Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Specialized Programs & Centers Committee Meeting, Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Date: Tuesday, May 16, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 52m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/827428437?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:54] Good evening. This is Brenda Sheridan. Today is Tuesday, May 16th, 2023, and I'm calling to order the Specialized Programs and Centers Committee meeting. I'm joined tonight by Mr. Morse and Mr. Beatty, so we're going to get started. Is there any public comment? There's not. Thank you.

[00:01:13] We'll move to item three, approval of the draft minutes for the April 18th, 2023 meeting. Is there a motion? Move to approve the draft minutes from the April 18th, 2023 meeting. Second. Moved and second. Is there any discussion? All right. All in favor of the minutes for approval, please raise your hand and say aye.

[00:01:31] Aye. Aye. That will carry 3-0. We'll move to our action items. 401 from Business and Financial Services, School Nutrition Services Agreement with Hillsborough Charter Academy. Ms. Willoughby. So this is the same agreement that we brought at the last committee meeting.

[00:01:54] There was one change that we made to the agreement that we also discussed during the meeting, that's under the other terms and conditions regarding termination so there's language in there regarding either party to provide at least a 90 day notice if there was a desire to cancel the agreement but other than that it's the same agreement and we look forward to working with Hillsboro this fall I move that the specialized programs and centers committee recommends at the London County School Board approved the staff recommended agreement between HCA and LCPS in which LCPS will provide meal services to HCA

[00:02:33] second it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion from board members no last chance HCA no we just really want to say that we're very grateful to for working with the finance department you know perhaps particularly Casey Jones he's just been extremely responsive as we've you know picked apart things and picked apart things and picked apart things you know not because we had doubts but just because we want to make sure that we're doing everything right

[00:03:03] And, you know, we would reach out to Casey in particular, and if we had five questions within 48 hours, we had all of those answers, and very much to our satisfaction. So, you know, we're absolutely grateful, and we're looking forward to working with the nutrition department next year and in all likelihood beyond.

[00:03:24] Fantastic, and thank you for that feedback. It's always nice to hear. All right, there's a motion, and there's no discussion, so all in favor of the motion, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye, that will carry 3-0, and we have an agreement. Thank you. Agreement of sentence. To the board, yes.

[00:03:41] No agreement. No agreement. Agreement of sentence of the board. But that will go on the consent agenda, right? Ms. Sheridan, would it be okay if I said one more thing? Absolutely. Okay, thank you. As long as it's positive. No, I'm just kidding. It is positive, I assure you. Keep it in the same vein. It absolutely is.

[00:03:58] At the meeting before this, a month ago, there was some discussion about playgrounds and refreshing playgrounds. And just about two days after that meeting, which I was in attendance of, we received the information about your fixed assets and you had to identify what all the fixed assets were. And our playground was actually built in the year 2001 at Hillsboro. And I just would like to bring that up as a point maybe at next

[00:04:32] month's meeting because there was discussion about a refresh in a 10 to 15 year range and we've really doubled the 10 and you know one and a half the 15 you know and you know all of our scholars 144 of them they're all LCPS students and yes we do have our playground inspected each year as all schools do and you know usually there's just a bolt loose or something you know nothing of great significance but we do believe that we should be considered very strongly for a refresh with a 22 year old playground so can we get that on next

[00:05:12] month agenda and have the appropriate staff work through their recommendations for that and information yes we can do that perfect thank you thank you very much absolutely all right board members without objection we're going to go to 502 first so that we can stay with miss Willoughby and she doesn't need to stay through everything that's all right so we'll go 502 our first information item business from business and financial services Middleburg Community Charter Schools audit report to miss Willoughby thank you so this is the report of the second unannounced on-site audit as per the corrective action plan for Middleburg

[00:05:51] Community Charter Schools I am happy to report that we have seen significant improvement since the last audit there are still two areas of concerns but to recap, from the first audit that was held on February 8th, out of the seven areas that we were reviewing, there were only two that had been cleared, and of the remaining five, there were, the majority of those were level three, which was the most significant risk.

[00:06:19] Again, I'm happy to say that out of the seven today, based on the second audit, which was conducted on April 17th, only two have been noted as still having deficiencies, one of which is a level two and the other one is a level one.

[00:06:34] So while we still see concerns, the level of risk has been mitigated to a degree. I'll just briefly go over those two areas of concern. One is related to cash disbursements and specifically regarding the sample size.

