Coraggio Consulting
Chesterfield County School Board Budget Work Session, Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Date: Tuesday, February 25, 2025
Place: Chesterfield County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 24m (video)
Official meeting video (Swagit): https://chesterfieldschoolsva.new.swagit.com/videos/335840
Official minutes (BoardDocs, on the Mar 11, 2025 agenda for approval): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/chesterfield/Board.nsf/pfiles/DENQJ56968CF/$file/DRAFT%20MINUTES%20-%202025.02.25%20Budget%20Work%20Session.pdf

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 2026-10-25. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:00:03] Good afternoon. I'd like to call the February 25th, 2025 School Board Budget Work Session to order. First, we have an update on compensation from Dr. Huff. Good afternoon, Chair Coker, Vice Chair Hudgens, members of the board, Dr. Murray.

[00:00:35] Pleased to be able to provide a compensation update this afternoon as part of the FY26 Superintendent's proposed budget. First, I want to start with some successes that we've had the past couple of years. with our compensation strategy we've reduced some vacancies in some key positions bus driver vacancies have been reduced by over 80 percent day porters by more than two-thirds instructional assistant vacancies 40 over two years our increase in daily substitute rate from our pandemic lows

[00:01:11] is about 20 to 25 percent higher fill rate and it's also created a pathway to teaching some Compensation considerations that we'll look at today include our scaled positions, which are teachers, instructional assistants.

[00:01:28] And then our newer scales that are active this year are for support services, speech, occupational and physical therapy, and then our school security officer scale. we also have graded ranges as well as bonus structures that are existing and a short discussion of our substitute teacher pay so this is our most recent title ii data we did add an additional year the 22-23 school year the important line here is the orange line at the bottom of completers

[00:02:05] and you can see that those are just under 4 000 completers which is largely unchanged since the 15-16 school year this slide shows our videoe completer data about 9 000 people enrolled in virginia teacher education programs both alternative and traditional programs in the 22-23 school year about 3 800 completed and about 68 completed in mathematics so just to give you an idea we have

[00:02:41] about 26 math classes taught virtually we have about 19 vacancies so we could hire 45 of those 68 ourselves there are 132 other school divisions in virginia and this also assumes that all of those candidates did end up teaching math sometimes people complete and then realize they can use their math skills in a different career or move away or take time out of the workforce for some reason. The scale of hiring, we hired almost 3,000 people last year, including

[00:03:16] full-time, part-time, substitute, and temporary employees. So when we say we're a large employer, that's high-volume hiring. Teacher is our most common job title. We have over 5,000 teachers. Our annual attrition rate for teachers is down, so we're celebrating that. And you can see as a steady decrease from our high of the 21-22 school year last year was about 8.47 percent national average pre-pandemic was around eight percent so it's not quite back down to pre-pandemic

[00:03:54] levels but almost sometimes people ask is your attrition different among general ed and special education teachers so we do aggregate or we look at that data separately and you can see that our attrition rate is actually a little bit lower a lower percentage for special ed teachers and we have to remember that's also calculated on a different base because there are many more general ed teachers but they're in the ballpark of being roughly similar we also look at our cumulative teacher attrition by month

[00:04:29] and you can look at December for example was the last month that we captured and and you can see that our attrition is pretty much on track to mirror last year so far so the 23 24 school year is that dark red line and then the dotted blue line is this school year so we look pretty similar to last year so far teacher starting pay we're proposing to start at

[00:04:59] 55 047 this proposal increases the starting salary by two percent and then also includes a step increase totaling about a three percent total for experienced teachers the step is consistent with that last teacher salary study that suggested we need to continue to give attention to the steps so that we don't recreate compression.

[00:05:28] For those maybe watching at home, compression is when someone who's brand new with no experience makes a very similar amount to a more experienced teacher. And I did attend all of the town halls this year, and that is something that we did here a few times from our teachers that they want to ensure that wasn't recreated.

[00:05:48] And so this step makes sure to maintain some distance there for successful experience. This is our FY26 proposed teacher scale. It has lanes for bachelor's, master's, and doctorate.

[00:06:05] And another position I would like to highlight is the instructional assistant position. We increased pay for this position in FY22 and in FY23. In FY24, we increased pay by creating a separate scale for instructional assistant positions.

[00:06:23] And we'd like to continue that progress. It's a direct contact role with students. I was speaking recently with a principal of a high-needs school, and she was emphasizing how that consistency and continuity within the school is so important.

[00:06:41] And having those same faces, you know, come back after break and the next school year really has an influence on student attendance and the willingness of students to take those academic risks. So we want to do what we can to create continuity there.

[00:07:00] About 70% of these positions are providing adult support required by IEPs or helping to specialize education for student needs. These are our instructional assistant vacancies by month. The important line here is the green line at the bottom.

[00:07:19] That's the FY25 line. So we've had some really good success with lowering our vacancies. We tripled the amount of recruiting events for this position this year. So thank you to our recruiting and staffing team and really all of our members of all of our teams come out and help with our job fairs.

[00:07:40] But we really have had some success with reducing those vacancies. This is our cumulative instructional assistant attrition by month. you can see that that looks a little different than our line for our teaching staff it's a little bit higher this is a position that you know only works during the school year and it is an hourly position and so typically you do see a little bit more attrition with those positions but we're running a little bit ahead of last year but still lower than our high of the 22 23 school year and

[00:08:16] And you can see this is our annual attrition rate for instructional assistance, and it has gone down each of the last two years. So our proposal is to increase the salary by about 3%.

[00:08:36] It would be 2% plus a step similar to the other scales. But the IA scale ends at step 25. And you might recall last year we expanded the teacher scale to 40 steps. so we are recommending adding that step 26 to the ia scale to retain experienced instructional assistance we have about 85 employees so about a little over 10 percent of our ias are at that top step and we think that's going to be important because this proposed budget also includes

[00:09:14] an additional 70 plus ia positions so that is going to be a big recruiting lift and so we do need to retain those folks that are current on board and on that step 25. this is the fya 26 proposed ia scale you might remember that that first lane is general ed ia's and there's some additional training required for special ed and one-to-one IAs and so that's that IA two lane so

[00:09:46] you can see the starting salaries there would be 1713 and 1799 the student support services scale this is a new scale this year as a reminder this is positions like speech language pathologists and occupational and physical therapists school psychologists audiologists and social workers last year a new scale was approved to align with the regional school market average and we find that that's moving pretty quickly the goal was to retain

[00:10:21] staff and mitigate the increase in the use of costly and hard to procure contracted services and we wanted to become more competitive at the midpoint and maximum of the graded range there which we found we were we were lagging most of the provided services are required by IEPs and even with late implementation due to the kind of that delay in the state budget last year we didn't know that this could be afforded until June so we weren't able to really market this during our recruiting season we still saw a decrease in vacancies we

[00:10:59] had six fewer SLP vacancies this year and three fewer school psychologist vacancies so that was a hopeful sign when that was implemented you know late and our proposal was to continue this progress with the step and then the two percent market increase so it would be a total of the three and then again this ends at step 35 which is shorter than that teacher scale last year the teacher scale was updated to 40 steps so we would propose extending the

[00:11:36] student support services scale to step 36 to retain those experienced service providers i think we only have about eight employees at the top of this scale but those are very specialized areas so that's very important to us the school security officer is the last scale that we have

[00:12:01] It currently includes 25 steps, and so the proposal is to extend that to step 26 as well to retain our experienced SSOs and promote continuity in our safety and student and staff safety procedures.

