Coraggio Consulting
Chesterfield County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Date: Tuesday, September 8, 2026
Place: Chesterfield County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 32m (video)
Official meeting video (Swagit): https://chesterfieldschoolsva.new.swagit.com/videos/400239
Official minutes (BoardDocs, on the Oct 13, 2026 agenda for approval): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/chesterfield/Board.nsf/pfiles/DYMNXZ62234E/$file/DRAFT%20MINUTES%20-%202026.09.08%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 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:06] Good afternoon. I'd like to call the September 8th, 2026 School Board Work Session to order. First, we have a report from the School Health Advisory Board from Ms. Stokes. We're doing a group project. I'm Breanne Forbes-Hubbard. I am the Vice Chair of SHAB over the last year.

[00:00:42] And I am Andrea Stokes, Chair of the SHAB over the last year as well. And we're excited to share a little bit about what we've been up to over the last year with you all. So our brief presentation, the intention of this is to recommend the following priorities focused on strengthening student mental health, wellness, and healthy school environments.

[00:01:03] We're trying to support staff, families, and students while ensuring equitable access to services and evidence-based wellness practices throughout CCPS. Over the last year, we started out by basing some goals for SHAB on the triennial report from the division.

[00:01:22] We saw presentations throughout the year aligned with those triennial report goals, and we talked about Hazel Health toward the end of the year as they wrapped up their first year with CCPS. We explored a variety of topics, as you can see here, mental health, emotional well-being, social-emotional learning, what technology use looks like in a healthy way, access to wellness resources for students and staff, Hazel Health, and community engagement.

[00:01:49] We have a few recommendations broken down into priorities for the division and priorities for healthy schools. The first priority that we're recommending for the division is expanding awareness of and access to Hazel Health. We talked about expanding communication to students, families, and staff about the services and helping them understand the referral process, developing consistent outreach strategies throughout the school year rather than just promotion at the beginning of the year, regularly looking at utilization data to identify schools or student groups with lower participation rates, working with Hazel Health to explore

[00:02:25] an employee assistance EAP-style program that would allow additional counseling sessions when appropriate, and clarifying referral pathways for students who require additional levels of care. Our next recommendation is to expand mental health support for elementary students, looking at any comparable behavioral health supports for those in fifth grade and below, since Hazel Health serves students in grade six and above, and then looking at partnerships or alternative service models to address those gaps. Our last recommendation as far as the division

[00:03:00] is to expand professional development and staff resources, including elevating existing best practices within CCPS. So things like comprehensive wellness and mental health training for new teachers during their onboarding, increasing awareness of behavioral health resources, referrals, and crisis response procedures, professional learning opportunities throughout the school year, and ensuring staff have easy access to resources and community supports.

[00:03:28] Our last category is priorities for healthy schools, looking at increasing student movement and outdoor learning, incorporating movement breaks throughout the instructional day, both at the building and classroom level, and ensuring that ongoing professional development for staff includes highlighting evidence-based strategies that support focus, self-regulation and academic engagement through physical activity. We also looked at some very cool programs about school gardening and outdoor wellness and would love to expand those opportunities across the division. Gardening can be a strategy to support nutrition, education, environmental stewardship

[00:04:04] and student well-being so we'd love to promote that within CCPS. We want to connect schools with community partnerships, for example, using the professional development opportunities offered by Fit for Kids to support classroom movement, active learning strategies, and wellness initiatives, and encouraging schools to participate in available trainings and incorporate those practices into their daily instruction.

[00:04:29] Finally, we talked about considering healthy screen time habits and encouraging each school to consider that within the appropriate confines of their instructional programming. And that's what we have for you all this year. We're happy to answer any questions.

[00:04:48] Well, thank you, Ms. Stokes and Ms. Hubbard. You guys did a great job. We appreciate it. Board members, is there any discussion? Ms. Chatters. Hello. I did have one question. On the slide where you talked about the integrate movement in outdoor learning, what grade levels were you recommending for that to happen with?

[00:05:13] I believe there's resources. I think it'd be ideal if we could have K through 12 doing outdoor activities. I don't know how practical that is. in their daily, you know, instructional time requirements to meet, but the more outdoor time and movement opportunities, we would say, the better across all ages. Thank you. All righty,

[00:05:41] thank you so much. Thank you. Next, we have a staffing update from Dr. Huff. Good afternoon, Ms. Hudgens, Mr. Pronto, members of the board, Dr. Murray, pleased this afternoon to spend some time with you to provide a staffing update, and we have a lot of good news this school year.

[00:06:11] All of our classrooms are filled with certified teachers, annual subs or long-term subs, but over 98.2% of our classrooms are headed by licensed teachers, and we have more in cohort programs and taking some final assessments, so we expect that number to climb even further.

[00:06:31] And since FY22, our teacher attrition has dropped from 12.4% to about 7.4% annually, we've seen a drop every single year in the last five years. Our vacancy rate is improved for elementary teachers this year. It's dropped from 3.7 percent at the start of last school year to only one percent at the start of this school year. And our vacancy rate for secondary core content areas has really remained low. It was less than a percent last year, and now to start this year

[00:07:08] was down to 0.28 percent so we're really happy with that and i know we talk a lot about math we had at the time of capture for this report one math vacancy we do have certified candidates available for that position so we are expecting to have zero math vacancies we had some late student population and scheduling issues that caused a late vacancy there but we do expect to fill it. We've decreased the vacancy rate for our ESL positions from about 5% to start last school

[00:07:44] year to 0.19% at the start of this school year. So we have one full-time vacancy and a 0.6 vacancy. And so Participate Learning helped us a lot with the ESL vacancies. So pretty good news in a lot of areas, and hopefully more to come.

[00:08:06] Our support positions, day porter vacancies are trending lower. Attrition for day porters is trending lower year over year, and that's been true for four consecutive school years. Our attrition rate for nurses is down from almost 14% to start last school year to only 8.2% to start this school year.

[00:08:29] and all of our RN positions were filled to start school. I'm expecting to see further improvement in this number because last year's budget cycle, we made some compensation changes to be more competitive with the Richmond school nurse market.

[00:08:46] That budget, as you know, is finalized kind of late in the year, but we've already seen some downward movement here And I'm expecting to see even further movement. Our daily substitute fill rate increased to 93% average last school year.

[00:09:08] And that was up about 3% over the prior year and an increase of about 25% over our pandemic area lows. So we're very pleased with that. The pre-pandemic kind of national gold standard was a 90% fill rate.

[00:09:23] So we're pleased to be exceeding that in Chesterfield County. And we maintained our goal of having an active substitute pool of about 3,400 people by the spring of the academic year. And we have about 2,200 more substitutes than at our lowest point.

[00:09:41] We've continued our regionalized recruiting efforts for substitutes. So we, the last two school years, have had an event in the Dale District and then the southern end of the county. because geographically we were finding that those were areas where we had fewer substitutes residing and commuting.

[00:10:01] We had a spotlight event at Bensley Elementary School. We had targeted 19 schools, and 17 of those improved their fill rates after the regionalized event. And last year, Ettrick achieved a fill rate above 90%, and Byrd, Meadowbrook, Thomasdale, and Carver Career Academy, which were all targeted schools, they achieved fill rates above our district average. So we feel like that's an effective strategy and we plan to use that this year as well. This slide kind of shows the importance

[00:10:39] of substitutes in our workforce. We last year hired 320 substitutes to fill full-time or regular part-time positions, and you can see that most of those were teachers. Sometimes we see people kind of do that in a two-step process where they are working as a day-to-day sub, they enjoy it, they're thinking about changing careers, they might switch to the annual sub position and then work towards their licensure and into the full-time position. But most of those folks are remaining in classrooms working directly with students as teachers, instructional assistants,

[00:11:17] or annual substitutes. And just the first two months of this year, we saw another 66 people hired from our substitute pool. So in the 14-month period, you can see it's almost 400 people total.

[00:11:33] And I think that really just reflects a changing market where we're more and more dependent on career switchers coming into the field of teaching. And substitute teaching is a great way for people to experience our classrooms and find out if this is something they might want to pursue as a career.

[00:11:54] We still have a few challenges remaining. One of those is attrition in some critical non-exempt roles like bus driver and instructional assistant. Our instructional assistant positions have increased. You might recall last year in the budget last year there were 70 positions added And this year in August, there were 14 new instructional assistants added as a result of student numbers and student needs.

