Coraggio Consulting
Hanover County School Board Meeting, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Date: Tuesday, March 11, 2025
Place: Hanover County School Board, Virginia
Length: 6h 11m (video)
Official meeting video (CivicClerk): https://hanovercova.portal.civicclerk.com/event/1275/media

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-25. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[02:45:53] Think about us being in closed session

[03:03:09] when she asks. I think it's a master. Are we good? Yeah, we're unmuted. Hey, McKay, are you able to hear us?

[03:03:29] Okay, she's talking, but we can't hear her, so let's figure that out. No, she's unmuted because it's lighting up. All right, bear with us just a second.

[03:04:19] can you talk now can you hear me testing testing yes we can hear you yeah okay great okay thank you very much it was was it still recording okay so that at least that's saying the closed session was

[03:04:55] closed session was still out there on the recording perfect thank you

[03:05:00] in breaking with tradition we will call to order our tuesday evening uh open session of the hanover

[03:26:06] county school board for tuesday march 11th 2025 uh coach ike do you have a uh oh i need a proposal to come back into open session please do i have a motion motion for open session we have a second second miss welch any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all opposed now coach ike do you have a certification statement yes mr chair the board will certify the following whereas the hanover county school board is convening closed meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the freedom of virginia freedom of information

[03:26:40] act and whereas section 2.2-3712d of the code of virginia requires a certification by the school Board that such executive meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Hanover County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the executive meeting to which this certification applies, and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the executive

[03:27:17] meeting were heard discussed or considered thank you do i have a second second the second miss welch any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries at this time i invite everyone to join me as we honor the memory of dr robert lowry bob lowry was the director of the maggie l walker governor's school in richmond virginia throughout his career and education dr lowry impacted countless lives because of his commitment to and passion for learning our Our thoughts and prayers are with the Lowry family, their friends, and the Maggie L. Walker

[03:27:55] Governor's School community during this difficult time. It is our honor to invite you to join us for a moment of silence to reflect on Dr. Lowry's contribution to education. Thank you.

[03:28:22] And with that, we will now move on to our invocation and our Pledge of Allegiance. And the Pledge of Allegiance this evening, which I'm very excited to announce, will be We led by Battlefield Park Elementary School students, William Crowder, Joseph Crowder, and Henry Crowder, third, first, and kindergartners, right after our invocation.

[03:28:43] So please wait for the invocation. Our most gracious Heavenly Father, the great architect of the universe, we thank you for this opportunity for us to get together here tonight.

[03:29:02] We ask that you give us strength and guidance as we do the will to do what's best for our Hanover County public schools. We ask that you be with all those who are less fortunate and who are currently serving to ensure our own freedoms and give us the opportunity that we can continue to educate all the students in Hanover County Public Schools.

[03:29:25] And now we ask that you join us as we pay honor to you. Amen.

[03:29:41] Quite comfortable over here. I have to tell you, it's a lot better when we're at the other facility because we get to then shake hands and acknowledge the outstanding students that come up and do that with us.

[03:30:17] So with that, thank you very much. Well, Mr. Chair, just remember that these three gentlemen are educated in the east where they are. That's where we educate the beast. So I just want to let you know that. Good job. So tonight, before we go any further, I'd just like to acknowledge some of our special guests that we have in the room with us.

[03:30:35] And I originally said I was going to do this, but I probably don't think it's fair. But we're very happy to have with us Dr. Reams, our director of elementary education here with us. going to have you stand up introduce all the elementary principals but i said that probably wasn't fair and then dr bob staley the director of secondary education is with us and i have counted six elementary school principals so if i missed one y'all tell me um but i know that jackie mccaleb's here in the front with her students dr glinda smith mary towns i saw mary some there's mary i saw mary towns brad davis is hiding in the back brooke a whitney told me i had to call her

[03:31:13] whole name out but uh i wasn't going to do that it's angie loomis i can actually say it i know that and then um allison mullins is here also allison is back in the back by brad davis we also have two of our high school principals with us tonight dr john wheeler and miss chris reese and we thank y'all for being here with us also and with that i now would move to a motion to approve the four sets of minutes that we have can i get a motion please so moved mr coleman is there a second second Ms. Welch, do we have a motion and a second to approve four sets of minutes?

[03:31:48] Are there any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries. And with that, I think we'll turn it over to Mr. Whitley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Penicuff.

[03:32:04] It is always a pleasure to bring forth the great news and accomplishments of our students and staff. Our first recognition of the night goes to four outstanding student-athletes were selected to be members of the sports backers active living leadership all-stars program that provides education hands-on experiences and mentorship opportunities to make a greater impact in their community first from hanover high school seniors ellie augustin and robbie seifert and from mechanicsville high school seniors kenzie strohacker and caleb smith please come forward

[03:32:37] I'm really excited to be recognized and their next recognitions and final recognitions

[03:33:37] of the night go to seven remarkable teachers who completed the rigorous process for achieving national board certification status which raises our division total to 96 national board certified teachers which is quite an accomplishment. This is a demanding endeavor that enhances the effectiveness of teachers through systematic examination of their teaching practice. Teachers deepen their knowledge of subject matter and become more skilled in daily classroom instruction and student assessment. This certification indicates that a teacher has met the highest standards established for the profession. These outstanding

[03:34:12] teachers are, and when I call your name, please come forward, Brooke Adams, Hersey Creek Elementary School, Ashley Cooper, Beaverdam Elementary School, Leanne Costa and Roll Point Elementary School, Jameesha Hairston, Laurel Meadow Elementary School, Faith Phillips, Atlee High School,

[03:34:54] Mallory Sensabal, Kersey Creek Elementary School, and Angela Taylor, Beaverdam Elementary School. And at this time, we also want to recognize the following National Board Certified Teachers who achieved renewal of their certification last fall who were equally outstanding.

[03:35:26] Shannon Floyd, Chickahominy Middle School, Rachel Griggs, Cool Spring Elementary, Melissa Larimer, Oak Knoll Middle School, Lacey Lizaraga, Hanover High School, Christina Luntzer,

[03:35:56] Cold Harbor Elementary School, Amy Marshall, Cool Spring Elementary School, and last but certainly not least, Jennifer McClintock, Bell Creek Elementary School. Let's give everyone a round of applause.

[03:37:47] Chairman, that concludes my portion of the recognitions, and I'll turn it over to you.

[03:38:05] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Whitley, and thank you to everybody being in attendance tonight for those recognitions. A lot of fun going down to help

[03:38:44] with the award of those pins that we, that Coach Ike and I went down and were able to do just a couple of weeks ago, actually. So I have an announcement for us all to hear, which is, on behalf of the school board, I'd like to provide an update with regard to our ongoing search for the next superintendent of schools as part of our commitment to a transparent search process.

[03:39:10] Applications for the position closed in February. A total of 38 applicants submitted credentials for consideration, and of those 38, a total of 35 completed all of the documents required for consideration by the application deadline, from Maine to Arizona and, of course, Virginia.

[03:39:31] These 35 individuals hail from 18 states. Furthermore, 12 applicants have previous experience as a superintendent. Seven have assistant or deputy superintendent experience. Nine have executive director, director, or assistant director experience.

[03:39:50] Three have consulting experience. One is a full-time professor. And two have other experiences. A total of 28 of the 35 applicants have either a Ph.D. or an M.E.D.

[03:40:07] I'm sorry, an E.D.D. The school board reviewed all 35 completed applications and considered seven who were recommended by HYA, our third-party vendor, as most closely resembling the profile that was shared with our community last month following extensive community engagement.

[03:40:29] Make sure you hear that. Seven out of the 35 that we all considered, seven, were then considered by our board. At a recent closed session, the school board narrowed that list of seven down to four candidates.

[03:40:44] We will soon begin the interview process to further narrow our pool of candidates as we work to identify the next leader of our school division that will advance our tradition of excellence. We remain on schedule to vote on the next superintendent of schools at our April 8th meeting. Thank you for my indulging me with that. Okay, and as part of that, I actually have

[03:41:18] a statement to read, another statement to read. But first, we will let any other board members have any comments that they want to make at this time. Coach? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to recognize the Attlee Raider Nation for bringing home another state championship recently in a boys indoor or winter track. And the team won by six points over Jamestown, which was the runner

[03:41:52] up and they did it out of all those events without having an individual state champion which is actually relatively rare that you can accumulate points throughout the entire spectrum of oh nearly two dozen events and not have a state champion. So I just wanted to congratulate the Raider Nation and the coaches and staff and athletes and parents that sacrificed their son's practice times and had to share their schedules with them but also likewise the girls were runners up and so that's

[03:42:32] not a bad I mean we could only done one better but the girls were runners up but the girls happened to bring home a couple state champions. Mia Bryson won shot put 38 feet 5 inches and Tori Goodson won the 55 hurdles in finals it was 8.12 but in prelims it was 7.92 which is actually one of those things that gets into one of the best in the nation at that level. When you get under eight seconds, you kind of set yourself apart. So good luck to Tori. I think she also got a second in the

[03:43:10] long jump and the 55 dash. So she really had a big showing. So I just wanted to acknowledge Dr. Weaver again. Well done as usual. Yep. Raider Nation is kind of a reload, isn't it, sir? alrighty love to hear it thank you coach any other comments miss lynn i just wanted to take a second and recognize a group of people that work under the radar quite a bit i wanted to give a big shout out to the school social workers the counselors and the family engagement team during the snow

[03:43:46] all of that snow they worked hours well beyond what is required of them to make sure that our families especially our most needy families had food and they were warm and they were well taken care of they went above and beyond the call of duty and i just wanted them to know that your work has not gone has not gone unnoticed and is greatly appreciated thank you miss lynn mr martin yes sir um i think it was my first or second board meeting our instructional highlight was the amazing shake that happens at ashland elementary school um it's a contest they put on where third through fifth

[03:44:23] graders practice walking up towards stranger like myself shaking hands making eye contact working on their interpersonal skills I participated in a couple weeks ago in the first round and it was an amazing experience one of the most fulfilling experiences I've had since I joined the board so I know the challenge has been issued to some of the other elementary school principals to look at and implement the program I would highly recommend you looking at it if it's something you think you might be interested in and then not to continue to Pat Dr. Wheeler on the back, but as a former mediocre basketball player at Atlee, they play in the state finals Friday night at 8 o'clock at the Segal Center.

[03:45:02] I don't recall the last time a boys basketball team won a state championship in this county, but maybe that was not paying attention. Probably back when you were playing, you think? It wasn't my team, I can tell you that much. But really excited to go watch Atlee, root them on Friday night at the Segal Center, and I hope a lot of people come out to support them.

[03:45:19] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Martin. Yeah, Mr. Seifert. I'll say congrats also to the Raiders. I'm planning to go to that game Friday night, so best of luck Friday night also. And I would just like to say thank you for all the citizens that have provided feedback for the boundary process in particular.

[03:45:35] You know, really a lot of insightful stuff. And, I mean, you know the neighborhood's the best. And so the feedback is appreciated for sure. And please keep it coming. I mean, the vote's in a month, so by no means is it over. And with all subjects, if you would please keep the feedback coming because there's thousands of you and all the good information that you have that could be useful to us, we do appreciate it.

[03:45:56] So thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Seifert. Ms. Welsh? Yes, since we're on a sports theme too, I'd like to congratulate all the swimmers that went to states. We had 100% of all of our swimmers that participated in the state championship swim meet to return to finals in some way shape or form so that is very impressive we had some great swims couple records broken that I'm sure all the schools I know a couple at Hanover so very proud

[03:46:28] of those swimmers it is a gritty sport so they practice a lot a lot of a lot of meters and yards do they swim and and at all times of the day so congratulations to all of our swimmers in Hanover county thank you miss welch anybody else coach ike i'm going to tell you i really think you're falling down on the job because i thought this would have been one that you absolutely would have done frankly i didn't have time to read through our beloved mechanicsville high school cafeteria employee miss evelyn martin celebrated her 98th birthday on february the 26th as part of

[03:47:06] the school spirit celebration student grayson wright made miss evelyn a custom handmade gift which he also did for her 97th birthday. This year's gift came from a special message. Dear Miss Evelyn, thank you for always being the light in the cafeteria.

[03:47:23] You have truly made my last years in high school unforgettable. Happy birthday, your buddy Grayson Wright. 98 years old and still working at the high school. We love it. So thank you. and then my last uh my last announcement is pursuant to virginia code section 2.2-3712b notice is hereby given that a closed meeting of the school board will be held for the purpose of interviewing candidates for the superintendent of schools at an undisclosed location within the next 15 days of this notice and with that i think we shall close board member announcements

[03:48:02] and i would now move on to the consent agenda items and i would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda moved miss welsh with the motion is there a second second coach ike with the second and is there any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all opposed motion carries

[03:48:26] and with that i think we're down to the instructional highlights fine arts members of board, Dr. Penny Cuff and senior staff, thank you so much for this opportunity to present an art educational instructional highlight. I'm very excited to share a little bit about the visual arts with you all this evening and we're just going to start with our programs starting with

[03:49:02] elementary. Students in preschool through grade five receive art instruction once per week and in addition students in grades K through five have an additional nine weeks of art that we call enrichment time. This is an extension of arts instruction and allows more opportunities for hands-on engagement in the creative process. We have 18 elementary art educators who teach roughly 7,700 students a week. That's pretty amazing. In our secondary schools we employ 22 art teachers at the middle

[03:49:39] and high school level and they teach approximately 3,000 students. All of our arts courses in middle and high school are elective in nature. At our middle school level we offer three semester courses and then one year-long course. In our high schools we have a number of different arts pathways which students can choose from. We offer a traditional art one through four pathway in which students experience a number of different disciplines throughout their four years including drawing and painting, printmaking, ceramics and crafts.