[00:12:20] And this includes the 2% market increase and a step to recognize successful experience. The review of compensation history for our graded range positions, and I know you are familiar with this, but as a reminder to the community, graded range is different than a step scale.

[00:12:44] It includes a minimum, a midpoint, and a maximum, as opposed to equalized steps for years of experience or other measures. So the salary study that was completed in FY23 using fall 2021 market data suggested that our goal should be a $16 an hour starting salary.

[00:13:13] The progress that we've made so far was FY23, we moved to $12 an hour. We were under $12 an hour at that time. And then we moved to $14 an hour in 2024. And then this year, fiscal year 25, we've moved to $14.42 minimum.

[00:13:34] This gives you an idea of the attrition in our graded range positions. That attrition is a little bit higher than our other positions. the most FTEs on our graded range. As an example, our bus drivers, food service associates, and day porters. But graded range applies to anyone who isn't on a step scale, so can be anything from accounting to IT to curriculum specialists. This is our cumulative attrition by month for graded range positions. And you can see that that dotted blue line is kind of where

[00:14:13] we are this year and again just like with teachers it's tracking very similar to last year the proposal is to move to 1470 per hour as the minimum and then it would include a three percent target increase that would be inclusive of both market adjustment and experience just a moment to talk about our substitutes because we do have over 3 000 substitutes now they're a significant factor

[00:14:48] in our teacher working conditions and they're required for our teachers to access all the benefits that we offer such as sick time for example or paid parental leave our target is a 90 fill rate that means when you call out for a substitute nine out of ten times you have a substitute that was kind of the pre-pandemic national gold standard and we've learned that our substitutes are an incredibly important pipeline of candidates for full-time positions

[00:15:25] as teachers as instructional assistants and other positions within the school division and it's a pathway for career switchers in a way for people to try out working with students in the teaching profession. Our fill rate through January 17th this year is 89%. This month has dipped a little bit. We're in cold and flu season and ready for spring to come. Our fill rate last year was 87%, so that is way up from our pandemic lows of in the mid-60s. This shows something that we're

[00:16:05] really proud of which is the substitutes that we've hired to full-time and part-time roles so this is all of last school year we hired 253 substitutes into regular full and part-time roles 103 of those were hired as certified teachers and we are also finding that many people are doing a two-step process where they're they like subbing and they're accepting an annual substitute role with benefits and then working to become certification or licensure eligible and then

[00:16:40] accepting that full-time teaching position this year just through december we had already hired 280 full and part-time employees from our substitute roles 111 of those were teachers current status of our daily rate last year we were fortunate when that state budget came through in june that the school board supported the 136 dollar daily rate and you can see that that puts us right

[00:17:15] in between henrico and hanover and competitive with the richmond regional average for this year and these are our high demand days we still have a high demand day rate of 203 dollars on friday and other high-demand days, and you can see that on average our fill rate over time has been five to six percentage points boosted on those high-demand days. And what we found is a lot of times that attracts people to substitutes. Well, I can try that, and I'll try it on Fridays. And

[00:17:51] then they realize they enjoy it and sometimes are available to substitute other days of the week or consider education as a career. The proposal is to maintain the daily rate for FY26, maintain the high demand rate of $203 for FY26. And then just a moment to review our bonus structure. The proposal includes a continuation of our current bonus structure. We have bonus amounts of three thousand dollars for teacher contracts at high needs schools bus driver bonus

[00:18:30] of three thousand dollars the instructional assistant tutor monitor and library assistant and then the custodian some things to keep our eye on as we move towards the future with compensation we're still in a national shortage of certified teachers we have those stated goals of $16 an hour to start for our graded range positions and $60,000 to start for teachers. We are competing with health care for our nurse roles and with private companies for

[00:19:04] our CDL roles. And we know that, you know, we can't match corporate employers, but it is something to keep in mind and keep our eye on and be aware of. And then also our public budget processes, you know, at the budget that the board will adopt and recommend this week, it determines pay through June of 2026. So that can be sometimes a little bit less agile in the marketplace than, say, a corporate competitor. So those are just some things to think about as we consider the future.

[00:19:42] And then also just always to remember our why behind our compensation. We want to attract highly skilled and motivated employees to work with our students. We want to prevent costly turnover. We want to maintain morale by working towards fair and competitive pay and align with that Richmond regional market. And we know that parents are children's first teachers, but the most important school-based factor in our students' education are our employees. We'd be happy to answer any questions at this time. Thank you, Dr. Huff. Board members, is there any discussion? Mr.

[00:20:22] Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for the presentation. Slide 21 talks about the school safety officer proposal scale, taking them from Step 25 to Step 26, I think. But I don't – is there a – and I might have missed it, and if so, I do apologize.

[00:20:39] Is the scale in the presentation? No, it is not, but we can certainly provide that, and it's in our compensation plan. Okay. And then the increase to, I guess, that step 26, the overall price tag on that?

[00:20:56] It really would be, we can break that down, but it's really just to ensure that those people at the top get the full three as opposed to just the 2%. Right. I understand that, but just looking at what is that going to cost? Sure. Should that be achieved and applied in FY26?

[00:21:17] Okay. That involves 20 employees, and it looks like it's 12,946. I can double check that figure for you. I say kudos for coming up with the number on the spot. I was not anticipating that at all.

[00:21:35] That was pretty good. Thank you. Ms. Hudgens? I just have a couple of questions. Thank you for this very great breakdown.

[00:21:52] On page 33, you're talking about the bonuses that we give to teachers at high-need schools. Have we noticed, because we increased those last year, right?

[00:22:10] We did not increase them. Yeah, we talked about increasing them. From the time that we implemented them, have you seen an uptick? Are they effective? Have you seen that?

[00:22:25] Well, one of the challenges has been that these were started with ESSER funds. And because of sort of the late adoption of the state budgets the last couple of years, we haven't known whether or not these were going to be available during our prime recruiting season so this is really the first year that these are in a proposed budget and likely to be available during the prime recruiting season so i think that our you know i mean last year we weren't offering that when we were offering we were saying you know this is proposed we don't

[00:23:04] know what's going to happen in June we don't know the state number so I think that this year could potentially be a telling year as far as data because each time it's been FY24 and FY25 years have been late and most of the people had to make an employment decision prior to this now Now, certainly the people who are in those schools who received them the previous year, we heard from them that, you know, it's a retention factor.