[00:12:25] So compared to two years ago, that's 84 more FTEs, instructional assistants. So we do have a high need in that area. And in fact, we're having an event September 10th, Thursday night at James River High School at five o'clock.

[00:12:43] And so anyone who's interested in an instructional assistant position, we hope to see them there. Special ed teacher vacancies and a shortage of candidates still persists. We've improved our position somewhat there, but we're not where we would like to be.

[00:12:59] We're still in a national, what's considered a national teacher shortage. And we still have salary competition, of course, from neighboring districts. And the budget timing is challenging. You might remember when we improved salaries, for example, for speech-language pathologists.

[00:13:16] We saw some improvement that very next fall after the improvement happened late spring, summer, but even more improvement the following year. And that tends to be a pattern because sometimes people have already made a decision earlier in the spring, and that's something that I'm hoping is going to play out with a couple of these areas.

[00:13:34] our instructional assistant vacancies are pretty consistent percentage-wise even though we've added positions we do hope to improve that further even within the next week here with an additional event our bus driver attrition has increased last year to this year I'm hoping that might be related to salaries we did make salary improvements for this year and it could be that some people had already made a decision prior to that budget finalization and so I'm hoping that this is like a one-year

[00:14:10] spike and that the salaries may change that and it may not be a trend. Our current vacancy rate for school-based food services positions is a little high. Many of those positions are part-time and non-benefited but we do have 20 more individuals starting this week and next week from the last job fair, which should take that down to about 6.6%, which is a little bit under where we were this time last year. Some strategies that we're trying or have tried,

[00:14:46] the IA scale creation happened in 23. We differentiated salaries for IAs working in special education. We added additional positions in the budget and have filled most of those. We hosted 14 instructional assistant job fairs so far, and we had 410 accepted offers through those events.

[00:15:11] We have started spotlighting schools, and we did a bus tour last year for the first time for some of our high-needs school locations. Because sometimes people have a perception of what it's like to work at a high-needs school. that doesn't really match the reality of being in the school and hearing the principal's vision and meeting colleagues and seeing all the exciting things that are happening within the school.

[00:15:35] And so we did kind of a boutique recruiting event with a small number of people and went to Fallen Creek Elementary, Fallen Creek Middle School, and Meadowbrook High School. And these are people interested in working in those locations. And we had some success with that event, and we plan to do it again this year, and we're adding a second event that will spotlight Bellwood, Salem Middle School, and Byrd High School as well.

[00:16:04] We also did a spotlight event at Bensley Elementary School for interested substitutes, and we had a lot of good connections at that event. And so I think some of these events are not about getting large volumes of people. It's about matching people with the right opportunity and answering their questions.

[00:16:24] So we plan to continue those strategies. Handshake is the software that we use to recruit teachers at colleges and universities. These are people in traditional teacher education programs, but also in content areas like math and science and other areas.

[00:16:42] We did 19 fairs through the software. We hosted events on the platform, did 18 recruitment campaigns, sent out over 26,000 messages, and we had 337 applications initiated as a result of those efforts.

[00:17:03] iTeach is an online asynchronous CAPE accredited teacher certification program. They also offer practice preparation as part of the program, and CCPS has the second highest completion rate in Virginia for iTeach, and we do have a number of people enrolled, and we are planning on doing one more cohort with the support of Title II funds in some of our higher need endorsement areas, and that includes elementary, special education, ESL, math, and we're adding science this year as well.

[00:17:40] We are still using Participate Learning International Exchange as a partnership. And while that's primarily an international exchange program focused on student experience, it does support some of our staffing needs as well.

[00:18:00] They've been operating a cultural exchange program for over 38 years, and this is through the U.S. Department of State. Only 3% of their applicants are accepted, and these are licensed teachers who are already experienced in K-12 in their home countries, and they've been interviewed and selected by our principals, and they can be here for up to five years.

[00:18:26] They're preparing our students for a global marketplace, and the schools who are participating volunteered and they were selected without regard to socioeconomic status of the school and what we're hoping for is these positive outcomes with student learning we've had i think three award winners now from our international exchange teacher group and it also helps to meet our needs with the teacher shortage we have 138 ambassador teachers currently we have 19 different countries represented so we're truly bringing the world to our students and had 27 schools

[00:19:05] participate and these are some of our elementary middle and high school that are participating and you can see is teachers from around the world and schools from around the county and different programmatic areas we've also completed 70 recruiting events in the last 12 months and that's up six percent over the prior year we've completed 19 teacher licensure informational sessions at schools and libraries throughout the county and we also complete those virtually so whatever you know meets people's needs we've attended hiring and networking events with fort

[00:19:41] lee trips to teachers and central virginia vamc we've attended part-time and classified job fairs at vsu vcu and bright point locally we offer licensure assistance for new candidates new hires and employees, so that's one of our strategies, especially helping annual substitutes, long-term substitutes, and daily substitutes understand, you know, what it would take to pursue a career in teaching, and in addition to monthly virtual sessions from fall through spring, we did 65

[00:20:17] site visits last year, and we completed two reading specialist cohort programs through Longwood University to increase our number of certified reading specialists as well. Many times people will ask us, where do you go when you attend external job fairs? And so the next couple of slides show a sampling of the external job fairs that we attended, many of those in Virginia or neighboring states. Sometimes you will see an education fair listed, but some schools have a

[00:20:52] general fair that's not specifically targeted to education majors, and we still attend those and work with people who may be interested in career switching or teacher licensure or maybe have a base degree in a particular content area that we have a need for. And we have a number of events coming up. So I mentioned the September 10th Instructional Assistant Fair at James Surfer high school next week on the 16th and 17th we're going to be having two career switcher events about

[00:21:27] how to become a licensed teacher one's going to be in person at spring line on september 16th and then a virtual one on september 17th we have a school bus driver job fair coming up on the 23rd at midlothian high school and we have our first substitute job fair of the year coming up on the 29th. And I believe that one's at Clover Hill High School. So if anybody has an interest in those and happens to be watching or they know of someone who has an interest, we have our link here where they can apply and see all of our upcoming events and also our recruiter's email should they have

[00:22:05] any questions about any of the events. I appreciate your time and happy to answer any questions. All right. Thank you, Dr. Huff. Board members, is there any discussion? Mr. Pronto. Thank you, Madam Chair. Quick question on slide 2.3. We talk about teacher vacancy going down from 12.4 to 7.4, and then a few slides after that, the nursing rate falling as far as vacancies being filled about the same percentage. What are we attributing that success to? Is it compensation?

[00:22:45] Is it benefits? Is there, you know, what conversation, if any, have gone on around understanding the success and lowering that number? Well, that's attrition. So I would say that attrition, you know, compensation definitely plays a role in that. And I think with the overall teacher rate, we've seen that over time and it's been a steady trend year over year. So I think part of it is things kind of settling out after the pandemic. And there have been, as you know, a concentrated effort to try to you know be competitive with richmond area salaries and i

[00:23:22] think i think some of that has paid off and i think we've seen we it's too early to say the the rn maybe it's a trend because we just compared two points in time last year and this year um but there was that significant um you know change in compensation and while we aren't competitive with the private market we are more competitive now with the school rn market in the richmond area and so we would be hoping to improve that a second year in a row because that's kind of the pattern we saw when we made the improvement to other support areas like slps and ot's

[00:24:00] thank you correct attrition i apologize for that the the point in reviewing what our staff is doing versus what actions the division is taking, right? I mean, that's essentially the apex of what I'm trying to get to and understanding not only from an HR perspective, but just from a culture perspective as well.

[00:24:24] Hey, what is working to where we're not seeing a high turnover? What are we doing right? Because we hear all the time what we're not doing right. So when we hear, hey, these things are going well, Those are like the spotlights to put on, right, to say, okay, great, we're moving this area in this direction, which is positive, and we need to keep that momentum going if that's what people are responding to.

[00:24:50] And so that's the nuts and bolts of what I'm after is what are the staff, you know, what are they responding to positively to drive those numbers? Ms. Chatters. Thank you. I just wanted to give an extra shout-out for your math teacher vacancy numbers.

[00:25:10] I know we have been working on that since I've been sitting up here, and I am grateful that we are, like, that's, like, not even worth reporting at 0.28%. That is amazing, and I really appreciate that. I think it's going to make a difference in our kids being able to have a full, real-life teacher in front of them, and I appreciate all the work that went into that.

