion as best as possible yeah I appreciate that I also appreciate as former Albemarle High School track coach the fact that the track has been resurfaced I'm curious I was in room 241 back in 1992 advocating to the school board that they resurface that with an all-weather track surface once upon a time, many years ago. What's the average life expectancy for a track

[01:27:06] surface these days? Typically five years. Appreciate that. And I know Lisa Bendahl and Tony Franklin do as well.

[01:27:27] I think that I had a question about, with the new implementation of the teacher parking lot at Albemarle High School, there was a removal of some of the practice fields for certain sports programs that use those practice fields. I just wanted to ask, is there any plan to maybe add more, just what is the plans with adding or just the current state of practice fields?

[01:27:54] So we put a parking lot in one of them, and we shifted some of the athletic facilities for Discus across Lamb's Lane near VMF, and so there is not a loss of any practice fields, so we just relocated and shift some of the things around.

[01:28:19] Thank you. Microphone, please. Yeah, so I think the short answer is there will still be two. It's possible that one of them is not up yet because of the grass has to take root, but there will still be two there.

[01:28:38] Thank you. I just, last season, the soccer team often had to cancel practices because there was splitting with JV teams and the girls team as well, and so just knowing that there is some kind of plan for that is really helpful. Yeah, I would think both fields should be operational by spring sports. i just to get back to you mr dylanbeck's uh thing about the hvacs and your comments i think you're you're both noting that there are challenges and that they're going to grow i mean i'm sure that i know that you're doing great work and i know that you know we had like hot um gym issues at

[01:29:16] ahs last year or two years ago and um often our student reps will mention in their readout from various buildings um that the rooms are uncomfortable and i know that you know what i've learned here tonight about the building envelope and all these things make sense but it does seem to me that you know also what you're saying about potential reasons for our costs going up all kinds of reasons um for our costs going up and um us coming back to school at a more human time and merv ratings and things like that i mean all of that makes sense and it does sound to me

[01:29:53] like they are continuing to grow these challenges are continuing to go does that is that fair i i think that's a fair assessment so i mean i i do think for us on the board to think about that in terms of you know we're here talking about budget and we're thinking about um how to spend our resources i do think that that's something that we should be thinking about because it's only going to get hotter it's you know the hottest summer on record becomes the coolest summer moving forward so it's just something for us to think about is the mountain view upper new building

[01:30:32] net zero energy um it was certainly designed uh to try to achieve that um we the proof will be in the pudding we don't have enough data right on the actual consumption yet to to be able to prove that um but we're hopeful great um is the solar operational there do you know so the solar is not operational yet so obviously we've got to get the solar up to truly achieve the net zero But that should be soon. I think we're my guess is we're probably waiting on Dominion. Excellent. As you said earlier, Western's viewing was significantly affected by the failure of the HPAC system. Is there any way you can predict or prevent that?

[01:31:12] It's a great question. I would love for us to get into predictive analytics using AI. We're not there yet. But I definitely think that the industry is heading in that direction. I know that all of our new construction, we are incredibly energy efficient, have geothermal supporting our two new schools, and I'm sure all the future ones.

[01:31:37] Does energy efficiency, and I know we also have a dashboard looking at the energy utilization at all of our facilities, does energy efficiency factor into the long range planning recommendations, Or does it help you prioritize what projects to tackle each year?

[01:32:00] I don't want to speculate as to what long-range, what factors, long-range planning members may consider in their rankings. What I will tell you is that there is usually one joint meeting every year, in fact, it's coming up in October, I think, between the long-range planning advisory committee and the ACES committee where they get together to talk about overlaps.

[01:32:24] Does your department, does building services grade the schools based on their energy efficiency? I mean, we have, you know, for example, Stony Point is what, 1932-ish building?

[01:32:42] Yeah, there's, so there's, and I apologize, I forget what the acronym stands for off the top of my head, but there's a way to score a building based on its energy. the EUI of a building and it's assigned the metric number. The lower the number the more energy efficient that building is the higher the less efficient. We do have EUI calculated EUIs for all of our buildings and we can get that data for you if it's something you're interested in.

[01:33:12] I think it would be interesting at least for the joint meeting where I am taking Ms. Lay's place in October. Hey, Matt, there's a measure on the ballot for a sales tax increase for school construction. It could bring up to $20 million a year, I believe, to Albemarle County. What would that mean for your department? And we are not advocating for it at all, but what would that mean for the county, do you think? I certainly think that $20 million a year would go a long way

[01:33:52] and checking off some of the items on the school board's CIP request list. Short and to the point. Thank you.

[01:34:09] Oh, one more question, Matt. Is there going to be an official ribbon-cutting at Ace Academy Lamb's Lane Campus, and may we come? Short answer is yes. I don't think we have a date yet, but once we do have that date, we will absolutely invite the board.

[01:34:26] I would hope that you would also invite the neighboring, the neighborhood, Green, Georgetown Green, who's been quite interested in the process. Absolutely. Yeah, we definitely want to close that circle. Thank you.

[01:34:42] Great. Thank you all. Thank you. Next up, we have Mr. Bradley about safety and security annual update. First of all, good evening to the board.

[01:35:06] Chair Berlin, Vice Chair Osborne, our board members, our newly added board member, student representatives, Dr. Hayes, and all the other participants and guests that are here today. I'm here today to speak about the Office of Safety and Security's programs and give you an overview as to what we've been up to.

[01:35:27] And also, as soon as I can find my cursor, there we are. Let me get out of here. I was impressive by your multitask in there. You like that?

[01:35:42] Yeah, right up top. There I am. Thank you. And yeah, there we go. All right. I just want to go ahead and give you an overview of what we've been up to, some of the highlights of the activities we've been involved in, and just give you an idea of what we're doing. We're one of those operations that kind of just happens in the background and keeps going. And we want to make sure that you're aware of our activities and also how we're dealing with our emergency response. So today I want to go ahead and cover a few items with you. We're going to go ahead and discuss a little bit about this is the agenda that we're going to be addressing today we do have a lot of

[01:36:22] information that is contained within the presentation so I will conduct highlights and of course when we get to the questions if there are any questions or concerns that you want to discuss that come to light please make sure you provide that to me I'll do my best to respond to that of course we are compliant with our strategic plan under learning for all specifically we're addressing where objective 4 which are our priority we prioritize the safety of students staff families and communities through comprehensive prevention preparedness and responsive strategies to create a secure and supportive learning environment that is the primary role of us is to create that

[01:36:59] learning environment because we do not have a safe learning environment we're really unable to educate our kids and our staff not able to function like they need to so we put all of our efforts into that particular objective as we move forward this is just our department mission just to give some oversight we are still a relatively new department within ACPS so we like to remind our attendees that this is our current purpose and what our mission is and that's available for your review we're gonna first talk about our staffing no significant increases or decreases from when we reported again last year we did

[01:37:35] have some minor increases with our school security officer staffing we did increase by just to our trailhead learning community and a cell each were approved and now put into service an additional school security officer that manages their students within the buildings and provide that assistance to the administrators. All the other staffing that we have is still standing consistent with what we've reported in the previous year.

[01:38:05] One of our few of our programs, we do focus a lot of our attention on our emergency management practices. Our crisis management plans, of course, are continuing to be an ongoing process to make sure that we have a plan in place to address any emergency situations that take place this year we want to go ahead and highlight that we've added per state law that cardiac emergency response plan that spot response plan has been added to our crisis management plans and what it really does it focuses on especially with our athletics or any opportunity where there's sudden cardiac arrest that we have a team that's in place that's trained understand their roles and they're able to

[01:38:42] respond to those sudden life-threatening circumstances. So that was been added to our crisis management plans and in coordination with our medical health divisions, our nurses, and also with our professional learning we've come up with through a committee to come up with what this plan looks like and how we've implemented with our schools so we can respond to these needs.