[00:23:42] But in terms of it being a recruiting factor, I think this year is kind of a bigger test. Well, I'm very curious to see, because I remember you saying that last year. One more question. This is just very, I might have, I don't think I missed it, but steps.

[00:24:03] So we've got a 2% increase and then an additional step. Can you really quickly explain how steps work? Does every year someone get a step increase or do we give a step increase? Yeah, it has to be included within the budget.

[00:24:21] But the idea is that the 2% is kind of a cost of living or market adjustment. So the whole scale, for example, in a step-scale pay plan as opposed to a graded range pay plan, the whole scale would move 2%, which would mean that your starting rate would move 2%.

[00:24:42] And then the other percent of the raise would be people having a successful year of experience and say, for example, let's say a first-year teacher this year, they complete their first year successfully.

[00:24:57] their principal recommends that they return, they receive, you know, good evaluation, they're going to come back next year, they would get an additional percent to kind of recognize they have gone through every aspect of the school year, they've been successful, and that differentiates them from a brand new teacher who may be starting in the fall. And by doing that, that's kind of what was recommended in that teacher salary study, it prevents compression because you

[00:25:30] have movement of the scale related to cost of living and inflation and that type of thing, but then you have some movement within the scale that is recognizing people moving on in their career. And when we started this and were doing that study, I remember some of the concerns were that, you know, people that were expected to, for example, be the mentors, be the leaders of various teams, were making a very similar rate to people who didn't have any experience at all. And so

[00:26:05] we think it's important to kind of keep that the mid-level of experienced folks in our schools and have some differentiation with their compensation because many times they're taking on teacher leader roles thank you kind of in line with um what mr paranto was asking regarding the sso's and i'm not asking for additional math on the spot but for our um ias and student support

[00:26:44] if we could get those numbers as well for the those going up the additional step i a number Number is 86,480, and the student support looks like it's 18,173.

[00:27:03] Thank you. I appreciate that. That's my only question. Ms. Chatters. Sorry. It was regarding the substitute. You sent us a spreadsheet before a couple weeks.

[00:27:21] The snow days got me confused on when you actually sent it, but I know we have it. And when I was looking at the numbers for the vacancies that we have, I wanted to ask your opinion on when you're recruiting and trying to fill those vacancies, are you getting any feedback on why certain locations are more preferred than others?

[00:27:46] We aren't getting feedback on that, and we haven't really individually sought feedback on that. But a success that we have had is we had that fair at Salem Church Middle School in November.

[00:28:02] And recently, like within the last two weeks, we ran fill rates for all of those schools, and they are higher. So we are wanting to capture that set of reminder to capture that again in a month to see are they going to stay higher because I think if they do, one of the things that tells us is that maybe having these fairs in a specific geography matters because people, I don't think, drive a long way often for substitute assignments.

[00:28:35] And sometimes you learn about it. You can remember being a substitute and you get the call at 5 a.m. You know, it's kind of last minute sometimes when someone's child wakes up sick or you might be needed at the last minute. And so I think they are somewhat geographically sensitive and that the number on the Dale District Fair that we had, those were encouraging.

[00:28:59] So far, we had not seen similarly high numbers from the Matoica Fair that we had, but it was a month later, and we've had a lot of snow, plus the holidays, so I'm not sure if it's a good test yet, which is why we want to run it again in the month to see if that looks like it's a differentiating factor, because if it is, that tells us that we need to employ that strategy more.

[00:29:23] Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Next, we have a 2025 legislative program update from Mr. Smith. Thank you, Madam Chairman, board members.

[00:29:43] I'm going to give you kind of a brief update on the legislative session. And I will note that I'm going to come back March 11th for some additional comments. We'll likely be focused on specific legislation purposes. But a couple of big picture updates. One, as you know, the session has adjourned as of Saturday, Sonny Dye.

[00:29:59] They did agree to a budget, which I'll talk about in a few minutes. The governor does have, at this point in time, 30 days to act on legislation. to sign, amend, or veto the legislation. And obviously the veto session will occur in April. One of the things that we've done a little bit differently this year is to establish a tracker for legislation.

[00:30:16] As you've seen, because I know you've looked closely at the tracker, that there's almost just over 200 bills that we've been tracking throughout the session. A lot of them have changed. I will have an additional update later this week with a flurry of activity that occurred over the weekend as the session adjourned.

[00:30:32] But some of those important topics we had obviously were assessments, Talk for the literatures, early childhood, FOIA, health, military student families, notifications, procurement resolutions. So you'll see some of those things in the tracker. Again, I'll talk more about that in March. A couple of general highlights on legislation, some things you heard a lot about.

[00:30:52] One was discussion regarding cell phone policies. As we know, you adopted your own cell phone policy. The legislation will require us to go back and look, if the governor signs it in its current form, to look at our cell phone policy to see kind of how we match up with that. One of the pieces that we'll have to look closely at is the definitions of consequences with regards to cell phone policies, and essentially the General Assembly has asserted that should be no formal consequences for cell phone policy violations. So as we kind of match up the governor's actions on that, we'll go through with the Policy Review Committee and obviously back to the board if we have to, and looking at

[00:31:30] how our policy matches up with that. The second piece is there's been a lot of discussion in the General Assembly with regards to the current framework for school assessments and accountability, the legislators really try to look at either trying to delay the performance evaluations going forward, the accountability network, but likely what's to occur, obviously, is that the governor is very invested in the framework the Department of Education has put forward. That will stay in place. We may see some language coming out of the governor's amendments to articulate that.

[00:32:05] It's unlikely anything would happen beyond there simply because there's not enough votes in the legislature to override that piece. So we assume we'll keep working forward with Dr. Pope and her instructional team and with Dr. Booth, obviously, to assume, obviously, that piece of the Department of Education.

[00:32:22] The last larger legislative update is we spent a lot of time this session working closely on legislation with regards to our long-term subs. As you know, the law defines how long you can substitute teach, essentially, and that we work to try to extend that from 90 days to 180 days.

[00:32:41] There had been in place that in the law, but it was a sunset clause on that, and essentially we're trying to work to remove the sunset clause and put that in place. As you know from the respective in Cheshirefield County, our goal is always to hire a full-time teacher for every classroom.

[00:32:58] The long-term subs is something that we say is in our toolbox in case we can't find, obviously, credentialed person immediately. So we want to maintain obviously having that that tool obviously for our hiring purposes. I would note that we spend a lot of time working our delegation on this piece. There is a difference of opinion for some legislators about the benefit of that program and so while legislation did pass we'll be looking closely to see what action the governor does take on that but certainly we'll be having some conversations with our schools and our principals

[00:33:33] understanding that at some point in time, it's really clear the legislature may unwind that program to essentially have that. And so we're trying to make sure at least that we as a county know that it's coming. We have asked for additional time to be able to unwind that, knowing the impact it's had in our school division. So I'll have more information about that, but I do want to alert you that while that did pass favorably for us, looking to see kind of what action the governor does take on that. The next piece obviously is with the budget piece, and Mr. Meister will obviously have a larger conversation with you on that.