[00:25:31] I did hear about the bus tour. Kudos on the bus tour. I heard that was really successful as well, and I agree with the concept behind the bus tour that going inside the school and talking to the people there and the staff there will help people make a better informed decision versus just the job fairs the way we were doing them before so i like that you're going to continue um with the bus tours and then the regional or not regional but the targeted job fairs that is paying dividends as well because i remember what the number looked like before and how it's going down this year significantly and i think the targeted locations

[00:26:06] was key to that, forgetting if you want to hire someone at Meadowbrook, then the job fair should be in Meadowbrook, right? And so I think the tactics that you guys are using now are paying off. And I just wanted to say thank you for that, because I know it's been years in the making of trying to figure out the right mix of recruiting efforts to draw in people to get them to see how great our schools are. So I just want to say thank you for that. Thank you. We're really excited about it. I do have one question on, you talk about, I think it's number 19, slide 19, licensure

[00:26:43] assistance. I just wondered what type of assistance do we give? There's a lot of paperwork that's necessary to get a teaching license. And there are statutory requirements as well as, you know, approved program or if you're coming from out of state and if you taught three of the last seven under a valid license out of state and so a lot of times when many of our hires were coming from a traditional teacher preparation program that's part of the support that the college provides and that's part of what people are learning about and that's their responsibility

[00:27:22] to kind of keep up their license renew their license how to add things to their license as part of the program. But now that we're seeing a shift in the market and that many people are career switchers, they may not have that sort of same opportunity. And so that's something that we're trying to provide as a district. We do one-to-one assistance. We do provide assistance for substitutes. We provide assistance for candidates because sometimes it's just hard for

[00:27:54] people to make sense of a thick, you know, volume of licensure regulations and how that applies to their situation. And many times there are multiple pathways. Like, for example, there's, you know, for some endorsements, there's a testing pathway for some endorsements. It's a, like a degree title, like if you have a certain degree titles, you have enough content. Sometimes it's a credit count.

[00:28:20] So, helping people understand what are the different options available, how do they fit my situation, and then also, if they need to do some more preparation, what fits their life and their schedule? Because if they're, you know, working a job with us, for example, and maybe they have some, you know, family demands as well, trying to understand, like, you know, do you learn better in an in-person program?

[00:28:44] Do you learn better in an online program? What kind of matches their situation and all the things that are available? That's fantastic. As somebody who has gone through all of that licensure, all that paperwork, it's a lot.

[00:29:01] And so with your atypical, you know, we're not just getting kids from the programs, you know, all the colleges. And we're going out and seeking them. And in the time that we've been on this board, we've watched this upward tick.

[00:29:16] of your numbers and it's astounding and it again I feel like I say this every time but it has not happened because you just sat back and so that right there is is really something else that has really benefited all of us and getting these numbers down so I want to really congratulate you and your team and we really appreciate it and we're very happy thank you so much thank you yeah okay I think that's all thank you so much Dr. Huff all right next we have a presentation on high

[00:29:47] school opportunities from Dr. Merriman and Dr. Coleman. Good afternoon, Ms. Hutchins, Mr. Paranto, school board members, Dr. Murray. I'm Belinda Merriman. I'm the director of high school leadership. I'm here joined today with Dr. Jenny Coleman, who is our coordinator for student engagement. And we're going to be talking about some of the high school opportunities that we have for our students here in Chesterfield County. Just in general, CCPS students have a variety of

[00:30:23] ways in which they can explore their career interests and pathways in high school. They have specialty centers, they have regional high schools, technical centers that our 11th and 12th graders can attend, CCPS online, so they have a variety of ways. Additionally, we also have our regional schools, which is our Appomattox Regional Governor School with Arts and Technology, Maggie Walker for Government and International Studies, Code RVA for Computer Science.

[00:30:50] For CCPS online, just as a quick aside, it really has grown under the leadership post-COVID, and we actually have 440 students who are enrolled full-time in their classes with CCPS Online and 378 part-time high school students taking coursework through CCPS Online.

[00:31:07] Our goal really is how do we find the way that the student needs to learn and find ways for them to fit in in that space so they can gain what they need. As you guys are all aware, of course, we just had our ribbon-cutting at CTC Hall with our expansion, something that had been in the works for quite a few years.

[00:31:24] It certainly was an exciting day to walk through those classrooms and see the fresh equipment and the new programs. So those new programs that we're offering there to help our students learn and gain new skills are the business and real estate. We have about almost 50 students there who are learning business management, marketing, some of those real estate principles, including that pre-licensure education.

[00:31:47] So that way, once they turn 18, they can go on and take that license in order to do what they want to do and continue to work. So some of their careers they could do, of course, are a real estate broker. They can end up becoming an entrepreneur. They can end up becoming and owning their own real estate firm. But it builds skills even if they choose not to stay within that real estate realm and go into business instead.

[00:32:08] We also are working with power generation there. They're learning about how power plants actually work. Those design generation systems, they're going to be exploring those careers in energy engineering through a two-year program. Some of the careers that they might end up doing is a power plant operator, electrical engineer, power line installer.

[00:32:25] all of which we're trying to find ways to fit kids into careers that the state of the commonwealth virginia needs and that our students have interest in so those are some of those of course game development security technologies there's a swath of students who really love the artistic piece of game design and then there's a swath of students who are really interested in that cyber security piece so we're thinking how do we make sure we're meeting all of our students needs um some careers there of course software developer game designer cyber security analysis i've really gotten some great things and they're looking forward to seeing some of the things that are going to come out of that classroom over the next year.

[00:32:59] Hospitality and tourism, and I know here in our district, in our county, we've certainly seen that increase of tourism and hospitality interest, and they're going to really be learning how do they plan events, how do they have those large-scale spaces that they can help bring people into the areas. One-year programs, they could end up becoming the full event planner, concierge, a travel agent, so lots of career options for them to be in that program.

[00:33:24] television and media productions, recognizing that we have a large number of students who are interested in and are already, honestly, doing their own podcasting, and then some shows that they're doing, et cetera, so broadcasting, working with professional equipment, real studios, really helping them see where they can go within those spaces, really looking forward to seeing some of that output that those students will be doing in the next year for that, too. We do have medical assistant. We're adding that to the Hall Street campus. We, of course, had it at Courthouse already, but there was such a strong interest in it we had a larger waitlist than we were able to get students into so we wanted to open up more so we would end up

[00:34:01] opening some additional spaces there at Hall Street so students could do it and we could get more students through it's a great way for students who want to either continue in that path there are also students who end up going into a career like this and then they use this as a way to earn some money if they go on to further education and nursing programs or in medical school etc so it's a great way for students to both stay within the career path or to further expand later on I'm now going to turn this over to dr. Coleman who works with our specialty centers and with right points so our specialty centers we have 13 of those specialty centers we have students approximately 2250 that

[00:34:39] participate in our specialty centers our families can click on our link there they can go to our web page and learn more about our specialty centers we have links to each of our high schools and to our specialty centers that are listed there in our specialty centers our students have the opportunity to to participate with a cohort of students around a curriculum that's a specific academic or focus area. Our students apply online for our specialty centers. We have specialty centers that are involved with the STEM areas, so our technology center. We have our engineering center. We have humanities as well with leadership, Spanish immersion. Students from across our division can apply to any of the

[00:35:19] centers, as many of the centers as they think they might have interest in. We provide transportation to all of the centers if they are accepted there and accept that offer. And then our opportunities, we want to take all the opportunity to share with our families the information about our specialty centers.

[00:35:37] And so our fairs, we start with those. And so in addition to the letter that Dr. Murray sends to our eighth graders and their families sharing about the fairs, our open houses, each one of our centers has an open house. The schedule will be on their website to share when theirs will be.

[00:35:55] It will be on the division's website as well. We have sessions for students where we go out to the middle schools and talk with all the eighth graders. We have parent events that are hosted by the schools as well as our face office. And then, of course, our creative and media services teams as well as our schools have consistent messaging on social media and their weekly messages to share with families opportunities that are coming up.

[00:36:18] This year's timeline, I mentioned our fairs, so they start at the end of the month. September 30th is our first one. It's at Midlothian Middle. Our second one will be October the 8th, and that one will be at Thomas Dale. Our open houses start about the same time. They start October the 1st.