[00:06:50] And again, we went back to July 1 and just picked up the additional months in terms of the sample size. That there were instances where sales tax was being charged on purchases. So there's just an opportunity there to make sure that being a school system, you don't pay sales tax to save money, as well as instances related to late fees and over-limit fees on the school credit card.

[00:07:13] The other item was related to incomplete cash receipts documentation, and again, this was really revolving around deposits being made in a timely manner, and so they just need to follow their own policy of having deposits made weekly, as they have outlined in their financial policies.

[00:07:34] We have already heard back from Middleborough Community Charter, and they have already addressed and gave assurance that they will monitor the credit cards, for example, more closely to make sure that they are paid timely to avoid any interest charges or unnecessary fees, as well as the sales tax, and then same with timely deposit.

[00:07:53] So again, we definitely have seen an improvement, and I look forward to the annual audit, which which will also be just right around the corner, as of June 30th, that will be conducted by our external auditor, and I'm optimistic that we'll see some improvement there as well.

[00:08:12] Thank you for that, and thank you for the clarification on the credit card. It's late fees that they were incurring? It was both, late fees as well as an over-limit charge. Oh, over-limit, okay. So when the annual audit occurs, will the external auditors pick new items?

[00:08:33] They're not just going to look and see, like you did, like your team did, where you went back and checked the things that had already been identified. Will it be different random things? They can pick any items they want to look at. Is that correct? Correct. What the external auditor, they come in with a whole fresh scope of looking at the entire process.

[00:08:53] Our review with these two internal audits was limited to the deficiencies that the external auditor had discovered during their last audit. So they may come in and they may find everything has been cleared or they may find something completely different, you know, because their scope is going to be much broader.

[00:09:12] Ours was limited to what the external auditor had found. Thank you for the clarification. Any other questions? Mr. Morse? No, I do appreciate the audit. I think it does absolutely show significant improvement and still some grounds for them to continue to work on, specifically the credit card, which I don't think we spent a lot of time discussing.

[00:09:34] You're right. Okay. Oh, okay. That's good. I know. It kind of shocked me there. But, no, I think that no doubt that MCCS will go back and take care of this.

[00:09:51] I have confidence in that. Thank you. All right. So we'll look forward to, I guess we'll hear in August or September about the annual audit. it may be a little later later fall for sure later fall all right thank you thank you for the update all right board members we're gonna go back to 501 our special programs update dr. Ellis yes thank you miss Sheridan so this evening we are we're gonna give folks a minute to we're gonna change scenes here you

[00:10:31] can come up here too right so this evening we are excited to share some information with you we are not anticipating any action coming out of

[00:11:10] this item but we wanted to take a few minutes to celebrate the work in our other special program so you've heard a lot about the academies of Loudoun we look at their data all the time you've talked quite a bit about the IB program that we're developing in dual language immersion we already have existing programs that are providing really positive experiences for our students so wanted to take this evening to share updates on that so katie clark has a whole team here to talk about those programs and i will kick it over to katie thank you dr ellis so good evening thank

[00:11:48] you for giving us some time tonight to give an update on our special programs as a reminder our special programs are directly aligned to the strategic plan specifically actions 1.1 and Action 1.2. This is our special program status chart that shows the status of our current and future programs for LCPS. In accordance with policy and regulation 5115, we are here tonight showcasing some of our implemented programs, Propel and Level Up, NJROTC, and LCPS Beam.

[00:12:27] We are excited to share the progress of these special programs. Tonight, I have with me Dr. Lee Smith, Tamara Morgan, and Brittany Scholeen, who will give an update on the program they oversee. At this time, I would like to turn it over to Dr. Lee Smith to talk about NJROTC.

[00:12:47] Thank you so much, Ms. Clark. So I have with me today our senior naval instructor, Captain Bill Johns, who is the instructor over the sole ROTC program within the school division, and that is the Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, also known as NJROTC. So we're just here today to provide an update on what ROTC is, how many students are involved within the program, and we also want to touch base on some benefits that students walk away from in the program. So we have about 200 students

[00:13:24] within the program, and about 90 of those students have transferred from other high schools within the school division to attend this wonderful program. Students have the four ideals, so if you think of Loudoun County High School, think of the L for leadership, the C for character, the H for honor, and then the S for service. So we want to make sure that students, when they come within the program, that they are instilled leadership values, character development, and there's just a host of

[00:13:58] other opportunities that i'll let captain john's touch base on so within naval science njrotc there are four courses naval science one two three and four and then there are eight extracurricular teams that students can engage in either before school after school um sometimes on the weekends right so students are doing both courses and extracurricular programs and those extracurricular curricular programs can range from drill, color guard, cybersecurity, drones, academic