[01:39:06] In addition, we continue to work on response protocols. That's constant. We encourage our staffs to use those daily because that's going to encourage our ability to respond to any types of emergencies as we need them. I do want to highlight that just last month we participated in a joint county city sheltering tabletop. The tabletop exercises I think are just incredible because it continues to reinforce the mindset that we need in order to respond to any type of emergency situation. If you don't practice it mentally, when the opportunity comes where you have to deal with that you're thinking about what's going on instead of responding.

[01:39:41] So we had an opportunity to participate in that. That was a regional tabletop involving both the county, city, university, as well as some of our emergency management resources through multiple agencies. It gave us an opportunity to coordinate with these and learn more of our players so that when and if something happens, I'm not meeting these individuals the first time when we're trying to communicate about an emergency activity.

[01:40:06] In addition, we continue to employ our ALICE training And I do want to highlight as a reminder, because in any emergency circumstances, communication is really the key and it's a priority. I do want to always highlight that our Crisis Communications webpage is a site that our Office of Communications has put together, which allows us to communicate with our public.

[01:40:25] Whenever there's an activity or emergency, it's a one-stop shop to identify and track and keep informed as to what we're doing so that we can keep communication at a premium. A few more projects that we're working on. One that we're highlighting and I think that is very critical and I think it's an amazing resource is our virtual emergency operations center.

[01:40:45] You may hear the term VOCIE as it is known for short and what that is is within the emergency management circles. This is actually a virtual emergency communication center. So you can pull in participants that have any involvement in an active emergency situation to come into a virtual space and it allows everyone to communicate.

[01:41:05] So in that same virtual space, I can communicate with fire and EMS, schools are represented, emergency management, our resources to help with recovery or reunification, all these resources can enter into this virtual space and continue to stay updated on what all parts are doing.

[01:41:21] So we're working towards getting that implemented completely within our school structure so that we're able to respond to our emergency responders when we have issues that are affecting our schools and our buildings. We're continuing to work on communications, inventorying our radios.

[01:41:38] We're making sure that we're able to talk to one another when things happen. That's just an ongoing process, just to make sure we're meeting our requirements with FCC licensing, that we're getting the proper equipment that's going to be useful for our folks to communicate. Now, we're also going to go through just our physical infrastructure.

[01:41:56] These are things that we're constantly working on, so this is going to be something you always see. But we've been highlighting, especially our security cameras. There's been significantly more requests from our administrators within our buildings that cameras are really important, that they're necessary. And I agree with that.

[01:42:12] We're putting a lot of our attention towards that particular project because it helps us to identify and respond to problems. And when they happen, we can go back and identify details, which is important for us to identify how, one, to respond to things better and also assist with our external agencies in case there are other activities that need to take place as a result of those.

[01:42:32] vape sensors is another one that seems to be creeping up We are constantly concerned about the impact that these devices have and we don't necessarily have control over their use So we're continuing to employ resources to expand our vape sensor use within our schools So we can keep our students safe. That's one of the areas. We never know what's in those So until they're used we hope that if they're used it's not something harmful But we want to make sure that we're identifying and can manage that concern within our school buildings Just wanted to briefly go over our safety audit.

[01:43:09] This is something that we have to do annually and that the school board is definitely made aware of. It consists of five different parts. Of course, it's two of the safety surveys conducted by our administrators in their schools, also by our superintendent. Also, we have our crisis management plans, which are completed and reviewed annually.

[01:43:27] Our school climate survey, which is the input we get from our school community within our student staff and our community about how they feel about safety within the area and also our school safety inspections i want to highlight that because this year although it's a three-year requirement to conduct our security assessments we successfully conducted security assessments of every one of our schools during the summer ran them through the comprehensive checklist just to make sure that we have a good starting point and we're looking forward to continuing to identify those i did promise matt workman we're not going to create too many work

[01:44:02] orders but i can't say that this process did not create more but that's just so we can be attentive to what's going on and we can repair them and just make sure we're in a proper place to make sure that our schools are safe this is one of the areas that we definitely want to make sure we discuss and it's always a point that is of interest our school resource officer program which is managed by our office and it's in conjunction with the ac police department and we continue to monitor and work this program we had two s or three sros and one in each of our

[01:44:37] comprehensive high schools and we have one rover that is provided by the police department that responds to those calls at our middle schools primarily and our elementaries whenever that officer is available to respond to get that sro qualified and certified individual into our schools to address issues of concern. We go ahead and make sure that we're getting the people in school to address that. This just states are what the code says about what they're here for and what their purpose is. Primarily they respond to emergencies. They're there to create an environment that's going to be conducive for creating rapport and relationships and they're there to be

[01:45:14] that resource for administrators to effectively keep their school buildings safe. We do have our MOU. It runs on a two-year cycle. This is the beginning of the second year so we're still acting under the current MOU we will have a review on that up never gonna run direction we do have a review to get that one conducted over the next year so we will have an opportunity to get input from our community on that as well once the revision is up for that

[01:45:49] particular time I do want to go ahead and discuss attached to this report which is available for you is our annual report provides a lot more detail specific items that are going to address successes I believe with the program that's provided for your review but that report is going to highlight the four attributes that we use to evaluate the success for SRO program.

[01:46:14] We use our SBAR data and we use those, although that's behavior data, we do address those points where the SRO or law enforcement has either a required report to law enforcement because of that student activity or a encouraged I would say where they would be expected to but it's not required so we pull those attributes out of SBAR to make that part of the reporting process we use our Virginia climate survey to get our input about how our community feels about the successes with the program calls for service those are just those times where law enforcement has put out a call to or we put a call out to law enforcement to

[01:46:52] respond to a particular issue that could be anything from concerns of suspicious people on campus we have a lot of calls that are related to student and medical activities where we have to have a response there's also opportunities where there are times where we have people that need to be arrested not necessarily our students but we have our community that's still functioning around our properties that end up getting into involvement. So these calls for service are going to be identified within the report and a comparative to let you know exactly

[01:47:27] how much they're increasing or decreasing. And also our activities and student engagement. We continue to encourage our SROs to be engaged in student activities. I don't think we're quite there with as significantly they can be, but we're continuing to work on finding a way for them to be engaged. I do believe that they are a good presence, and I'm curious to find it when we get to the questions if we have any input, especially from our student reps, what their thoughts are about that particular program. But the report is available for your review, and it does cover these areas that will provide you some more detailed information about that particular program.

[01:48:03] We touched basically on the school security officer. So school security officers are those non-law enforcement folks. They're school employees that are responsible for pretty much the safety and security of our students and our staff throughout the school day. And they're there primarily to assist in maintaining discipline, respond to emergencies and be another resource to our students and get to know them, understand them so that we can be both a support and be able to assist our administrators when there's a need for supporting them in the disciplinary process.

[01:48:38] This is just some of the training that they have undertaken, particularly this year, required Every year they take their CPR, search and seizure, stop the bleed, Narcan, and traffic control. Those are things that they use potentially on a regular basis, and if not used regularly, it's important for them to understand because typically they're going to be the ones, because their role is to be in and around the campus, they're going to be the ones that find when we get into situations where it's a potential crisis.

[01:49:05] We want to make sure that they understand how to do that immediate need of service. In addition, they do de-escalation, implicit bias, cultural competency, CPI information privacy, and weapons screening. We want to make sure that they understand how to operate and function within their community and understand their community so they can be a benefit.

