Coraggio Consulting
Chesterfield County School Board Budget Work Session, Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Date: Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Place: Chesterfield County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 16m (video)
Official meeting video (Swagit): https://chesterfieldschoolsva.new.swagit.com/videos/373929
Official minutes (BoardDocs, on the Feb 10, 2026 agenda for approval): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/chesterfield/Board.nsf/pfiles/DQYVDT804631/$file/DRAFT%20MINUTES%20-%202026.02.03%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 2026-10-24. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:03] Good afternoon. I'd like to call the February 3rd, 2026 School Board Budget Work Session to order. Before we begin this afternoon, I'd like to take a moment for two recognitions. We want to celebrate that this is Black History Month.

[00:00:20] Chesterfield County Public Schools honors the contributions of our black students, teachers, employees, and families in our school communities past, present, and future. It is vital to ensure that black history remains an integral part of our curriculum, and Black History Month is a time for all Chesterfield County public school students to learn about and be inspired by black heroes.

[00:00:45] During our February 10th business meeting, the school board plans to adopt a resolution in honor of Black History Month and the significant contributions of black Americans to our nation's advancement. We also want to recognize that National School Counseling Week is February 2nd through 6th.

[00:01:05] This annual recognition is designed to focus public attention on the contribution of school counselors throughout the United States. I believe I speak for our entire school board when I say that Chesterfield County Public Schools counselors are among the best of the best.

[00:01:22] Our school counselors make a daily difference for the children of Chesterfield County. School counselors are with our students for their happiest moments, like college acceptances, and school counselors support our students when the world seems bleak and overwhelming.

[00:01:38] School counselors have truly stepped up to support the wide variety of academic, social, and mental health needs of our students. Next, we have a presentation on the fiscal year 2027 proposed capital improvement plan from Dr. Wadaka.

[00:01:58] Good afternoon. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about, I think, as I said in December, my favorite topic of all that we do is our capital improvement plan coming up for the following fiscal year.

[00:02:14] Before I do that, I want to recognize John Belasa is behind me. He's our director of construction, if you haven't met John yet. He was integral in the development of this presentation as well as the development of this plan, as was John Thuma and his team, our director of facilities. As you can imagine, John Thuma is busy working on last minute details for our plans for tomorrow.

[00:02:33] And so he is doing that tonight. So, again, thank you for this opportunity. The slides that you'll see tonight, some of them you will have seen a few before in previous presentations. Bob gave a really great presentation two weeks ago that provided sort of a primer for what we're going to talk about tonight.

[00:02:51] We also talked a little bit about some of these ideas in December. But we'll continue through with the more detailed information related to our capital improvement plan going forward and specifics on where we go. So if you see a couple of slides that are similar or familiar to what you've seen before, forgive me on that, but we have great work ahead.

[00:03:09] So this is one of these slides, and it's, I think, an important part for our community as we discuss our capital improvement program. And that is that it's developed by policy and through our policy development process in the school board policy group. So the important part here is that capital improvement plans are not developed sort of in a vacuum.

[00:03:30] We make them with the idea that we have thoughtful planning with particular goals that are designed to improve our educational opportunities for our students. This is a place where we are creating the best possible learning environment for our students and working environment for our staff. And we do so in a way that's thoughtful and planned and designed to create various or to achieve various goals.

[00:03:51] And so that is, again, designed by policy and developed through policy as we do many of our things. So we'll start off tonight, again, these are some, this information that you've heard before, but we'll start with our major construction projects.

[00:04:07] We'll talk about some of the ones that are briefly, some of the projects that are going on right now, as well as probably more detail on projects that are coming forward over the next several years. So I'm not going to go into as much detail in terms of the ongoing projects, because we've heard that in December, you heard about Bensley and Deep Creek and the new high school.

[00:04:26] And you'll hear next week about CTC at Hull a little bit more. But you'll also hear about that in more detail in April as well. There was a question from one board member about delays that might have been related to the weather last week and this week. Very happily, we are not behind schedule as a result of this work.

[00:04:45] The two elementary schools that are under construction right now are both under roofs, so lots of work was going on in the buildings last week. The high school, the contractor there, had eight days budgeted for weather in January. Of course, you used less than that, so that's great. and so we'll continue on process with that.

[00:05:01] The only thing that didn't happen last week at Deep Creek Elementary School is the water connection that was planned to take place didn't happen because of the weather, but fortunately, we were way ahead of schedule in that part of the process, so we're in good shape there. So we will continue to move forward with that as well.

[00:05:17] Next week, you will hear a presentation on the contract approval for CTC hall renovation, so that's continuing forward, and so I won't go into detail tonight about that. But all projects remain on schedule and on budget at this point. So this is a slide that you saw last time when Bob was presenting, and it's a little bit different than the slide that we presented in December, and just simply that there is a change between when the Dale District new elementary school was included.

[00:05:47] So this slide, for those of you who may not have seen it, shows sort of when we have schools that are opening moving forward. So we have a number of schools that are under construction right now. You'll see on the sort of left side of the screen that in green, you'll see the schools that are under construction.

[00:06:02] In yellow, you'll see some projects that are in process right now. And then at the right side, we'll talk about projects that will be in the future. And we don't quite have funding or maybe perhaps land for some of them, but we are going to certainly be going forward with that. But the big picture change here from our conversation that we had in December was that we have worked with our partners of the county to identify the opportunity to construct two new elementary schools.

[00:06:26] one as a replacement Grange Hall that will open in August of 2029, and then a new Dale Area Elementary School that will open in August of 2030. Of course, that will also include a pre-K component as well.

[00:06:42] So that's the timing that we've worked out. Obviously, still more approvals to go, still more process to go, but we feel like that is a very doable, very reasonable timeline and will be very important projects for our community as we go forward. So I'm going to talk those projects that are in yellow there that are sort of in progress.

[00:07:02] I'm going to give a little bit more detail on our work going forward, starting out with the Falling Creek Middle School Phase 2 project. You, I'm sure, are familiar that we built a new Falling Creek Middle School a few years ago. And the second phase of that project is to construct the track and field, as well as various other recreational facilities at that site.

[00:07:25] What you see on the screen is my feeble attempt at generative AI. So Dr. Pope, I hope, will be proud of me in using that. We took construction plans and colorized them and just kind of give a little bit more idea of what it's going to look like there. So I think it looks great. That track will probably not quite be that color, but it gives you an idea of what that site will look like in a little bit more detail.

[00:07:47] So design is 100% complete right now. We are currently in our pre-construction phase. Again, we will result in the demolition of the existing former Falling Creek Middle School. This is what's being used right now as the swing space for Binsley Elementary School as the new Binsley is being built.