[03:50:11] For our juniors and seniors, we offer the rigorous IB art program as an option. Here's a glimpse at our additional pathways. In graphic art, students engage in a variety of creative challenges with a design focus using Adobe software.

[03:50:27] They learn to think like designers and solve problems. Our photography students learn to shoot with film cameras. They process film. They develop prints in a traditional darkroom, which you can see there in the center image.

[03:50:42] And in this age of rapid fire photography, where we're all walking around with a camera in our back pockets, really forcing yourself to slow down and consider a shot and not waste the 24 that are on the roll, and then to go in the darkroom and learn in complete darkness how to roll that film, process it, and then printmaking is a whole other art form.

[03:51:08] I'm going to show you one in just a second. You'll get to see a pretty advanced technique. This magic of the darkroom is something that can't be replicated in our digital age. Our students do also engage with digital photography, because here we are in this world, but we do hearken back to the historical parts of photography as well.

[03:51:34] Students who desire a more rigorous opportunity in graphics or photo can elect to take AP2D design once they've completed two years of either graphic arts or photography. We also offer crafts. This is a three-dimensional process focused course, bookmaking, ceramics, fibers, some wood. Those are some of the materials and processes that students use to create artwork. And here we have two students, one showing another how to center on the potter's wheel. Speaking of that advanced photography, this is a slide, a double exposure slide, and it's a

[03:52:14] students photograph called Olivia Story by Abigail Bridges at Hanover High. She placed first in the county for PTA reflections contest in the photography category and this piece has been entered into the state composition. And although we're seeing this image as digital, this is a traditional darkroom print in its original form. Our students also shined quite recently at the annual scholastic art competition. In the metro Richmond region, approximately 2,700 pieces of art were submitted

[03:52:46] and juried. Hanover County had 25 honorable mentions, 12 silver key winners, and 15 gold key winners. The gold key winning works of art have gone on to the national competition. And in February, the regional gold and silver key winners were on display at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. We also like to celebrate our teachers as well, one in the audience too. We've had Teachers of the Year throughout the years, most recently Ashley Phipps is Teacher of the Year, she teaches at South Anna Elementary

[03:53:23] School. Melanie Klinder was honored at the Scholastic Art Competition as a regional art educator and she was recognized along with our Gold and Silver silver key winners and Jamisha Hairston who was recognized a little bit earlier for national board status achieved this year we have three elementary art teachers who all have their national board certification so March March is our favorite time of year in the art department because it's youth art month and this is why we love to teach art we like to celebrate our kids right so we try to think of all these really cool things to do to celebrate the

[03:54:01] accomplishments of our students and youth art month really gives us the space to recognize skills that are developed through the visual arts including problem-solving, creativity. Problem-solving is both critical and creative. You have to think wide and then you have to narrow in on a focus. Observing your world in a more detailed way and of course the arts communicate. During Youth Art Month the visual arts are highlighted in a number of ways big and small. We'll do things like art trivia on the announcements, spirit weeks with themes like All the Patterns Day, making buttons that celebrate art which students and teachers can wear, digital galleries

[03:54:39] rotating student art, actual galleries showcasing all of the work around the schools, and daily drawing challenges. We continue. There's lots of activities. The picture on the left shows students working on art trading cards. They're going to produce a series of cards and then have an opportunity to trade cards with their classmates to have a collection of original works of art we have a number of shows featuring student work the photo in the middle is of a bell creek middle school student at a middle school show last month in addition this month we're having lots of showcases beaverdam and

[03:55:17] rural point are both having arts nights they are featuring work from the visual arts and the performing arts laurel meadows pta is hosting a paint your partner night and mechanicsville's pta is hosting a family art night all of this towards the end of the month here on the right is one of our elementary students who's proudly displaying a landscape that she's created one of the many lessons that the arts teach is that problems can have more than one solution and this student's solution or drawing is one of the many ways that one could depict a landscape of trees students

[03:55:56] also engage in creating art for a cause here are two community projects the photo on the left shows kindergarten students at Kersey Creek who have created butterflies for a group called Noah's Children. This group provides palliative care to kids in the Richmond area and support for their families as well. The butterflies will be part of the annual gala and fundraiser event. On the right we see a group of students from Oak Knoll Middle School who worked after school to paint pet portraits which they donated to a senior dog rescue group. These are a few more

[03:56:35] photos of the bell creek middle school art show they collaborated with short pump middle school and held a show down in the city at an art center called artworks i would also like to mention that we currently have an all hanover youth art show on display at the montpelier center for arts and education this show features approximately 150 pieces of art created by students in grades k through five and we're going to hold a reception for students families teachers the community in April. And speaking of April, mark your calendars. This is the 48th annual festival of arts and

[03:57:14] sciences, excuse me, Hanover County's largest and longest lasting event. Our first festival took place in 1973. So for those of you who are doing the math and thinking, well, that's not enough years, right? We did have a little time off during COVID. This year, the arts and science festival will take place on April 26th at Hanover High. The mission of the festival is to bring together the community in order to share the results of student learning in all areas of the curriculum.

[03:57:47] It is a student-centered event and allows the teaching staff the opportunity to encourage student participation through the display of projects, performances, and exhibits. Just to give you a little taste of what to expect, we will have of course artwork lining the halls anywhere and everywhere. We're going to have student projects from a host of different subject areas that will be on display from world language projects to CTE, creative writing, science experiments. We will also feature digitally created student work on a website which

[03:58:20] one of our instructional tech coaches is building. Performing arts groups from all county groups to school-based groups will fill the stage with performances that day. We will also have some interactive fun. Students can spend time with musical instruments in the Try the Instruments exhibit. Last year was the first year we did this, and it was a huge hit. Students and parents can talk with performing arts teachers, find out what those electives are about, try all kinds of different musical instruments, and see what they might gravitate towards. Elementary students are

[03:58:57] also invited to join in a come-and-play physical education event at 1045 in the gym, and this activity will be led by a group of elementary physical education teachers. We will have a STEM on stage that will feature science learning throughout the day. And this year there will be a chess tournament for students in grades K through 12 in the gym. The tournament will start at noon and students will be able to register online. Registration information and digital posters have been sent to schools and this event is sponsored by the Virginia Chess Federation.

[03:59:32] so what a great way to end the school year is to um just showcase all the great stuff that our kids do in so many different ways we had a lot of sports highlights here and i love to see that our kids are engaged in our schools and we have a large number of kids that are engaged in our schools in the arts performing and visual thank you again for giving me this opportunity to speak to you tonight thank you are there any questions or comments from the from the dais i just want to thank you i brought my calendar and it's already mr may doesn't recognize this since he's gone with the phone calendars but i resort back to the old-fashioned way so i'm with you there there you

[04:00:12] go anybody else i will tell you that i had i this one of my favorite events to get to go to and um several years ago when it was at patrick henry i went and uh i was wandering around looking and actually looking for my grandchildren's uh artwork and um i came across my my daughter's uh school room identification for her artwork there was a young man there second grade and uh he recognized we talked we ended up talking to each other he knew that i was her father and so we're talking to each other i've seen that gentleman now three different times outside of pearson's corner over

[04:00:50] the last three years and he still comes up to me today and speaks to me and it's what this organization what y'all are doing with these arts and science festivals that really it really strikes our our students and uh just a it's just a remarkable event and so i i truly enjoy it i i love going to it every year so thank you with that oh you had something else as well just i love the additions this year i went last year and i think the additions are great and so keep keep shining i love it and it is an amazing event i hope everybody gets to go it was packed last year

[04:01:25] it was that's what we're and the instruments scare me because my kids all played strings and they're out there letting them play at the strings mr zeifert yeah i just want to say how much i'm looking forward to it it'll be my first one and uh your work with the chess tournament and making that happen is awesome so thank you thank you thank you so much thank you very much all right with that we'll move on to information and discussion and i think we have a presentation on our boundary adjustment update. Dr. Lance, I think it's your show. Well, thank you. Good

[04:02:02] evening, and thank you for the opportunity to return once again and talk about the student forecasting and boundary adjustment process. And joining me online is McKay Larrabee, live from Portland, Oregon. So just kind of wave there, McKay. You've got a pulse. My name is Dr. Lance Richards, and I am a retired public educator from southern Indiana, 35 years in public education, And I want to tell you up front that we have thoroughly enjoyed the process in working with you as individuals and your school community as a whole.

[04:02:35] These can be very contentious propositions as you move forward. And I would applaud your community in the response to the community engagement sessions that we participated in, your district leadership, as well as the board itself in terms of the positive attitudes of bringing this forward and trying to do what is best for all of the children in this division.

[04:02:57] So let's get started. Just a quick agenda overview here of the timeline. We're going to talk about our community outreach and highlight a few things there. Then we'll get into the meat of it in terms of the draft, elementary, middle, high school boundary recommendations.

[04:03:12] We have some statistical reports so everybody kind of knows the numbers of students being impacted by this. And then, of course, next steps for the division. So looking at the review and the framework, we got together, believe it or not, back in August, September. I think I visited with you right there leaning into October when we got together, started gathering all this information because like baking a cake, the ingredients are important in all of this data, all of this information, bringing it in, making sure that it is right before we go forward is critical to the final outcome.

[04:03:46] We then worked on student forecast, understanding the issues within the division because there are some very unique things going on here and I travel the nation working with schools of my time with MGT. And there are some very unique things when you talk about mobility in this division and the number of folks wanting to come in because this is a community in which people want to be a part of. We then developed some boundary options. These boundary options, iterative just means mathematically. We looked at the data. We brought the scenarios together.

[04:04:19] We then had a community forum. We were here together in January for those. And we're kind of in this March-April point of looking at draft recommendations and a possible plan going forward. So some key points. There is inward mobility, and by that I mean people are wanting to come in to your community and live here. We actually saw a positive net migration between the number of students born and for the number of students that show up in kindergarten, and we never see that anywhere. So this was a unique situation. We had to look at it and revisit it multiple times to

[04:04:54] make sure that we had because to be honest with you on the first go-around we didn't understand the data we were looking at and it just didn't make sense to because we'd never seen it before the growth is uneven if you look at this chart these are the study areas and so there's about 50 to 75 students within each study area and the darker the color the purple is more is more growth in those areas and then orange is a little bit of shrinking in those areas but as you can see that density around Cool Spring Elementary, that is kind of that density of population there and

[04:05:28] down toward the Atlee side of things. So you can see how the density of population on that side of the division weighs in. Their student population is growing within the Ashland, Cool Spring, and Rural Point attendance areas, and utilization is lowest at Pole Green in South anna it's also a good point for me to uh share i know the board knows this but with the community that's that's listening in and those in the audience that we work from and i'm sorry i keep talking to you with my back but they say i got a face this way so i apologize um we work from the

[04:06:05] ground up the ground up we work from the elementary up elementary is the foundation we work out of those attendance zones and then up into the middle school and up into the high school so that's kind of our frame of reference that's the foundation in terms in terms of our analysis some guiding principles so one of the big things on my first my very first visit to hanover county was a conversation around the guiding principles about those things that we were going to use to base our decisions going forward and it seems pretty straightforward we've had these conversations we're going to balance utilization and i and from the get-go it was we were going to look at this not only at current but at five and ten year forecasted trends so that we're not having you

[04:06:43] as a community not having to revisit this in just a few short years we're trying to minimize the number of students impacted by these adjustments work to maintain those those neighborhood cohesions as best we can and no island zones where you have this pocket of students out on the periphery and you take them to a different place we have to consider transportation because it is so expensive to run those yellow limousines down the road and then we want to minimize disruptions and impact a special program special populations and those kinds of things so but it's very important as i shared earlier and we've shared in multiple meetings these things all pull it's not a linear

[04:07:23] these things all pull against one one another as you're trying to make these decisions going forward so in our community engagement just a few highlights on this screen we were here in january 27 28 29 as well as showing that information uh asynchronous we had a large turnout in the upper right hand corner a large turnout for our online survey a terrific participation there and if you look at the bottom center that's the scenario story maps over 28,000 item views with an average item views per day of about 949 that's a lot of folks engaging in the process we had terrific

[04:08:02] turnout at our community meetings and so the takeaway on this is your public is involved and your public is watching and is concerned and wants to be engaged, has been engaged in this process. So main considerations in the student forecast, and we're looking again, elementary up, and clearly you look right there at the center, you see what's going on at Cool Springs. That was kind of the genesis of this project. If you're playing Monopoly, it was go. We were looking at Cool Spring and trying to find ways to balance that utilization across the division. But you've also

[04:08:39] got growth coming for ashland you've got growth currently at pole green and the most important thing you can see there that blue represents capacity the gray is 2024 students what we are anticipating at 2029 is that lighter pinkish color and then the purple color is 2034. but what you also see there at pole green in south anna is under utilization and the possibility for more students to attend in those schools. One other note for the audience, Washington Henry will come online with the 27-28 school year and so that second line of 495 is representative of the

[04:09:18] capacity for that school at the time in which it opens in the new facility. So considerations for the for the middle school and high school. So in looking at Chickahominy and looking at Attlee you see a similar issue in terms of growth, in terms of current student enrollment and in terms of the future. Oak Knoll and Hanover High School both represent some possibility for underutilization and potentially more students participating in their programs.