[01:49:24] I want to touch briefly on some of our mental health and wellness programs. I know we had the Lightspeed program, and I think you guys are aware with that, but that produces a significant amount of alerts that we get both during the school day and after hours to respond to our students' concerns, community concerns about our students where there's potential for either self-harm or threats to others.

[01:49:48] So that is one of the assistance that we continue to support with our IT unit. The Help Me app, which we continue to promote, is another resource for us to engage and give a resource for our students. And anyone who wants to access that app to go ahead and get access to crisis communications resources, There's a crisis text line, there's an ask for help, but also my office, in conjunction with our mental health staff, are also responsible for dealing with these calls and alerts.

[01:50:18] When they come in, we make it a priority to address it. If it requires emergency response, my office provides that. If it requires support for our mental health services and counseling staff, then they address that with our students. We want to make sure that no matter what their state, we want to make sure that they're going to be safe and secure.

[01:50:38] And then we have our threat assessment process that continues to be ongoing. It's something we just simply readdressed a little this year just to make sure that the process and flow is just more efficient. So we provided training to all of our administrators just to make sure that we're responding to the threat assessment process, identifying any potential concerns with our students for threats to self or again, threats to others.

[01:51:03] So that's one of the programs that we spend a significant amount of time addressing so we can address that more as a standard throughout our schools. Looking ahead, some of the areas that we would like to focus and put some time on is community engagement.

[01:51:19] We do try to make sure we have opportunities to inform our communities about programs we think are important. This year, we would like to try and address some of the priorities to be dealing with cyber bullying and bullying awareness. Human trafficking awareness, that's something that we are seeing a little bit more of an increase.

[01:51:37] It's one of those things that's unseen people don't know what it is unless you're made aware of it. We want to put some time and attention there. Drug and gang awareness has been of some interest and also gun safety. We find that many times our students and families get involved in some concerns with crises because we're not addressing the gun safety aspect. I think it's important to touch on that. And again, staff training and awareness. We continue to make sure our staff are addressing student discipline training to make sure everybody understands that we're dealing with our kids in the most effective manner and also behavioral assessment training. It's important. Everyone's different. Everyone has

[01:52:14] their own way of doing things. We want to make sure that we're at least smart with our emotional intelligence about understanding behavioral assessments. It helps us be more responsive to our students throughout the school day. So that is going to bring me to the conclusion of my presentation. I appreciate your time and your support with my program. We continue to grow every year. A lot of work is coming from our department. I appreciate my coordinators that I think are doing an amazing job, but we just continue to keep on going and making sure that we're abiding by that mantra of making this a safe and secure learning environment for our kids. If you have

[01:52:53] any questions, I'll be glad to field those. Thank you, Mr. Bradley. Yes, ma'am. I would like to ask our students, I don't want to put you on the spot because I know this is anecdotal information and and I'll often argue with my colleagues about presenting anecdotal information. But if any of you would like to speak to how safe you feel at school, if there are areas that you think could be beefed up for either your emotional or physical safety, we would love to hear about that.

[01:53:20] But you can also not say anything to. - Or anything related. - Yeah. - Yeah, or anything you'd like. We're an open book. - Hi, I'm Kenny from Monticello High School, and I would like to say that I feel very safe at school constantly, And I know that if I am in distress or if a student is in distress, we always have someone to talk to ready and available.

[01:53:39] So I thank you for that. Fantastic. Thank you very much. I agree. I have a question about ALISH training or like a suggestion. Yes. So when we were doing it, with the YouTube video, there was like ads and it kind of derailed like students' like participation and focus.

[01:53:58] So is there a way to remove them or move the video to a different site where those wouldn't happen? Sure thing. we'll look into that one. I know they like the ads because YouTube likes people to pay for their services but let me see if we have an opportunity to put that in another place where we can avoid that distraction and make it a little more clear to you. Thank you for that. I also want to say that I think my interactions with the school resource officers and SSOs have been generally positive. I think it really helps seeing them around the school and knowing that they're present and also knowing that they're very approachable if I have any concerns. Great, thank you. I would like to say thank you for all the implementation you guys have done um i'd like to reaffirm how

[01:54:37] the sros and sso's have been very helpful i would like i wonder could you guys add another weapons detection system because sometimes it causes a little bit of congestion when we're trying to get into school but i don't know the budgeting on that but something to look into okay sure and just so you're aware there is a budget requirement that goes along with that obviously and we've also found out this particular year that the staffing requirements that are needed to also man that process can be a little taxing so we want to try and balance that responsibility to also with the actual

[01:55:14] service of having them in place so we'll continue to look into and see if we can make some room to make those more available but we'll continue and make that a possible budget item for the coming year I wanted to build on that with another question is just um do you guys calibrate the weapons detectors a certain way because I know that some days or certain detectors my water bottle will go off and somebody's it won't so I just wanted to see if there are some variation in that there are variations those units are actually if you research them they're used for a very minuscule you can get those

[01:55:50] sensitized down to the point where you could find paper clips if you wanted to you use those in classified locations and areas where you're really looking at those fine details. We try to set them at a level where we're identifying those things that can hurt us of a mass destruction level, which is firearms and anything bigger, okay? So we want to put them at a level where we can identify those things that may be more encountered at a school and that we can prevent those from coming in. So there is a sensitivity level that we're aware of and we try and manage it. It is a little bit more sensitive than it was last year, just so you're aware, because last year was our first year.

[01:56:28] It's our opportunity to test it out and see if it's working. But I think we're at a place where we need to be to make sure that the environment's gonna be most safe. So we wanna keep working through and having you guys understand what sets it off or not. I was just over at Monticello during the AP training.

[01:56:43] So I got to work at the school, work in the screening. And it's interesting to see what's setting those things off. So it's also good for me to be in that environment so we can understand what you guys are going through. - Follow up on Charlotte's comment, forgive my ignorance.

[01:57:01] What is ALICE training? - ALICE is our, whenever we get into, as part of our response protocols, when we get into a lockdown and we have that critical violent incident in the schools, ALICE is the practice we use to respond to it.

[01:57:16] So it's an acronym and it allows for us to, it's alert, identify, it's counter, it's evacuate, and it allows a whole acronym for people to communicate, how to communicate, how to respond, and how to implement the process.

[01:57:36] So that's what that stands for. - What has been, I mean, I know that students have just sort of noticed the varying sensitivity of the weapons detection equipment, but what has been the outcome?

[01:57:52] Do you, I mean, what are the results in terms of detecting actual harmful weapons, or is it primarily deterrence, I would hope? - I think it functions both. I would not be naive to say that we have weapons in and around our community, but we're not encountering a significant number of weapons.

[01:58:20] And one of the reasons why it's not one of the focal points and highlights of the conversation is because I can count on my hand how many weapons that we've encountered to date. - Outstanding news. And that, one of those, was a firearm, and the other were knives that were more of a significant size than what you would encounter for a simple pocket knife.

[01:58:41] They were identified safely, there were no concerns, and we were able to address the individuals who brought those in. If it was a teaching and learning experience, that you're not supposed to have these, and you came from camping, and you have a mini-tool or whatever, we teach.

[01:58:58] If there's an issue where it's a concern for physical safety, then we make sure we are engaged. And then we call the authorities if that's what it takes to make sure we're addressing it properly. And in terms of the vape detectors, what is the cost? A, where do you put them? I'm assuming in the bathrooms.

[01:59:14] But what is the cost per unit? Okay, so the vape detectors are placed in the bathrooms. They're more effective in the individual stall bathrooms because it's easier to monitor and identify when they're actually alerted. When they go into the larger bathroom with multiple folks, it's a little bit more investigation that needs to be done on the administrator's parts to identify who and what individuals set those off.