[00:08:04] And so once the new Binsley is ready to go, we'll move out of that building, tear it down, and build track and field and other recreational spaces. So our approximate budget is $6 million for this project, and we're looking forward to this very, very important process. So that leaves one more track to be constructed in the middle schools here in Chesterfield County.

[00:08:24] So we'll definitely want to do that in the future, and that will be an important project going forward. But, again, another really, really great movement forward. And you can see on the slide where the track is is sort of where the middle school used to be. As we move forward into the replacement Grange Hall Elementary School, this is, again, another one of my attempts at generative AI.

[00:08:48] We just sort of changed the name on the picture of A.M. Davis School. This replaces a building that has components that are over 100 years old. That's a critical part of how that sort of got onto the original bond referendum. But this project is also highly related to the opportunity to reduce about 25 classroom trailers in that area.

[00:09:11] So it's a little bit different site than where the school is existing right now. So not only are we replacing a school that has exceeded its useful life, we are also having the opportunity to address many of our capacity concerns in the area. So that's a tremendously important part of our goals as a school division, is to reduce the number of trailer classrooms as much as we possibly can.

[00:09:33] And this project absolutely does that, and it is a critical part of that as we go forward with that moving along. So as I mentioned, we are aligning the site to a location that better meets the student population in the area so we can better take advantage of the space that is in this space.

[00:09:48] So we'll work through that. Again, we'll have an anticipated opening date of August of 2029. Just down the road from here is our next project, our Dale Area Elementary Additional School. So this would be a new school community that would be added to the Chesterville County Public Schools community.

[00:10:09] This is almost entirely designed to address overcrowding in the Dale area. So many of our schools have lots of classroom trailers in the Dale area, in this corridor here, and to the point where we think that we can reduce about 60 classrooms, trailer classrooms, as a result of this project.

[00:10:29] So that's tremendous. That is a legacy building opportunity for the school board and the county and our opportunity to really make tremendous impacts on a positive quality learning environment for our students. In addition, we have a very large waiting list for pre-K students in the area.

[00:10:48] So this project will add an additional 150 seats of pre-K as a result of this work. So there will be the prototype school that's built, plus an addition of another 150 seats in the pre-K opportunity. So that does require a little bit more design work.

[00:11:05] So that's part of the reason why we said, hey, let's take a look at this and open this in 2030. It provides us an opportunity to do that, make sure that our financing works out just right. And again, this will be a really, really profoundly important project as we move forward as a community. So something to be very proud of.

[00:11:23] So those are our sort of primary upcoming major projects that we have. A lot of the planning work is ongoing for that. We also have a number of projects that are in the mid-range area. These are projects that we've talked about for some time, some of the referendum projects that we need to continue to work through, but maybe don't have funding yet or maybe don't have a property identified for these projects.

[00:11:44] So Midlothian Middle School Replacement, the additional Old Hundred Area Elementary School, those are both projects that we don't have a property just yet. for that. But of course, will be continuing to be an important project for us, projects for us. And then, of course, Thomas Dale expansion will be an important project, the Matoka Middle School replacement, and then the Byrd High School gym addition are all projects we've talked about for some time. We just don't have funding for them right now. But again, are important projects for our community going forward. And in the long run, you know, we talked about a lot of construction projects. We're going to do a lot of really great work in the next five to 10 years. But it's

[00:12:23] important to remember that we are not done after we do that work, right? And so because of significant renovations that will need to be done, because there will be additional growth in the county, there will be additional capacity needs in the county, there will need to be more construction projects, more schools, and it's important to remember that age is an important part of our decision to replace a school or to build a new school, but it's incomplete, right? It's a one component of our decision to do that. We need to make sure So the schools that we have address our programmatic needs.

[00:12:55] We need to make sure that the condition is taken care of. We need to make sure that we understand the division-wide capacity utilization. So there are lots of components that as we develop plans for future schools, and again, that will be coming down the road, it's important to take consider. And so as Chesterfield County continues to grow, it's important to remember that we will need to build additional schools down there.

[00:13:16] All right, so this is a slide that you've seen a couple of times now. This is our slide that shows where our major projects are located. And, again, the point here is to say we're doing projects all over the county. We'll continue to do projects over the county. This doesn't include any of the major maintenance projects that I'll talk about here in just a few minutes.

[00:13:32] But, again, we are trying to do our best to make sure that we are investing throughout the county in as many places as we possibly can. All right, so that's our presentation on our sort of major projects that are coming forward.

[00:13:48] These are the new school projects or maybe some renovations. But we need to turn now to our major maintenance update and our funding for major maintenance. So we, a couple of times now, have talked about the need to invest in a really aggressive, proactive major maintenance program in the county.

[00:14:05] And so, again, we're going to start with a couple of slides that you've already seen in this boardroom. But we want to make sure that, again, this is something that we have shown to our community as an important part of what we do. Because it's really great to build new schools and really fun to do that.

[00:14:22] But we absolutely have to take care of the schools that we have so they can continue to serve our community for the long run. So, again, our major maintenance process helps us to meet the school board policy goals of 7240, again, taking care of those buildings. And we're trying to, again, make sure that we are extending the useful life of existing buildings where we possibly can.

[00:14:40] So those are things like replacing chillers, security camera replacements. These are things that may not be as exciting to some folks, but are very exciting to people like me and John and others that, again, are trying to make sure that we are developing the best learning environment for our students as we possibly can.

[00:14:57] This next slide, again, is something you've seen before. I've used this slide. Bob used this slide. And it's essentially saying, hey, we've been saying for some time there is a need to invest more in major maintenance throughout the school division. And so we have been able to use the last several years one-time funds or other kind of funds to make sure that we are able to meet the financing goals that we have.

[00:15:19] But for fiscal year 2027, there are additional needs that are critically important. And so we need more financing tools. And so these are a couple of slides from previous presentations that we've shown. Again, these are no surprise to the board. We have a lot of work to do as we go forward. And then in December, I shared this slide that showed that there are significant concerns with our facility condition assessment.

[00:15:42] There are significant costs that are going to be needed over the next number of years. And the specific details of these prices are not as important as to say, hey, we are doing this analysis and this assessment to help us understand what are the investment needs throughout our division.

[00:16:00] And so we want to make sure that when we do that, we do that in a thoughtful way. We've gone out, we've done a logical, scientific assessment of the condition of our buildings, and we've thought about what are the needs as well. So if you take a look at what the big picture numbers are there, you're seeing a lot of money that's needed for HVAC, it's mechanical, that sort of thing, electrical improvements, roofs that need to be replaced throughout the county.