[04:09:50] And you can see the direct feeder patterns for those schools there on the left. So this is your current feeder pattern. So one of the conversations that we had publicly at our community meetings and with school leadership and the working group and the board as well is trying to perhaps clean up the feeder pattern. So as kids come through, if they're in elementary together, they stay together through middle school and they then, sorry, they matriculate then on up into high school together. And so these are your current, and I know it seems a little bit complicated here,

[04:10:25] but Elmont Elementary split along I-95 and we'll show that in our later maps as they then matriculate down to Oak Knoll and Liberty Middle. And then Ashland, Beaver Dam and South Anna are direct feeders, Rural Point and Pole Green are direct feeders into Oak Knoll and Hanover.

[04:10:42] But as you come down into that center section, Pearson's Corner and Kersey Creek then split along New Ashcake Road out into Oak Knoll and Chickahominy. Then back up to the top, Mechanicsville Elementary is split along Mechanicsville Turnpike coming down and you'll see that Cool Springs and Washington Henry go straight into Chickahominy and then Battlefield, Cold Harbor, and Laurel Meadow come into Bell Creek and Mechanicsville.

[04:11:07] So in this process and looking at the elementaries, we were then also wanted to assess the middle schools in hopes of cleaning up these feeder patterns as best we can. So you can see here's the, you've got three circles for four splits. So that center circle deals with Pearson's Corner and Cursey Creek and the split that goes on there.

[04:11:28] And then up to the left you can see Elmont and then down on the bottom you see Mechanicsville. I'm sorry, yeah, Cursey Creek and Pearson's Corner is there in the center of those splits. All right, so in visiting and doing our initial work and our initial analysis, when we came and shared that with the community, we actually came in with the blue, the green, and the purple scenarios.

[04:11:52] And one of the big questions that came out of our community engagement was, well, the decision's already been made, there's already been a final decision, and the answer was no. We were there to gather community insights, and much of the tweaking of this and the looking at this and the adjustment of this has been done as every, easy for me to say, has been done as a result of that input and so out of that came an additional scenario of indigo and trying to look at that and that information was pushed out and shared with the community so these were these after after the initial committee work after the board's additional involvement and they got in their folks and they were pulling and looking at their own study areas and looking in these

[04:12:31] different segments of student populations to kind of see it was like your teacher double checking your work they wanted to make sure that they were getting what they needed out of this process but I applaud them also in listening to their communities. And they said, well, what about this? Well, what about that? And they investigated all of these possible scenarios and these possible iterations going forward, trying to make sure that this process in the end was the most positive it could be, but also accomplish the things they set out to accomplish. So the Cool Spring, look, this all started with Cool Spring, looking at Cool Spring, looking at the attendance and what we could do

[04:13:07] about that. So the highest priority in this process was to relieve Cool Spring as it was already operating above its building capacity, and it expected to go even farther in the next five years. And so in order to relieve Cool Springs, while looking at those guiding principles in the process, the executive team looked at reassigning areas on the southeast into the current spring attendance zone into Washington-Henry. And so, you know, also looking in this map, we also have to recognize that, let me get my bearings here, to the southwest, basically, you're out of district.

[04:13:42] And so Cool Spring is pushed up again, so you've really only got one of three ways to go in terms of this process, limiting some of the options. So the draft elementary boundary recommendations came back into understanding that Washington-Henry will not have enough capacity to handle all of the new residents until the school building opens until the 27-28 school year.

[04:14:06] As a result, the board has decided to do a phased implementation in areas moving from Cool Spring to Washington-Henry. And this implementation is the same as the original green scenario. So this impacts Giles, Atlee Manor, Craney Island Farms, and Craney Island Estates neighborhoods moving over to Washington Henry.

[04:14:27] But it's not just that simple because Washington Henry doesn't have the capacity to accommodate all of those students. So the green area of Atlee Manor and Craney Island neighborhoods would move to Washington Henry starting in the 26-27 school year.

[04:14:43] And the Giles neighborhood area in the Brown would then move at the 2728 with the opening of the new school. Several additional proposed adjustments then have to be made in order to address this domino effect.

[04:14:59] So, you know, we talked earlier that this is really almost a counterclockwise movement in order to accommodate the flow of students in terms of relieving cool spring. So with these changes, the executive team then endeavored to balance this utilization in the direction of the guiding principles as best as possible.

[04:15:20] So with that move, we're looking at here with Rural Point, this area in purple on the screen would move from Rural Point Elementary to Pearson's Corner due to its proximity and potential for future growth. This area, and then in the gray, you would see this area moving from Washington-Henry to Rural Point to open up some capacity then at Washington-Henry in order to receive those students from Cool Spring.

[04:15:49] In the red areas here, you see students moving from Rural Point over to Pole Green to bolster utilization of Pole Green, to lift that, and then allow Rural Point to accept those students we just spoke of from Washington-Henry. In this scenario, in this portion of the adjustments, this area would move from Washington-Henry to Mechanicsville Elementary, helping to alleviate Washington-Henry due to the movement from Cool Spring.

[04:16:18] And this is the area south of Meadow Bridge Road. This is a fairly substantial thoroughfare along a large portion of Washington-Henry Elementary's southern boundary. In this particular situation here, students then move from Mechanicsville Elementary School over to Cold Harbor to increase utilization at Cold Harbor and allow Mechanicsville Elementary to take on potential new students from Washington Henry Elementary School.

[04:16:49] Again, kind of moving from Cool Spring through Washington Henry back around through Mechanicsville up around then to Cold Harbor. On this slide, this area of students moves from Cold Harbor to Battlefield Park to balance utilization between the two schools.

[04:17:11] And in this one, in the purple, this area moves from Ashland over to South Anna to increase South Anna's utilization and to alleviate the further growth coming to Ashland Elementary. On this slide, you find that this area moves from Elmont to Kersey Creek to better align the elementary zones to the middle and high school zones.

[04:17:36] dealing with those feeder patterns that we spoke of earlier. And so this is basically all of those moves on a single slide with the breakout then of the options for 26 and 27 surrounding cool spring.

[04:17:54] So you can see all of the impacted zones in this one slide, in this draft recommendation. So then that leads us up then to the middle schools and high schools. So the area in green at the top left with the arrow and the breakout there, those moved from Chickahominy and Attlee to Oak, Null, and Hanover.

[04:18:18] So this aligns with the Kersey Creek attendance zone, whether you did blue or green. This then realigns the middle school to secondary zones to align with the elementary zones. Similarly, in the center there, blue, these students moved from Oak, Null, and Hanover to Chickahominy and Attlee.

[04:18:36] this aligns the Pearsons Corner elementary attendance zones under these plans. And finally, this area would move from Chickahominy in the green here, middle school in Attlee, to Oak Knoll Middle School and Hanover High School aligning rural points attendance zone. And for those of you that are observant, there's a little square there down above Laurel Meadow. That one realigns the zones so they're approximate to the middle school zones, but there's no impacted students at this time. So you saw the more complicated feeder pattern earlier of the differing splits.

[04:19:13] In this case, we're down to one split. We simply could not fix that split with Mechanicsville and Mechanicsville Turnpike. There's just not enough capacity in that space, in those spaces to make that work. But it cleaned up the other splits that you had across the division. So Ashland, Beaverdav and South Anna and Elmont, clean feeder into Liberty and Patrick Henry, Kersey Creek, Roll Point, Pole Green, Clean into Oak, Nolan, Hanover, Cool Spring, Pearson's Corner, Washington, Henry, straight into Chickahominy, Attlee, and Battlefield Park, Cold Harbor, Laurel, Metal, straight into Bell Creek and Mechanicsville.

[04:19:49] And again, you do still experience that split at Mechanicsville. So as I shared earlier, this kind of provides you the elevator speech if you're talking to friends going down the street or for those opportunities to kind of share this information.

[04:20:06] So on the left, you have the existing boundaries. And this is what happens if you do nothing, okay? So let's take a look at Cool Spring. They're presently at 110. They're going to migrate over the next five years to 117 and kind of equalize as they go out to 115 in 2034.

[04:20:24] Similarly, if you get down, if you look at Ashland, they're going to go from 84 to 92 to 91. So they're going to grow. When you go over to the draft elementary site, when you go over to the draft recommend, thank you. When you go over to the draft recommendation side, it's important to note that that school year 2024 represents what those schools would be today in this academic year had this change been in place.

[04:20:51] And I call it going to green, kind of moving everything, trying to get everything into that 80% range. And so as you see, as you go forward, especially into 29 and out into 34, you're primarily, you're very, very close to being all green at that point.

[04:21:07] And then you'll note at the bottom, the cells that are blocked out around Washington, Henry, that's because they're going to go from a capacity of 378 and they're going to go to 495. And so the 29 and 34 calculations are based off of that 495 that you anticipate having in the future.

[04:21:31] And then here, similarly for the middle school and high schools, you can see what's going on there with Chickahominy, 95, 98, 99. Presently, they would be 85 if these changes were in place, and they're going to grow to 91 and 93. Similarly, with Olkno, you were increasing that utilization, so they're going to be not quite at 80, but a much, much, much improved utilization at 73, 71, and 75.

[04:21:57] Similarly, if you jump down to Attlee High School, you'll see what is presently 93, 102, 103 becomes 82, 92, 96. And so this is, you know, a lot of the questions early on were surrounded by, well, how many kids are in impact?

[04:22:14] You wanted to minimize how many kids are being impacted. And so there's a couple of things going on in this matrix, okay? So the current, on the left-hand side, is the current school of residence. So if you follow this chart across, what we're saying is there are 30 kids at Ashland that are going to go to South Anna.

[04:22:36] And then if you track down from South Anna to the bottom, you'll see that they have a total of 30 kids coming in. Similarly, 61 students from Cold Harbor are going to make their way over to Battlefield Park. And Cool Spring, of course, is the one that started this conversation.

[04:22:57] So they have 83 going to Washington-Henry in 2026, and then 154 going the following academic year for a grand total of 237. You can see there from Mechanicsville. And Pole Green, again, zero represents that little chunk that has homes in it, but doesn't presently have any elementary-age students or any students in it.

[04:23:20] Rural Point, 58 of their students go to Pearson's Corner, 119 go to Pole Green. And then similarly, Washington Henry, in order to receive those students, 124 go to Mechanicsville, 88 go to Rural Point for a total of 212.

[04:23:39] So there are a total of 812 elementary students being impacted with these changes. Similar, if you jump down then to the middle school, the 6-8 at Chickahominy, There are 160 going over to Oak Knoll, and then Oak Knoll ascending 28 to Chickahominy.

[04:23:57] And you'll note that Mechanicsville is not on here because there are no shifts in that pattern. Attlee, 198 to Hanover, and then Hanover ascending 13 to Attlee. So, next steps. What comes next?

[04:24:19] The school board work group is recommending to the entire school board the green scenario. This will be presented as an action item at the April 8, 2025 business meeting. The school board work group further recommends delaying implementation of the initial boundary modifications until the fall of the 2026-27 school year.

[04:24:38] This will be presented as an action item, I believe, later this evening. The school board work group is also recommending that the HCPS administration develop an implementation plan framework for the school board's consideration. Thank you, Dr. Lance.

[04:24:58] Do we have any comments or questions from the dais, Mr. Mr. Martin? Yeah, I do. A couple comments. First, thank you for all your work on this. I was on the committee, and I had Ms. Stone and Mr. Whitley send me a bunch of data, convinced that I was going to be better at this than you guys.

[04:25:18] Needless to say, I was not. I spent a lot of time looking at it, and I think you guys have done a wonderful job doing this. One of the things that when you show the impacted numbers, this process is really difficult. but we're only impacting 7% of our county.

[04:25:33] And I know that it's really hard for those 7%. I'm speaking as a dad of kids that are going to get moved. My kids are part of the 7%. So I understand and completely see the impact there. But I do think for all of the buzz and talk about this to only impact 7% of our county is a win for us.

[04:25:52] So I just want to thank you on that and appreciate all you've done. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Martin. Anybody else? And I probably am remiss in saying this, But I really want to thank our vice chair, Coach Eikenberry, Mr. Martin, and Ms. Welch for working as the subcommittee that worked with MGT.

[04:26:12] Y'all's hard work and the hours and hours and hours of effort put into this is remarkable. And we appreciate MGT being as flexible and easy to work with as they were. And it makes us very proud of where we are on this whole process.

[04:26:28] So thank you very much, Lance. We appreciate all you've done. And thank you to Ryan and Steve and Whitney. In fairness, I need to look up in the little corner there and do a wave at McKay Larrabee. She is the wizard behind the curtain. She and her team have spent countless hours in looking at this, analyzing this, reworking this.

[04:26:49] They are the true craftsmen of this enterprise. So you're just the pretty face of MGT. Wow. I'll take it. I will take it. Thank you. Coach? Well, with that said, McKay, thank you again for everything.

[04:27:07] I think I said this earlier to you, and, again, this process started, Chris Whitley, August, July. Yeah, Jennifer, for that original committee in the basement of one of these buildings that are, I can't tell you where it was or right after what.

[04:27:27] But we connected with MGT based upon various vendors, and you all stood out, and for obvious reasons. And I think the leadership of McKay and Lance and Cameron, there you go, I got it.