[00:34:08] But one of the big successes that we did have this session was the removal of the support cap, which, as you know, is something that we've talked about pretty much since 2008 when it got put in place. So it is a huge success story for you as board members, something you talked about last year with the JLRX study.

[00:34:26] That was one of your top priorities. The legislature did come through with that. Obviously, we still need to wait for the governor to take action on the budget, but that was a big success story for us. The second piece was they put in place a $1,000 bonus, which is effective June 1. There is no local match that's required from that. They've also made some investments in special education, as well as some other minor investments with regards to math supports as well. Mr. Meishel will talk about, obviously, the direct impacts it has on our school division, admittedly very favorable. The last piece I do want to note is that the legislature has spent

[00:35:04] some time as recently as this past Saturday, looking at the impact that any kind of cuts from the federal government will have on the state budget. Their impetus right now is mainly of concern about job loss. So someone employed by the federal government, if there are cuts in Washington, D.C., what impact would that have knowing that we have a significant amount of Virginians who are employed by the federal government? They are going to look more closely and looking to, if they have to call a special session if they had to put in place some investments to deal with that.

[00:35:38] Obviously, the Commonwealth of Virginia receives this amount of money with regards to the federal government, and we do as well as the school division. We've not seen any direct impacts to date, but it's important we'll be closely following the legislative conversation as any regards to federal government cuts that come down.

[00:35:58] Again, when I come in March 11, I'll discuss and share with you a little bit more some legislative updates on specific legislation but happy to answer any questions you may have thank you mr. smith board members is there any discussion miss jatters um mr smith i just want to say thank you for that spreadsheet i love the way it's organized it's very easy to read very easy to follow and i'm an lis person so it was just like punch and play i loved it thank you so much um and i just wanted to i don't know if you can answer this or just explain because we did get a lot of i got a few emails and we went back and forth about the long-term sub discussion

[00:36:36] if we can clarify for the community, not necessarily just the impact as we talk about an adult in the classroom to help, but the questions that I was getting were related to, is that a qualified person in the classroom versus not getting a qualified person?

[00:36:53] Does that person take the spot of a qualified person if recruiting goes well? Like, what do we do in that situation? If you can elaborate, please. If not, then we can. Yeah, I think we always have a qualified person in our classroom all the time. I think certainly we want to have someone who is full-time, not a substitute person.

[00:37:14] But obviously, when we have gaps, sometimes it's related to different hiring needs. Maybe it's math, maybe it's science, and certainly maybe a last-minute situation. The long-term stuff allows us to fill a gap for that period of time. The other concept we try to work with is we want to bring that particular substitute teacher up to be a full-time employee for us.

[00:37:37] So we want to work with them on any training, credentialing they may need to do as well. Again, I use the analogy that it's a tool in our toolbox. It's not the first thing we look to do, but it's something that we need to do to ensure we have a qualified person in front of the classroom.

[00:37:52] We want to make sure we have access to that. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Mr. Perranto. Thank you. I think I said this last year. I don't know if the county heard me or not. We should probably just build you a road from here to the state and back again for the amount of miles that you trek back and forth.

[00:38:16] So, again, thank you on our behalf for doing that. I want to go back to the very first thing you covered, which was the cell phone. So I want to make sure, did I hear you correctly, that there were to be, I guess the conversation, nothing's finalized, but the conversation was no consequences for cell phone violations.

[00:38:37] Can you expound a little bit more on that? Yeah, and I'll come back in March. I think with more specifics on that impact, I also want to wait for the governor to take action. So in a positive way, the General Assembly agreed with the governor and the Department of Education when he first put forward the notion that we have a self-owned policy.

[00:38:59] I think where they struggled with was what kind of consequences should be part of that. Their focus is mainly of concern about not suspending or expelling someone for consequences. So I think that they were, that's their larger piece there as well. I think that, and we have some of those pieces in our policy, but I'm going to come back to the board, Policy Review Committee obviously will take a look at that as well.

[00:39:24] The positive thing is that we're ahead of the curve. And the one thing I do want to know when we talk about some of the policies is, I mean, knock on wood, I mean, I think our schools have embraced the concept. think you know it's not the most favorable thing there for students and for staff as well but I think that over time too I think we'll see the the impact hopefully in a positive way. Just to clarify so the conversation would be the state coming out and saying you shall not have consequences

[00:39:59] versus hey we're not going to tell you what you need to do that's that's up to the district to decide. However, you really shouldn't expel or suspend. Is that the direction that the conversation is going? Yes, sir. Okay. Yeah. It's the nudge, but it has a lot of shalls in there. So I think that certainly we'll have to align our consequences to make sure there, I think where there is leeway, obviously we'd have the conversation with the board to determine what leeway you want to take.

[00:40:31] Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Smith. I don't have any other questions. Did you have I do have one more related to what Mr. Pronto was saying.

[00:40:47] So as I imagine the consequences for cell phones, so say little Johnny has a cell phone out and the teacher says don't, put it away, and then maybe his behavior turns from a cell phone-related issue and then it goes to belligerence or crazy or whatever.

[00:41:12] So is there, are we parsing those apart? Are we, say, how does that work? I think, so unfortunately, each situation is going to be different. But if I'm thinking through the situation you just described, I think you'd have to kind of parse out different things.

[00:41:30] I think you're looking at our current policy, right? So if there's a cell phone violation, you always need to look at what that violation is, if there's a consequence with that. if there's subsequent something, additional action that takes place, a disruption, I think you have to look to see kind of what consequence is involved with that.

[00:41:47] And I think also taking it all together, knowing that there is one situation. So I think, and you've seen that with some of the cases, you've had to look through for student discipline. Each one's kind of unique. But I think that is certainly always the concern of the cell phone piece, and we heard that from the classrooms, right?

[00:42:04] It's the, do I have to take it away? Because that confrontation poses significant risk as well. Thank you for all your hard work. It's a busy season and you do handle it well, so thank you.

[00:42:19] Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Next, we have an annual report from the Citizens Budget Advisory Committee from Mr. Eckert. Good afternoon. As introduced, I'm Sean Eckert.

[00:42:51] I have the privilege of serving as the chair of the Citizen Budget Advisory Committee for Chesterfield County Public Schools this year. I'm joined by several other members of the committee this afternoon. We're thrilled that the weather finally cooperated and we're able to be here this afternoon to share some of our committee's observations and recommendations.

[00:43:14] Purpose of CBAC is to assist the school board in the evaluation and allocation of resources and to ensure high-quality, effective, and efficient school division. The seven citizens that you have appointed to CBAC are listed here.