[00:16:22] These are not things that get a lot of headlines, but they're very, very important to making sure that our students have a great learning environment where we possibly can. So that is that. So I want to go now into the major maintenance funding proposal for the coming year.

[00:16:42] As Bob so eloquently stated last time, we don't want to work for a school division that doesn't invest enough in our major maintenance work. And so the superintendent has proposed funding major maintenance at $30 million next year through a hybrid approach.

[00:16:58] We'll go into details on that. You've heard about that already. But I want to talk about where we are proposing to use those funds. And that is listed on the right side of the screen. And so if you'll notice, the first $25.8 million of the dollars that we've identified of the $30 million are mechanical, so HVAC roofs.

[00:17:19] They are security improvements. They are electrical improvements. And those are sort of those bread-and-butter kinds of projects that allow us to keep these buildings going to the best extent we possibly can. As we continue through our facility assessment process, we may have different projects that come on down the road. And so we are proposing projects that we know are very good, very thoughtful projects that will be valuable to our community and to our schools.

[00:17:40] But, again, we'll continue that facility assessment process. So I'm going to go through each one of these so you can see exactly where we're proposing to use these funds, what specific schools, what specific projects. Because when I said before in December, I talked about the need to be able to be really clear about saying every single dollar that we're identifying are related to a specific school, a specific project, specific opportunity to make the school in place better and so I want to fill that responsibility to you because I think it's very important that we know where those ones are going so on the mechanical so again this is HVAC kind of

[00:18:15] work also heating and cooling we're investing most of our work in Matoka Middle Manchester High these are air handling units they are units that again it's they handle air right they move air around the buildings and they make sure that we have fresh air throughout the buildings.

[00:18:32] We also want to start phase one of a larger HVAC upgrade at Hopkins Elementary. If you've been in Hopkins lately, you'll note that there's lots of temporary units that are around. So that's going to be a much bigger project to get that going the way it needs to be.

[00:18:49] But we're going to start replacing it with six air handling units. That'll get us a long way down that road and that'll be really critically important. We'll also do some smaller projects, replacement of a chiller and an air handler at Bonaire, a chiller replacement at Chalkley, and a gym air handling unit at Watkins.

[00:19:04] So, again, these are just good bread and butter, really good projects that need to be done and will be valuable to our community. Roofs are probably one of the most important parts of a building because it's really hard to focus on algebra when it's dripping on your head, right?

[00:19:24] And so we want to make sure that we have a constructive, thoughtful process in how we're changing out roofs as well. One of the challenges that we see in our roof data that we look at as we're developing this work is that because roofs have, because we've not had a systemic process to replace roofs when they need to be done, there are lots of parts of different roofs of different buildings that have been kind of patchworked throughout the division.

[00:19:50] So you might see a section that is, you know, 25 years old. That's right next to a section that's maybe 15 years old because there was a leak or something like that. And so what we want to do is to really focus on making sure that we're developing bigger projects that allow for a consistent roof age throughout a building where we can.

[00:20:08] Now, bigger buildings, you can't really just replace the whole roof oftentimes because it will take a long time. And number two, number one, a long time. Number two, it will take a lot of money to get through that whole roof. And so we wouldn't do anything else if we do like high school at one time. So we'll do some of those in phases, and we'll develop that over the next couple of years as we go forward.

[00:20:28] So in this process, in this year, we will have a plan to replace the flat roof at Thomasdale West. We will in the future, in future years, do some repairs to the slate roof at that building as well because there's both of those needs.

[00:20:44] We want to make sure we're maintaining the integrity of that building. At Carver College, we'll do a full replacement of that roof. Curtis Elementary will do a phase two replacement. So there was a previous phase that was large enough. Bailey Bridge, we'll do a phase one replacement. So that's definitely a school that has lots of different patches from time to time.

[00:21:04] And so we'll do that. And at Jacobs Road, the shingle roof will be replaced. If you've been to Jacobs Road, you'll know there's a primary sort of shingle roof there, but there's also sort of a center flat roof, and that's what we'll do with us. So that's our roof. Our security improvements, we will have a second phase of security film installation.

[00:21:28] So we've been throughout the school division. We have added ballistic film on all the entrance doors throughout the division. I probably won't go into a whole lot of detail, but we want to add to that significantly to make sure that we are reducing the likelihood of an ability of an intruder to get into the building, and we'll continue forward with that.

[00:21:47] That'll go the first year with all of our elementary schools being done. In future years, we'll do the middle and high schools as well. And then we will do a security camera replacement at a number of schools that you see listed there. Those are just the time. These are ones that just need to be replaced at this point.

[00:22:06] Okay, electrical. This is the opportunity to replace our lighting in many of our schools and replacing it to LEDs. So this is consistent with one of your recommendations from the Environmental Stewardship Advisory Committee. It talked about how we can save a lot of money by reducing the electric consumption by replacing these lights. And so this doesn't include any kind of other sort of alternative financing opportunity, but it does provide an opportunity to do that work. That's important. It's important to reduce our electric consumption, but it's also really important that our classrooms are bright and light, and if you've been in many of our classrooms,

[00:22:43] you'll note that the old fluorescent tubes just aren't doing it anymore, and they need to be replaced. We'll also have generator replacements at Matoka High School, Meadowbrook High, and Swift Creek Middle. Meadowbrook, I'll just mention that, has two generators. There is one that is for the emergency management shelter. So Meadowbrook and Cosby both serve as our sheltering locations if they're in case of a major need to evacuate or emergency. And so there is a specific generator for that site. What we're talking about is the rest of the school here. There is also a need to

[00:23:19] expand the emergency shelter generator as well, but that will come down later with another project. Okay, so that was sort of the four major areas, that first $25.8 million, and we're going to go into a couple of smaller projects that are critically important. This first one is our Capital Uplifting Program. This is our Interior Program. I think, Ms. Hudgens, you asked me about this last time, and will be a part of what we're doing. So this is a little bit of a pilot project where we're saying, all right, let's identify a school that, you know, HVAC is pretty decent,

[00:23:55] the roof's pretty decent, all the sort of core functions and core systems are in a pretty decent shape. But, you know, when you're just in the school, it just needs some love, right? It needs some opportunity, some paint, those sorts of things. And so what we wanted to do is find a school that could have a design that could be replicated throughout the county where we go and we say, how do we make this space just nicer for our students to be in, for our faculty to be in, for the learning environment to be, again, just more inspiring than this sort of institutional white that's on the walls?