[04:27:45] Those three have been, I think, the big focus of your company going forward, at least in Hanover County, Virginia. So I applaud your efforts and your energy. And easy to work with, right, Ms. Stone? yes they were again thank you again okay anybody else thank you very much and we'll see how the things turn out here in a little bit and with that we'll move on to our next topic under information and discussion with Ms. Hahn on revised review of proposed revisions to policy

[04:28:19] 7-2.3 thank you Mr. Chair what you have in front of you is a proposed revision to policy 7-2.3 regarding school admissions this is on for first read so no action needs to be taken this evening this policy update allows the superintendent to consider special circumstances and deciding whether a student may remain in Hanover County when they no longer meet the residency requirements

[04:28:53] so for example if a family encounters circumstances that you know require them to move out of the county it allows the superintendent to consider those circumstances and potentially allow the students to stay at their current school through the end of the school year this edit also provides an option to appeal should someone disagree with the decision of the superintendent and that would come to the full board and i'm happy to answer any questions do we have any questions

[04:29:28] of miss hahn thank you very much excellent job as usual and i will tell you now i have to beg forgiveness because um we talked about all the work mgt did and our staff did but honestly our school staff the the central office staff for all y'all have done to answer the thousands and thousands of questions and jen to be able to pull up this gripe to pull things together to give us uh data when we need it um it's i'm sorry that i left y'all out initially but you really did an excellent job and we really appreciate it so we acknowledge this has been a complete team effort

[04:30:03] and we thank you and your staff for all you've done to support us so with that i will now move on to our new accreditation model oh she didn't stay okay let's see if you do it as good i'm sorry mr chair you get the b team for this one um so thank you for having us back um board members we're able to hear a very in-depth approach to how the new accreditation and accountability system from the state is being rolled out and will be embraced by our schools starting right now and

[04:30:40] i am going to give a high overview but if i skip anything that you believe that the public would want to hear please just stop me and i will do my best but i'm going to try to keep it at a higher level tonight. All right. So the first thing is to just really recognize that the changes that we have are keeping the focus on student achievement, but the way in which it is measured is slightly different. And so you can see the old system up at the top was looking at pass rates, looked at different content areas, looked at different reporting categories, graduation, chronic

[04:31:19] absenteeism and something called CCCRI. We're replacing some of that and really shifting some of the emphasis. So I know that when we have come with accreditation results each year, we have to stop and we say to the board, so here's our pass rate, but here's the rate that counts towards our accreditation. And what we will be doing this year is something very different because we are looking at everything coming into a scale. And so every single student in our schools has the opportunity

[04:31:54] to increase the score for their school. And I love that idea because it's not this sort of nameless, faceless thing. Every student has the opportunity to contribute a point here or contribute a point there. And I think it really does build on the community of learners that we believe in.

[04:32:12] The other thing that I want to mention as a high overview is that this particular accreditation system, I think, marries beautifully with the comprehensive plan that the board has adopted. The emphasis, the priorities are quite in alignment, and so I am very comfortable leading the way with our instructional team and our principals and our teachers towards this accreditation model because it already holds true to the core values that we have.

[04:32:39] Here are some of the features of the framework. I do want to call out here specifically that our English language learners and their progress is something that is highly emphasized in this new model. And so we want to make sure that those students have the opportunity to show their growth year after year.

[04:33:00] The way that the state has set this up is our students take, by state law, a test called the Access for L's every single year that they are in public schools in Virginia. What we look for for having that category is we're looking for the progress that a student makes from one year to the next.

[04:33:23] And so points can be accumulated for that progress that is being made. A school that has at least 15 test takers for two years in a row will have that reporting category embedded. If a school, though, does not have 15 two-time test takers, then that will not be reported out to the public.

[04:33:42] And so you'll see that some of our schools will have this category incorporated into their overall score, and some of our schools will not. When you look at the bottom, this is a very different way of reporting out. And so now we're really looking at, is our school distinguished, on-track, off-track, or does our school need intensive support?

[04:34:04] Ms. Curry, who gave the presentation during the work session, proudly shared with you that we have, based upon last year's testing, that we have all of our schools on-track or distinguished, which is exactly where we want to be, but we know that we want to move more from the on-track into the distinguished area.

[04:34:25] And there was quite a conversation with the board about that this afternoon. When you look at the two systems next to each other, you have the newer system on the left and the older system on the right. And so what they are trying to do is to merge these two systems so that the state system and the federal system speak to each other and that we're not chasing two different goals within our accreditation and accountability.

[04:34:52] And so they have blended these in so that we have the new support and performance framework. When you look at the new framework, you can see that there are different components for elementary, middle, and then for high up at the top, and we'll go into more depth there.

[04:35:09] You can see that the distinguished on-track, off-track, and needs-intensive support is across the board, so every school, whether it's elementary, middle, or high, will still fall into one of those four buckets even though the input amounts are different for the different levels and then we also do look at whether or not we need additional federal support and that is sort of at the bottom of the screen so here's what it looks like and here's how it's different across the different levels at elementary school we're looking at mastery as 65 percent

[04:35:44] growth at 25 percent and readiness at 10 percent you see those shifting percentages and graduation replaces growth at the high school level what that does is it shows you how our state prioritizes different ways of learning and showing your learning at different levels within our school divisions so elementary to middle to high school i'm going to get into what each of these categories entails. So when you look at the elementary school, we're looking at growth. There's a thing called

[04:36:19] expected growth, and that is a statistical term. To look at a student and how far they have come from their last grade levels testing to the new grade levels testing, but it's based upon a cohort of peers who had similar testing history. And so that is how we look at the growth for both reading and for math. Mastery, though, is did they meet the standards? Did they get that quote-unquote passing score on their SOL? And so that comes side by side. In the old system, there was a blending of mastery and growth. You could get some extra points for growth, but it wouldn't

[04:36:58] necessarily relate to the mastery. So now they're separated out, and I think that's more transparent for our community so that they can see what is our mastery of this, but then also how are we growing. And they're not tied together in a way that the public can't determine why are we doing well or where might we be struggling. This will make it more clear. When we look at readiness, that's readiness for learning. And so when you see that orange color, we're looking at chronic absenteeism right now. And then the state is going to build out some performance tasks for both middle and elementary school that relate a little bit more towards that readiness idea. And so in

[04:37:37] elementary is going to be related to the five C's, critical thinking, some of the things that you heard Ms. Stackpole talk about earlier today. And then when you get into middle school, it's also about career and making sure that we're tying those critical thinking and creativity into career pathways. The absentee rate is consistent across all three levels. It is very important for our community that our students are engaged on a regular daily basis with their education. And so So this is a metric that we can use to make sure that we are paying attention to our students being in the classroom where they can learn best.

[04:38:15] When you look at high school, one of the features is how much graduation counts. And so graduation is 15 percent. That is completely appropriate. That's the end game. That is success for 13 years of hard work, both on the part of the student, but also on the part of the staff and the faculty and the teachers and the parents and the community as a whole.

[04:38:36] And so we want to make sure that we're celebrating that, and I believe that this accreditation system really does put a strong value on that. There is another component to readiness in the high school, which is the three E's, and we are going to be talking about that.

[04:38:52] This gives a little bit more information about how each of these categories fits in mathematically, and you can see all of the percentages there. Here's your middle school slide with the same information, and high school.

[04:39:15] When we look at the readiness framework, these are the three E's. These are the concrete ways that we know that our students are ready to go on past our gates after 12th grade. And so here's where I was talking about students are able to earn points basically.

[04:39:32] When you think of, I know that many of you are very intrigued by our house system and students earning points, to me there's a lot of similarities here. Our students are earning points for their school, to uplift their school and to show show the community how it is that we are achieving all together as a community of learners.

[04:39:50] And so employment, enlistment, and enrollment are the three ways that students can earn points for their school based upon how they are going to transition into the "real world" that they will see. So when you're looking at employment, there are going to be some lists that come out from VDOE and V-O-E-E that help us as a community to understand where the high-demand, high-wage fields are.

[04:40:16] and really promote that within our CTE curricula and other areas so that we can promote that. Enlistment is related to an ASVAB test, which is an aptitude test that the military uses. And so this is a test that is free to our students.

[04:40:34] Right now, we use it primarily with our ROTC students. But we're looking at, and other divisions are as well, if we can expand that offering to students who wish to partake who aren't necessarily in the ROTC. And then enrollment.

[04:40:50] Are our kids ready to go to a two-year school or a four-year school? And so you can see here that points can be earned by dual enrollment, AP or IB. And there's a variety of ways that that can happen. And we're going to be excited to bring to you a little bit later this spring some of the advancing work that we're doing with embedding a little bit more dual enrollment within our system.

[04:41:15] And so here is a mathematical spreadsheet-- I love a good spreadsheet-- that helps to understand how the things are weighted and how they're totaled. This really is a formula that comes directly from the state. Ms. Curry was able to plug in our data from last year, starting to plug in some data that we already know exists for this particular year in order to see where our progress is coming and where we need to pay a little bit more attention.

[04:41:41] And when we know that we need to pay a little bit more attention, we're able to apply the resources that are given to us by the school board and to the school board by the Board of Supervisors in order to make sure that our students are receiving what they need to be successful. I love this system because it is both very global in looking at a community's success and very granule in allowing for us to remain fine-tunely focused on an individual student, on every individual student that exists within our division.

[04:42:14] And so here are the performance categories and it sort of gives you the idea of what the ranges are, but then also what the descriptors might look like. And so we are really fortunate that our starting point is on track and distinguished, and we have room to grow, but we're not fighting some of the demons that might exist with off-track or needs intensive support.

[04:42:36] So we're in a great starting place. These are some resources that we have provided, and I am happy to answer any questions. Any questions that we didn't get answered earlier? Anybody got any comments or statements?

[04:42:52] think it's uh I think it's wonderful and I think your comments about how it ties in to allowing us to actually feel day to day that we're contributing to what the final scores are and and you did mention that all schools are either uh are on the right track that's a good way of putting it as we go into the new year and we I didn't hear you say the results should be out this summer fall did I hear did I miss that or did you not say no we typically will get the results in the summer there's always a little bit of wiggle room if i'm honest and because we also

[04:43:29] have two new testing um controls this year it's a new test for all of our math and a new test for all of our ela the state needs to do their magical statistical work before they can give us the results and so there will be at some point over the summer we will send out a great big celebration to show you what our achievements have been that's what i was after thank you any other comments thank you miss grey very much for that i'm gonna stay right i was gonna say are you taking the next one too go ahead all right all right i'm not sure that we have more information um to display than

[04:44:05] what we have in the past so mr chair school board members dr penny cuff this presentation is a follow-up to the conversations that we've begun in a couple of work sessions related to how the school board wishes us to proceed with the athletes who attend the hanover science specialty center and so in past months we have reviewed data i do have some updated data related to the winter and the spring sports at hanover and we will add that in we are being a little careful because as

[04:44:40] some of you noted when you made comments earlier our track teams did a great job this year and so our spring track teams had a little bit late start in getting into tryouts and producing their rosters and so I want to make sure that the information that I give you for the spring is accurate but right now the percentages are tracking very similarly to what you see up here and so I do don't expect any huge bumps or changes related to that but we will get that out to you just now you were passed some information related to JV participation in girls sports mr. I can bury the last

[04:45:17] time we discussed this data asked some probing questions related to softball for example and why there might be a higher percentage of athletes at hanover who participate in the specialty center and whether that is being offset in other schools and so he asked me to pull and find out information related to what jv teams were participating across the division and the information that you have in front of you the first thing that you're going to notice is that at hanover high school quite transparently they are able to offer all of the girls jv teams whereas at some of the other schools

[04:45:56] we see gaps here and there particularly in softball and soccer sometimes it's a year on a year off and sometimes it's straight across one way or the other and so i'm happy to answer further questions but i do understand that this is a time for the board to have its discussion as well well and i think there's also some further guidance that may be coming down do you want to just at least touch on that i will we've received information that the vhsl is actually looking at changing some of the rules around transfer and it would impact specialty center decision making not in terms of whether a family chooses to have their student attend the specialty center but what the decision

[04:46:34] making might be around athletics if they start at a center and leave or if they go into a center a a little bit later. And so we're waiting on VHSL to do that decision-making. We believe that the topic will be introduced on Thursday and then voted on on Friday. Okay, thank you. Mr. Seifert.

[04:46:53] Yes, ma'am. Thank you for the briefing. I have a question. With these schools not having girls JV teams, does that mean that more girls are being cut? I mean, you know, you don't have enough for a team, but are there eight girls that get cut because they can't quite make a team? Sure. So When there aren't enough spots on the varsity team for all of the kids who came out But there aren't enough kids to place into a JV team there will certainly be students who are cut Do you think we end up more girls so with less opportunities than at these schools, but I think it's gonna be a year Yeah, it's it's definitely a year to year as you can see

[04:47:28] There is a lot of up and down and it just relates to which kids that particular year Want to come out for which particular sport and so it's hard to find a trend that is enough for us to to say yes it's absolutely impacting here because we see it impacting sometimes and not others if we could get some data even anecdotal like you know do these three schools that don't have all the jv teams if they're you know i spoke with ms more yeah i spoke with ms more about this and she said that she did not believe but again we can dig more closely into the individual student

[04:48:03] level if you need us to um she did not believe that the individuals who play at hanover had they played at their home schools would have necessarily meant that there were enough kids then yet to play back at their zone schools because you're taking kids and scattering them to three other schools yeah makes sense thank you go try miss Greif thanks again for this this update I appreciate that but I do actually see a glaring trend at mechanics Ohio school they haven't had soccer and softball uh for years right so there as i said the different schools have different

[04:48:43] patterns and i've seen the same thing at atlee uh also in the same thing they haven't had soccer in years and they are finally fielding a softball team for the first time in four years and i wonder if that has to do with the success of the softball team last spring at atlee it it might have but you know when i'm looking at um you know the data that we have in front of us um where i'm looking at hanover's softball team currently let's say they keep and you're a former softball coach so you typically would keep how many 15 girls yeah about that okay so 15 girls based upon the

[04:49:17] statistics that i have right in front of me now would mean approximately um eight girls would be hanover high school community girls and seven would not or or vice versa yeah it would be that close

[04:49:32] And so that tells me that if it happened to be eight coming from the other three high schools, only seven from the Hanover community, so only seven girls that maybe played in Little League and softball in the Hanover community and wanted to rise on up and eventually become a hawk and play softball, they would get bumped by the other three high schools' girls that attend the Health Science Center.