[00:43:31] I'd like to thank each of them for the time and energy they have volunteered to share with the committee. We meet about 10 times a year. We also visit several schools each and all have a shared interest in ensuring that CCPS schools are as successful as they can be while using the financial resources available as efficiently as possible.

[00:43:55] Certainly also want to thank Dr. Murray, Bob Meister, Mrs. Coker, who regularly attends our meetings, as well as many other CCPS team members who have provided presentations and information to our committee. Bob and his team are always very forthcoming about the opportunities and the challenges that CCPS faces when determining how to allocate the limited resources that are made available to the school system by the county and the Commonwealth.

[00:44:23] We're always able to get the information that we are looking for, and we get the opportunity to ask a lot of questions, and it's a real great group of folks to work with. The work of our committee this year basically produced a couple of themes.

[00:44:44] One is that Chesterfield County public schools are underfunded, and as a result, the superintendent's proposed budget is based on inadequate resources. That's not just the opinion of the seven Chesterfield County residents who serve on the committee the General Assembly's Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission published study a couple of years ago. I know you know this That acknowledge that public schools across Virginia are underfunded that was quantified as underfunding in Chesterfield County in the range of 200 to 300 million dollars

[00:45:18] What that means is that our schools are only getting about 80 or 85 percent of the funding that they need according to the nonpartisan JLARC commission. Building maintenance needs and recurring replacement cycles for things like school buses and IT equipment are chronically underfunded and cobbled together from one-time sources when we have them.

[00:45:43] The initial proposed revenue increases included in the governor's proposed budget essentially ignored the findings of the JLARC study, and while the General Assembly has added some additional resources, which is great, this modest additional funding, as well as the county's preliminary proposed contribution, still are inadequate to meet the needs of the CCPS schools.

[00:46:07] Inflation last year was about 3%, so if we've got a budget that's only growing at 3% or less, then that budget is really shrinking in real terms, despite the fact that we have a growing enrollment and the growth is more rapid for students like English language learners and special education students who need more resources, not fewer resources.

[00:46:30] I'm going to turn it over to the CBAC vice chair, Rinal Patel, who's going to elaborate on some of these things. Thank you, Sean. Good afternoon.

[00:46:54] Rinal Patel, I'm the vice chair for the CBAC committee and would like to continue on with the recommendations. So looking at the current slide, this slide talks about the revenue growth we'll be seeing for FY26. As noted, we are expecting the state revenue to reflect about an increase of 12.1 based on the governor's proposed budget from early December.

[00:47:16] And we are expecting the county to put in roughly around $15 million, which is broken into two components. One is the normal ongoing budget transfer, and the second piece is related to the springline lease at the District 60 office complex. The overall projected revenue is 25.6 million which reflects about 2.7% increase from FI 25 budget the despite the increase in the revenue there's a deficit of 16.8 million which is reflected in the proposed budget. Moving on to the employee compensation in the

[00:47:53] price law in the prior slide we noted the 25.6 million increase and a big chunk of that is going towards the employee compensation, which is a 3% raise for a total of 20.2 million. CBAC fully supports the 3% raise for all employees.

[00:48:09] Despite the 3% increase, as Sean noted earlier, this barely keeps up with the inflation. Additionally, this 3% is going to take the starting teacher salary to just around $55,000. It is great to see that we are heading in the right direction of achieving the long-term goal of reaching the 60k but as we stand today this is still not competitive enough when compared to other districts lastly the salary study set a goal for us to reach $16 per hour for the graded employees with the three percent raise this will take us to a minimum hourly rate of 14.70 the

[00:48:47] salary study was our guide and benchmark for all ccps employee wages and currently we are falling further behind in meeting those benchmarks for some of our most difficult positions to fill moving on to the regular and major maintenance as noted as noted in our previous slides there is a deficit of roughly 17 million which is reflected in the proposed budget on top of that the proposed budget also outlines other needs to be considered for funding consider pending funding and one of those other needs includes funding towards regular maintenance to support the

[00:49:26] current 67 ccps school buildings this is to support the day-to-day work to keep the building running which includes painting carpentry electrical etc cback recommends this becomes a regular budget item and build a plan to increase the budget annually another item is major maintenance and you have heard cback over the years advocating for the funds to support the major maintenance bucket our concern is around the sustainability of funding this bucket in the coming years the annual maintenance expenditure over the last few years have averaged roughly 28 to 30 million and currently for f526

[00:50:06] the minimum funding needs has been satisfied however it is uncertain post 2026. the funding for major maintenance should be a non-negotiable item in the budget especially if the issues such as roof or hvac comes around it can disrupt the classroom learning and put additional strain on the staff. On top of that, as we see a rise in the inflation, the cost to perform major maintenance will continue to increase over time and therefore it's critical more than before to make sure we manage this bucket. I'm going to pass on to Jason Young to wrap up the recommendations. Thank you.

[00:50:41] Good afternoon. My name is Jason Young. I'm the Clover Hill representative of CBAC and this is my fourth year on CBAC and unfortunately it's my last year as well.

[00:51:04] And I just want to say before I talk about my few slides that I've just spent a tremendous opportunity to kind of see the ccps budget and the inner workings of it and how it struggled to keep pace with our growing student population and its needs in chesterfield county and i think our committee plays a small but really important role in helping to shape that budget and address what we see are the most critical needs facing our school system and i just want to say thank you i've been here a couple times because you always listen to us and and in many cases you've actually acted on our recommendations. With that said, I do have a few slides where we do need your

[00:51:42] help, right, in kind of pushing the ball forward. And on this slide, Chromebooks, other technology buses, what we're talking about here is sustainable replacement cycles. And I know Sean mentioned this a little bit, but we've essentially kicked the can down the road for many, many years by not investing enough money to replace equipment, technology, and things like buses that outlive their intended lifespan and the cost of this lack of investment that we make right is that we have to pay for increased maintenance to maintain this aging equipment we have equipment in our schools right now that's essentially

[00:52:21] non-functional right because we can't find replacement parts anymore for that equipment and obviously we have technology and equipment that is becomes unusual and that disrupts student learnings and our staffs ability to teach so there's nearly ten million dollars right now and I met technology and equipment needs in this year's budget that we don't have any revenue to address.

[00:52:42] And I'll just give you one example, and it's our bus fleet. In last year's budget, we noted that the bus fleet had 254 buses that were over 15 years old. And as we know, these buses continue to age, right?

[00:52:57] They cost more to maintain. They break down more frequently as they approach the end of their useful place. And we know that one new bus costs about $145,000 per year. I'm not in the business of seeing what things are going to cost in the future, but I think they're probably going to cost more in the future than they do today. So one of our recommendations is that we ask that you work with our county to consider a one-time injection to allow us to develop more sustainable replacement cycles for things like our buses, our technology, and other equipment that we need.