[00:24:35] And so when we do this, we've identified Providence Elementary School. The reason for that is that at school, the roof is in pretty decent shape, the HVAC's in pretty decent shape, not that it's perfect, but they're in pretty good condition compared to others. It's also consistent with a prototype that is throughout the county.

[00:24:52] So Alberta Smith is the same prototype. Clover Hill Elementary, Crenshaw, Ecoff, Jacob's Robe, Providence, of course, Weaver, and Woolridge all have the same prototype and basic, same sort of basic design of the building. And so what we can do is, as we go in to figure out how we make this space as nice as it possibly can be, we can replicate that over and over and over again so we don't have to do the same design process over and over again.

[00:25:16] So we're excited about that. We think, again, this is a pilot project. We'll learn from this as we go forward and maybe make some adjustments and work with the end users to make sure that we are creating the best environment we can, and again, for a relatively modest cost compared to a full sort of renovation as well.

[00:25:32] So we're very excited about that. This next one is a bit of a placeholder. If you've been around to many of our sites, the parking lots, in many cases, are just not in great shape. This is a part of our facility assessment process. We're not quite ready to say which parking lots we're going to do, but in the springtime, we'll know that, and we'll get that right away.

[00:25:55] And we'll finish up with alarm panels, and these are just projects that need to be done. These are panels that are aging out, so Meadowbrook, Matoka, Chalkley, and Curtis Elementary School. So there's a lot of detail there. I hope that's not too boring for you, but it's really critical as we move forward in the next fiscal year, we'll continue to develop our facility assessment process, a facility condition assessment process, So that we'll have, again, that long-term plan.

[00:26:20] But really, really thankful to the superintendent, to the finance staff for saying, hey, we don't want to wait on some of this work. We really, really need to make sure we're investing appropriate funds. And so we've really tried to be as strategic and thoughtful in using these funds to make sure that the work that we're doing makes the most sense in the long run for the school division as we develop that bigger major maintenance process.

[00:26:39] So happy to take any questions you might have. Oh, I forgot the school list. Bob reminded me to mention the school buses because we continue to do that. We talked about this a couple of times in our process. So as you know, we have developed a major opportunity with the county to replace our school buses over time.

[00:27:01] We've done really, I think, a great job of developing that relationship and making sure that we don't have old school buses that should not be on the road anymore continuing to be there. One of the questions that we got last time, or I think, Mr. Pronto, you asked last time, was, hey, what are the costs associated with maintaining those older buses?

[00:27:20] And that sounds like a really simple question, but I went back through the data, and it's actually a little bit more complicated than that. But we did take a look at kind of where the point is when a bus starts to be really expensive to take care of on the road. And I would love to say this was planned, but once you hit that 12-year mark is when a bus is on the road full-time, it gets really expensive.

[00:27:40] So it goes for an average of about $7,000 or $8,000 a year to maintain before that to closer to $11,000 or $12,000 per bus per year. So it gets really expensive. So what our plan is to have the buses on the road for the first 12 years, and then 13, 14, and 15 years, they'll be off the road.

[00:27:56] They'll be spares since they'll be used some, but won't have nearly as much cost. So that doesn't answer the question fully. I don't think we're going to fully offset the costs of the program, but it will help, and I think it will be really valuable. So very excited about that project going forward.

[00:28:13] And again, it will require the school board Dedicate funds annually towards that service for the project. Okay, so now I'll take questions. Thank you. Dr. Wattica Board members are there any discussions? Thank you, Madam Chair. I did want to say that I think The environmental committee will be really happy to see the LED lights I'm really happy that that made it to the to the budget But I only had one question and it was about the roof when you do the full roof replacement Does that mean they get solar or does not qualify? It only happens for a brand new school

[00:28:51] so great great question so that it would certainly be an opportunity whether or not we would do that at that particular school depends on how much space we have and that sort of thing we definitely want to when we put solar on a roof we want to make sure it's large enough space that it's meaningful we also want to make sure we're putting solar on new roofs and not on older roofs I haven't thought through that necessarily for these particular projects but it's a fair question and I'll definitely will think through that okay because there's only two of them that were listed I get a full roof or understood not a phase one Or phase two, that doesn't make sense.

[00:29:22] But for the two that were listed with full, I was just curious. Absolutely. We'll definitely evaluate that. That's a great, great point. Mr. Pronto? Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple questions in regards to, well, let me back up a little bit, sorry.

[00:29:38] Your predecessor would present and would talk to us in red, yellow, and green. Okay. Are you aware of that? No, I'm not. Okay. So, for example, he would say, you know, the roof at, and I'm just going to make up schools, right?

[00:29:55] Sure. The roof at Cosby is a red, and the roof at Manchester is a yellow, and we're going to focus on the yellow to maintain it, right? And then project the red for, you know, a later date because it's a complete wash, right? Understanding that that's not something that you're following, but you do have a list, if you will, of all of our schools in regards to their current conditions.

[00:30:20] to be categorized under something like that, I'm assuming? So actually, yeah, there is a red and yellow process. I just didn't include that here. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. I'm just used to hearing that and then seeing it now and we don't have that.

[00:30:36] It just made me wonder. Thank you. The other question for that is you talked about security camera replacement. Those are cameras, they're still working, correct? They're just aging out to where we see that they're going to need to be replaced.

[00:30:52] Just to clarify for a community, it's not that we have schools that don't have working cameras. It's that we recognize that we're spending more money on upkeeping these. It's just going to be beneficial to replace them. Is that accurate? Absolutely accurate. What we're trying to do is to get ahead of that.

[00:31:07] We don't want to get into a position where we have a bunch of cameras that aren't working. We're trying to be proactive in our work. Sure. And to clarify, Meadowbrook and Cosby, the additional generator, that's for a catastrophic event to where the community would have to go to the high school.

[00:31:24] Is that correct? Yes, sir. So there could be a hurricane that results in widespread power outages for many days, as we know. And the problem at Meadowbrook with the emergency generator is that it does not operate the air conditioner. So that obviously could be a significant challenge in September when there's a hurricane event.

[00:31:46] We have identified a grant program working with the county emergency management folks to help us replace that, and then we'll work through that financing process. So we have taken on the responsibility to take a look at technically what does it take to add that function in.

[00:32:03] We have to do some changes in wiring and switch gear and that sort of thing, But they will take the responsibility for the application for the process. And the new high school that's being built will not have that. Is that correct? There will not be an emergency shelter. It will remain Cosby in that area.

[00:32:19] Yes. Okay. Thank you. And then the old bus is, just to get back to that, understanding, trying to capture the cost of everything, there has to be some figure out there, right, that says, historically, we have spent X amount of dollars.