[04:50:02] now that's a question that i have not asked yet to know and i don't know whether the records have been kept to know whether that whether at hanover if there were students who were cut from these sports from these jv teams that would have otherwise been playing in their zone i'm going to be quite frank as a female athlete and coach i think that we need to do more to encourage our girls across the board to participate in sports and try to figure out why the change has happened when i was coaching and i know that this was a long long time ago

[04:50:38] but when i was coaching with jackie davis over at mechanicsville we had full teams all the time and we were still having to cut students and we don't like to cut students because we want to give them as many opportunities but what has happened with girls and some of it was lacrosse we added women's lacrosse girls lacrosse and our numbers in soccer and our numbers in softball did decline because there was a different opportunity for them to choose in the spring and so i think that looking at this comprehensively from a girls sports perspective is worthwhile no matter what decision the board decides to make about hanover right well it's not just the girls when i look at

[04:51:17] the varsity wrestling and uh nearly one and three are coming from outside of the hanover uh health science center and the same thing for the previous year also so that seems to be a a common stability there so it is not just for the girls I mean I've got obviously as mr. Macon attest sees I'm a very simple guy I got a C for cuts and roughly 12 activities and for the most part it I see trends I see gymnastics is

[04:51:51] very high also and as is competition cheer at I mean at Hanover High School and and it's not like that and they even i believe this year have a jv competition cheer whereas the other schools don't even have jvs and so again um i just don't want um look looking at all of it i don't want to see the health science bumping the hanover community for one thing and then leaving the other three schools empty and it's not about winning it's about participation

[04:52:26] I mean, look just what happened when we, again, I saluted the Attlee track team, right. So, again, it's not just about that. It's about, to me, and I think Mr. Seifer might agree, it's about participation. And that's where I'm coming from.

[04:52:42] I agree with you. The more the merrier. I agree with you. And I'll just say, and participation leads to winning. I mean, the bigger pool of kids we have, you know, we win more also, which is a positive for good reason. Okay. Any other comments? Thank you, Ms. Greif.

[04:52:58] you're very we appreciate it very much and with that we will now move into public comment and for public comment i'll read the instructions for public comment but i do want to a comment that i know that we uh we have a lot that i want to have something to say about the boundary adjustment and i just want to remind you we we obviously want to hear what you have to say but please for the boundary input we need to remind you the best way to get the information to us is online through the form online and to get it from our main web page to community tab boundary adjustment the form is under the community engagement tab and that is consolidated

[04:53:37] for us to review on a weekly basis so we will we will continue to look at that as we move forward through this process and with that the school board conducts the public comment segment of its meetings to receive information from the general public on matters related to hanover county public schools per board policy the total town allotted for public comments shall not exceed 60 minutes speakers addressing the school board are requested to follow these guidelines as each speaker is recognized by the vice chair the speaker is asked to clearly state the speaker's name magisterial district and the subject of the speaker's remarks speakers are asked to address their comments to the board and not to the audience the board requests that the audience refrain from

[04:54:17] responding to speaker's comments with applause or any other audible expressions of approval or disapproval the time allotted to each speaker shall be three minutes each speaker's elapsed time will appear on the screen speakers will also receive notification from the vice chair that when time has expired although the board does not permit the use of slideshows or other projected materials during this segment speakers are invited to provide printed copies of such materials to the board the board expresses its appreciation for the public's input and cooperation during this segment of the meeting and with that coach ike i turn it over to you thank you mr chair um maggie hoge

[04:54:54] or okay good and craig maxey you're on deck is craig maxey here he is okay thank you're on deck good evening good evening um no pressure we're going first my name is maggie hoag and i'm with the chickahominy district and i have two children at cool springs elementary school a kindergartner and a third grader and thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak to you this evening on the boundary adjustment. At a previous meeting, a comment was made suggesting that the school board was just in charge of schools. However, we all know that your role extends far beyond that.

[04:55:32] You represent Hanover and the decisions you make impact every family and neighborhood in our county. We are in the situation because for years, the school board and the county have turned a blind eye to the growing needs of our community. Even as recently as 2018, the capital planning proposals schools did not include Cool Springs, despite the knowledge of nearly 1,000 homes would be built in the neighborhoods around the school, like Honey Meadows, Taylor Farms, Summer Duck, and Giles.

[04:56:00] The oversight seems irresponsible, given the families moved here for the same reasons, the wonderfulness of our amazing schools we have here. It's disheartening, though, that the situation has fostered a narrative of us versus everyone else in Attlee. This overcrowding issue isn't solely caused by Giles, it's a collective challenge that affects all of our neighborhoods.

[04:56:22] I sincerely appreciate that you have decided to push the implementation of the changes until 2026. This gives us time to address the issues at hand and do this so thoughtfully. However, I would like to express my frustration with the handling of the Indigo option, presented on a Friday evening, February 21st at 6.30 p.m.

[04:56:45] And by February 25th, barely two days later, it was no longer an option. The Indigo option appeared to be a superficial gesture rather than a genuine proposal. Indigo did not have the equitable opportunity for community feedback compared to the other options.

[04:57:02] However, if we land on the green option with accommodations, please ensure that the Giles neighborhood would not move until the construction is complete. My third grader has already had two school years where her classrooms were last-minute adjustments. I will say even this year, her classroom was a previous art storage closet.

[04:57:23] That's so serious. However, I firmly believe that her current situation would be far better than moving to a construction zone in an already crowded school. The original guiding principles was to avoid natural barriers. The children in Giles would have to cross 301, but not directly into Washington Henry via Attlee.

[04:57:39] I would like to point out that buses physically could not make the left turn on Mann Road because of the harsh angle. It would have to go down 301 and right on to Shady Grove. lastly i urge you to guarantee that the feeder from washington henry would not move away from chickahominy and atley high it would be ludicrous for us to move away from these schools as there are so many more across the ash creek road that would need to be addressed prior to thank you again for your careful consideration and the evolution of our conversations and incorporating community feedback and for those on the board that are veterans thank you for your service thank you so before we pause the clock so before we go any further you heard it said it

[04:58:18] was briefed earlier if you were here if you weren't here i'm sorry you missed it um we're gonna it's going to be a motion made in about an hour we finished public comment there's going to be a motion made to delay implementation yes for 26 to 27 so you you may have missed that vital point but we're going to not move the majority that's going to be the recommendation and i won't speak for my board until the board votes but the recommendation will be that we will move the communities that are going to be impacted once washington henry is completed so i want to make sure that that's clear before we go any further that everybody that's going to get

[04:58:57] up and talk to us make sure you know that it's going to be we already have the motions drawn up and we'll read them here in just a minute so just reminder that we'll we will delay whatever we decide on in april will be delayed a year for implementation a small piece will move in 26 but But the majority will not move until 27 after Washington Henry is completed.

[04:59:17] Okay? Thank you for that clarification. You're welcome. The communication outward beyond this room this evening just made it said 27 regardless. So thank you for the clarification. You're welcome. But in your speech and everything you said, you kept talking about stuff, and I wanted to make sure we get that clarified because I'm sure other people are going to stand up and say the same similar stuff.

[04:59:34] I just want to try to get it clarified up front that that is the recommendation that's going to come out of your committee. Yes, sir. Well, the recommendation is in two phases, basically. we'll take a small step in 26-27 and a larger one the following year when Washington Henry is complete and so the majority of the move will occur in the following year once the new school is built but tonight we're just going to make a recommendation for roughly a 17-month delay okay for anything to happen at all okay and then we'll obviously give staff time to start

[05:00:10] working on that implementation that would be the second motion so it would two motions tonight and again obviously as uh lance mentioned from mgt us leaning towards the green scenario we're still leaning towards the green scenario but again that won't happen again for another month so that'll be at our april meeting when we will give where we really want to go with this as far as green or blue or purple or as you mentioned indigo but again indigo was created

[05:00:45] actually by mgt kind of an offshoot of purple late okay and it was done by them okay one of the people that i mentioned tonight when i was thanking them happened to be the person that i was a part of that when it happened and then like you said it it disappeared shortly thereafter very shortly yeah shortly thereafter yes but thanks again for your attention all this thank you for your commitment and the evolution and the reassurance you're welcome and if you hang around long enough after this public comment session's over if you could just wait the motions will be

[05:01:21] made that is the very next thing after public comment so thank you you're craig maxi i am and next is uh lisa peterson as she's here okay thank you sir mr chairman and members of the board my name is craig maxi and i am a chickahominy district resident i'm also the parent of three current and future pearson's corner panthers while i'm speaking my personal capacity my comments will track closely with sentiments expressed within our 100 member rutland community school boundary adjustment group i want to start by thanking the members of the school board's work group for their many hours spent studying maps looking at statistics and listening to parents and other

[05:01:59] members of the community they have gone above and beyond by creating and analyzing more and more boundary adjustment permutations as part of their core effort to alleviate cool spring elementary's overcrowding and properly utilize washington henry elementary's current and future capacity i support the variation of the green plan the work group's recommendation that shifts three contiguous neighborhoods craney island atley manor and giles from cool spring elementary to washington henry elementary the green plan best balances future school utilization to minimize the risk of having to undertake an additional boundary adjustment process in the near future

[05:02:37] acknowledging that as with any boundary adjustment plan the green plan causes disruption to those neighborhoods which are moved the green plan however moves these three interconnected neighborhoods that are walkable together you can walk or bike between these three neighborhoods without crossing any significant natural boundaries such as at least station road to the northeast or the farmland and atlee rec to the northwest of giles while there would be disruption in these neighborhoods the plan should minimize the disruption to children's neighborhood friendships developed nurtured and reinforced by going to school together and then coming home and being able

[05:03:14] to walk or bike to each other's homes it is concerned with the indigo plans split of rutland both within rutland and from connected walkable neighborhoods which led to the creation of our rutland community school board adjustment group in rutland we recognize that washington henry pearson's corner and cool spring elementary are all good schools and well supported by the school board the indigo plan hit so close to home in rutland because it would not only split most of rutland from the rutland center townhomes but it would also split us from cool spring forest i'm sure that many of you are familiar with rutland and cool spring forest these are two

[05:03:53] neighborhoods with interconnected neighborhood streets in fact on my neighborhood street in rutland my next door neighbors are in cool spring forest my kids and many others in rutland have close relationships with those next door neighbors 30 seconds forced they walk or bike to each other's homes under the indigo plan they would be sent to different schools the work group's recommended green plan keeps all of rotland and cool spring forest at the same elementary it respects those natural boundaries and those neighborhoods i encourage you to adopt the work group's recommendation to promote and protect these neighborhood friendships thank you thank you

[05:04:32] lisa peterson followed by christian cole christian cole hi hi my name is lisa peterson i am retired from elmont elementary and substitute for hanover county public schools i am currently in a long-term position at ashland in kindergarten which i love what district are you from ma'am i'm in ashland thank you thank you i'm here to speak about the most recent change to the western corridor boundary as of the last school board meeting my neighborhood country club hills was added to be moved to south

[05:05:09] anna our neighborhood is a well-established older neighborhood that many myself and my daughter have purposely chosen not only for the school system but for the schools there's not a lot of turnover in this neighborhood. Both of my children attended Henry Clay, Gandy, Liberty, and graduated from Patrick Henry in 2010 and 2014. Our granddaughter attends Ashland and is in the third grade.

[05:05:33] It takes me eight minutes from our neighborhood to get to Ashland and 20 to get to South Anna, and that's by car. How long are these children going to be on a bus to start their day and end their day going to South Anna? I'm concerned about the children who will be in the fourth and especially the fifth grade when they're supposed to start this new school. These two classes are commonly known as our COVID kids as they were in pre-k and kindergarten during the pandemic.

[05:06:01] Many of these students were online and while they learned what they missed was the social and emotional aspect of school. Playing at recess and eating lunch with your friends is vital to a child's well-being. These children are just now showing adjustments to being back in school.