[00:53:34] Again, I'd like to thank you when we talk about mental health. CBAC has, our recommendations the past two years was to eliminate what was known as a shared counselor positions at our schools. And what these positions were is where two schools essentially shared one school counselor.

[00:53:55] And this caused immense problems, right? Whenever a student had a need for that school counselor, and that school counselor was not at that school, right? It was at the other school. And so everyone had to scramble to figure out and to work with that student because the school counselor was at the other school. So eliminating these shared counselor positions, it was probably the number one thing we heard at our school visits when the schools that had them, right?

[00:54:17] Please get rid of that for us. Please get us our full-time counselor. That was a great step to address some of the rising mental health challenges that we're seeing. This year, we'd just like to echo that the School Health Advisory Board has issued some additional recommendations around school-based mental health positions, and we'd like to endorse those recommendations.

[00:54:38] I think those recommendations include six additional school social workers, two additional attendance school social workers, six additional school psychology positions, six additional education diagnosticians, an additional school nurse, and this is to cover the needs of students at our career and technical centers, and then any additional nurse, counselor, and psychologist social work positions that are going to be required at the new school.

[00:55:10] One other thing that we'd like to just throw into the bucket, too, is just a recommendation to look at any telehealth collaborations with local providers that would facilitate access to clinicians in the community during school hours and after school hours when they're needed for students that are in crisis.

[00:55:28] this. I think that's something that the county is looking at as well. And lastly, our committee supports the call in the budget for additional CCPS staff to meet the needs of our gifted students and additional school-based administrative personnel. I think this is probably our top thing, one of the top things we heard in our school visits this year, is that our smaller elementary schools, so elementary schools with a population less than, student population less than 900, that they need additional administration to help with the increased responsibilities that school administration have, testing requirements, evaluation of teachers, and the greater focus that they need to place on security at the schools.

[00:56:08] We know that elementary schools with a student population over 900 students, they're afforded additional administrative positions, but if you're right under 900, right, you don't get that, and that's creating pressures on the administrative staff at these slightly smaller elementary schools to get all the required duties accomplished with the manpower that they have and lastly as we said dr. Murray's proposed budget contains a sixteen point eight million dollars shortfall in revenue and that

[00:56:45] includes fourteen point one million and in student facing needs and two point seven million dollars and other needs so on the student side of things four million dollars to support additional staff to meet the state band-aid at so standards to support our growing ELL population. 9.7 million dollars to support special education services for students with disabilities in need of an IEP. 285 thousand dollars support the Chesterfield Recovery Academy. I'll note this is just the money that needs that we need to run the program and a hundred thousand dollars for additional community and schools site which I believe is matched by communities and schools as well. And then on the on the

[00:57:23] non student facing side 2.7 million dollars needed for school bus maintenance I mentioned that before fuel increases required software licenses we're replacing five intercom systems that are at the end of our life cycles and five schools and funding for new staff computers primarily at deep creek everything that I just mentioned right is not something that that our committee is saying all this would be nice to have right these are expenses that we're going to incur this year and we that need to have funding for us but because

[00:57:58] of the current budget shortfall, they can't be included in Dr. Murray's budget because he by mandate has to pass a balanced budget. So quite simply, we need to find money to fund these initiatives. And our charge to you is to work with our county partners to make sure that we have that funding, at least to make sure that we fully fund our budget for next year. Thank you. I'm going to turn it back over to Sean to conclude. Thanks, Jason. So some of this is preaching to the choir,

[00:58:34] certainly, but the CBAC committee really feels that the county has to find the funding to provide to schools in order to meet that $16.8 million that was listed as unfunded in Dr. Murray's budget, but we must go further. We need to compensate our employees in a manner that acknowledges that Chesterfield is competing with neighboring school systems as well as the private sector for qualified teachers and other workers that are essential to the success of students we need a budget that adequately provides for routine building

[00:59:11] maintenance and major system replacements like HVAC and roofing you know we've got 67 schools so it's not realistic to continue funding this type of maintenance only when we are fortunate enough to find some one-time funds left over at the end of the year or hope the county determines it has some available debt capacity for schools it's too many buildings to act like this stuff isn't a consistent annual ongoing need. The same is true for school buses, for Chromebooks, for IT equipment, etc. All these replacement cycles really need to be built into the annually

[00:59:48] recurring budget. So, you know, that's the request from CBAC this year. We're here to help you tell that story to the county if you'd like us to, and we appreciate your time this afternoon. We'll take any questions if you have anything. Thank you very much to all of you for your presentation this afternoon. And board members, is there any discussion? Mr. Perranto? Thank you. I just want to highlight, and I hope she's okay with this. She's smiling. I'm going to take that as a yes.

[01:00:25] Ms. Patel, thank you, obviously, to your entire committee on the CBAC. Ms. Patel was just voted to the board on the Chesterfield Education Foundation. Her children are enrolled in CCPS. A lot of our volunteers that serve on these committees are in the same boat.

[01:00:42] But it just goes to show the dedication that you all have to help the school to grow, to champion for whatever the budget might be and the different things that you see. So we greatly appreciate the time and energy that has been spent from CBAC, from SEAC, from all the other ones and with ACK to be able to come up here and say, hey, look, we recognize, right, JLARC, we recognize that we're in upwards of, I wouldn't even say 200.

[01:01:15] I think it's nearly 300 million, of which we are underfunded dramatically. And we're trying to figure out how to make that work with an 85% yield, if you will. That is a challenge in and of itself. And so 100% agree with everything that's been presented today.

[01:01:32] Greatly appreciate the time to put forward that this board has, as we did last year, conversations in regards to if we see that access, where does it go? And that's extremely difficult because we love to say, oh, sure, everything's going to be covered.

[01:01:48] And not only are we looking forward to cover this year, but as in your presentation, 100% accurate, We need to start looking towards next year and figuring that out now, which is going to be further discussions that need to take place. So I just greatly appreciate feedback.

[01:02:05] Thank you for this presentation. So with all that being said, my one question is, have you had the opportunity to speak to the Board of Supervisors? We have not. We have talked some with staff internally, and I have had some conversations with staff at the county.

[01:02:24] One of the things that our committee has talked about is participating in the county's budget process that sort of follows. And obviously schedules got a little confused here this February due to some constraints.

[01:02:40] But we certainly intend to reach out to your counterparts on the Board of Supervisors as this process continues. Thank you. I don't have any questions. Just a thank you for all of your hard work.

[01:02:57] And as you stated in the beginning of your closing remarks, yes, you are definitely preaching to the choir. We hear you and are in the same court as you all are, too. So, appreciate it. And we will take all of these recommendations into consideration as we move forward.

[01:03:14] Thank you very much. Thank you. Next, we have a presentation on the proposed FY26 operating budget and the five-year plan from Mr. Meister. Thank you, Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair, other members of the board, Dr. Murray.