[00:14:33] orienteering, and so forth. So I'll turn it over to Captain Johns to give additional information on the ROTC program. Good evening, and thank you for having me here. As Dr. Smith said, we have about 200 cadets in the program. The average is about 200. We started off this year about 197. The high watermark was a couple years ago at 220, I believe. One of the things that is unique about the program, I think, is that it is cadet run. We organize departments and divisions

[00:15:10] similar to the Navy, but they run it. So we like to call, the instructors like to call ourselves the left and right limits, the rumble strips on the highway if they're going too far left or right. We tell them this is the way you need to do it. The teams are also run by the cadets. We are present there to make sure they don't do anything you know dangerous or anything like that and then obviously we have to go to the meets with them the six teams or eight teams I've lost track the count eight teams that we have they're very competitive and successful we have a region that we compete against other ROTC schools which gives us opportunity not only for friendly

[00:15:46] competition but those team captains that are on those specific teams get a chance to learn and leadership skills in making their team successful as we compete against others. - And one thing I do want to add is that all students, no matter which courses they are participating in, or no matter what extracurricular activity they're participating in, they all engage in community service.

[00:16:13] So whether they're helping their peers, they're helping the elderly, they're helping outreach, every student is fully engaged in community service, which really aligns with our profile of a graduate in the five C's.

[00:16:35] - Good evening, thank you for having me. Propel and Level Up are programs that are designed to address equity through enrichment for high-achieving underrepresented students in STEM. Established in 2019, with only three schools, we currently have 15 schools, three Propel, I'm sorry, 10 Propel schools, five Level Up schools, with a total of about 472 participants.

[00:17:03] In 23-24, our plan is to add one additional level up program to the program, the whole program. Overall objectives for 22-23 were to improve computational thinking and problem solving skills for students, utilizing inquiry-based learning in all of the programs, increasing participation in our summer programs, and increasing student participation in our afterschool programs.

[00:17:33] Next slide, please. So currently what's on your screen a basic overview of our program from the fall propellant level up was very busy this fall starting with our fall unit on forensics students and both propellant level up had an opportunity to study forensics and investigate a crime scene we also had a collaborative partnership with bloom where students were able to participate in the bloom event and lastly in partnership and in collaboration with computer science as well as the Academies of Loudoun.

[00:18:12] Students participated in an Hour of Code event at the Academies of Loudoun. The majority of the activities were planned by the Computer Science Honor Society students at the Academies of Loudoun and led by those students.

[00:18:30] So students had an opportunity to interact and learn computer science pathways from students who are currently computer science students. In the spring, students were engaged in engineering and programming VEX robots and competed against other Propel and Level Up students at our annual VEX robotics competition.

[00:18:58] Students also had an opportunity to engage in STEM activities, navigate in virtual reality, and hear various guest speakers from various STEM fields. Level Up students had an amazing opportunity to attend a field trip at the Udvar-Hazy Center and engage in a lesson led by our aerospace educator.

[00:19:23] This summer, we have the plan of hosting about 250 students at four different camps. One camp will be hosted at the Academies of Loudoun for our Level Up students, which will also be taught by the teachers at the Academies of Loudoun.

[00:19:40] And then there will be three camps hosted at three of our different schools for our Propel students grades four and five. Thank you. Good evening.

[00:19:56] Thank you for having us here. My name is Brittany Shalene. I'm the math programs coordinator and I support the LCPS BEAM program. LCPS BEAM aims to improve the academic performance of students who are economically disadvantaged and or living in historically marginalized communities experiencing opportunity gaps with an eye towards better preparation for high school mathematics, differentiation for students who would benefit from additional challenges, greater participation in selective schools or programs or gifted programs, making sure to diversify those programs, and greater engagement in high school with advanced course taking in mathematics, such as AP Calculus.