[05:06:17] For fifth graders to have to move and leave their school their friends and teachers would be hard enough but then to turn around and head to middle school the next year well that could be devastating. Middle school is quite an adjustment for most students. Is this something that we want to do to these children? I'm not sure about the number of kids in Country Club Hills that attend Ashland but I did ask our bus driver and she said she picks up 10 in the morning and returns 4 in the afternoon so I'm thinking 20. This makes me feel like these newer neighborhoods are pushing us out i'm asking that this recent decision be reviewed or to allow an exemption for the fourth

[05:06:57] and fifth graders so that they can finish their elementary years at ashland and assist them with the transition to middle school and i appreciate your thoughtful consideration thank you and miss peterson uh if you listened to were you here i did i did did you see the change from back to the green yes no um hanover hills because i'll speak for the west because he's not sure where the west is i do know where the west is because i'm familiar with the maps but i'll let mr may the country club estates was moved back to ashland elementary right it was yes ma'am it was thank you that's what was briefed earlier just so you know that thank you you're welcome and again adjustments

[05:07:37] are being made uh depending on you know what we hear on the ground especially from bus drivers yep yep they are very important uh christian cole followed by bob nelson good evening good evening my name is kristin cole my family lives in the chickahominy district and i'm here to speak about the boundary adjustments i have a daughter at cool spring elementary in second grade and a daughter at atlee in ninth grade i have had very productive conversations with several of you over the last couple of weeks and i'm grateful for the chance to address you all this evening i appreciate the board's communications to the public thus far and the accommodations that have

[05:08:16] been made both tonight and and previous to tonight um to the proposed scenarios based on public feedback. However, it's been disappointing that our community is facing these issues now. The school board has been reactive to growing school utilization issues instead of proactive, which could have been avoided with better decisions years ago when residential developments were being approved. While we cannot change the past, we must learn from it to prevent future issues and how those issues are handled. My fear is our communities will face similar problems in five to ten years as our children progress through school. According to the MGT presentation, if the green scenario is

[05:08:52] approved chickahominy middle will be at 91 utilization in 2029 when my youngest daughter is set to attend sixth grade there in the 2020 in the excuse me in the 2034 in the green scenario atley high school will be at 96 utilization during her 11th grade year i urge the board to continue to prioritize our our county's future growth and development plans when considering the current boundary changes please ensure that parents do not again have to fear sudden redistricting with only month's notice. We would like assurance that after these boundary adjustments are made that we can feel confident in knowing what schools our children will attend for their remaining academic

[05:09:32] career. Regarding the working group's recommendation tonight, I appreciate that the potential vote to delay implementation is being considered. Allowing a year before implementation of anything allows families time to adjust and prepare our kids. This accommodation makes it feel like you've heard your community's feedback and i thank you for that lastly i'd like to address the pervasive narrative which has been shared at previous board meetings in the public comment that king's charter sold or gave the land to the county to build cool spring with an agreement for attendance in perpetuity from my research the school board purchased the land through eminent domain from

[05:10:09] honey meadows in 1989. public schools are not built to serve demographics by contract that's what private schools are for if such a document does exist i would ask the school board publicly disclose whether this has been part of your considerations which in my opinion would go against the guiding principles the board stands for 30 seconds i appreciate your attention and careful consideration in this matter thank you i don't have to uh good evening chairman may and school board members one second mr nelson i i've not called the next we're gonna get the next one

[05:10:43] day i'm sorry uh daniel is it geist or geist geist okay you're not mr nelson you're up bob you're up i just hadn't gotten that far yet i'm sorry i apologize me too uh good evening chairman may and school board members my name is bob nelson i reside in the ashland district my comments concern redistricting in addition to cool spring is the best option in fact essential to resolving elementary school redistricting here are my reasons for this conclusion first no decisions

[05:11:17] have been made all options should be considered second an eight classroom addition to cool springs adds capacity where it's needed the most using the 21 students per teacher ratio hanover strives for cool spring capacity increases to 930 students third trailers have created created an open campus environment at Cool Spring. A brick and mortar addition is the safest option. Fourth, three new or replacement elementary schools have been approved. Washington Henry is pending approval

[05:11:55] and an addition is proposed for the Hanover Trades and Technology Center. Taking an eight classroom addition to Cool Spring off the table is arbitrary and capricious. Fifth, and perhaps most important. Under the blue-green scenarios, over 500 students are affected by major, disruptive, and costly domino effects of redistricting. These impacts largely disappear with a cool spring addition. 237 students won't need to be sent to Washington Henry.

[05:12:32] 212 Washington Henry students won't need to be sent to Mechanicsville and Rural Point. 85 Mechanicsville students won't need to be sent to Cold Harbor. And that's just the major movement changes. Finally, turning to middle and high school redistricting using MGT's methodology, the blue-green scenarios fail to equalize capacity utilization.

[05:13:00] No students should be sent to Chickahominy from Oak Knoll or to Attlee from Hanover. I provided a spreadsheet with the analysis supporting these conclusions. These are well-supported, common-sense recommendations.

[05:13:17] Please think outside the box. Adopt them. Thank you. Thank you, Danielle, and followed by Rebecca Raymond and Michael Raymond. Not yet.

[05:13:38] Hi, my name is Danielle Geist. I have a 9th grader at Atlee High. Our family lives in Milestone in the Ashland District. The boundary readjustment could result in him transferring to Hanover High.

[05:13:58] i'm here tonight to bring attention to the more than 350 middle and high school students that the mgt boundary adjustment presentation that was displayed tonight is being rezoned from chickahominy atley into openel hanover high per the plan on that same page it lists that approximately 1200 total students will be rezoned in the next two to three years this means that 30 percent of the rezone students are middle high school students 30 percent of them in reviewing the mgt presentation attending work sessions and listening to the overall discussion of the plan

[05:14:36] it does not appear that 30 percent of the total boundary adjustment effort has been focused on these middle and high school students and the best path path forward for them i am here tonight to present to the board a petition signed by the families of fifth and twelfth graders impacted by the rezoning of milestone in topopotami neighborhoods the petition reads i am a parent guardian of a student currently in fifth through 12th grade at kersey creek chick hominy or atley i would like my family to have the choice for my rising sixth grade or middle high school student to remain at chick hominy atley through the planned high school graduation or transfer

[05:15:10] to oak knoll hanover the choice we want the choice to keep our children there over 60 parents took time to sign our names to this petition sharing with you our requests for our families to choose the best school pathway for our students many of these same families are attending this meeting tonight i am presenting also a picture of some of the milestone cms at least students who gathered together on their own time a snow day at the milestone entrance in unity to share their request for families to choose the best pathway to graduation one of the guiding principles of the

[05:15:46] boundary adjustment is minimize impact moving sixth and 12th graders from their current school to another one is a significant impact that most of our families have already experienced when our students transition from Kersey to Chickahominy. Many families have shared this was a rough transition and one that we only expected to experience once in our students' K through 12 education.

[05:16:09] This is where many of our classrooms, there was maybe 5 to 20 students that came from Kersey and went on to Chickahominy, where all the rest of the students at Kersey, they went to Oak Knoll. students were separated from all of their friends and this is going to happen to them again 30 seconds please consider this this transition results in students losing established friendships social networks teammates teachers coaches and advisors many students are concerned about how they will find new friends in the school that is their rival just right now families are concerned about how this move will impact students self-esteem and confidence their progression extracurricular activities and the

[05:16:48] possibility achieving key leadership positions consider the burden placed upon our middle high school students that are impacted by these change areas our families understand these middle school students thank you ma'am thank you rebecca raymond and michael raymond and on deck is zinat nisa you want to pull the microphone down sir please hey sir can you pull the microphone down thank you oh look at you you're pulling her up i like that even better there you go

[05:17:28] Good evening. My name is Rebecca. I am in the Beaverdam District and I am in Miss Confidence third grade class at Ashland Elementary School. Don't move my sister Morgan and me to South Santa Elementary School. Don't. The reason is it would make me wake up earlier and I would sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, because I hate to wake up early. Another reason is I would be farther away

[05:18:08] from my friends. Also, I love Miss Crockett. She is my friend and is good at keeping me focused. No other teacher is able to do that. It would be hard to focus without her, and that is why I don't want to move. But that's the beginning. Miss Crockett helps me when I am down. So does Miss Compline. Miss Howell and Miss Holden are busy but love seeing a smile on my face. I hate to be alone without them. Ha-ha's and giggles can't be here without Mrs. Maloney's class. She makes me smile

[05:18:47] which I take to the nurses. Learning chess and making friends happen here. Miss Churchill can find me a good book in no time. The days go by fast with her. I can't sit down with her. Miss Miss Stanley makes time go faster with her cheering mood.

[05:19:06] All that fun makes me happy with her. They are all like a sister to me and Morgan. I can't go without them. Morgan can't either. So that is why I don't want to move. So no moving. Thank you. Thank you.

[05:19:26] We're not supposed to do that, but we'll do it for a seven-year-old or eight-year-old. For a third grader. Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir. Good evening. They're separate. ourselves yeah thank you thank you good evening mr chair mr vice chair members of the school board good evening my name is michael raymond i'm in the beaver dam district and i'm the proud parent of two daughters who attend ashland elementary school i'm going to deviate from my previous submitted remarks in light of the presentation we just saw because i was intending to speak to you about my strong opposition to the latest edition recommended by mgt to include the western

[05:20:05] corridor portion north of staggs creek as part of the modified green scenario i want to appreciate the board scenario or the board form looking at all of the factors in considering the human elements specifically focusing on two of the guiding principles to minimize the number of students impacted by the boundary adjustment and to consider transportation impacts and work towards limiting the time required on a bus as the shift of those two purple areas north of stags creek and west along 54 from ashland elementary to south end elementary would not adhere to those guidelines i appreciate your consideration and the changes that we saw tonight and i see no further need to

[05:20:43] comment so we'll yield the rest of my time back thank you thank you wow thank you we'll let you speak anytime you want to you can always yield after one minute uh zenith nissa followed by kristen holty good evening members of the board my name is zenith nissa here again i was speaker in the last meeting also um i haven't even made my speech i don't know what do i say i am from chickahominy district two boys in cool springs elementary school i understand a board has made the decision to go with green but it's not written on the stone and we still have a vote in april if

[05:21:22] you still can consider listening to these 317 families who have signed the petition and requested board please listen to our concerns we want our kids to be with cool springs the reasons are transportation we are 0.25 miles from cool springs and we are being sent to school which is three 2.7 miles precise almost three miles from us that means the impact the guiding principle is impact less impact on kids how are you going to address that why are our kids to be sent where we can literally walk i cross the road and i walk and my boys go to school versus now they will be on

[05:22:02] buses and much longer time it's like 300 times more that's my one one point if you can consider the transportation and the impact on students if we see green has almost the same impact indigo has and wireless purple has less impact on the students like maggie said in the earlier the indigo option came and it just disappeared in two days was it like playing with parents emotions why was it not considered what are what are the reasons it was not considered and how is green better than indigo

[05:22:37] we need some answers and if you can reconsider your decision uh also middle school and high school chickahominy and atlee do we have a guarantee down the road in 10 years time are we again here talking about why are we rezoned again why are we now sent again because chickahominy will be 91 percent and atly high school will be 96 percent again and that's let's not speak about the new neighborhoods counties anyways going to approve new construction is happening all around the area so those kids will go to kings it was charleston i don't remember the full and charleston

[05:23:14] second 164 new apartments are going to construct it's already approved those kids will go to these school so are we now facing again in the future the boundary adjustment or we want an assurance please give us that this is the permanent we will be staying with Chica harmony and at least and we will not be in this room again talking about the rezoning 30 seconds news 8 reported on February 26 that the school board previously the school board previously received the proposal indigo

[05:23:50] scenario which would have combined the blue green and purple scenarios though it continued to move forward with green scenario and we still have questions and we are not given the answers all i'm asking is please listen to us and we are not tense we are hundreds of families if you can reconsider if you can still further work on it thank you we are in the walking area we are literally i can see the school in my from my front yard okay thank you thank you kristin holte followed

[05:24:25] by mike birkenfield feld sorry mike birkenfeld is mike here oh okay all right good evening school board and administration i am kristin holte of the cold harbor district you cannot please everyone that is for sure um the parents have to understand would you rather have overcrowding for your children or would you rather have them get the education that they need and in order to do that would they would have to be redistricted the school board is trying to be as transparent as

[05:25:05] possible they're doing the research just you know you have to give it some time and as they said it's not going to go into effect till 2026 2027 first I'm known to be opinionated you know me um i i hold angela kelly wisik the board of supervisor of chickahominy district from 2011 to september 2023 responsible for the other overgrowth of chickahominy it is not the school

[05:25:40] board's fault i believe that the boundaries do need to be redistricted the cost to build onto the schools would be astronomical in comparison to redistricting as it is our hanover County property taxes are going up every year, and just building more would raise our property taxes even more. So I'm sure the school board is looking into the most efficient and cost-efficient and less stress on the kids as much as possible. That's all I need to say. Thank you for letting

[05:26:14] me speak. Thank you, Ms. Holt. Mike Birkenfeld, followed by Rebecca DeVinson. School board members, everyone. Thank you for taking your time tonight and all the work that everyone's put forth through this whole process. In a work meeting on February 25th, oh excuse me, I'm from the Chickahominy District and I live in the Rutland neighborhood. I attended the work meeting on February 25th and

[05:26:51] during that meeting there was discussion of an unnamed plan that seemed like it'd be a modified version, Indigo plan, and I built a lot of this off of that meeting and attending the work session earlier today, I realized this isn't necessarily relevant, but I want to share this because this could affect other people and make sure that we all align the best we possibly can. Part of that revised plan was there's a creek in our neighborhood and there's a possibility of using that creek as a boundary. I can understand how this may appear as a good boundary if you're not

[05:27:29] familiar with the neighborhood. This creek more resembles a ditch in most areas running through Rutland. During the summer months, it is not uncommon for this creek to be dry in areas. Rutland also has multiple bridges on walking paths to connect the neighborhood.

[05:27:46] One of the goals set forth by everyone here is to not break apart neighborhoods. If this creek is used as a boundary to separate Rutland and two separate school zones, this will not align with the goal. Our creek is the furthest thing from the boundary because it is a place where kids meet and play together. It provides a sense of a country setting in the woods that allows children to experience an experience they don't often have in our suburban area.

[05:28:10] With congested traffic and strip malls developing all around our community, the creek is a unique setting that allows our young ones the opportunity to encounter nature head on. When kids come home from playing with their friends at the creek, they are sometimes muddy, and as a parent, that can be a bit aggravating.

[05:28:28] But remembering being a kid and the adventures that take place, it is well worth it. Sharing those adventures the next day at school with friends they played with from the other side of the neighborhood builds foundation. If we use our creek as a boundary or a divider for schools, those conversations may not happen.

[05:28:47] They will not make plans to play at the creek that afternoon. They will miss out on the next exploration of the creek. They may miss out on a lifelong friend because of a divider. A boundary that is not a divider, but is actually a place where boys and girls join together, build friendships, get dirty, and have adventures that are difficult to come by where we live.

[05:29:09] 30 seconds. And just based on this information, I strongly agree with the green plan because it does not use an arbitrary line such as a creek as a divider. Thank you for your time.