[01:59:41] Unless my building services folks had that number effectively available, I can get back to you on the cost. Do you happen to know? Okay, so he says it's about $1,500 for the units. And just so you know, we use those units to the level that we're able to address the response.

[02:00:01] They can be used for ballistic identification, they can be used for distress, they can be used for vape sensors, they can be used in many ways. Currently in order for us to respond to them actively and effectively they're just set right now for vape sensors.

[02:00:16] Thank you. Also regarding those vape sensors, I know that there is a sensitivity level for that as well as you were just talking about. What are you seeing in terms of how many of those are being caught, found, whatever?

[02:00:32] I don't have a direct number of the units that we're getting. I can get that for you. What we are finding, though, is that it does sensitize and find and locate that the vapes are being used. We're working, actually, a little bit more to get our response together so that we can report that information a little more accurately.

[02:00:52] Again, if they're in those larger bathrooms where we have multiple individuals, it's more difficult to identify to the degree who has it. But so we're going to work on that and be a little more judicious about how we employ those within our schools.

[02:01:07] So the only way that a vape can be detected in our schools is if it's being, the moment it's being used? If it's being used, correct. Thank you. Yes. Hey, Mr. Bradley, as you know, earlier this month there was a school shooting in Waynesboro.

[02:01:25] Yes. A guy shot into the back of an elementary school. Can you talk about the preparations for events like this in Albemarle? Sure thing. And first of all, that's just horrific when that experience is presented to any school district and anyone in their school buildings.

[02:01:44] I just pray that's never something we have to deal with, but we continue to train our staff to identify to situational awareness. We want to see it before it happens. We want to identify who's coming to our buildings and who's outside. So we're teaching our individuals more about those behavioral cues.

[02:02:03] We also, with our facilities, we have the film on the external windows of our first floors for the schools. That allows individuals to, they have to repeatedly try and get through the glass in order to get into the building.

[02:02:19] What that does, it allows us to buy time, allows us to see what's going on, call for support from our emergency services, and then get into a proper protocol so that we're able to be in a safe place until we get that response that's needed to make sure that we can deal with that assailance that's coming in 100 we cannot prevent that kind of activity from impacting our schools but the more trained we are the more prepared we are the more we're able to mitigate any particular loss or significant harm or death to our students or our staff so we continue to work and train and that's what we continue to do to make sure

[02:02:55] we're prepared hi i had a question about the light speed monitoring system so you mentioned that it is, sorry, 24-7, 365 coverage of student activity? Yes. So it is my understanding that certain keywords or key phrases trigger an alert and administration can then look at that. Yes.

[02:03:21] Do people working in administrative roles, if they want to pull student records, do they have to keep a log of that of some sort? So the answer is there is a log that's done whenever there's a need to go back and research that information when it's first identified it's an alert that goes through our IT process and it that cues it to go to the Lightspeed service who is a contractor that we use to evaluate the the message that comes through so if the message say is a self-harm message and it says

[02:03:56] something very graphic about how they want to you know address that concern that they have. Then the call goes through to one of my staff members. There are four of us that are on call. Anytime of night we deal with these, they come through. When we get the phone call, then we address it with the call service, identify if it's a legitimate claim and get as much information about it. We research it, then we begin making phone calls and identifying if it's during the school day. We send it directly to the school and let our school administrators and staff deal with it, identify the student, get them into a safe place and

[02:04:33] identify how we can help them get past that, that issue. If it's after hours, we call families, we call our administrators, we engage. If we're unable to locate the student and what's going on, we get the enlistment support of our local emergency responders to go do a welfare check because we never want to leave someone out there who's not being addressed because the call came into our service. Getting to your point about the log, if there's a need for us to go back in to get more detail except from what's provided to us with that first alert which is the log

[02:05:08] then we go through and we track and identify what we needed to go into to identify further information to support whether there's a concern or not so that information is captured and retained on a case-by-case basis when we have to dig deeper into that information all right thank you i'd like to thank you for the efforts that that you and your team have put in uh just recently with some staff at Western Albemarle High School with concerns and to your point early on that

[02:05:42] you know teachers and students can't be successful unless they feel safe sure and so to give you you and your team credit for making those arrangements so that they do feel safe so thank you very much appreciate that thank you anything else for Mr. Bradley or shall we take a break thank you all all right thank you very much for your time okay the school board will now take a break

[02:06:08] you have 10 minutes please come back at 8 15. 8 15 that math is all right looks like everyone's

[02:18:26] around the table so welcome to the meal um hopefully you brought some things but um we're looking forward to be able to connect with you around um and pleased to be able to work with you around framing school board priorities for the coming year um as you've referenced before we've got budget books here to be able to unpack and write the next one to some degree but today it really isn't about the budget itself it's about being able to understand the priorities that we're striving to achieve and the means by which we get there and so really today is the start of a lot much larger conversation as we all see as we move forward oh I'm sorry I'm not introducing myself my name is Tony Borash I'm the assistant director of professional learning here with the

[02:19:03] division and looking forward to be able to facilitate this exercise to help support alongside my teammate Maya Kumazawa who's going to be able to introduce herself and go through our experience today so as we talked through the goals of our work session. Really, this is the portion I heard it said. This is the portion where we get a little bit of time to put our heads down and to put some perspectives into place.

[02:19:24] Our goal for this discussion is to bring three school board priorities that the superintendent and team can use to develop a focused budget and make recommendations when resources do not allow every need to be funded. So it helps to give us some goals to move forward with.

[02:19:39] Not only would it help to prioritize and inform the evaluation of new requests, but also informs the beginning of a larger strategic planning process as we, I say, lowercase s, strategic, lowercase p, planning, that we use the strategic planning and strategic thinking to make great decisions about the ways in which we support the young people and all of those who wrap around those services with them.

[02:20:00] So our discussion here is going to be focused around two pieces. One is to better understand the FY27 budget and to see where we currently stand so that everybody's on a shared page being able to work through that. And from there, we'll be able to use that in the STEM around some prioritization exercises where we'll unpack our values and see how these budgets can help to align to those.

[02:20:24] And with that, I'll be able to transition to Maya, who will be able to walk us through that. Good evening. I'm Maya Kumazawa, Director of Budget and Planning. And this evening will be a very, very brief budget review for those of you who are unfamiliar with the budget, but then also I'm sitting a couple minutes looking at what next year and future years might look like.

[02:20:47] So we'll start with the budget document, the FY27, that represents the 26-27 school year. And I'm just going to walk through some examples and highlights of things to get you acclimated with the book. So the first page I'd like for you to turn to is page A25.

[02:21:08] The letters represent different sections, and then the page numbers start from one within each section. So the total budget for Albemarle County Public Schools is about $334 million.

[02:21:29] The budget has revenues and expenses, and the revenues equal the expenses. So this represents a balanced budget. Our revenues come from local, state, and federal sources, in addition to the use of our own fund balance or savings that we've built up.

[02:21:47] Expenditures can be broadly categorized into instruction, administration, attendance, and health, technology, building services, transportation, food services, non-instruction, and transfers. Now, while the entire budget book does encompass this $334 million, in order to understand it, we break it down into different components.

[02:22:12] Two of our largest components are the school fund and the special revenue funds. We most of the time talk about the school fund because that makes up $308 million of the 334. That's over 90%, so that is our main day-to-day operating fund is the school fund.

[02:22:31] So zooming in a little bit lower into the school fund, that's on the next page. So if we flip the page to A26, that budget, a component of the total budget, is $308 million. There's a similar breakdown of revenues and expenses.

[02:22:47] They equal each other, and they're a balanced budget. Our funding sources come from local, state, and federal sources. And then A26 breaks down the expenditures in a different way. Rather than by state categories, we are breaking it down by what the expense is actually being paid for.