[00:36:34] They go through November the 5th, and those, again, will be advertised by each of the centers. We'll have that, again, advertised at all of our middle schools as well as online. An application, again, is online, and that is for the specialty centers, our governor's schools, Code RVA.

[00:36:50] We all do an application that's online, and that opens October 1st and closes December the 4th this year. Students do their interviews, their auditions. That's January and February, and then we make offers. The first part of March, this year will be March 3rd, and then students will share their decisions the middle of March.

[00:37:09] So our specialty center curriculum is, you know, an engaging, challenging curriculum, But in addition to that, our students in all of our high schools have the opportunity for advanced coursework. So students can take dual enrollment courses, advanced placement courses, concurrent courses, as well as international baccalaureate courses at our IB centers in order to earn college credit.

[00:37:31] For our dual enrollment and concurrent courses, they can earn college credit based on the grade that they earn. For our IB and our AP courses, they earn college credit based on their exam score and then the transfer or credit policy of the university. With all of our course offerings, students have multiple AP and dual enrollment opportunities at each one of our high schools.

[00:37:56] So we have a partnership with BrightPoint for our dual enrollment courses. And so students enroll in their courses through BrightPoint and they earn high school credit and college credit. So, for example, a student may enroll in English Composition and they will earn English Composition I and II credit while also earning English XI credit.

[00:38:17] Our Passport program is managed by SHEV, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. And that is a block of courses in six blocks where students can complete the credits and courses. All of those courses are transferable. Those courses are a component of the UCGS.

[00:38:35] Students can earn credit in the Passport or the UCGS based on completing those courses or credits. It's 15 to 16 for the Passport or 30 to 32 for the UCGS. Again, all of those are transferable to any state college in Virginia, about 13 private schools as well.

[00:38:56] They are transferable to others as well, but that just depends on those individual schools. But all of these courses in these programs here are automatically transferable. We offer over 25 of those courses. They include U.S. History, I mentioned English Composition, Psychology, Pre-Calculus.

[00:39:18] For our dual enrollment this year, we have 100 dual enrollment endorsed credentialed teachers. So our teachers are credentialed to teach dual enrollment just like the teachers on Bright Point's campus are credentialed. So they have a master's degree and at least 18 credit hours in that particular content area. And we offer over 60 dual enrollment courses.

[00:39:37] I mentioned we offer over 25 of the transferable courses in the Passport program. The other courses we offer does not mean they do not transfer. Those courses like Introduction to Business or Web Design or Anatomy and Physiology are courses that are around students' interest or career pathways, and they may transfer.

[00:39:56] Those would just depend on the college's transfer or credit policies. This year, we have over 3,500 students enrolled in dual enrollment, which is a 10% increase in what we had from last year. And our students can take dual enrollment through three pathways. They can take them in a class in person at high school.

[00:40:13] They can take them to a distance learning, which is online at their high school, synchronously. Or they can take them online asynchronously. So with the advanced opportunities, the coursework opportunities I was sharing, of course, students can earn the high school and college credit.

[00:40:30] It's taught by our teachers on our high school campuses. And the earlier students are exposed to credit, to high school rigorous courses in high school, the easier the transition is from high school to college. When we offer dual enrollment college courses in high school, students have an open, we open that pathway to students to have, first-generation students perhaps, or students that have barriers to a college entrance.

[00:40:57] They have that opportunity. And then, of course, if you are leaving high school with credits for college, that can be a cost savings because you're able to finish college earlier. And some of our students take that and they finish college earlier, Some invest that time in taking courses that are of interest to them.

[00:41:15] Some use that time for a double major. For Chesterfield students who typically will take two to three dual enrollment courses in their 11th grade and 12th grade year, that's an $11,000 to $16,000 savings. So quite a bit. So appreciate your time today.

[00:41:32] As we share a little bit about our avenues our students have, what questions might we be able to answer for you? All right. Thank you so much. Board members, is there any discussion? Mr. Bronto. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for the presentation. One of the things I think that we do well at is acknowledging where the strengths are of our students. One of the things that I have heard that I think we might, and I don't have the answer, right? I wish I did.

[00:42:03] As far as a specialty center, and you did mention eighth grade, right? That's the time to apply and to get your interview in and everything that goes into that. Time and time again, I've heard parents say, I didn't know this opportunity existed.

[00:42:21] And it's email after email. It's folks going into the middle school saying, hey, guys, if you're interested, now's the time, right? And like I said, I don't know what the answer is to cover all that. I'm not saying that we're not doing a good enough job in doing that, but I have heard parents saying, hey, I wish I would have known.

[00:42:42] It's in an email. I've got kids in different schools. I get a lot of emails, right? And so I can empathize when a parent says, I'm bombarded with emails. I missed that one, right? So I don't know what the answer is, but to parents that are watching, it's a great opportunity for an eighth grader to, you know, what interest do I have?

[00:43:02] What do I want to do, you know, moving forward? Or maybe they don't know, but they have an interest and they can explore that interest by going and applying to the specialty center. And then on the flip side to that, for our 11th and 12th graders going to CTC, both at Hull and Courthouse, and having the opportunities in some of these courses earning certificates that they would need if they didn't go this route and would have to pay for it on their own.

[00:43:28] And we're providing that through the courses that they're taking. So I just think it's a great opportunity for our kids to get the leg up, if you will, to have the advantage coming out of high school and saying, hey, I pursued this, and now we have this certificate to go with it.

[00:43:44] It puts them ahead of the game. And so kudos to you guys and just the opportunity that we're presenting for our kids to make these advancements. I think they're very fortunate to do it, and I hope if they can take advantage of it, they do.

[00:44:01] So appreciate all the time spent on that presentation and grateful that we continue to move forward and adding programs to CTC as well, again, to expand where our kids are and what their interests are. So thank you for that. Ms. Chatters. Hi.

[00:44:17] So some of what Mr. Paranto said I have an answer for, but I was going to mention it again, as I always do when you guys talk about this, is that getting started early is really important. And I appreciate that Amy Barlotti's team did a, I forgot what her sessions are called.

[00:44:37] Forgive me. Thank you. She did a coffee conversation after I mentioned the desire to get the information out there more often than eighth grade because it is a catch-up, a really quick runway if you just start in eighth grade.

[00:44:54] So we do have coffee and conversations to Mr. Pronto's, like, what are we doing to get the information out there other than the email? As a mom of four kids in CCPS, I know what that e-mails look like, but I also know that we're putting the information out all the time, right? So I appreciate the fact that we do the coffee and conversations to help get the information out.

[00:45:13] I would just ask that if we can standardize the presentations. So one of the things that I've heard parents ask about often, and I've been to several with the older two of my children, and I understand the presentation is not the same in the sense of transportation, for example.

[00:45:32] Yes, we take them to the school, but there's a hub situation involved in that, right? And then when we bring them back, we're bringing them back to the hub situation, right? And then we're not necessarily taking you all the way back home. We're going to get you within 0.3 or 0.5, right? So the nuances behind that are important.

[00:45:49] I've heard parents ask about children taking four years of math in high school. Well, if you take the double accelerated route in middle school, you limit your options for what you can take in high school, in your senior year. So now you weren't really a calculus person because you want to be an artist, but because you were double accelerated, the only thing left for you to take is calculus.

[00:46:12] So if we can avoid calculus, hey, I'm not a fan. But do you see what I'm saying? Like the education on how they should map out their children's pathway if we start the conversation sooner than later. I know personally, I attended when my child was in fifth grade, we went.

[00:46:29] When they were in sixth grade, we went. They didn't pay attention the first two times because they didn't care. But then when we went in seventh grade, they're paying attention, right? And they're hearing the information repetitively of what you need to do to compete and how do you write your own essays and things of that nature. So the frequency in which we communicated.

[00:46:46] So I would ask if we can send the information out to PTAs. That might help. That's another, maybe an email they might read. I know we're sending the information out. And it's not that we're not. It's just we have to send it out in different formats. So maybe one of our TV producers in the making might make a video for us that we can post on our page that talks about specialty centers.

[00:47:09] Something just outside the box, just to help them find the information a little bit easier than just in the email. And, yes, those were the two things. So I appreciate us getting started sooner. I love the coffee and conversations that Amy does to help bring attention to it sooner than eighth grade.