[00:20:33] Our program is a little bit different. The majority of our program runs over the summer through five weeks. So our program results and progress goes a little bit into both. summer we had 107 students participate in our program. From those students, we had 86 that were regular attendees. That means that they attended at least 50% of the program. Those students gained an average of 3.3 RIT points in math between spring 2022 and fall 2022 on their map. This is in comparison with the students who are in math 6 that could have participated in the

[00:21:11] program, their average gain was 1.0 red. Among the 86 BEAM regular attendees, 74 or 86 percent enrolled in pre-algebra their seventh grade year, which means they went from math six to pre-algebra. During the year, regular mentor check-ins happened with all students, regular attendees and those who were not, through the 22-23 school year. So we also monitor what their course is for next year, although that's not up there and currently of the 86 regular attendees 76 have enrolled in

[00:21:47] algebra one we also have more students that are coming back for the summer 54 rising eighth graders are coming back and we're hoping to mentor them through the summer to get some of those up to algebra one as well and we also have a whole new rising seventh grade crew of 108 students so we are expanding by about 54 students for the summer so I'd like to just give a quick update Well, first, thank you to our guests this evening for giving an update on their amazing programs here in Loudoun County.

[00:22:23] And I'd like to just give a quick update on our two programs that are in the planning phase. Our dual language immersion offer and wait list emails went out on Monday, May 8th. The initial acceptance deadline for that program is this Friday, May 19th. The LCPS pre-IB program is still currently enrolling students.

[00:22:43] and our student opportunities application remains open for interested students to show interest. And that concludes our presentation for this evening, and we would be happy to answer any questions you might have. So I just have two comments. First of all, thank you all for being here and giving us the updates on your programs.

[00:23:01] What I love about both the JROTC and the NJROTC. I know I'm leaving out a letter. NJROTC, thank you. And the Hour of Code is the leadership opportunities for the students in both, and the mentorship of the students being able to, you know, we're providing not just the program to our students, but the additional opportunity.

[00:23:25] And the camps during the summer and the BEAM program is an amazing opportunity for students. And I'm assuming we'll see more students in our marginalized students applying to the academies because they're getting that early math and science and STEM opportunity, and hopefully we'll see an increase in that application process as well.

[00:23:49] So thank you all very much. Mr. Morse? Thank you. So first, in the Propel level up, you mentioned the crime scene, and I hope we're talking about simulated crime scene. Is that what they're working on?

[00:24:05] Yes, they are simulated. Okay, I was just double-checking. Over to the NJROTC, you have approximately 200 students. How many applied last year? So the application is open to students currently who are in grade 8 in LCPS, homeschool students in private school.

[00:24:29] We'd probably need to take a moment just to dig through that data and see exact numbers. I wouldn't know the exact number off the top of my head, but we can definitely take a look. Typically, do we have more apply than we have space? Absolutely. Because I know that when we talk about special permissions, folks coming in from other schools are saying, you know, we can only come to Long County High School because of the NJROTC.

[00:24:52] So I think the board understands there is a desire to have more, and we work with staff every year to try to get either a ROTC unit. Yes. So we'll continue to push on that. In the BEAM program, there were 107 students, but only 86 regular attendees.

[00:25:11] And regular attendees were defined by 50% participation. That seems really low. So I'd like to kind of get your thoughts on what we're doing or not doing to entice the children to come all the time and to continue to participate.

[00:25:30] Because there are probably more people interested than we have seats available. Is that true as well? Yes, we have around 300 students apply for the program. Okay, because, I mean, if we have students, you have 21 students that were less than 50% attending.

[00:25:48] Do you have any thoughts or ideas on how we could improve the attendance or identify those that would be more actively engaged? Because we're putting resources in, and other students aren't getting these resources. So if we could maximize the resources we're putting in, then we could talk about expanding the program, potentially.

[00:26:07] Yes, one of the big barriers was transportation, and we made sure to get our students, we bumped up the deadline for registration this year so that transportation had time to work the routing so that we could then communicate to families what stops there were and work out any issues with transportation ahead of time.

[00:26:27] That was the biggest obstacle for students. We do deal a lot with students who have family in other countries, and so a lot of our, we said regular attendees as 50 percent because a lot of them had they're going out of the country visiting their families and so when I looked at the data most of our students that were regular attendees attended more than 20 days and then it trickled down from there so when you say 50 percent the majority were of those regular attendees were 20 days or higher okay perhaps somewhere in the

[00:27:01] application it should state that this is for students that will be here for the duration of the summer so that those that are not going away and are at home would benefit from the program. Just some thoughts on that. But I think it's a great program as well. I'm excited about it and I'd like to see more opportunity there. Of course, we'd like to see more of a lot of things these days, but it's just not quite there. Thank you all. Mr. Baby. Thank you, Chair. Could you talk about the RIT points and that gain and what's, so it's an average of 3.3 RIT points. Could you