[02:23:05] So that would include salary, other wages, benefits, operations, and transfers. If you go down a level further, we break down the school fund into school budgets and department budgets.

[02:23:22] Now we dedicate entire sections of the budget book so that you can see the budget for each of our schools in Section D, and you can see the budgets for each of our departments in Section E. So let's flip the budget book over to Section D, School Locations, and in the Table of Contents you can see a list of all of the schools and if you're interested you can find your school, flip to the page and take a look at what a school's budget is or you can see the general scale of them as well.

[02:23:59] School budgets are driven by and developed based on projected student enrollment and demographics.

[02:24:20] Schools are provided staffing resources based on ACPS's staffing standards and formulas. The remaining budget is allocated to operations and is determined by factors such as student enrollment, demographics, and performance. We'll look at some examples later, but Section G contains information about all those budget factors and assumptions that go into the school budgets.

[02:24:44] The other portion of the school fund is made up by department budgets. So that can be found in the next section, section E. So flip to the next tab, and in that table of contents, you can see a list of all of our department-based expenditures.

[02:25:06] You might ask, well, why do we have departments, and why are they separated from the schools? We do this because a lot of our costs can't be allocated to a specific building location the way a school budget can. so for example we heard about custodians this evening those staff work and are based at specific school locations so custodians are included in a school based budget and you know some of the more obvious positions like your teachers and your principal there are some other costs you heard from mr.

[02:25:38] Bradley this evening also his department serves all the schools there isn't one safety person assigned to every school and so in that case they are a department because they can't we can't allocate the resource specifically to a location and so whenever we have a service that serves the division in its entirety and not by individual school we pull it together at a department and the department budgets are all separate based on what service they provide we have 16 departments we also have one department called non department which

[02:26:12] is basically a budget a budget area that budgets for transfers to other funds And then we also have a department called Lapse Factor, and that represents vacancy savings that we anticipate to have throughout the year. So when you add up all the school budgets and all the department budgets together, that makes up the $308 million in the school fund.

[02:26:36] I also want to spend a little bit of time on special revenue funds. So that's the remaining money that is part of the total budget, makes up a much smaller proportion. That's about 34 million dollars, and if you flip to the next tab, section F, you can see a listing of our special revenue funds.

[02:26:59] These programs require separate accounting and reporting of revenues and expenses. Within each fund, the revenues and expenses balance, so each fund has its own budget in a sense, whereas the school fund, the budget as a whole balances between revenues and expenses.

[02:27:19] and state governments, local organizations, and fees fund many of these programs. Although the accounting of these programs is maintained separately, the provision of services to students is integrated within our overall operations. So while this is in a separate place in the budget document and it's accounted for differently, you would not notice day to day how something is funded. So you might have a teacher who's funded in a special revenue fund, but you would not know that because they're integrated into operations. Are there any questions about the budget structure as a whole? And feel free to jump in at any time. We intentionally

[02:27:57] have you sitting at tables so this can be more conversational. Each of your school expenses, you've got enrollment. Is that a figure on day one or is that a figure on 60 or when is that sort of snapshot taken?

[02:28:13] it's a great segue into my next slide. So we use September 30th as a snapshot to budget our various factors that go into the resource allocation. And September 30th is also the date that which we report to the state, our specific figures. So there's a lot of things that line up then. It's also a little bit into the school year, so it gives us enough time to be representative.

[02:28:45] So let's turn to page G3, and you might have to turn your book. But this is the projection for the current school year, 26-27, and you can see there's a projection for every school by every grade level.

[02:29:05] This is the projection for September 30th that was made. And you can see how it compares to actual enrollment last year and projected enrollment last year. Projections are built on a 10-year basis, so we'll use the 10-year projections.

[02:29:22] We'll talk to you about that in October when we're thinking about long-range planning. For budget purposes, we stick to the first year as this is an annual budget. We use these enrollment projections to develop the class sections. We also, as I mentioned before, these enrollment projections help inform how much an operating budget for a school should be.

[02:29:43] We also project the number of economically disadvantaged students or special education students, EL students, to determine what kind of resources we think it will need the following year. So a school budget is made up of staffing allocations. That's the majority of a school budget, over 90%.

[02:30:04] And then a small portion goes to operating budgets, so the money you need day-to-day to run the school building. Other questions about enrollment? so next I just wanted to point out some I mentioned staffing standards that those words might not mean very much to you but if I go through some examples it might be more helpful so a staffing standard is a formula to foster equity equitable resource allocation across schools these are guidelines that are

[02:30:44] adopted by the school board if some schools might deviate a little bit from the standard and we have a process for approving those so it might not be exact if you walk into a school building it might not be exactly what you see in the staffing standard but that is the the baseline or the foundation by which a school staffing is designed so the first example we'll look at is on page g6 if you go near the bottom of the page you'll see a staffing standard for teaching assistants so in this first example we have a staffing standard called teaching

[02:31:21] assistant K1 and teaching assistant lunch. We provide a certain number of FTE or full-time equivalents to each school based on how many sections there are. So sections like a homeroom or a class.

[02:31:40] For every K1 classroom section, we provide a four-hour TA to that classroom. A four-hour TA is equivalent to a .55 FTE, or full-time equivalent, because their base hour day is 7.25 hours, so 4 divided by 7.25 is .55, so that's what that means.

[02:32:01] We also provide 30 minutes, a 30-minute block of lunch coverage for every two sections. That's a .07 FTE equivalent, and then division-wide we have 9.7. So we're going to skip a few pages and go to G23.

[02:32:24] I know, sorry, the numbers get real small here, but there's a lot of information to show. On page G23, if you look across the top dark section, look for where it says teaching assistance or TA lunch coverage.

[02:32:42] And those numbers that you see in those columns, that represents the FTE. So division-wide, we have 56.7 K-1 TAs and 9.7 lunch coverage TAs. And those FTEs that you see listed, that is what determines the budget allocation.

[02:33:03] So we estimate the cost of a TA to be, say, $45,000 a year when you include benefits. So roughly $45,000 times these numbers of FTE is the budget that we would allocate in the school's budget.

[02:33:20] any questions these staffing standards form in virginia or we get to standard based on our own expectations yeah that's a great question um if you go back to g6 um on the right side of the page

[02:33:52] you'll see the staffing requirement for by defined by the vdoe or industry standards where it applies So this is the basis of where these standards came from. So on page G6, these industry standards are the SOQs, the standards of quality required by the state.

[02:34:12] And we meet or go are better than whatever the state says. But that's there for reference. In the boxes where it's blank, there isn't a standard that we're aware of. And so that's an ACPS standard.

[02:34:27] but we do often benchmark ourselves against other divisions and learn from other divisions to ensure we're in line with providing the services that we want to provide yes yes there's different depending on the the type of positions they're different organizations to benchmark against and for departments I I know that I think it was the building services guidelines I think are pretty detailed.

[02:35:02] That's on page G15. So that is not, you know, an SOQ necessarily. It is an industry guideline of how many, you know, maintenance workers you need per square footage that you have. So it's kind of a mix of comparison points.

[02:35:19] Question for my colleagues that have been on board for longer than eight months. Have you seen a change in the standards based on, for example, the increase in the number of special ed students and the way to which additional services and staffing ratios or standards evolved over time?