[00:47:26] And for those parents who are listening, I would encourage you to start attending the open houses as soon as possible because there are different requirements for each of those specialty centers. And the nuances that are associated with each do have a bearing on what you want to do. So thank you both for that.

[00:47:44] I have a question. So you have 3,500 students enrolled in DE courses, and that's a 10% jump? What in the world are we attributing that to? That's impressive. Honestly, it's been a concerted effort from the high schools.

[00:48:02] One of the things we've been working on, honestly, for probably the past five years is how do we consistently get our students to take a little bit more rigorous coursework. And sometimes you have to start a little bit earlier. You have to get the ninth grader to take an honors course, and then they get comfortable with that, and then maybe then they'll take the DE course. So we've really been focusing on that and having really stringent goals from each of the high schools the past few years where we're going in and talking through and really building very specific supports, Bringing in some students who took DE or took an AP course who perhaps hadn't done so previously and having them talk to students who are maybe on the fence about taking a course.

[00:48:36] Having teachers tap students who might be entrusted who are like, I think you can do this. We do recognize, I think just like with leadership or other places, with students, having somebody tap them to say, I think you can do this and I want you to try makes a huge difference. And so those schools have really created some programming to do that type of tap on students to help students take that risk and continue to grow the numbers that we're having in there.

[00:49:00] And then, as I said, already helping to also work getting more and more students into honors coursework to build that scaffolding so that way they're prepared for that DEAP college-level coursework by the time they hit the 11th and 12th grade year. It's really nice. I appreciate that, especially acknowledging the fact that having somebody look at you and think, you know what, I think you can do this, and then that gives them that bonus.

[00:49:24] And also, I love that somebody, hey, I didn't do great, and here's where you can do better. That's really wise, too. So thank you. Thank you all so much. We appreciate it. Next, we have a presentation from Dr. Wodica on Westridge High School redistricting.

[00:49:45] Well, good afternoon. I am so thrilled to be with you this afternoon to talk about the next step in this multi-year process to bring our first new high school to Chesterfield County in 20 years.

[00:50:03] And that, of course, is to create an attendance zone for that high school, Westridge High School, which will, of course, open next year. So I want to mention two things before I get started in the presentation. The first is I want to thank Justin Briggs and Diane Gappas for just incredible work on this work.

[00:50:20] They are a small but very mighty planning team, and it's really a joy to work with them every single day and really outstanding work that goes into this. So thank you to them for that. The second thing I'll note is that we do have another presentation after this that is a distinct and separate process.

[00:50:37] But we do kind of refer to each other in these presentations because ultimately there is some effect back and forth. But there are distinct processes and just didn't want to make sure we didn't separate those two components as well. So the first couple of slides I'll just mention, and these are slides that the board has seen many times, But it's important to note for the community in that we don't do these, again, these redistricting processes in a vacuum.

[00:51:03] We don't just kind of draw lines wherever we might want them to. We have school board policy that gives us goals and guidance and process about how we go about doing that. We have that listed here in policy 7240. We'll also have some more detailed redistricting guidelines and processes.

[00:51:19] I won't go through those today, but those are there for you to read if there is questions related to that. The other thing I mentioned is strategic plan. This is the school division strategic plan objective 2.1, which provides guidance on mobile classrooms. So a huge part of what we're trying to achieve in the school division throughout the county is to reduce the number of trailer classrooms we possibly can.

[00:51:41] So our goal is to move from 261 trailer classrooms and 2425 to 175 or lower. This process, this construction of this high school, as well as other processes, is a huge part of that and will result in a very significant reduction in the number of classrooms outside as we go forward.

[00:52:00] The other point I'd like to note is the planning objectives. Again, these are oftentimes goals that we are trying to achieve. So it might be we're trying to balance enrollment among schools or utilize the capacity that we have or accounting and thinking about growth in the county.

[00:52:16] We're thinking about how do we keep neighborhoods intact to the best extent we possibly can. And there is a reality here that sometimes these priorities compete a little bit. But we try to find the best situation that has, we make them the best we can for all of these items.

[00:52:32] So those are our major planning objectives. I also just want to note in this process the schedule for how we will go through this process. So we, of course, are providing this first overview tonight at the school board work session. We're providing options that have been developed by staff.

[00:52:48] The board will consider those. We will then have a public information session where the community will hear about these options. Those students and families that are affected, we'll do that at Deep Creek Middle School on September 28th. And then we are scheduled for October 13th for the plan to vote for this.

[00:53:05] Of course, ultimately, it's the prerogative of the board of schedule, but that's where we have positioned the vote as we move forward. So just a little idea about where we are in terms of this process and how this works. So this is the current high school zones throughout Chesterfield County.

[00:53:21] So we're primarily going to be affecting the western part of the county. There's a number of moves here. And there's a couple of points that I want to note here. And I think if you're probably watching from the audience, it might be a little bit difficult to see. But in that west part of the county, that big red area, that's the Cosby zone, you'll see both Cosby and Westridge High School in that area.

[00:53:41] So the point I want to make there is that Westridge and Cosby High School are really close to each other geographically. So that creates some challenges in terms of drawing lines that make sense for everyone, but that is a constraint of the process, but certainly is an important process that we will continue to follow.

[00:53:58] I also want to mention, as I mentioned at the very beginning of the presentation, there is a concurrence or parallel process related to an administrative rezoning that allows the school division to take advantage of some of the capacity that's created, particularly at Cosby High School.

[00:54:14] So every one of the options that we'll see later in this presentation is the presumption that that goes through the administrative process. The next presentation, we'll talk a lot more about that, but that's related to 53 students at Clover Hill and 75 students at Manchester. Again, we'll discuss that in more detail in the subsequent presentation.

[00:54:32] But this slide and this map differs a little bit from the previous map in that you see this hatched mark in a couple of places in the western part of the Clover Hill District and the Manchester District. Those are the areas that will be affected. And again, it's the assumption that those will continue forward. So that just gives a little context to what we're providing.

[00:54:51] So just a little bit about the Westridge new high school. So of course, the school opens in August of 2027. So just 11 months or so from today, we are making great progress, and it's a beautiful building, and hopefully folks have had the opportunity to drive past it. The road is now open.

[00:55:08] They will open with a design capacity of 2,400 students, and of course, as I mentioned before, is located in the current Cosby Zone. One point that is important, I think, for everyone to remember is that current 11th graders, so students who are in 11th grade now and, of course, will be in 12th grade next year, will attend their current school.

[00:55:26] So we will open the school without a senior class, and that provides the opportunity for students to finish their high school experience at that school where they've been mostly for the entire, not three years, but will be four years going forward. So that does affect how many students we will open with, but all of the numbers that you will see here are presuming a four-year enrollment.

[00:55:46] So we'll open with three years, but the numbers you see will be based on four grades in the school. So I want to draw your attention to countywide the high school enrollment, and hopefully this will bring to account a little bit why we're taking a focus on the schools that we are.

[00:56:05] So if you've ever heard me talk about rezoning, you'll hear me talk about program capacity versus design capacity. I'll talk more about that in just a second. But this highlighted column here, there's a lot of data here, but the really important column is that highlighted column where we show the percent of program capacity utilization.

[00:56:22] So how many students are in the school versus the program capacity? So a couple to point out, Cosby is at 125%. We know there's 24 trailers at that school. Midlothian is at 97% as well.

[00:56:38] So this part of the county, these are sort of the two really high areas where there needs to be some capacity development, which, of course, is why we're building the school. So just to back up a little bit, the difference between design capacity and program capacity, I know the board has heard this, but for the public, the design capacity of a school is when an architect sits down and says, I'm going to draw lines on a sheet of paper, how many to figure out how many classrooms we have, what is the maximum number based on the VDOE standards of how many students could fit in that school.

[00:57:08] But we all know that schools don't always operate at 100% efficiency because we have certain programs that may not allow that. Certain programs may have fewer students per teacher or fewer students per classroom. And so that usually brings down that capacity to what we call program capacity.

[00:57:26] So the amount of students that we can have in the program that we do have in the school, because we know that's actually how the school actually operates. And so that's why we really focus in on that program capacity number, because it allows you to know not only how many students who have in the school, but what do we do in the school, and it allows us to give a number based on that.