[00:32:38] I'm not looking for, you know, line-by-line item, right? If we have a bus that's, you know, over 15 years of age, right, and still out there on the road or using it as a spare, whatever it might be, there has to be cost-saving somewhere, right?

[00:32:54] And that's what I'm looking for is just to be able to understand, okay, with this program, being able to filter out after year 12, and then, of course, 13, 14, and 15, as you mentioned, being sub-buses, emergency purposes, what have you makes complete sense um there's a savings in that versus what we've been spending right that's what i was after in trying to understand how much have we been spending out of our budget to maintain this older fleet versus a projection of how much we're going to save by being able to uh filter out after you know year 12 or 13 sure that's what i was after yeah

[00:33:31] absolutely so we we have budgeted in fiscal year 26 about 8.7 million dollars for repairs for all of buses uh over the years um and so the reason i say it's a little more complicated because there there's not a consistent number of the number of buses per year because there hasn't been consistent buying over those years so you might have a have uh 135 buses that are currently seven years old but only 20 buses that are eight years old and so then when you start to do that it ends up being a little more complicated but we'll definitely work on and find a way to answer that question more completely.

[00:34:04] I appreciate that. I think being able to show the value of this from a percentage standpoint in the savings, not that there needs to be buy-in because just the idea of this alone makes perfect sense and it should be as such, but just understanding the savings aspect of it to be able to present to the community and say look, we're not having to spend this money here because this is what we're doing now.

[00:34:28] I think that would be extremely beneficial just to show over the course of the next few years what this would look like. I appreciate that. Ms. Coker. I just have a couple questions and then also just to ditto what Ms. Chatter says, I know the Environmental Stewardship Committee is going to be ecstatic to see some focus around the LED lighting.

[00:34:54] So thank you for listening to them and putting that into plan. The facility conditions assessment. approximate time you think that will be complete yes ma'am so i'm hoping that's done by june so we wanted to make sure that in this process everything that we're proposing is going to be consistent with that so every project that we have here is um is something that we've identified as a part of that process we're just not done yet and so i've asked for that to sort of be done by june and so that's kind of the time glad we're looking at that and doing that again i think it It's been many years since the last one.

[00:35:34] And then last quick question. The work that's being done at Thomasdale for this upcoming year for 2026, is that main campus or west campus? Which project? I think it was the rooftop HVAC. Sure.

[00:35:50] I don't remember what slide that was on. If you don't know today. You can get back to me. For the roof, yep. It was for 2027 was west, but there was an earlier slide.

[00:36:09] that said that there was work happening in 2026. I just didn't know if that was Maine or West. Let me get back to you on that. That's fine. Yeah, thank you. All righty, thank you so much. Thank you so much. Next, we have an update on compensation from Dr. Huff.

[00:36:28] But first, we have something from Dr. Darby. Madam Chair, I will not be participating in any discussion of this matter because my spouse is an employee of the school division.

[00:36:48] Good afternoon. Ms. Hutchins, Mr. Peranto, members of the board, Dr. Murray, I appreciate having some time this afternoon to spend with you to review some additional details of the compensation portion of the superintendent's FY27 proposed budget. I'm discovering I'm not as tall as my colleague.

[00:37:16] People make instruction possible and we have had some successes with investments and compensation with some previous gains. We reduced the vacancies in transportation and that's been a year-over-year reduction in vacancies with all the routes filled to start schools the past several years. We've had a decrease in teacher attrition that was sustained the past two years, and we've had an increase in substitute fill rates that's continued to increase

[00:37:50] this year as well. And what's new information is we've also had a better vacancy rate, a reduced vacancy rate for student support services positions and these are positions like occupational therapy physical therapy speech language pathologists psychologists etc many of which are required services for students so those went from 11.7 vacancies and then that was the year that i believe it was june of 24 where we got a kind of a late budget or some money at the end of the

[00:38:27] budget and put this into place we weren't sure if it was going to impact that recruiting season but it did as well as the one beyond so that's down to 4.6 percent vacancy rate so substantial differences there we have had though several years of high costs that have prompted candidates and employees to carefully consider compensation details which isn't unique to ccps or even to schools so this is kind of an outline of the position types that we'll be chatting about and

[00:39:05] teachers instructional assistants student support services and school security officers and proposed transportation would be scale positions then we have graded salary range positions and then also substitutes and stipend and bonus considerations so we'll start with teachers because that's our most common job title in CCPS. This is a chart that you might recognize that we update each year, and this shows the number of teachers that are being prepared. This includes alternative programs,

[00:39:43] and this is only for the state of Virginia. It is Title II data. It's federal data, but only on the state of Virginia. Data does run a little bit behind, so the last year that we have is we've added 2324 the blue line shows the number of enrollees in programs the orange line shows the number of completers meaning they finish their certification they pass their tests they're ready to teach so you can see that completer number is kind of sort of mostly a flat line over a long period of time it's also important to recognize that everyone who completes a program does not

[00:40:20] necessarily stay in the state and seek employment as an educator. And then we kind of zero in on our math candidates. So we had 8,700 enrollees for the last year we have data, 23-24, and then 31-35 completers and 69 completers in the state of Virginia in math. And that's actually improved from the data that you've seen the last few years, but still not enough for 133 school divisions.

[00:40:51] Right now, I believe we just made an offer this week, so we have three math vacancies, which is improved, but we still have 20 positions that are online that we would like to have in person that we're working towards over time.

[00:41:08] That's also an improved number, changed from a high of 26, but still some work to do there and still not the robust pool for the state that we would like to see. The scale of our hiring, we hired over 3,000 people last year in CCPS, including full-time, part-time, substitute, and temporary employees.

[00:41:32] So that's a large-scale operation, and just want to remind our community of that. We have over 5,000 teachers. This is our annual attrition update for teachers. So you can see that we've had a marked drop in attrition rate, and it's been pretty similar in both 23-24 and 24-25.

[00:41:58] We do look at that data monthly, and of course, most of the attrition occurs at the end of the school year, some during the year. There's nothing about our month-over-month trends that make us believe this will be radically different from last year.

[00:42:15] So we think we may have settled into a little bit lower pattern, which is good news. And this slide is not as good of news. This is our local market starting teacher salary at the bachelor's level, no experience.

[00:42:33] And it compares us with our surrounding districts in the Richmond area. We are the purple line, so you can see what happened there in 21-22. You might recall that we were lagging the market and we had a salary study and implemented that salary study in phases.