[02:35:54] I don't know if the standards have, but I mean, we've increased our special ed support staff, special ed psychologists, I think this year, I don't know if the underlying guidelines in a typical year the standards do remain the same if we propose a change we'll bring it'll be part of the budget process to say oh we want this new position or we should change this ratio if it's if it's the special needs the actual needs are increasing then that would be built into meeting our staffing

[02:36:31] standards usually maybe a part of growth or an increase a non-discretionary increase it would be presented in a way that's we're not changing the standard, our demographics and enrollment is changing, and that's why the budget is changing. Yeah. So some staffing standards are based on student enrollment, while others are allocated per school. So this other example is nurse staffing. Every school receives a nurse. And so while larger schools have more overall staffing, they generally have lower per-pupil costs

[02:37:06] because that cost for the nurse is split among more people. And not all standards are fully funded. So we do have one nurse per school, but you can see in our standards that we would have two or three if that could be funded. And so some of the standards are there as a, hey, this is where we should be, but they're not all completely funded, and it's a multi-year budget process.

[02:37:33] Oh, yep. That means partially funded for us. Yep. All right. So the last example I want to review with you is a special revenue fund, and that's called the Learning Resources Fund. So if you flip back to page F16. This is a fund that we spent some time on during this past budget process. I just wanted to bring it to your attention. This is a special revenue fund where the revenues are funded by a transfer from the school fund. So the money originally starts in the school fund that comes from state, local, and federal revenues. And then

[02:38:12] we make a transfer into a separate fund, and that's the revenue for the Learning Resources fund. For the current year, we increased that transfer or that revenue to $1.4 million annually from $600,000 annually. And then in addition, you all approved a one-time transfer of $600,000 for the current year. And the other thing to note about special revenue funds is that fund balances can be retained from year to year. So what that's being spent on is on the expenditure side. There's $1.4 million in recurring expenses, and that covers baseline annual operational costs

[02:38:50] of textbooks, software licenses, curriculum adoptions across all grade levels and disciplines. And then the $600,000, that's a one-time funding amount for this year, which is a bridge funding for very specific curriculum adoption cycles. And so if nothing else changes going into the next budget year, you will see the $1.4 million that has been approved to be recurring. The $600,000 would go away. Things like new biology textbooks, would that be included in that funding or would that

[02:39:21] be something that, oh, we need to serve another $100,000. Hi, I'm Megan Wood, acting assistant superintendent for instruction, and I have been actually overseeing this budget even in the role director of professional learning and so it would be both because we do have reoccurring expenditures we're working on a textbook replacement cycle so that

[02:39:59] we can project out multiple years how much money we will need as you guys know we've adopted pretty hefty curriculum the last couple of years and so right now we're looking at what might be a dish we might have to make some additional requests in the next couple years just to kind of catch up from all of the big expenses that we've had but one of the things that I've really started to work on is projecting out because we know that when we adopted HMH it's a seven year we've adopted it for seven years so we know in seven years we're going to have to look at are we going to stick with HMH or what does that look like when we come up with the big textbook

[02:40:33] adoption cycles we also have like AP textbook replacement in addition to the 9 through 12 science replacement so there's a lot of different factors that go into it so each year we would have to kind of assess what it looks like coming up for the next year so it could still be a little bit of both I think that's a good prediction thank you I think that's part of the reason why I wanted to use this as an example because I think there's gonna be a lot of activity in the next few years and then

[02:41:11] the last slide I have is just a forecastable what does it look like moving forward I don't have a revenue forecast on here as I don't have any information about what that might look like but on the expenditure side we are anticipating health care costs to increase by about 8% per year in the next few years maybe rising up to the 10% range in the out years based on what we're currently seeing someone mentioned special education staffing that is a cost that we see increasing every year not necessarily due to more students but because of the the severity of the need at every school so we do

[02:41:48] anticipate investing more in that for the next five years. You might remember in the current year we balanced our budget using some one-time funding sources. We will need to replace that with recurring funding starting in FY28. So that's kind of like a baseline, hey, if we want to maintain a service, we need to find recurring funding for it. This was particularly true in the case of our technology replacement. And then for the next two years, we will be seeing average salary increases greater than 4% based on the current collective bargaining agreement and the

[02:42:22] salary scales that have been approved. In FY30, year three, there will be a new negotiation for a second collective bargaining contract. So that will likely bring on new costs then. And then the other item that we know for sure will also happen in year three is the opening of the northern feeder pattern elementary school operating costs. If the two schools or if the Mountain View upper school that we open this year is indicative of what the cost might be in the future. It'll be about $3 million. So these are some of the large items that we're looking to in our forecast. And then

[02:43:00] in terms of revenue, I might remind you that this past year, our main revenue source comes from local government, and they provide us with a transfer to fund these ongoing expenses. There was a reduction of $6.4 million in revenues for this budget, and that was based on an average growth of 5.8% per year.

[02:43:24] So you might use that as what might be possible in terms of revenue growth if, on average, it was 5.8%. But those discussions will continue through the budget process, so we'll see what that is. My guess is if we do get 5.8%, this is manageable.

[02:43:43] these costs that we're thinking, that we're predicting. And that's why we wanted to bring this protocol and this exercise to tonight's work session. So for you to think about, well, if we did have funding, where would you prioritize it? And so with that, I will turn it back over to Tony.

[02:44:03] Yes. - Question, what are we building into the budget in terms of energy costs, DCCO, et cetera? - That was work to be done. So I'll be working with staff on that, but we don't have any specifics yet.

[02:44:19] We do have, for this year, we do have contingencies built in. We haven't fully spent the additional state revenue that hasn't been, some of it has been appropriated, some of it hasn't, just because there are still some things in flux.

[02:44:35] So energy and fuel is definitely some items that we're keeping our eye on, but nothing specific yet. - LCI set to next year. - Yes, so the LCI will be flat going into next year.

[02:44:54] I will mention, though, we do anticipate a decline in state revenues based on what we're seeing with enrollment. So state revenues won't be flat. There are still other factors other than LCI that might change that impact our revenues.

[02:45:09] Thank you, Maya, for unpacking those, and the team for really diving into them, better understanding the baseline understanding. As we go into this prioritization exercise, really, again, we want to shift with that mindset around the concept of a budget.

[02:45:28] We're not here to talk about numbers because we don't have numbers to be able to speak to. Right now, here it is to talk about values and to talk about aspirations and to talk about the work that we want to try and take on. And because every one of these numbers is a means toward funding those aspirations.

[02:45:44] So the better we can understand what those are, the more likely it is that we can achieve the excellence that we're striving for. And we're looking forward to be able to unpack that together with you today. So what I've pulled up here on the slide that's behind you, it's also right in front of you if you wanted to treat it as a little placemat sitting in front of you is a different way of looking at our vision mission and values i know we often unpack that every time we dive into a conversation and really try to identify what we're going to be discussing in any given place and today all of this discussion is about all of those things so it's hard to

[02:46:20] pinpoint any one so what i'd ask you to do is really to start with if our goal is to be able to identify how we achieve our values and to bring the experiences that are the commitments for how we achieve student learning, that we lift up these four values as the means for us to unpack it.