[00:57:46] Another point I think that's really important for Chesterfield County, you just heard Dr. Merriman and Dr. Coleman give a great presentation on all the incredible opportunities that our students have here in high school. And that is that there are students moving around the division quite a lot. So we certainly had that in elementary and middle school, but there are even more opportunities at the high school level for students to attend a school that is not necessarily their zoned school, right?

[00:58:10] So you have a live-in number, the number of students who live in a particular zone. We have students going to different specialty centers in different parts of the county. We have students coming into a particular zone that might be going to a specialty center. You have students that are going to regional programs, so outside of the county even, so they are not in that actual enrollment.

[00:58:28] So what we've done is we've developed a projection based on the standard of around how many students are doing that on a net for each school. You can see in that very last column where we are at the end of last school year. So we have, you know, in some cases, a couple hundred students swing between the number of students who live in a zone versus who are actually attending in that zone.

[00:58:48] So that really does matter and really does change the enrollments in our school. So we're assuming that ultimately that will continue on as we would expect, although that may change as we continue to develop those programs. Another really important item that affects student enrollment here, particularly in Chesterfield County, is the pressures that further residential growth continues to have on our school enrollment.

[00:59:13] So two schools that we pointed out here, this chart shows the potential student yield from development. So this comes from the county's Stratus system that is a program that takes a look at approved development when we think certain developments are going to come and get an idea of how many students we think are going to come from those developments.

[00:59:32] That's not 100% accurate. We know that, but it is a good historical projection based on what we know typically happens. And so you can see in those two particular zones, Cosby and Midlothian, you see the highest number of potential new enrollments from the development that we do see there. So that's, again, why we start to see this focus on those two campuses.

[00:59:52] So that's a lot of context and a lot of given idea of how many students we think and how we sort of come about the projections that we'll provide and we'll want to show. So now we'll get into the options that we've presented. So the first is option one, of course, where we see a number of neighborhoods that are zoned into Westridge.

[01:00:16] So what you'll see is the list of neighborhoods. Of course, that's not inclusive of every single house that is in that particular zone. But those are some of the major neighborhoods that are in this zone. The other thing I'll note is that there is a number in parentheses after each one of the names of these zones.

[01:00:33] That's the number of students that are currently living in those particular neighborhoods. So just to give you a little context of what that means. So this is Magnolia Green, Westerly, Summer Lake, Watermill, Round Tray Peninsula, and Wynwood at Fox Creek. and you can see what the zone would look like in this case.

[01:00:53] And so what would that do to enrollment? This is another complicated chart that is a lot to read and certainly to study another time, but I'll tell you how to read each one of these charts now so we can go through that. The first is the sort of left-side block. We have the current school enrollment.

[01:01:08] We typically take a look at school enrollments on September 30th and March 31st. That's because by the time you get into school, so moving around goes, we wait until September 30th take an official count for the number of students in school. We do the same thing again on March 31st. So this number is based on last year's March 31st number. Again, that will be somewhat different every single school year, but it gives us a pretty good idea of how many students we think will be in the zone. So that gives us the particular program capacity at those schools.

[01:01:37] So you'll note, again, Cosby is at 125.5% and Midlothian is about 97% where we are now. The next block provides the adjusted enrollment based on the option one with that administrative rezoning that I mentioned before.

[01:01:53] And so what this puts us at is about 75% at Cosby, 76% at Midlothian, and would open Westridge its first year. Again, this is a four-year number, assuming four-year grades, at about 67%. So there's plenty of room for capacity and growth, each one of those schools.

[01:02:12] We also want to look at five years down the road in the housing pipeline that we talked about just a few minutes before. And what you can see is that in this case, Cosby would be at 85%, 82% in Midlothian, and then Westridge would be just under 80%. So this provides a little bit of context on where each one of those numbers comes.

[01:02:30] And so you'll be able to compare those different options at the very end of the presentation. Of course, we don't really know what's going to occur in development. We don't always know how many houses are going to be built. Some things change, some things don't. But this gives us the best projection that we have, the best information that we have.

[01:02:48] So a couple of opportunities and limitations related to option one. It keeps Westridge, Cosby, and Midlothian all under 1,600 students and allows certainly for growth. It also removes 26 trailer classrooms. So 24 of those would be at Cosby and two would be at Midlothian. But, of course, there is this limitation for all of these is that there is a very close proximity of Westridge to Cosby.

[01:03:12] And so that, again, does limit the amount of options that we do have. And so that is something to think about. Moving to option two, this is different from option one in that we reach a little bit more into the Midlothian District and also into the Woolridge Road corridor.

[01:03:28] So we're looking again at Magnolia Green, Westerly, Summer Lake, Roundtree Peninsula, Halsley and Newmarket, and then sort of west of Woolridge Road as the way to explain that. So you can see the little bit different map that we have. Again, at the very end of the presentation, you'll be able to see all three of those maps.

[01:03:44] You can compare them as well. And those capacities look like this. So Cosby would be a little under 74%. Midlothian would be at 63%, 64%, and West Ridge would open at about 80%. Five years down the line, Cosby would be in the low 80s.

[01:04:03] Midlothian would be at 70%, and West Ridge would be in the lower 90s. So, again, kind of approaching that amount where we're starting to get thinking about capacity concerns. Just a couple concerns there, opportunities and concerns, again, similar to option one, We're moving trailer classrooms by relieving Cosby and Midlothian.

[01:04:25] All schools will be under 100%. Uses West Street, west of Hull of Cosby and Woolridge Road as a boundary. So very natural boundaries that are there. And then that could allow us to utilize the most seats at the new high school. Unfortunately, though, the limitation would be that we would have a much lower enrollment at Midlothian.

[01:04:44] So you have an existing school where you would have less enrollment or less utilization of the asset that you already have. And again, we're very close to West Ridge. And then option three is a bit of a hybrid of option one and two. And so it also reaches into the sort of Midlothian high school district, but not as much at the Woolridge areas compared to option two.

[01:05:06] So the primary neighborhoods that we would affect, we would bring into Westridge. We have Magnolia Green, Westerly Summer Lake, Watermill, Round Tray, Peninsula, Wynwood, Fox Creek, and Fox Field, and Halsley at Newmarket. And then ultimately, the capacities look like this.

[01:05:21] Again, we're in the middle block where Cosby would be a little under 76%. Midlothian would open at 64%, and Westridge would be at 78%. And then down the road, similar but a little bit less at Westridge in five years compared to option two. So still in that 90% range, and Cosby at 85%, and Midlothian at 70%.

[01:05:42] This certainly is a hybrid of option one and two. It relieves both of those high schools, continues to remove 26 trailers, and all schools would be under 100%. And again, you would have lower enrollment at Midlothian at this point. So this is a summary of all of those slides.

[01:05:59] It provides the ability to see the differences of those maps, these nuanced differences that may look a little bit different. Also just provides some five-year enrollment information for each one of those areas, what those neighborhoods are. Again, I won't read this to you at this point, but you'll be able to see what those differences are.

[01:06:17] So you can study them in more detail later on. And then finally, just as I mentioned before, there is a summary slide. Again, a lot of data here, but it's something for the community to consider. The top table is options one, two, and three based on that first opening, right?

[01:06:35] So again, assuming a four-year grade, not the eight, nine through 11. And then the below chart is with the five-year housing pipeline. So you have the two different options there and two different perspectives, and it gives you an idea of how much we would project each school to utilize down the road.

[01:06:56] So we're happy to take any questions, but we'll mention that, again, we do have a public information session on Monday, September 28th, Deep Creek Middle School, the auditorium. This is an opportunity for families to join us, to meet Dr. Baber, if they haven't met her already, learn about the great things that will be happening at Westridge, and certainly have an opportunity for that.

[01:07:17] I also want to mention a resource that families can use is our redistricting zone lookup app that our planning team created. So if families go to this link, the link that's in the presentation and the QR code is the same thing. But it's a tool that you can go in and say, hey, I think I might be affected by this redistricting.

[01:07:35] Let me put my address in and I'll know whether, hey, maybe I'm not affected by it or in option one, two and three, here's where my attendance zone would be. So it should be a really easy tool for folks to use and should be an opportunity for people to see very clearly where they would be affected.

[01:07:50] So we'd be happy to take any questions about that. And if you have any really detailed questions, again, Justin and Diane are here to help with that. Thank you so much, Dr. Wodica. Board members, is there any discussion? Mr. Pronto. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you so much for this presentation and to your team.