[00:42:53] And so you can see a marked improvement there in 22-23. You might remember that that was when we reduced compression in the salary scale as well as enhanced teacher salaries overall. and we were able to surpass one of our competitor divisions and were kind of right there, similar to another competitor division at that time.

[00:43:17] But then that gap started to widen again, and you can see what's happened over the past two years is a little more widening. And this year, Hanover made a significant move. You can see that kind of sharp uptick there, causing, you know, some work that we need to do to be more competitive in that market.

[00:43:43] We took a look at extended local market starting salary just because we were starting to get inquiries and we thought, well, I wonder what that data looks like, even though these are competitors. They're close to us geographically, but they don't have lots of teaching positions.

[00:44:00] They don't have a lot of FTEs. They're smaller divisions. We did not market adjust it. So for example um it's 2.8 to three and a half percent lower cost of living in some of these counties but we just thought that would be confusing so we just use their you know just the salary that's published um and what we see is that again we're the purple line um and so we're lagging some of these divisions as well had we market adjusted what we would see is a little bit more distance

[00:44:34] from those top three competitors, and the bottom competitor would catch up to us a little bit, but still remain below. This slide may require the most explanation. So at step zero, this compares step zero of scales in our major competitor divisions in the region, and then also step 15.

[00:44:59] Now, it's important to remember that divisions have different practices on how they place people on different steps, whether it's year for year, or they may have had different practices over time with different leadership, different budgets, different financial pictures. So to be conservative here, we only use the Henrico New Hire scale, which is their lowest scale, and then just compared that year 15. And so you can see that we still have some work to do. And The point of including this slide was that I didn't want to leave the impression that

[00:45:37] we needed to do some work at the beginning of the scale, but we were doing better as we, you know, at the midpoint or at the maximum of the scale, because that does not appear to be the case. Henrico does have three scales. They have the new hire scale.

[00:45:53] They have the HP or hybrid plan scale, which it appears most people are on. And then they have the UP scale, which is kind of, I think, a grandfathered one that not many employees are on. If we had compared it to those other scales, the gap would be larger. But really, because there's a lot of interpretation there, we just went with the conservative scale comparison. So the proposal is to increase teacher starting pay to $57,277. And our future goal,

[00:46:30] of course is $60,000 so that gets that gets the starting salary closer to that goal and we think that is needed it increases the starting salary by four percent and then it also the proposal includes a step increase so it totals about five percent for experienced teachers and we would also propose adding a step 41 for the so that the teachers at the top of the scale receive the same increase as everyone else that does appear to be within market when we look at years and

[00:47:09] scales for our competitors that they have two out of three have a longer scale than we do and we just aren't on in the position yet with although we've had a lot of good staffing news this year, we aren't yet in the position where we have all of our vacancies filled. We need to hang on to the people at the end of the scale instead of encourage early retirement, for example.

[00:47:35] And this is a mock-up of what the proposed scale would look like with the different steps and the lanes for bachelor's, master's, and doctorate. And then we also have some other scale positions to discuss. One is instructional assistance. And in FY24, we increased pay by making a separate scale for instructional assistance. And there are two lanes, one for general ed, IA, and one for

[00:48:09] special ed, IA. And in FY25 and 26, we continued with market adjustments and steps. We have increased the recruiting events I believe we've quadrupled the recruiting events for those positions and last year in the budget the board added an additional 70 IA positions for special education and we have made progress in filling those last year our vacancies ran around 25 to

[00:48:42] 29 during the year and this year they're running 35 to 40 but what we've done is that would have filled all of those 25 to 39 from last year plus about 35 of the new ones so there are actually quite a few additional IAs in classrooms and also these vacancies tend to move around so it It doesn't mean that there's a sustained vacancy in the same school for all year.

[00:49:14] But this is still a position that's challenging for us. The continuity is important because some students who are working with instructional assistants experience impacts to their progress with a lot of transitions. And about 70% of our IA positions do provide support that's required by IEPs.

[00:49:37] This is our attrition rate, so you can see when we implemented the salary study, salary change, the attrition rate did go down, and it went down two years in a row, and then last year it started to creep back up again, and of course now we have a number of additional FTEs to fill with a different base.

[00:49:59] So the proposed modification would be to apply the 4% market increase plus the step and also to add a step 27 to retain the instructional assistance at the top of that scale.

[00:50:17] And that's a shorter scale when we implemented it, so we think that's important because there are approximately 10% of the individuals kind of at that point, and we definitely need to retain them. And this is an example of what that proposed scale would look like.

[00:50:40] And then the student support services scale, this is where we have had some success and reduced the vacancy rate. And in FY25, there was a new scale approved to align with the regional market average, and the goal was to retain staff and mitigate the increase of hard-to-procure contracted services.

[00:51:04] And that did have met with some success, and we have reduced our vacancy rate significantly over that time. Most of these services are also required by students' IEPs, so the proposal is to continue that progress with the market increase in a step to that scale.

[00:51:33] We also have a proposal for school security officers. They're on a scale, and you might recall this is a relatively new position for us, and that is a scale position. It currently ends at step 26.

[00:51:49] That is the position that we have the most individuals towards the top because there was a real focus on hiring experienced security personnel who may have had experience in law enforcement or elsewhere. And so the proposal there is the 4% market increase, the step to recognize successful experience, and extending that scale by one step.

[00:52:17] Transportation. This is a new proposal. Transportation was previously on the graded range. And you might recall that in 2021, when we were having challenges with transportation, there was a 2021 and 2021 proposal, which was kind of urgently needed and enacted very quickly and really went a long way towards filling our driver positions.

[00:52:50] We've made a lot of other changes, too, in how we recruit and how we onboard. Transportation's made a lot of changes in training. But what has happened is that bus drivers are currently paid on grade 106. But because of that, 2021 and 2021 and subsequent COLAs, they're getting towards the top of grade 106 and beyond where grade 106 would end.

[00:53:18] And what that creates is an unanticipated consequence after a period of five years where if they are applying for, you know, promotional opportunities like a transportation coordinator, an assistant area manager, somewhere where you would need to have knowledge of, you know, routes and driving the bus and so on, it's creating an hourly decrease because the rate is so high in 106 that if you go up to another grade and look at the experience, then the rate's lower.

[00:53:48] And so it's just an unintended consequence of kind of an emergency action that kind of grew over a period of years and, of course, has a cost to correct. We're also starting to fall behind again with our starting hourly rate for bus drivers.

[00:54:05] So this proposal would also increase that significantly as well. So the proposal would increase starting bus driver pay from $24.15 to $25.11, and it would rectify that disincentive for drivers to have a career pathway and become a transportation coordinator, assistant area manager, and area manager.