[02:46:39] We'll start with the concept of equity, the concept of excellence, the concept of family and community, and the concept of wellness. These really are the commitments that wrap around all the experiences that we have. So before we dive into this prioritization, what I invite you to do is grab a pen if you haven't already done so out of the cup that you've got right in front of you and there they are in a cup for a reason they've got color coding that's all going from it just to be able to see in this next exercise how the collective is starting to see what the priorities might look like so grab one of those and what I'd ask you to do is on that page that you've got working from put a star

[02:47:15] next to the value that is most dear to you when it comes to the experiences that we're striving to create in our schools just one they can all be they're all important right would none of us have favorite kids as they say but we want to pick one of them yeah this would be your individual big rock collectively these are our big rocks right yeah if you've got a star next to that hold it near and dear you don't have to say anything about it I just want

[02:47:54] to make sure that you keep it in your mind as we work through this process of identifying how we achieve that sense of excellence as we move through and with that I'll ask you to just flip your page on the other side of the page you see similarly on the right side the same values that we know are the foundation for every experience that we put forward for all the young people in our school division and on the left side we see a number of different contributions toward those experiences that would our team has been able to break down into these four areas of focus now these these areas of focus won't be found

[02:48:31] exactly in this way from any of our budget books or any other work from that we tried to distill those combinations into some areas of focus that would help you lift up where those contributions might most align and we're going to use those today to try and help identify what you've deemed to be most important for the ways in which we can work toward the excellence that we're seeking so i know these are all right in front of us but be able to just break these into those four buckets the first being focused on operational resources these are all the things that we put in place as we've heard earlier this this afternoon and evening around the

[02:49:07] operations that we put forward to try and achieve wellness and to try and create the conditions for all of our students to come through the safety and security for example or some of the key operational resources we were able to put forward right below that you've seen a reference to learning resources and academic resources that are helping to create the learning experiences that each of these students at our table as well as all the ones that we support experience every day right below it are referencing the human resources that are able to put those learning resources into place and make sure that um they that every student gets the care and quality that they that they so require and below it are the community resource the variety of ways

[02:49:45] in which we all wrap around this collective so just being able to see each one of those items we're going to do a little bit exercise to start to unpack which of these are most important to you and this will be a start of point where i'm going to move from this microphone over to the other side of the table just for us to actually engage in some conversation which will be great the exercise that we'll actually do and i'm going to put it right in front of us here but also i'm going going to give you some cards that'll walk us through it. What I'm going to ask you to do, and this isn't binding, I just want to say that out loud. This is a part of a discussion to help

[02:50:25] to create some conditions for us to talk more freely about the work that we're striving to put together, is to use these cards to be able to identify for you what are those big rocks to continue to come that conversation thread, or what are the most important pieces for you so that we can have some conversations together about what they mean for us. On one side of this card we'll just be asking you to take one of those operational priorities all those different investments that we make in our experiences and to identify no more than three of those that for you are most important to be able to continue

[02:51:00] to uplift the work that we do I would also ask you when you're identifying any one of those to think about the value that you think that that that investment would help to cause so that you've got that alignment built in yes please that I think we should work for is accessibility for our students who have physical disabilities, but in most cases that would come out of the capital budget and not this.

[02:51:33] So should I not think about that for now? That would be something I think you've got to have you. As if we go back to, the budget is just one collection of numbers. there's other ways that you might have a priority that's not necessarily tied to the budget or to a budget it might be in different places so i think we encourage you to think outside of the budget i know cip is a different budget but and there might be different levels of influence that you can have on different areas but i think for this exercise try not to think about well what is in

[02:52:11] the budget or what can i put on there think about as priorities we intentionally took off per Dr. Hayes' suggestion. It used to be called budget priorities. We changed that to priorities because we want you to just think about priorities at a high level. So if it's a priority for us, you'll make it happen. That's a fair distinction. So everybody's got their cards right now. You don't have to play them yet because they don't have anything on them. So have you got your blank cards? We'll just start with picking those up and you can talk with a partner so long as that partner or wants to talk with you.

[02:52:51] That's all right, right? So just ask for permission first, right? We call it the think-pair-share. If somebody else next to you is thinking, let them think. But as you're considering where those areas might be, just write the word or phrase from that bank of a priority. And on the backside, you'll see a way of being able to describe why that means so much to you.

[02:53:14] We're gonna take five minutes just for this moment in time for you to be able to review, to give some thought, to talk with each other

[02:53:19] before we go through the sharing protocol after that.

[02:55:29] You can pick multiple values if you want. That was just a good time value. I assume it's for a reason that we would do it that. Do you personally delineate student learning resources and curriculum?

[02:55:47] So for me personally, I agree. For me personally.

[02:55:58] Just a quick one-minute check. I know one minute's not enough. Gives us a chance to sort of discuss a little bit.

[02:57:54] No, sure thing. That's awesome. That makes a lot of sense.

[02:58:05] I'm looking around and seeing a lot of writing still going on.

[02:59:37] going on. By all means keep writing if you're writing, but I also want to make sure in honoring our time that we've got some space to be able to share across the table what folks have thought about so far. So if you've still got some blank cards, that means you've still got some opportunities to weigh in based on things that you heard or things that you're thinking about. There's no cheating here, right? So just because the clock stopped doesn't mean that you can't keep adding ideas. What we did want to do is to open up the floor and have folks discuss a little bit about what they put forward. So the way this protocol is set up for us to be able to do is really just a structured conversation. That if one of us at the table can start the process by sharing

[03:00:13] just one of the three priorities that we wrote down, a brief description of why you shared it. Anyone else who said the same thing puts your cards right in the middle as well. You want to add anything to what that one person said or build on what they said, by all means do it. But then we'll just go around the circle and tell everybody's had a chance to share.

[03:00:32] That makes sense? So with that, does anybody want to kick us off by sharing their first? put priority area of equity and an example I said curriculum resources that reflect our students and I wasn't quite sure what to do on the rationale but I checked reach because we want to sure so that helps to broaden our reach so I'm thinking what I'm hearing you describe is by focusing on curricular resources that uplift equity it has an opportunity to have a broad reach across their divisions.

[03:01:08] Anybody else lift up curricular resources in something that they shared? Student learning resources that came from that as well? Does anybody want to build on what they heard Zothborn say, just around the importance or the power of curricular resources from their perspective?

[03:01:26] I think curricular resources are super important, especially for those who have jobs because of financial situations and being able to really expand upon what they're doing during the school timing. It's really important, so those resources provide under excellence but either way that's okay yeah i think it's really about like where the alignment to those investments come from because they cause more than just one outcome

[03:02:08] yeah i think so that's where there was a clarifying question about the distinction and for us we were thinking about student learning resources being the things that are in the hands of our students and curricular resources largely being the hands of our teachers creating the conditions for their students right so a lot of those come together but some aren't unique to each other i think curricular resources as part of family and community because if you have the right resources families engage in helping their students sure yeah the language of that value with the whole family and community wrapping around for the shared learning experiences power

[03:02:42] did you have can you turn it in if you want to turn it in yeah sure we're just getting a collective here about all these different focus on those resources i did um go for it please i did i also did i did uh student learning resources and i did that for equity because um if people have resources they need to thrive with learning they will be able to it also kind of goes into

[03:03:14] excellence it will they will be able to learn and be able to access the content and the other the yeah curricular resources or student learning experience or resources any other other folks that put that down my part here was excellence which leads to student achievements examples would be better sol scores preparation for real life become a lifelong contributor and leader in society and use it in better curricular resources and the rationale is impact reach and alignments

[03:03:53] i got excellent as well what i had as examples about the nutritional wellness students have to be We also need to learn, professional learning for our teachers and partnerships.

[03:04:09] And that basic vision passion that students have to know. And that is the key to being ready to learn from all of our teachers through partnerships. And I thought my rationale was that this was for the next moment.

[03:04:27] Thank you. I also had partnerships in support of students and families connected to equity. An example would be communications that help bring families and their students on. And I had reach and alignment.

[03:04:44] There would also be reach for families who you don't see and hear from. I think it's family and community.

[03:05:02] You have breakfast, lunch, mental health services, community engagement. The idea that students can only thrive with their basic needs. I had one about wellness. Making sure that all students are valued and that they need safe and .

[03:05:21] I had one about excellence and my examples are staff recruitment as well paired with staff retention. So I believe that by having better teachers, not only will the students learn more, learn more efficiently, but also students will, students obviously learn different ways and better teachers are a bit better able to adapt to those situations.