[01:03:36] CBAC did a lot of my heavy lift for me here today, so I appreciate Mr. Eckert and gang on their work, of course, as well as my team to get us to this point. The schedule is a little weird. This presentation was intended to be given to you guys a couple weeks ago, so some of the items in here may look a little dated as I talk about General Assembly still being in session and things like that, but work with me.

[01:03:58] We'll get there as we go through this. A reminder of where we are in the process. We are another shade of blue now. We're into February. The school board is was set to approve their budget tonight. That will be Thursday as we go forward This will be your opportunity to hear a few new things in this session Including the five-year plan as well as a few other items about grant and other funding and we'll come back again this evening to talk a little bit more Informally about what changes you may want to make in the budget that will lead into

[01:04:31] As CBAC just mentioned, the county process, which kicks off with their budget in the March 12th, 13th, I guess the 12th, is when they roll out, and they'll have their series of town halls, et cetera, immediately following that. All well, we wait on the governor and his action on the General Assembly budget as well.

[01:04:50] Hopefully we'll be able to come back to you in, we'll say May, and wrap this whole thing up. A bit of a reminder to you all, again, CBAC did a great job of this for me, so I will go relatively quick. FY25 revised budget that the superintendent proposed had a $25.6 million increase in it based on that governor's proposed budget.

[01:05:12] What that led to was about a $970 million budget that we spent a good part of the month talking to you about, talking to the community about, and that leaves us where we are today in terms of $25.6 million afforded underneath that governor's plan, the bulk of that going to compensation, the 3% raise and assorted nuance that Dr. Huff spoke to earlier, making up the bulk of that, a few other items under required and leased, as well as that

[01:05:42] $16.8 million of what we had been termed unfunded adjustments of about $16.8 million that we need to address. I won't walk through these again, but they're there for mostly the citizens to remind you of what was in that afforded budget. Again, the 3% compensation increase being the biggest of these additional school needs, the biggest of this group being the special education funding and the English language learner growth that we saw as well as a handful of other items on here. This is what we'll need to look at and talk about as we better understand

[01:06:19] the state funding as we move forward. We also spent a fair amount of time talking to you about other needs. Again, CBAC did a lot of the heavy lift for me here and reiterating many of those around the operation staffing and compensation areas. I'll come back to each of these as we talk about the five-year plan. As I lay out the five-year plan, I layer in many of these into that plan so you can see what that may cost over the next four or five years as we try to get to some of these instates. So this is the first new slide I'll share with you here today. This is based on

[01:06:55] the afforded number, the 25.6 million. You can see the top line of operating dollars. That's the numbers we've been talking to you and the public about primarily over the course of the last month or so. That 969.4, 25.6 million increase represented about a 2.7% increase, slightly below inflation, just as Mr. Eckert said. As you look at the grants and food service lines there, about 2.9% increase in grants and food service of about seven as food costs and other things continue to

[01:07:28] rise. As I flip forward on here, this is looking at the same chart, assuming we get funding for that $16.8 million of what we deem as needed, the bucket two of funding. You can see the operating fund increases to about four and a half percent growth, something a little closer to reasonable. We'll still have a ways to go to catch up from some of the gaps that we currently do have and again grants at three food service at seven and you also see are just here of about five point six million dollar budget relatively flat from last year I'll pause here on the grants line just for a moment I know

[01:08:06] there's been a lot in the news over the last month about federal funding and grants I would like to say of that around 40 that's represented here about a million or so and a half of that we'll move over to the operating as we shift some of the seat assignments, if you will, from Head Start to our VPI program for our pre-K population. So if you think about that 40, it'll likely be closer to 39 as we move away from that particular federal program. Of the remaining 39 million, about 31 million of that is other forms

[01:08:40] of federal funding split roughly equally between special ed or IDEA funding and the title grants, Title 1, 2, 3, 4. There's another million or two of other assorted items in there, but the bulk of what would be the federal funding, give or take 31 million, is special ed IDEA and the title grants 1, 2, 3, and 4. Sean talked a little bit about this earlier. I'll dive into it a little bit more in terms of what was in the General Assembly's proposed budget, which is now a General Assembly

[01:09:17] approved budget that's waiting for the governor's action. As a reminder, and as we've talked about several times, the governor's proposal included about $12 million in additional funding for Chesterfield County. There were three main things, Mr. Smith hit on these as well, that were in both of the House and Senate versions of the budget. One is the support cap removal. You can see that was worth about $12 million to Chesterfield County. That was in the agreed to version as well. Enhanced special ed funding of just about $3 million. That also was in the approved

[01:09:53] version that passed this weekend. And lastly, the $1,000 bonus for instructional and support positions. A version of that was in the version that passed through the General Assembly this weekend. And it mirrors mostly that Senate proposal that indicated a June 1 payment of these for instructional positions. We'll be able to dig into that in more detail should that survive the governor's red pen as we go through the next month or so. Lastly, as always is the case, we do need to sit and wait a little bit for the governor to take action on these. Unfortunately,

[01:10:31] our budget process doesn't allow us to wait, so we have to roll forward with what we know today. So that's a little bit of the state budget update. I'll come back again and roll those into a revised proposal for the school board to act out on Thursday in this evening session when we come back to you there but safe to say I'm going to assume most of that general assembly money gets rolled in and survives the governor's hand as we go forward but we'll talk more about that as we go the other big set of new information for you in this afternoon session is that five-year plan

[01:11:05] so what we did is we built this starting with that superintendent's proposed budget including those items that were as of yet unfunded so that 16.8 million I'm including in our baseline I don't think there was a chance of us not having to fund those in one form or another so I thought it was made sense to start from that area and then most of what I did was roll in those initiatives from those two or three pages that I shared with you several times about here are the other things that are on our list that we'd see as really important nominal or

[01:11:41] if not nominal. Growth of about 1,400 students. You've seen me present that trend chart over time. That's what's assumed in here. We're also going to assume we get to that $16 an hour and $60,000 teacher salary by 2029. And we're also, needless to say, going to plan for the opening of the new schools. Obviously, we've got the Deep Creek this year, but moving forward into the elementary schools, high schools, and other items on your CIP as we go forward. A reminder of those CIP items nothing's new here but uh most notably for this particular five-year plan you see the items on the left uh deep creek and am davis are part of your current budget needless to say

[01:12:20] bensley west area l will open in in august of 26 and the west area high being the big one in august of 27. so now we look at those three pages that i walk through uh several times with you all around what are those other items that aren't in dr murray's budget that we know our needs to the district what do we need to consider for those looking at each of those in turn ongoing maintenance increases uh five million annually i built that in gradually over time to get there by fy28 this is one of the items you heard uh mr eckert talk about as well major maintenance uh 35 million

[01:12:55] annually get there over time by fy30 bus replacement get to an 8.5 million dollar annual uh replacement schedule for buses and do that by fy30 and get to that little over 10 million dollar technology replacement cycle also by FY 30. Would I want to get to those by FY 26?