[01:08:10] It is a challenge to redistrict in and of itself. but then to have two high schools that are this close to each other makes that difficulty increase even more. And so that does not get by me in regards to the amount of time spent in trying to figure out and work with transportation and bus routes and what have you to make the most sense out of all of this.

[01:08:31] And so thank you very much for putting this together and the amount of time spent so that we could have this presented to us today and then in time for the meeting on the 28th. I will say, and I'll reiterate this tonight as well for the comment section from the board.

[01:08:50] As of right now, option one is receiving a lot of attention for the positive. A lot of feedback is in favor of option one. And looking at it, and of course, we're not voting today. I just want to clarify that.

[01:09:07] But looking at it, it does make the most sense in having the capacity closest to the other schools without one being at 90 and the other one being at 70, for example, in a five-year plan or even opening up. But I do think it's important to highlight that juniors this year, should their address be in an area that is going to be redistricted, will stay where they are.

[01:09:35] And then also waivers is an opportunity as well for the junior class that's upcoming on the sports team if they're wanting to stay to explore that opportunity potentially. So I do want to put that out there. That has been one of the questions that I've received quite a few times from parents and trying to understand what does this mean for my child moving forward.

[01:09:56] And so greatly appreciate this. I'm looking forward to everyone that will come out on the 28th to receive this presentation. as you said, meet Dr. Baber. She's a fantastic principal out of Matoica, has done wonderful things down there. So I know that she'll do wonderful things at Westridge as we continue to move forward and establish what that culture looks like there, and more things to come out about that as time moves on. But out of all of this, the one question I do have, and if you don't

[01:10:30] have the answer now. That's okay, too. But pertaining to transportation, the cost comparisons, right? If the board were to go, say, we want option three, what is that going to look like from a cost comparison to option one, for example? I think having an understanding of that financial investment on fuel in and of itself, more bus routes, less bus routes, trading off because are so close to Cosby. Just wanting to understand a little bit better in that regard. Appreciate the numbers. The numbers make sense, but just wanting to understand from a financial standpoint as we move forward in looking at this, what does that look like

[01:11:09] for us? Appreciate that. Thank you. Ms. Chatters. Thank you for the presentation, Dr. Reed. I clicked on the impacted subdivisions and I just want to say thank you for putting that there. That is a very helpful tool for the community to go look at it and see instead of us asking well am i in that one am i in that i appreciate that it's consolidated broken down by option that's a very helpful tool because we um to mr paranto's point we have been getting emails regarding where the community

[01:11:47] feels they would like to support and i think having this list gives them a clearer picture of is my community part of which option oh i'm in all three i'm good right so this will help ease some angst. Two other things. You had mentioned the system that the Board of Supervisors uses to give us the five-year projections.

[01:12:08] I know I've mentioned this before, but just reiterating again, do we know if that system now takes into account apartment complexes? Because at one point in time it did not, and their vision of us was not the same as our own vision of ourselves. Yes, ma'am. Just confirming with my colleague, Justin, it does take into account and makes those multipliers a little bit different.

[01:12:28] okay great and then the last thing um something mr paranto said didn't register right for me you were mentioning something about waivers and if i can get clarity because that was not my understanding of how that's working for the rising class any uh requested waiver would have to follow school board policy um athletic waivers are not embedded within that policy in fact vhsl frowns upon athletic waivers.

[01:12:56] If you meet another separate waiver criteria within our policy, then there is a superintendent's exception to waive you for eligibility at your new home high school for varsity sports. Okay, great, because the way you were explaining it didn't mesh well with my understanding of what Dr. Murray said.

[01:13:17] So, okay, that's cool. Appreciate the clarification. I do want to say I think that that has been a familiar question that has come up. So a lot of folks wondering about athletics. And to that extent, a lot of question has come up, too, about whether we would have varsity sports at the new high school.

[01:13:35] And, yes, the new high school, Westridge, will open with the full complement of JV and varsity sports year one. And then my last question, which is not really for you, Dr. Reba, since Dr. Murray got on the mic, he can take this one, too. I've been getting a lot of questions about the specialty center that Westridge might host.

[01:13:53] and if we have a timeline on what that might look like or when we will know what those options are. Yeah, our intent from the start of planning for the new high school was not to come out of the gate hasty. So we did not plan to open year one with the specialty center.

[01:14:10] We acknowledge that there's a lot of business growth that is occurring in the Western Corridor, and we want to take that first year as an opportunity to see what local business partners may be able to provide by way of enhancing a specialty center year two.

[01:14:29] So that would be in the 28-29 school year. Thank you. That was all. Dr. Darby. Thank you for the clear presentation, and I echo Ms. Trotter's comment about the tools that you have provided online and the clarity of the three options and the pros and cons throughout the presentation.

[01:14:51] I had two questions. One is on slide three, the objectives. That was really helpful to understand because anybody can draw lines on a map. But to understand where these lines came from, are those objectives in any sort of order? Because you kind of mentioned in your presentation that they kind of compete against one another at times.

[01:15:10] Sure. They're not in a specific order. And I think as we go through this, we try to optimize them as best we possibly can. But again, they sometimes compete with one another, and we just try to find the best good for all components, and that's where we think we are. And then kind of also following up to the question of a specialty center, the programmatic impact is blank for West Ridge High School in all of the kind of projection charts.

[01:15:39] Obviously, if we don't know what the possible program is, is it possible to have a guest without the name of that program? Because some of these are pretty nuanced within the five-year projections.

[01:15:56] Yeah, we can definitely produce a general projection and we can share just based on other specialty centers. And there's some that are bigger than others, but we can certainly provide some general size. That would make sense. Thank you so much. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[01:16:14] Just to go back to the waiver conversation, I think in the 28th meeting, it would be a great opportunity to highlight that and answer any questions, because in the meantime, I'm just pouring in the Dr. Phillips to get back to parents. But that is a hot topic.

[01:16:31] It is something that I have had questions about. And, of course, we know and I greatly appreciate you clarifying that the upcoming senior class will stay. Everyone else behind them, that's where folks are really wanting to understand, hey, can I, you know, is this a possibility, what have you, and then what does that look like if it is?

[01:16:53] And I think just having that covered at the 28th meeting would be fantastic for folks to have that answer given to them. Sure thing. Thank you. Thank you. This is really, really well laid out, and I love how you have all of these charts that have everything that we really need all in one page.

[01:17:19] Just really well done, you and your team. So I'd like to echo what Mr. Pronto said about, you know, as we've been hearing from the community as soon as this went live. And I don't disagree with what they're saying as, you know, Midlothian High School is in my district and I would prefer it not to, you know, go down to 1300.

[01:17:45] So, you know, I look at option one right now where I stand. It looks like that is everybody is going to be about even and then, you know, moving forward with whatever happens. So on the 28th, we really need the community to come out and let us know, what are you thinking?

[01:18:10] What do you think? And so that is, that's where we stand. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Yes. If I may, just because it's work session. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[01:18:27] First, I want to thank Reed and his team as well. This is a very complex situation. Opening an elementary school, very tight boundaries that we're looking at. Middle school, still kind of tight.

[01:18:43] But given the geographic location or proximity, rather, of two high schools, this one and being a high school, significantly more complex. So I mentioned that because while your team could probably land comfortably on a preferred option, it is incumbent on us to present multiple options.

[01:19:11] And I think that that better illuminates for the public just how complex and difficult this task is. And it's important for the community and our board and our staff to kind of wrestle with what is best in the long term as we consider planned and future unplanned development in this particular corridor.

[01:19:33] The only piece of feedback I would give you, Reed, to maybe better highlight y'all's efforts, when you said it'll remove 26 classroom trailers, If you could put the word all in front of 26, it removes all trailers in all three options from Cosby and Midlothian High School, which I think is a great testament to the stewardship of the tax dollars behind the new West Ridge High School.

[01:19:59] Thank you. Thank you. All right. Now, Dr. Wadaka. Welcome back, sir. Thank you. Good afternoon again. I'm very excited to be with you again to talk about the second presentation related to the development of attendance zones related to high schools.

[01:20:22] Again, this is a separate process, but certainly is provided to us as an opportunity because of the rezoning that's related to, or redistricting related to the new high school. So this is an option that will provide the opportunity to utilize some capacity as an option for us as we move forward.