[05:29:26] Thank you. Rebecca DeVincent followed by Pratap Sahu. Hi, I'm Rebecca DeVincent and I reside in the Chickahominy District and my comments relate to the green plan.

[05:29:41] I had some other things prepared before today when I attended today's work meeting and realized that you guys are going with the green plan and I do really support that but I did want to state that as a parent of two current and one future Hanover Public County students and a resident of Rutland the green plan is important to me because not only does it meet those five standards that you guys have set forth as trying to create a plan to follow those standards but also it performs best under your goals of providing

[05:30:19] immediate relief to Cold Spring Elementary and also remaining community minded and as a parent those two are really important to me the green plan does best to balance school utilization at the five and ten year trends and it's helping Chickahominy and Atlee High School so we aren't having to do this again in ten years and my youngest is three years old and she's going to start kindergarten when the rezoning first takes place and the green plan provides the best assurance that my family and other families that are doing the rezoning now are not gonna have to do this again in less than 10 years because

[05:30:56] my heart breaks for every family here that is so impacted because everybody loves their school nobody wants to do this today but we absolutely don't want to do it again in less than 10 years so if you choose any plan except for the and admittedly the green does not provide an amazing solution to the student populations at Chickahominy or Atlee High School in the future future but it does the best indigo puts Atlee High School at 98% and in 10 years so these same families are doing this again and I can't support a plan that would do that

[05:31:32] and I appreciate that you aren't supporting that plan either secondly the green plan is the only plan is the blue or green plan are the only plans that don't divide a neighborhood and as a resident of Rutland purple and indigo divided our community indigo actually divided our community not to one not two but three elementary schools and I know looking at a map cool spring forest and Rutland might look like two different neighborhoods but if you live in our neighborhood you will know we are not two separate neighborhoods we're in one community our students are our children 30 seconds they are able to bike and

[05:32:10] walk to their friends their classmates houses in Cold Spring Forest and they're playing on the playground together we're at the swimming pool together meeting up at the sport court and to choose any plan that would divide any neighborhood in half does not remain community minded and I know that's not what Hanover County is about so I just want to let you know I appreciate you looking at the data doing this work and I support the green plan thank you thank you mr vincent and thank you for uh everyone loves their schools i i take that as a quote and that's that's a good thing that means all of our schools are are functioning relatively well okay thank you

[05:32:48] prattap so who followed by charlie hoag go ahead good evening good evening good evening everyone and honorable chair school board members and dr benikoff sorry so my name is prattap sahu i live I live in Chikawamuni district and today I'm here to talk about the school boundary adjustment and reasoning options.

[05:33:24] So so far all the options which we saw, it's not going to help the neighborhood or the community. So also the question on the data accuracy presented by the MGT. So MGT conducted three different meetings, Atlee High School, Patrick Henry and Mechanicsville High School.

[05:33:43] But every time we saw the data is like, it's not matching with the initial data with the next data right also the survey was open to all like we have we can vote for the from the 10 different devices not sure whether that has been captured accurately with all the options if if school board really concerns and think about the community and the neighborhood then please consider and rethink about the long-term strategic plan instead of this temporary movement of the kids from one school zone to another school.

[05:34:23] So in 2002-2003, no child left behind Blue Ribbon school programs. It's mentioned that 896 students can be accommodated at Cold Spring Elementary School, but as for the current data, we saw it says 112% utilization.

[05:34:44] So again, I request school board to rethink what is the best possible scenario can be done without impacting kids movement here and there that's all thank you thank you charlie hoag followed by jennifer and lane thompson i see them i'm charlie hoag i'm in the aslan district and uh this is regarding uh elected school boards um in a seminal book published 30 years ago

[05:35:19] politics markets in america schools john chubb and terry moe argued that locally elected school boards are not the most effective and efficient approach to educating America's youth. Chubb and Moe warned that institutions of democratic control, meaning locally elected school boards, often fail in carrying out their core missions, instead empowering vocal and well-organized adults at the expense of the educational needs and interests of students who do not get a vote in local elections.

[05:35:55] school boards are asked to choose between a policy that improves student achievement and one that benefits teachers the pressures of seeking re-election perversely encourage school board members to prioritize adult employees over the education of students these dynamics are likely amplified in large urban districts where teacher unions teachers unions tend to enjoy stronger organization and access to greater political resources according to the shorenstein center research shows how national trends and campaigns including the heightened political involvement of

[05:36:30] super wealthy individuals and the rise of new organizations raising unlimited campaign funds can significantly affect local politics unlike the more traditional occurrence of local elites mobilizing to influence their own local elections we share the emergence of national networks of affluent individuals mobilizing to support common causes across multiple localities one example from 2017 an outside group outside group spent more than 1.5 million on three school board races

[05:37:04] in the denver metro area thank you um i support dr penny cuff as uh hanover's next superintendent and i agree with the uh uh cool spring addition thank you thank you jennifer and lane thompson And they're going together, and followed by Lindsey McLean.

[05:37:31] Is Lindsey here? And Ms. Thompson? I'm not going to let him stand on my knee because I might not get back up. We got it. Thank you. Hello, my name is Lane, and next to me is my mom, Jen Thompson.

[05:37:50] We live in the Henry District. I am in second grade at Roll Point. I love my school. I love my teachers, my friends, and everything about Roll Point. I have fun riding the bus with my friends, and we all go to school together.

[05:38:06] But now I am being told I may have to go to a different school. Even though my bus will still be full of kids going to Roll Point, that doesn't make sense to me. I've been at Roll Point since kindergarten, and it feels like home.

[05:38:25] Changing schools means leaving my friends, my teachers, and everything. I know that makes sense. That makes me really sad. I don't want to start over somewhere new.

[05:38:42] When my school is right where I belong. Please let me stay at Royal Point where my other friends are staying. It's not just a school to us. It's our home. Thank you. Thank you.

[05:38:58] So you just heard from Lane about how much he loves Royal Point. And as I've expressed through my 10 emails, two survey responses, attendance to two of the boundary work sessions. I didn't know there was one today. And the last school board meeting and multiple calls with committee members.

[05:39:15] I know it, I know it. And Hanover County staff, which I think Mrs. Stone is saying my name in her sleep, I continue to advocate for our area. The proposed boundary lines, which splits Williamsville Road on the River Road side and gold hill road as shown in your packet creates an unnecessary island zone you've asked for our feedback and suggestions and we've provided them yet no changes have been made to our area there are ways to achieve the goal of increasing utilization at pole green without disrupting this established community in the february 25th work session mr martin referenced a fifth scenario

[05:39:53] that would move hundreds of fewer children while still addressing the needs of overcapacity schools which might have changed by his comment he made earlier tonight but any nonetheless this tells me we haven't quite found the right solution within the current scenarios i agree the delayed rollout provides an opportunity to re-evaluate each specific area and specific boundary line to ensure the best decision for our county as coach eikenberry stated in a previous meeting we are here to do what's best for the children so now i ask that you stand by that commitment to keep for

[05:40:30] looking a solution that makes the most sense thank you thank you and miss thompson again i i salute your perseverance as does miss stone um but i also as i mentioned to you earlier that we will have a second motion about allowing staff to start looking at implementation and so along the way as I mentioned to an earlier speaker about bus drivers being a very very valuable piece to this and routing as Miss Stone and I've talked about could be a very valuable piece to this and I love your artwork you really color between the

[05:41:06] lines real well so that's very nice yes lots of valuable resources from my company are being used for these ten copies that I keep bringing to the meetings yes ma'am all right let me turn the page here all right we got lindsey mclean and nathan duke is nathan duke here he is hey neighbor um hi i'm lindsey mclean i am from the south anna district i'm an alumni of ashland schools a teacher at ashen elementary

[05:41:42] and most importantly a parent of ashen elementary students thank you for your time this evening and for hearing our community and importantly our neighborhood concerns i grew up on hickory oaks lane and attended schools in ashland as did my uncles and parents and cousins it's a family tradition one that i had hoped to continue with my own children this is a big reason why i built my family home with my husband on hickory oaks lane this evening i'm speaking on behalf of many families who moved to a particular area in hanover because it was zoned for henry clay and gandy and now ashen elementary while we appreciate the new building and the gorgeous branding the push to

[05:42:21] remain part of ashland elementary is deeper than that for those of us east of the south ana bridge and on winston road we're deeply rooted in the town of ashland our kids are on the ashland soccer league they swim for the ashland barracuda swim team they play for ashland little league and dance at ashland studios our dog foods from fun and feather pet store and we count the trains when we wait at the train crossing we pick up our prescriptions at cvs on junction road junction Drive and shop at the Ashland Food Lion. We support the Ashland Public Library and attend all of Ashland's festivities year-round. We are sorted into Ashland Elementary houses, Tatanka,

[05:43:00] Mar, Gratos, Haruma, and Kula. We hand our children off daily to their bus drivers whom they know and love to take them to Ashland Elementary each day, and they know the sites that they drive past. The Light at Blanton, Luck Pond, and First Baptist Church. Our kids have grown up in ashland preschools and we expect their education to continue at ashland elementary to take these neighborhoods and route them to south anna would not only be a burden for families to sort out they'd have to find new after-school programs and child care new transportation options and new work schedules a doubled commute time but it would also also deeply rupture a community that

[05:43:38] is proudly hanover and more importantly proudly ashland there are other geographic boundary adjustments that are lines that you could use for this rezoning and I suggest you look at those some of them happen to be creeks please consider staggering transitions for families that have students at schools currently so that family tradition can continue please provide transportation to those families which would be a much shorter and safer route for those bus drivers and please consider not sending these kids to a school that they don't know where it is they don't know what looks like and you couldn't pay me to drive there because i don't know how to get there

[05:44:16] and i've lived here my whole life thank you thank you three speakers all right we'll just see how many let's see how many we can get let's go see how many go nathan duke followed by pat jordan are you here okay there's one less sarah huggins i'm going to do a role mark killingstead i see hank foley and jack dyer okay so we just missing one you're on great um i didn't realize i'd be

[05:44:54] following lindsay who also lives on my road so maybe a little redundant but my me and my family live on hickory oaks lane which is in the south anna magisterial district which is proposed under all the scenarios to move from ashland to south anna i have a four-year-old two-year-old and my wife is pregnant so i'm at the very beginning of the next 10 years being affected by this change naturally you know populations evolve and adjustments are necessary You know, I spend my career in economic damages, litigation about financial damages, so I understand the importance of numbers and forecasts and trends and factoring that in.

[05:45:32] In this case, this type of decision is different than just numbers. It's more than just numbers. It's about emotions and relationships and communities, and it's about decisions that people have made long in advance that they're now living with, which is why people living in these old communities, which is such as mine, that has low turnover in these homes, you know obviously don't want to be affected um you know we moved to this house two years ago um that i live in currently with the expectation that we were going to have our kids go to ashland

[05:46:10] elementary uh which was for a number of reasons including uh child care convenience of the direction it's much closer than south anna is which is where the proposals are redistricting us do it is uh our child care is you know they spend part time in kitty kingdom which is on the way and also with our grand or their grandparents who all live in ashland so to put them in south end is very disruptive to all of that both financially and from a time perspective um but that i don't

[05:46:42] know how we will you know figure out how to navigate um there i also don't see the necessity for the western adjustments particularly now that i've heard at this meeting that they're no longer considering the additional modified green proposal under any of the proposals currently the section that's moving out of ashland into south and in the western side uh you know moves the needle from i think 90 utilization after 10 years with no adjustment to 88 with the adjustment

[05:47:22] Moving a very nominal amount of kids. I can't even imagine what the bus route to get there is It's it's very indirect and it's only a handful of people that are on route 54 It also separates us from the 30 seconds understood which is directly across the street and Very much a part of the same community as we are. So now without that modified adjustment You know we're in a different school zone from them, which doesn't make any sense from my perspective you know in the event the board determines that I foregoing the proposed western adjustment is not palatable and has to be executed you know i think

[05:47:59] a phased approach providing people an opportunity to make a decision about where they want to go for a certain number of years or time period is thank you sir necessary have a good evening thank you sarah huggins followed by mark killingstead hi i'll be fast um sarah huggins from the chickahominy district i live in craney island which if i'm not mistaken is the small change you guys are referring to so wait a year then do a small change we know we're almost certainly getting rezoned fine all of the hammer schools are good we'll be fine my request is if the proposal is already to wait one year why not just wait with our busload or one busload of kids and wait two years until

[05:48:36] the construction is complete uh if we do the the one you know us after one year then that's asking all of our second graders to navigate four school buildings in four years it just seems excessive and unnecessary for a handful of kids from each grade level so please consider just rezoning all at once thanks thank you mark killingstead followed by hank foley still got it low jog yeah oh no that hurt oh i'm sorry good evening mark killingstead chicago district thank you mr may

[05:49:13] as well as the members of the board for taking this time uh first i want to thank mr whitley for his creative ways letting us know the bad news or the good news upon which end of it you're on although i will say that if we have another snow day please go to mission impossible and away from the friends um also um madam welsh she mentioned swim i gotta i gotta bring it up so state results um hanover did awesome uh alley high school's number four hanover high school's number five patrick henry was number seven mechanicsville was number eight in the boys category for swimming at state uh girls swimming uh number seven was atley number eight was mechanicsville nine patrick

[05:49:53] Henry 17 was Hanover. The swimmers did awesome. Someone earlier said something about girls' sports. I think you're probably seeing a decline in sports across the board in certain categories with all of the year-round sports that are out there.