[00:54:35] And this is what the proposed scale would look like. And so those were scale positions, and now we're transitioning to graded range positions. So these are positions like, you know, anything from custodian to accounting, positions that aren't on a scale, and graded ranges differ from step scales because they have a beginning, mid, and max rather than step progressions.

[00:55:05] And a salary study was completed for the graded range in FY23, but it was using fall 2021 market data. And so that data now is pretty old. And the results set a $16 per hour minimum target.

[00:55:25] So you can see the progress that we've achieved there over the years where we implemented a $12 minimum hourly rate and all the way up to this year, a $14.70 hourly rate. But we're not yet at the goal of the $16 hourly rate.

[00:55:43] And you can see the attrition in the graded range positions. And it looks like that drop may have coincided with the implementation of that study. And you can see that it sort of looks like it's creeping up again.

[00:56:01] And so the graded range position proposal would be to move to a $15.28 minimum hourly rate. The proposal would include a 5% increase for current employees inclusive of both the market adjustment and the experience.

[00:56:20] So similar to what is happening with the step scales. And then we would like to spotlight the position of nurses, because this is an area that's been identified for improvement. The importance of nurses in our schools, their health and safety positions, sometimes that's the only medical professional in the school.

[00:56:42] They are sometimes fulfilling IEP requirements, especially in the cases of LPNs, and they're responding to emergencies and critical incidents. Our decline data started to give us a concern here.

[00:56:57] We have pretty strong fill rates, pretty few vacancies in nurses. But we had 12 RN offers rejected since the start of FY25, and that was 44% of the offers we made. And the reason given was salary.

[00:57:16] So that caused us to think that this needed some attention. And if we can't fill some of the positions, like the LPN positions, we would need to fill those through contractors. And that cost is much greater than hiring our own employees.

[00:57:32] And it also provides sometimes less continuity of care. So we're also seeing a little bit of an increase in attrition there for both our LPNs and our RNs, More so with our LPNs, which are a little more off-market, so that makes sense in terms of the data.

[00:57:54] Proposed regrades aim to address market standing, our attrition increase, and our offer decline numbers. So we would like to propose regrading RN positions from grade 114 to 115 and LPN positions from 108 to 111.

[00:58:17] And then we would like to transition to substitutes. So we know substitutes are a significant factor in teacher working conditions. They're required for teachers to use benefits offered like sick time. The target is a 90% fill rate for all days, and that was the pre-pandemic national standard.

[00:58:37] It's a very important pipeline of candidates for us now. The market picture has changed significantly, and we're highly dependent on career switchers and people who start out substituting our schools, enjoy working with our students, and want to pursue a career in education.

[00:58:54] So this is a great pathway for career switchers, and we've had some great success with the board's support with improving our fill rates. our average daily fill rate through December was almost 92 percent in January before the snow it looked like it was going even higher and we're we've implemented a new strategy having job fairs in different areas of the county and targeting areas where the fill rate may have been lower and I want to give a shout out to Meadowbrook High School with a 92 percent

[00:59:30] fill rate this year. And we're seeing some real changes there. And our mid-January fill rates are looking good. And our average for last year was 90% for the year. I'm anticipating that may be higher this year. These are the subs that we hired into full-time and part-time regular roles for last year. It was 278 individuals. And you can see from the graph that most of them did take teaching positions. And then some people are kind of switching careers into two-step where

[01:00:08] they are a virtual facilitator, annual substitute, and they're working on their licensure and then moving into a teaching position. And this was the first half of this year, already 228 people hired from our substitute roster. High demand days are looking good. We've had a level rate there for several years. We have a 94% fill rate last year and this year for high demand days. So that's

[01:00:41] looking strong. This is the current status of the daily rate in our surrounding divisions and our FY27 proposals. So you can see that we're still pretty competitive. We're a little bit behind the market average but even with some competitors and so the proposal here is three percent just to keep up with the market things are going well but there are when you multiply that small amount by the number of days and the number of substitutes it can add up so the strategy is just to kind of keep

[01:01:18] up with the market in that area to keep keep up with our success as well as our strong pipeline into the classroom. So the proposal is to increase the daily rate to 140, to maintain the high demand date of 203, because we feel like those numbers are still strong, that's still working, and maintain the long-term rate of 232.97. We're still having strong fills there as well. And then last, we'll move to stipend and bonus considerations. So the proposal for stipends is a four percent market

[01:01:57] increase this is for academic and athletic stipend scales and department chair and lead positions and then we did find a cut we look at each of these each year and we did find a couple of positions that do look to be off market and they relate to indoor track the head indoor track coach and the assistant indoor track coach so we had a regrade proposed there to put them more in with the Richmond market and the for the elementary department chair we pay those by semester so it's

[01:02:35] published by a semester rate and that's the way our employees are used to seeing it so that's why that's reflected that way here but our proposal is the elementary department chair this would be like the grade level chair who is you know doing a lot with the PLCs and professional learning communities and so on and so the proposals to to change the title to make that a little more clear because we feel like that may have played a part in getting off market and then to increase the flat semester rate to 484.22 to better reflect the local market and of course we have a current

[01:03:13] bonus structure that's been in place for several years for teachers at a high needs school location bus drivers instructional assistant tutor monitor library assistant and custodian and so those are proposed to continue and just as we think towards the future we still are in a national teacher shortage although we've seen some improvement this year in a number of our endorsement areas and so we're still in a kind of a competitive employment market especially for teachers and

[01:03:49] we want to have a multi-year focus to be well positioned in the market and we still have those goals of $16 an hour and $60,000 for the teacher scale to start. And I think it's we always like to end with remembering our why. We want to attract highly skilled and motivated employees to work with our students and prevent turnover, maintain morale, align with the Richmond market. We know that our employees and and especially our student facing employees are the most important school-based

[01:04:23] factor in our students education and i know the the pandemic certainly taught us all the importance of all the support positions as well i'd be happy to answer any questions at this time thank you dr huff board members is there any discussion ms chatters thank you madam chair i got a few so i'm Sorry, if we go to slide eight, we were, that's when you started talking about attrition.

[01:04:54] I think that's the attrition slide. Okay, then it's before that, I wrote the wrong number down. But it was your chart that had the attrition right there. And I was wondering, I've asked this question before, I wasn't sure if we did something about it or not, but do we have an exit survey or anything that people can take before they walk out the door so we can figure out why they're leaving and do a trend analysis on if it's something we can do or if it's not something we can do.