[01:20:42] So different than the first presentation, this is an administrative move, so we'll talk a little bit more about what that means and where that's defined in policy. And so similar to the previous presentation, these redistricting processes, again, are not something that's done in a vacuum.

[01:20:57] They're done in a policy environment. I know the board has just heard about this, but I know certainly folks may be just tuning in for this presentation. But policy 7240 provides us guidance on how we go about this process, how we take a look at different options to provide to you as well.

[01:21:14] Separate from the redistricting that we talked about just a few minutes ago, policy 4040 also provides an opportunity for administrative adjustments. The superintendent is authorized to adjust school boundaries when less than 15% of the school enrollment is impacted.

[01:21:30] And so when that will positively affect the efficiency of the school division, and that's the situation that we continue to be in now. Again, those guidelines are there for you to read as you desire, and we continue our process to remove as many trailers as we possibly can where we can do it all.

[01:21:48] That's great, and we'll do as many as we possibly can. Again, our planning objectives, this is where we take a look at all of the different components that go into these decisions where we're trying to optimize each one of these areas as much as we possibly can. So we might be looking at balancing enrollment.

[01:22:03] We might be looking at accounting for housing growth in the area or thinking about how we keep neighborhoods intact and thinking about how we develop options based on feeder patterns and other considerations. So as we talked about in the last presentation, there's not necessarily an order here, but there is a desire to try to optimize these as much as we possibly can, realizing that sometimes these are competing goals that, you know, there are trade-offs sometimes for each of these.

[01:22:32] So this presentation, again, we're back to these current high school boundaries. And what I want to point out in this presentation is certainly we talked about the relation between Westridge and Cosby in the last presentation, But I want to point out the geographic proximity of Cosby to the attendance zones for the western side of Clover Hill as well as Manchester High School zone.

[01:22:56] So there is a geographic opportunity there to take into account, and that's what this presentation is all about. So we've identified two areas that might be a little difficult to see on the screen, but hopefully you're able to see that below, where we have an opportunity to move Clover Hill to Cosby.

[01:23:13] We'll zoom into each one of these, but you'll see that patchmark side, as well as a Manchester to Cosby zone, a little bit in the southern part of that part of the district. So overall, this moves 53 students from Clover Hill to Cosby and 75 students from Manchester to Cosby.

[01:23:33] There are currently 29 11th graders that will have the option to stay at their currently zoned school. That's a little bit different than the previous presentation because there is an existing school that they can stay at. And so they will have an option, or students may choose to go to their new school, to Cosby.

[01:23:49] In this case, there are 16 Clover Hill students and 13 Manchester students that are in that circumstance, as well as 17 students who are attending specialty centers or regional programs that will not be affected by this change. So you take that number of 128 and reduce it by a little bit in the first year, and that's kind of where we are going forward.

[01:24:11] So, again, there's a little bit of nuance. These high school rezones are a little bit more complicated because there's a lot moving around, but that's the direction. So you have a zoomed-in copy of what that will look like. So, again, a lot of data on this slide, but it does provide an option to show you an opportunity to see how we impact, in particular, COSBY with each one of these areas.

[01:24:35] So this harkens back to the previous presentation where we looked at option one, two, and three. But now we're looking instead of at Lothian and Westridge and Cosby, we're looking at Cloverhill, Cosby, and Manchester. And so what you can see is after the move, after the zoning move on that sort of third to last column where it says percent program capacity, it puts Cosby down in the high 60s, mid to high 60s.

[01:24:58] And so that provides us some options to utilize some of that capacity. Where Manchester, for instance, is at 98% and almost 99% of capacity. If we did this in option one, we would be at 90%. Same thing with option two and three. So this does provide an option to utilize that capacity.

[01:25:16] We're certainly not bringing it down into the 70s of percent at either Clover Hill or Manchester, but it does free up quite a bit of space in each one of those schools to be able to move around a little bit more, to be able to utilize the school in a more efficient way. Because sometimes when you're getting close to that 100% number or even that high 90s number, it can be difficult to utilize the school in a way that it is designed.

[01:25:39] So this is a complicated slide. Happy to take any questions on that. But basically what we're showing in that very last column there is what the program capacity would be depending on which option the school board chooses and that administrative rezoning. Is that complicated enough for everybody?

[01:25:55] So hopefully we'll just focus on that number. We'll just focus in on our zoom in to Clover Hill and to Manchester in the next slide. Again, we're going to move 53 students from Clover Hill. 16 of those students are 11th graders. This is, we have access to Cosby along Hall Street, and it's, again, the furthest point west in Clover Hill zone.

[01:26:17] So there are a number of neighborhoods that are affected by this. Harbor Green, Harbor Point at Brainerd Mill, Lake Forest to Swift Creek Lake Point, Lee's Forest, Mockingbird Hills, South Shore, and St. Clair are all those items. I do want to point out for folks that may be looking at this map online, You're saying, what is this odd shape that is we're rezoning the lake, right?

[01:26:36] That is an artifact of sometime long ago in GIS where just the shape was not changed appropriately. And so we'll be correcting that as well. So that's just what it looks like if you look at the zoning map at this point. But it does look a little funny that we're rezoning the middle of the lake.

[01:26:51] On the Manchester side, a little bit down further south, Winterpock Road moves 75 students from Manchester to Cosby. 13 of those students are 11th graders. This follows Riverway Road and is bounded by Cosby High School to the west, so we have a current zone.

[01:27:08] And impacted neighborhoods would be Physick Hill, Plantation Trace, River Ridge, Stony Brook, and Windsor Park in this particular move. So we will have a public information session at Cosby High School. This is an opportunity for families to come to Cosby, meet the principal and the team there to let them know what a great place Cosby is that will welcome them.

[01:27:32] Again, similar to the last presentation, we do have this app that allows families to look up, say, hey, am I affected by this or not? And it will tell them. So happy to take any questions you may have. All right. Thank you, Dr. Rodica. Board members, any discussion? Okay.

[01:27:49] No. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. All right. Next, we have announcements, communications, and school board comments. Board members, are there any announcements or comments?

[01:28:08] Okay. Well, next school board meeting, business meeting, will be held this evening, September 8, 2026, at 6.30 p.m. here in the public meeting room. There's no further business. We will enter into closed session, which will be held in the public meeting room's conference room.

[01:28:25] Madam Clerk, please announce the items for today's closed session. It is my understanding that the school board desires to enter into a closed session in accordance with section 2.2-3711.A of the Code of Virginia, 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 matters that would involve the disclosure of student records.

[01:28:55] members of the board you've just heard the items requested to be discussed in closed session do have a motion in that regard i make a motion to enter into closed session okay zero second second okay madam clerk would you please call roll on the motion jennifer darby i dominate chatters i see them pronto i lisa hudgens i we are now in closed session do i have a motion to

[01:29:34] reconvene in open session. 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 there, be it resolved that school board hereby certifies that the best of each member's knowledge, one, only public business matters lawfully exempted from opening many requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification resolution applies, and two, only

[01:30:09] such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the school board is there a motion to adopt the resolution i make a motion to adopt the resolution is there a second second madam clerk would you please call roll on the motion jennifer darby aye dominique chatters aye stephen pronto aye lisa hudgens Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the student matters?

[01:30:38] In case number two, 2026-27 slash RE14, 2026-27 slash RE15, 2026-27 slash RE16, 2026-27 slash RE17, 2026-27 slash RE18, 2026-27 slash RE19, and 2026-27 slash RE20.

[01:31:09] It is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld. Is there a second? Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Jennifer Darby? Aye. Dominique Chatters? Aye. Stephen Pronto? Aye. Lisa Hudgens?

[01:31:25] Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the first personnel matter? In case number 2026-27-05-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld. Is there a second?

[01:31:40] Second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Jennifer Darby. Aye. Dominique Chatters. Aye. Stephen Pronto. Aye. Lisa Hudgens. Aye. The motion carries. Is there a motion regarding the next personnel matter? In case number 2026-27-06-HR, it is recommended that the superintendent's recommendation be upheld.

[01:32:04] Is there a second? A second. Madam Clerk, would you please call roll on the motion? Jennifer Darby. Aye. Dominique Chatters. Aye. Stephen Pronto? Aye. Lisa Hudgens? Aye. The motion carries.

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