[03:05:43] So that will go with clarity for the adaptability and impact for the more learning. Thank you. Kind of building off that, I also had staff retention as a big priority for me because I know at Albemarle, very anecdotal. I know that's not always awesome, but it just does feel like we've had a lot of very experienced teachers leaving for non-retirement reasons, whether transferring to a different school or I mean, really, that's about it, because whether for perceived benefits or unrealistic course or prep loads.

[03:06:15] So I feel like that's something if we can address by either improving benefits or regulating some standards about how much can be asked of teachers in terms of how many preps they have to teach. that's been an issue for a couple teachers at Albemarle. We can retain that really experienced talent that our students and our schools have built relationships with over long periods of time.

[03:06:36] I also had staff retention. At least for my school, when you have staff that stays longer, they can know the students better and know how to support them and what will make it so that they need education better. Yeah, I had safe and effective physical environments which kind of ties with that just with having a safe community with your teachers with your community i think that's really important um as well feeling safe to be able to focus on

[03:07:13] for excellence up at staffing levels and retention like you guys mentioned um having experts in the field i degree i was thinking about some of the trades and then jumping on that bandwagon i had staffing recruitment and retention under excellence credit to the cba or increasing pay and benefits for our staff teachers need to be feel supported in order to be successful

[03:07:52] along those lines i have professional learning for time to equity um so that we can have more evidence-based learning training we're seeing what that brings um right now so and i had impact each equity as well um and example i'm looking at student learning resources curricular resources and professional learning this i thought would address impact and reach because we need well-trained teachers and culturally responsive learners

[03:08:35] goes back to what i mentioned earlier about operation using operational resources to make sure that all of our facilities are accessible for students with physical disabilities and nobody has to temporarily move classrooms uh worry about the elevator being out of order those types of things sure and my last one when i started writing was assessment resources um i think this goes on

[03:09:14] with what people were saying that curricular resources resources resources transportation being able to rely on transportation is something really important so that you don't have to find a different way to do it.

[03:09:34] My last one was safe and effective physical environment. If people don't feel safe at school, they will not be able to learn and not be able to, it's important.

[03:09:55] What's on the table? We talked about this a lot earlier, so I kind of stated it showed the same thing, but having the access to resources at the student learning is really important.

[03:10:17] just 'cause if you need the resource in order to be able to learn efficiently, that kind of leads into equity. I had one about excellence, making sure that every student succeeds and it's suiting learning resources. So if they miss a day in class, they can access what was learned in class that day online.

[03:10:36] They can still understand the material and all that. I had one kind of looking at health and wellness resources, but through the excellence labs, because I think it's important to note that that has a tremendous impact on how students are able to perform.

[03:10:53] Like, if you come to school and you're hungry or if you go to school and you've been struggling with mental health issues, that definitely not only impacts how you can be attentive and effective in the classroom, but also your life outside of that. So I think it's important that resources are provided to make sure that of all the inequities that there could have been, unfortunately, are, that are out there, that's not one of them, that everyone has that same, when we step into the school building, we all have that same foundation in terms of we've all eaten, we're all feeling okay, both physically and mentally, and I think that's really important.

[03:11:32] Totally outside of this exercise, at some point I would love to hear from you all. We have really dramatically increased mental health resources in schools in the past decade, but certainly the past five years. Any of you have anything to say about that, whether it's been, because it's more available, whether it's more de-stigmatized?

[03:11:57] But that's a pretty good situation, but we can. I mean, at my school, we have a lot of, at least, we have a lot of, we have a lot of mental health support, at least, and it's very helpful because it makes people feel more able to succeed in their learning and feel like they're, feel safe and they are understood.

[03:12:20] And they have support as well. That's great. Students go to counselors all the time to be able to talk about their mental health, so I think it's definitely a resource of the cards.

[03:12:41] Move it around and make sure they don't leave voices on the table. Equity, make sure every student has what they need. Mental health, as you previously mentioned, it's been a big part. It's been, 4.4 has grown a lot throughout, and, you know, students are always asking for counselors or other mental health officers at least in my school we have them.

[03:12:58] Thank you. Voices are still on the table. We might have had. So, thank you all, first off, for sharing those pieces, and, um...

[03:13:17] And Tony will have a new budget book based on the next slide, right? No, I think that really the close of the exercise really gives us is to see these perspectives mapped out and I think you already heard some of the trends that came through, but just even lift them up, being able to see this mapping, seeing significantly just across the board with learning resources, curricular resources and pieces like it, not only for equity and also for excellence and the balance of those to ensure that our learning experiences or that everything we're putting forward is causing what we're striving to cause.

[03:13:48] We're also seeing a focus on staff retention, recruitment, and professional learning associated with that same equity and excellence. We've got some connections to the wellness in particular and the ways that you all talked about, especially the operational resources to inform to ensure that we're creating the environments that when students come safe and ready to learn, then we can use the resources that we've got provided to be able to help cause that.

[03:14:13] So that's what I'm seeing in some of the trends, and we'll obviously collect these together able to provide something a little bit more like a summary to be able to work from but hopefully that can help to springboard into continued discussions around that workflow. I appreciate that very much. You already started to lift up to some of the questions that this might have unearthed that if we have the time we'd love to unearth those from here but I know we could also be able to say like moving here into the next exercises that you do like this that any questions that this has sprung forward, please share those with everybody on the team here.

[03:14:51] And we want to make sure that you're as informed as possible in trying to make the next decisions. Is there anything you'd want to do to summarize, Maya, from where we are? I just appreciate all of y'all's time, especially to our students. And I know, and lifted up, Kenny, I noticed that when we went to the school funds, you turned directly to Monticello High School.

[03:15:12] I thought you did, but you told me exactly what that is. And it just reminds me that we're all looking for our home in this work. And as we build forward everything that we can do to create the conditions for each of our young people and each of the people who are supporting them, to feel as proud as I could tell you felt about your school, that's really everything we're trying to do, appreciate everything.

[03:15:32] I'd like to thank the students, normally when it hits nine o'clock, you have permission to leave, but I'm really grateful that you all stayed. Yeah, thank you so much. You guys want to have a car, I do put it through one, I do put it through one, I do put it through one, I do put it through one.

[03:15:53] It's almost like a walkout. I just got a couple more times. Thank you. I don't want to see that. He's closing in. I don't know where I am.

[03:16:06] I think that's where the continuing discussion works from.

[03:16:37] Yeah, once you start to balance the support, we start to make sure that we continue this level of service. But this resource would be able to increase this level of resource and by default. Yeah, causing impact on other areas.

[03:16:53] Thank you to Tony and Maya for giving us that experience and we look forward to several months of joyous budgeting with you. Do you have anything else for us or does anybody here

[03:17:25] have any other questions for Maya and Tony, Miss Kumazawa? Are we good for now? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you all very much. Looking forward to continuing the conversation. Okay, thank you. Other business. Do we have any other business by board members or Dr. Hayes? No business. I just want to say thank you to all the staff for their involvement in tonight's presentation and for Tony and Maya and none of this would be possible without HR because they make sure we get all the staff

[03:18:01] members in and hired and supported for our division. So thank you. Just a quick statement about the superintendent search firm. The board has interviewed several firms and directed staff to work with procurement on a contract that is in the process. And until the process is complete, we cannot share other information. Upon award, the firm will work with the school board to develop and publicize a timeline that includes opportunities for community members families students and

[03:18:40] employees to provide input and be engaged in the search process we encourage you to remain engaged as the superintendent search web page will be posted on the acps website in the next few weeks and will contain all relevant updates all right thank you mr dylan vic anything else seeing none and here are no objections oh bob you look like you wanted to say something no objection all right your honor i call the albemore county school board meeting adjourned thank you

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