[01:05:22] And if you're able to share that data in an aggregate of what the trend looks like. Yes, we do have surveys. There is a specific one for teachers because there's sort of a state-suggested list of questions. We do send it electronically as people resign and they fill it out.

[01:05:42] We don't have a high completion rate. So folks who do survey research will tell you, you know, you have to interpret those results with caution if you don't have a high percentage. I think it's over 40% or more completing.

[01:05:59] But we do have that, and we do look at it, and we do read any comments that people write. We do follow up on them. And the top reason is family personal for resignation. and then retirement was second, and for the last several years, employment in another school division is also in our top three. Okay, thank you. The next question I had was, you said the future goal, we know the future goal is $60,000 as a starting salary. Are we willing to say that

[01:06:36] that future goal is for FY28 or FY29? Like, do we have a, that might be a Bob and you question together but is there a projected time that we think we're going to get to that hopefully next year uh that's why we made such a healthy contribution or proposal um for this year so this year's proposal roughly reflects half of what we need to do to get there so um i would love for us to be able to know what the um the new monies would look like for next year to commit

[01:07:11] to that um can't do that but if the money is there yes it will be in the proposal to uh check the box of that goal off the list and then turn our sights uh to a new goal that bob will share in his five-year plan i think at an upcoming meeting next meeting okay thank you um the next question i think this is my no there's two more so under uh the long-term rate that you posted my computer died or else I would know what slide number it was um I was just wondering how do you

[01:07:46] define long term when you substitute so is it how many weeks or days long term is 20 or more days in the same assignment same assignment so if I'm substituting for art for 19 days and then I get moved in the same school to PE for 19 days right because the idea is that if it's 20 days or more you probably had to do some planning some additional planning like maybe all the plans you know weren't left and you probably would have to do some additional assessing

[01:08:21] and so the elevated rate the idea behind the elevated rate and i think that's kind of a common cutoff number of days because 20 days kind of an instructional month and so if you're doing it more than that in the same role then it's probably a little bit of added responsibility then my last one I promise for the bonuses I know I've asked this before I know that it's only for what's written there when we talk about teachers at high needs schools but I always get the question and

[01:08:54] it's a logical question so I'm just repeating the question again what about the support staff at the school and the administrators at the high needs school is there anything that can be done for them we will be addressing the assistant principals at those schools so Bob we're officially on the hook for that and I believe we were going to do that as early as this year awesome and then just say thank you I appreciate the recognition of the stipends being increased

[01:09:30] for our grade level chairs and our coaches because I've been hearing about that for a couple years so I appreciate the effort that went into doing the assessment to to get us back on market value so I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for that presentation.

[01:09:51] A couple of questions for you. We had an audit and finance committee meeting this morning, and one of the members had asked a question in regards to our teacher retention rate after year three. Would you be able to get that information for us so we can share that with the committee?

[01:10:08] Yes. Last year, the attrition rate in the first three years was 11.5%. I did not expect you to spit that number out right now, but kudos to you for doing that. Hopefully you didn't feel put on the spot with that, but thank you for having that right there on the top of your head.

[01:10:29] That's very impressive. That's down from a high of 16.77% in 21-22. So it is common nationally to have more attrition in the first three years, but we are seeing improvement. Fantastic. Bob, if you could help get that information back to that member, I greatly appreciate that.

[01:10:50] Thank you. And then also, you had mentioned about the nurses rejecting offers because of salary. Do we have data showing that across the board, not just with nurses, when it comes to salary, teachers, IAs, bus drivers, what have you, do we have that?

[01:11:15] Now, if you spit that out of the top of your head, I will just be very, very impressed, which I don't expect you to have. But just out of curiosity, with that understanding, do we have trends with that, right? Does data show we're more highly likely to have this particular group reject versus this one?

[01:11:36] Or is it pretty even across the board? Do we know what that looks like? Well, so far, it's hand counting. So, no, we don't. But we've just transitioned to this new software system, so my hope would be that with everything in a system and migrating away from spreadsheets, that there could potentially be some reports that we could write.

[01:12:01] I would love to have that data. Yeah, me too. I appreciate your passion for that as well. Thank you. And to go with Mrs. Chatters and what she mentioned, we did have a coach some time ago come and petition the board for an increase in stipends for, you know, coaching staff.

[01:12:20] And so we're seeing that, and kudos to the division for listening and putting forth the effort to increase that. And, you know, we've got to start somewhere. And so we are starting, which is greatly appreciated. So thank you to all involved, you know, in that.

[01:12:38] But outside of that, greatly appreciate the presentation, and it definitely does put a better understanding as to where we were, where we are, and where we're trying to go. And the numbers show that. So kudos to you and your team for gathering all that and presenting it.

[01:12:54] Thank you. Okay. I just had one question. Do you know what the attrition rate was pre-COVID of teachers? Yes.

[01:13:11] It was between, well, no, because the rates that I had were from the COVID years, the 2020 and 2020, which are going to be artificially depressed. I did see one number where it was around 8%.

[01:13:27] So I think that it's back to a similar rate. And I also read a study that from 2013 to 2023, McKinsey did a study showing the average national rate was between 8% and 9%. so I think that what we're seeing now is a pretty typical rate of course when you have vacancies you would always like for it to be lower but things do happen and people do move and you know make different different decisions and different things happen with their family so you know we

[01:14:02] understand that as well. Thank you glad glad to know that that was just in my head also So I'm sure along with Ms. Chatters, when we saw that 69 number and that little teeny, teeny spot for math teachers, we're always thinking, oh, but wasn't it one recently, like a couple of years ago?

[01:14:24] I feel like that was one. I know it was in the 30s at one point. It might have been in the 20s at one point. It was pretty low. It's the same thing as one, right? Oh, one applicant. Oh, is that what it is? Thank you, John. That didn't make it up. Anyway, thank you so much, Ms. Huff.

[01:14:42] All right. Anybody else? Okay, thank you. So next we have announcements, communications, and school board comments.

[01:15:04] School board members, do we have any announcements? No? Okay. All right. So next school board budget work session will be held next Tuesday, February 10th, 2026 at 4 p.m. here in the county public meeting room. It will be followed by business meeting at 6.30 p.m.

[01:15:22] Public hearings for the superintendent's proposed budget and capital improvement plan will be held at the start of the business meeting. If there's no further business, we need a motion to adjourn.

[01:15:38] So moved. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Ann Coker. Aye. Jennifer Darby. Aye. Dominique Chatters. Aye. Stephen Pronto. Aye. Lisa Hudgens.

[01:15:53] Aye. The motion carries the February 3rd, 2026 School Board Budget Work Session is adjourned.

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