[01:13:15] Absolutely. FY 27, yes, but in the spirit of providing a plan that is potentially achievable, I took the path of achieving these over the next five years. Staffing and student needs. I assumed an additional 6 to 10 million for student growth, that 1,400 student count that I mentioned as well as some shift in demographics. That adds up to about 30 million by the end of 2030.

[01:13:40] And I've also assumed an additional $2.5 million, so $10 million by the end of this period, for what I'll just call other initiatives, whether it be things like CBAC talked about in terms of additional mental health support or other items that the superintendent may choose to lean into within the schools, et cetera.

[01:13:59] So could we make a case that that $10 million could be $20 or $30? Absolutely. What's in this current case assumes $10 by 2030. Lastly, compensation. None of these numbers will be new to you. To get to that $16 an hour minimum pay rate, I get there by FY29, cost of $15 million annually to do that once we get there.

[01:14:20] $60,000 starting salary, I do that by FY29 as well. That's a $50 million cost. And other compensation, whether it be additional bonuses or additional targeted compensation, I assume an additional $2.5 annually as well. So $10 million if you go out the next five years.

[01:14:38] So what does that look like when you stack this on top of each other? you can see FY26. We're at about that $980 million number. You stack these on top of each other, you get to somewhere just over $1.2 billion. Not surprisingly, a $200 to $300 million shortfall from where we are today. Potentially coincidental with JLARC, but I don't think so. What does that look like annually? You can see the just over $40 million we've got in our bucket one plus bucket 2 this year and based on that relatively conservative hope of getting there by 2030 it still requires

[01:15:14] about 60 to million over the next couple years trending down to about 50 million incremental by FY30 to get to what this 1.2 million or billion dollar budget will result in. So a lot there this would have been more interesting had we had a little bit more time between the 11th and our approval, but that school board approval will be the 27th. The slide was not updated. We'll come back on the 27th, and we'll also come back this evening with a further dive into some potential adjustments based on what we know in the state budget as of now. So with that,

[01:15:53] I will pause for questions from the board. As always, thank you, Mr. Meister. Board members, is there any discussion? Mr. Barante? Thank you. Could you get out your crystal ball for me? There we go.

[01:16:11] All right. Thank you. $16 an hour minimum wage by 2029 and a $60,000 starting salary by 2029. If we continue on the rate of inflation, are we planning properly ahead at a 16 and a 60 number, in your opinion?

[01:16:29] I think the answer is comfortably we probably will want to be higher when we get to 2029, yes. Thinking of that, from an increase then, overall, we're looking at more than $50 million in the next four years.

[01:16:51] Should we choose to target something north of that, which is a very reasonable assumption, yes. Yeah, okay. And has that been a part of any of your thought process, or are we aiming for the 16 and 60 to be able to say, we know that this is our goal to accomplish, and then if there's excess, then we'll obviously, you know, the board at that time entertain that?

[01:17:14] To this point, we are, at least the way I've been approaching it, I'm open to other comments and suggestions. Until we reach this stated goal, I don't want to target above that, so we've been largely focused on the 16 and 60. Very good. Okay, thank you. I appreciate the plan and taking the replacement cycle schedules and putting them in something that we can digest along the way.

[01:17:47] obviously we need the state to come up with the funding that we're needing for the next five years so definitely appreciate it i don't really have any questions you laid it out beautifully um any other i think you're off the hook i'll see you this evening see you this evening all right well next we have announcements communications and school board comments school board members are there any announcements or comments so our next school board business meeting will be held this

[01:18:24] evening february 25th 2025 at 6 30 p.m public hearings on the superintendent's proposed fy 2026 operating budget and fy 2026 capital capital improvement plan will be held at the start of the meeting if there's no further business we need we will enter into closed session which will be held in the public meeting rooms conference room madam clerk please announce the items for today's closed session it is my understanding that the school board desires to enter into closed session in accordance with Section 2.2-3711.A of the Code of Virginia,

[01:19:01] the Virginia Freedom of Information Act, and specifically under Subsection 1, the discussion and consideration of personnel disciplinary matters, and 2, the discussion and consideration of student disciplinary matters and matters that would involve the disclosure of student records.

[01:19:18] Members of the board, you have just heard the items requested to be discussed in closed session. Do I have a motion in that regard? I make a motion to enter into closed session. Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters. Aye.

[01:19:33] Stephen Pronto. Aye. Lisa Hudgens. Aye. Ann Coker. Aye. We are now in closed session. Do I have a motion to reconvene in open session?

[01:19:53] So moved. Is there a second? Second. The board is now in open session. Madam Clerk, would you please read the resolution certifying the closed session? Now, therefore, be it resolved that the school board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge, one, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies, and two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the school board.

[01:20:29] Is there a motion to adopt the resolution? We make a motion to adopt the resolution. Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters? Aye. Stephen Pronto? Aye. Lisa Hudgens? Aye.

[01:20:45] Ann Cooker? Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the first student disciplinary matter? In case number 2024-25-14, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:21:02] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters? Aye. Stephen Pronto? Aye. Lisa Hudgens? Aye. Ann Coker? Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the next student disciplinary matter? In case number 2024-25-15, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:21:26] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters? Aye. Stephen Pronto? Aye. Lisa Hudgens? Aye. Ann Coker? Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the remaining student matters?

[01:21:42] Aye. In case number 2024-25-27RE and 2024-25-28RE, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:22:02] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters. Aye. Stephen Pronto. Aye. Lisa Hudgens. Aye. Ann Coker. Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the first personnel matter? In case number 2024-25-43-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:22:26] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters? Aye. Stephen Pronto? Aye. Lisa Hudgens? Aye. Ann Coker? Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the next personnel matter? In case number 2024-25-44-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:22:50] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters? Aye. Stephen Pronto? Aye. Lisa Hudgens? Aye. Ann Coker? Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the next personnel matter? In case number 2024-25-45-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:23:13] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters. Aye. Steven Peronto. Aye. Lisa Hudgens. Aye. Ann Cooker. Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the next personnel matter? In case number 2024-25-46-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:23:36] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll in the motion? Dominique Chatters. Aye. Stephen Pronto. Aye. Lisa Hudgens. Aye. Ann Coker. Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the next personnel matter? In case number 2024-25-47-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:23:59] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Shatters? Aye. Stephen Pronto? Aye. Lisa Hudgens? Aye. Ann Coker? Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the next personnel matter? In case number 2024-25-48-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:24:22] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters. Aye. Stephen Pronto. Aye. Lisa Hudgens. Aye. Ann Cooker. Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the next personnel matter? In case number 2024-25-49-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:24:44] Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Dominique Chatters. Aye. Stephen Pronto. Aye. Lisa Hudgens. Aye. Ann Coker. Aye. The motion carries.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com