[05:50:09] Baseball, softball, swimming, soccer. If they can go year-round, they're going to go year-round more than likely because as swim parents know, for the high school kids, they're also year-round swimmers. It's a heavy load. sports in two different directions plus school and sometimes jobs it's it's too heavy to handle moving on to the redistricting i don't know why you're going to send kids to chickahominy and atley when chickahominy and atley are the two that are supposed to be overflowing that makes no sense to

[05:50:42] me send them out to where there's going to be the most room i also live in milestone and it even though it doesn't affect my kid um because he's going to be graduating before the time frame but to see the other families that are going to be affected by this and i also agree with a previous speaker when she said that junior high and high school kids were not taken into account you have kids that are in educational tracks whether it be through deca 4-h sports something they're on a pathway through their graduation you pull them out of one high school to another high school

[05:51:20] they're going to lose that pathway let them stay till they graduate or if they're on a pathway let Let them stay until they're done with it. You know, and I don't hold you guys accountable for having to redistrict. My beef is with the Board of Supervisors because they're the ones that said, let's build houses and all over the place, and then we'll let someone figure it out later.

[05:51:40] 30 seconds. My problem is with them more than with you, so I don't envy you. But I do think some more than a month from now to the next vote needs to be done to really look at things because you do have some farmland along Atlee that could become houses pretty soon.

[05:51:58] So, thanks for your time. Thank you. Madam Clerk, do I need to make a motion to extend, Mr. Chair? We can let him talk, and then we'll have to do it for Mr. Dyer.

[05:52:15] Go ahead. Mr. Foley, you're on. Hey, Chairman, members, Dr. Pennekeff, thank you. Hank Foley, I live in Totapotomy, so that's Ashland District. I speak for a lot of Totapotomy folks.

[05:52:30] We're not very organized in Totapotomy, and they just abhor public speaking. So, you don't hear from them very much. We have a modest proposal. No change in secondary schools. Leave us at Chickahominy and Attlee.

[05:52:47] We're close to Chick and Attlee. We can go ride our bikes through Honey Meadows and get there. Giles is the Johnny-come-lately. We have like half a century on Giles.

[05:53:04] You could take them and bus them easier to Hanover. Their population density would be one, it'd be a couple buses. we have so few students in Totapotomy. I'm asking you just to leave us be. COVID was a disaster, asking you not to do anything like that again. One of my sons is interested in strings, as you mentioned your kids are. He wants to continue with Mrs. Van. She teaches at both schools. My son, my other son, I have two of them. They're rising Atlee seniors. They are,

[05:53:45] one is seriously visually impaired, but he's been hanging around Atlee for years now, courtesy of his older sister who's graduating this year thank god very grateful for the hanover county public schools i really am he knows atley he can navigate he can echolocate he can feel stuff he can make his way around atley and he knows the people there so i'm asking you let him continue don't pull the rug out from him give him every chance for success i know you want that like

[05:54:21] I do. And I'm on special education advisory committee for 10 years now. The goal is to make all the schools equally able to give every kid, no matter their mental landscape, their physical makeup, the best opportunity. And I think we do a very good job of doing that. And I work hard on SEAC to make sure that's what we do. So I know that we all know you got to make some changes.

[05:54:48] Something's got to change. No parent, no homeowner is guaranteed to be in one place, but I'm asking you don't do it on the backs of a totipotomy kids 30 seconds much more recent as the last speaker has mentioned you've built it up that's not our fault so i ask you to include leaving totipotomy as it is in any plan changes thank you so we have one speaker left i would entertain a motion uh mr ryan i'll make a motion to let mr dyer speak is there a second second we have a motion

[05:55:22] and a second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye all opposed did you limit him to one minute or did you want to give him the full three minutes okay i'm good evening um thank you chair chairman board dr pinnico i'm from the beaver dam district and i'm here to speak in support of dr pinnico i know y'all got a tough decision to make over the next couple weeks

[05:55:54] but i'm hoping that basically we can help you with that discussion tonight in the beginning in January we were asked in the four sessions that you had to put together a profile of what we would like to see as far as our superintendent of schools there's a lot of discussion about it it's very good discussion about it but for me and for the committee I represent every bit of that discussion sort of

[05:56:30] fell on the same person every time every time my item came up so at the end of the day we're looking for superintendent of schools that basically has a huge heart compassionate for children with the resolute and determination to provide opportunities for every child to learn and achieve that's what we ultimately want but i'll go one step further it because you look at resumes you look at interviews to make your decisions and i've

[05:57:10] sat in that same position many many times but there's a house resolution that was passed last year in the middle of last year 602 by the house by the house of delegates and i give you i've given you a copy of that and that right there to me represents exactly what we're looking for in hanover county for our superintendent of schools i couldn't ask i couldn't read it or provide it to you in any better form and i'm not going to read it now because i won't have time to read it

[05:57:49] for you so so i'm asking you please read it take it in strong consideration look at it closely but But another thing I want to ask you to take in mind, she's been with us for six, seven months. She has been in the trenches, and y'all have went through a lot of trench work to build this foundation, okay?

[05:58:11] Give her that benefit. Don't change a horse in the middle of the stream. And I'm not making any bad reference in that respect, okay? Mr. Chair, God gives us blessings each day, some that we never understand or recognize.

[05:58:31] But many of us, with faith and trust, strongly believe that actually Dr. Pennycuff is a blessing for Hanover County at the right time to become our permanent superintendent of schools.

[05:58:47] Thank you, Mr. Dyer. I ask you to embrace that blessing. Thank you, sir. Have a good evening. Thank you. And with that, we close public comment time. We'll move on to the action items, which is what everybody's probably all sitting here for.

[05:59:03] So with that, does the committee – I have to wait on Coach Ike to get back since he's the committee. Does the committee have a proposal to make, Coach Ike? They do. Yes, Mr. Chair, I'd like to make a motion to approve the school board work group's recommendation to delay implementation of initial boundary modifications until the fall of 26-27 school year.

[05:59:38] Thank you, Coach. have a motion on the floor to uh to accept the school board work group's recommendation to delay implementation of the initial boundary modification until the fall of 2627 school year do we have a second second thank you because i can hear the echo we have a motion and a second is there any discussion yes sir mr martin um one point of clarification well i guess a couple um delaying this does not um provide relief to cool spring that it needs i think delaying this is the right move but i want to acknowledge the fact that that school is is has daily challenges um their

[06:00:17] principal miss pike continues to have a positive attitude um i think they were really hoping to get some relief this coming school year uh understand that they're not um because we need to be prudent about this but i wanted to publicly recognize her her staff her teachers for their you know putting their head down and doing the best they can with the situation that they have that was my one thing I wanted to say. The second thing I want to clarify, Mr. Eikenberry, is when we talk about the delayed implementation, I know we have it in phases, the 2026 move of, I guess, the smaller

[06:00:51] group. Would it just be that small group that moves to Washington Henry or would it be that sort of counterclockwise, as it was called, domino effect to the other schools? I'd like to think that the domino effect would begin in a year and a roughly 17 months and but it would just take a small chunk coming out of cool spring which would be the cranny island and atley manor right if i

[06:01:25] recall um moving across 301 and then the following year giles would move across 301 but all the rest would start that effect like we looked at um i don't have it in front of me but it was that sheet that showed the the one I had trouble reading to begin with during the workshop right the one at the bottom at the right side that showed what it would look like as far as the net gains and losses no it's actually written out but

[06:01:59] yeah it was a matrix that's it right there because I was questioning Coal Harbor would only have a net gain of 24 but yet roughly 80 some coming out of Mechanicsville and then 60 some coming out of Coal Harbor to battlefield like that. So it start to move in that direction Yes, but that would start in 26 27. Okay, so I think to clarify the motion coach Ike if I could try to make sure everything will take effect 26 27 Except the follow-on piece of the green which included the child's neighborhoods

[06:02:39] Am I correct in saying it that way Terry you want to correct me again? Push your button. Good idea. I Yes, sir. That is correct, because the green plan was a phased approach from the very beginning.

[06:02:54] Okay. So year one is the non-Giles community, and then year two is the Giles community, but the intent is that really everyone except for the Giles community would move in year one, and then because Washington Henry would not be prepared to receive the full Giles community until year two.

[06:03:18] So did that make sense? Yes, ma'am. That answered my question. Thank you. My last point, and I'm sure you're going to say this, but it needs to be said that nothing has been decided in terms of grandfathering and a lot of the questions that I know we're bound to get following up from this meeting. Yeah, we have not started talking about implementation.

[06:03:39] All we're trying to do is come up with a recommendation for a plan. So this is the first step, which is to make the motion that we delay everything by a year. So 26, 27 for the implementation and how it is implemented. We're going to hopefully in next motion, you'll hear that in another motion where we'll ask our school experts to work together with us on the implementation plan.

[06:04:07] Does that make sense? And so I know a lot of the speakers tonight have made comments about, well, I don't want my junior. don't want my seat we've not even discussed that i don't mean that ugly i'm not trying to be flipping when i say that we're trying to come up with a solution on trying to address the numbers then we will try to figure out how do we implement that using the school experts bus routes um our education or the the the teachers and the uh educational staff working with us to make sure that we come up with an implementation plan it makes sense so is that clear did i clear up the muddy the water at all we good so everything's going to everything in green will happen in 26 27

[06:04:47] and and then the giles community would would go in 27 28. good any further comment or discussion all those in favor say aye aye all opposed say no motion carries do you have another recommendation from your committee uh coach ike yes mr chair i move to approve the school board work group's recommendation that the hanover county public school administration develop and implementation plan framework for the school board's consideration thank you do we have a second

[06:05:22] second miss welsh so we have a motion on the table and a second is there any discussion on this one yes sir coach i just wanted to elaborate on two other points identical points that i've made tonight which is that part of what staff will do and a lot of it is equally shared amongst staff But a big piece is obviously the people on the ground, the everyday teachers, principals, bus drivers, food service, cafeteria worker.

[06:05:57] I mean, it's the whole spectrum will be a part of this over the course of an amount of time. And as I mentioned earlier, we already made one little tweak over with Ashland and South Anna just in the last week or two.

[06:06:15] And again, just because of hearing more common sense on the ground, that would affect an area that, okay, we get it, okay? And that's kind of how it went. It was just one of those, I got it. And it's probably more out there.

[06:06:32] And again, that's why we made the first motion to stretch this out so that we could get it right or as right as we possibly can. I know we're not going to make everybody happy, but we're giving it our best. So that's my only comment. Thank you. Any other comments?

[06:06:48] Okay, we have a motion on the floor and we have a second and we'll call for the question. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed. Thank you very much. We'll work on a timeline. We need to we need to discuss that at our April meeting, I guess, as we start working through this about how do we implement it, Terry and Jen. So, okay. Thank you. Now everybody's gonna jump up and leave now because that's what they all wanted to wait to hear that we're going to actually pass the motions that we said we were going to do.

[06:07:16] so uh with that uh i remind everybody that you have uh in your uh materials that uh for your for your review the fiscal status report facility usage report and the calendar i don't have that so i apologize i don't know where it is or what it is so i apologize oh i pulled two up talking they were the same thing so i'm so sorry there it is so we have to have consideration of elementary recess schedule for 25 26 and who has that motion do we have a motion

[06:07:51] for that push your green button please i'd like to make the motion for uh extending recess by 10 minutes uh during the uh school days for the elementary school students okay we have a motion on the floor is there a second second by miss welch is there any further discussion on this all those in favor say aye aye aye all opposed motion carries thank you i see it now i had to checked that they were because there were two motions on the other one so i thought there were both of them so i apologize for that now we'll go through the uh fiscal status report the facility

[06:08:28] usage report and then the calendar of board-related events i remind all of our board members to make sure you look at the board-related events so that you can try to get to things we're going to get extremely busy over the next three or four months and with that uh dr penny cuff do you have a schedule of topics for next school board meeting and do you have any comments for us tonight any words of wisdom from our superintendent well i certainly appreciate how involved the school board has been in helping us get to the right answer for the community for the boundary adjustment i think the points that the community has made about wanting to keep the children together from the

[06:09:07] time they're in elementary school through high school has been heard i think the points the parents have made about please do something so that we don't have to do this again in the next decade, if you can help it. I think that the school board has worked very closely with each other and with staff to help us get the best outcome that we could get to put on the table for discussion. And I thank you all for that, because this is not an easy process.

[06:09:36] Topics for next time include math update. It's revisiting the boundary adjustment for action. And we hope to be able to bring back the beginnings of an implementation plan for probably work session discussion to get your guidance and hopefully have one for you to approve by May.

[06:09:59] And I'm pretty sure one of the topics on there will also be a recommendation for a new superintendent. So that needs to be captured also. I do want to clarify one thing, what we did on this last vote. That 10 minutes is not an extension of the school day.

[06:10:16] it is 10 minutes that we're going to reorganize the day and and make up those 10 minutes to give extra recess time now so we did not add 10 minutes to a school day so i want to clarify that because i'm sure we're going to get a thousand phone calls about it but i'll try to work through that uh and dr reams would not let me do that she's back here waving at me going please don't do that don't do that so uh with that being said we're not going to do that so anything else anybody else got anything for the good of the uh mr martin just that i will not be at the next meeting i will be participating remotely for our april meeting so you won't get to see me in person bob can we try to get a uh

[06:10:54] cardboard cutout mr seifert i just wanted to say thank you for the clarification on the recess i appreciate that and thousands of elementary school kids appreciate that also so thank you yeah well it's all dr reams for being here that got us to get that across the vintage line so anything else from anybody else yeah i know yeah she said we'll just hear from the teachers we won't hear from the parents so okay with that then i'd look for one of the wise men uh either in the extreme west or

[06:11:27] the extreme east um to make a motion yes chairman may i would like to make a motion that we adjourn is there a second second there's usually six of those we have a motion and a second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye we are now adjourned

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