[00:27:37] talk about what that really means so the RIT is the main score that students get on their map and it's really what they're ready to learn I don't know the official name of RIT but that's how many so a student went from 247 to 250 that's what we mean when we say RIT and when we looked at the data we compared math six students that could have applied to the program and then the students that were in the beam program and the average growth for those students in the BEAM program was 3.3, whereas the average of the, I guess, control group was 1.0

[00:28:14] over the summer. I guess for, in general, across the whole LCPS population, what's the normal growth for any student to go from math six to math six? Do we know that? I'm going to ask Dr. Tyler. I'm sure he has that memorized, and he looks eager to tell us. We want some metrics, and Dr. Tyler appears good evening so dr blake lock and i were considering adding context to the findings so

[00:28:49] these were sixth graders and the typical growth from winter to spring for sixth graders on math is and this is winter to spring imagining january to say april or may is 3.3 rip points so these students actually matched typical growth for kids for an entire half year of school in a five week period so that gives you some context of the kind of growth that they made relative to what's typical for sixth graders at that time okay that's very helpful that's great um that's actually really

[00:29:24] wonderful to hear um and then how does the uh change and this is for dr ellis because there was the virginia math ways uh education i'm sorry the math change is is that still going through or was that um what's the status of that and does that affect the results of this program so britney correct me if I'm wrong but the VMPI is is no longer it has been erased from the video we website we don't talk about VMPI anymore and I believe the mass standards are set to be reviewed this summer public comment this summer but

[00:30:03] nothing to do with BMPI great thank you any further comments mr. Schrock and you joined us if you wanted anything okay all right well welcome anyway all right thank you all very much for the updates we certainly appreciate all the work you're doing on behalf of students we'll move now to 503 health and medical sciences academy program proposal dr. Ellis thank you miss Sheridan so unlike the previous presentation this presentation provides you all

[00:30:36] information on a new program in the in the proposal phase of the process and I I just want to highlight policy 5115 it's a new policy that was approved by the board this past year for special programs and academies and by policy the superintendent and the school board will approve the program plan or the program proposal rather for new academies or programs so we are anticipating we're

[00:31:11] hopeful that the committee will move this to the full board for review and we are I want to be clear that we are very much still in the planning phase and we do feel that we need board approval to continue down the path of planning for a program prior to implementation so before getting any further down the path of planning we feel very strongly that we have community input we've gotten family and staff input we have community buy-in miss Dawson is going to talk a little bit about how we develop that so we are really excited and feel like we're

[00:31:50] on the right path and we have enough information and a complete picture to share with you all this evening to get your feedback and again we're hopeful to talk to the full board so we can continue next steps so with that I will turn it over to Ms. Clark and Ms. Dawson and Dr. Smith for more details.

[00:32:11] Thank you, Dr. Ellis. Again, thank you for allowing us some time this evening to talk about our newest proposal, Health and Medical Science Academy. As all of our programs are directly aligned to the strategic plan, as we mentioned earlier, specifically providing rigorous and culturally responsive instruction to ensure deeper learning and develop accessible specialized programming. So Again, this is our special program status chart that shows the status of our current and future programs.

[00:32:45] As you can see here, we will be sharing information now about one of our programs that is currently in the proposal phase. Tonight, I have with us Renee Dawson and Dr. Lee Smith, who are the program owners, and I will turn it over to them at this time for more information.

[00:33:05] Good evening. I'm going to start off with our HAMSci, which is Health and Medical Sciences Academy. the overview. So the Health and Medical Sciences Academy is designed to expand learning opportunities for students grades 9 through 12 with learning experiences that enrich and expand upon their interest and strengths in the health and science field. Each HamSci Academy pathway will align with a robust industry credential and an integrated work-based learning experience such as mentorship, clinical experience, and toward internship or externship. Students

[00:33:44] will access knowledge and health science literacy through a curriculum that develops critical thinking skills coupled with those industry credentials preparing students for skilled healthcare workforce careers. I will note that the consideration for the Health and Medical Sciences Academy was really born out of job market research, division-wide and cluster surveys, strategic health and medical sciences experience days bloomed, that was mentioned in our previous presentation for middle school students and industry partner feedback. And that

[00:34:21] brings us to our Health and Medical Sciences Industry Roundtable, which was a great success. So a little bit of information about that, on April 28th Loudoun County Public Schools in partnership with the Loudoun Education Foundation hosted a Health and Medical Sciences Roundtable event. There were a a total of 35 participants, Mr. Sorokin was there, including 23 health and medical science workforce representatives, higher education representatives, alongside LCPS staff. Our efforts for the roundtable were to have industry feedback for college and career readiness in

[00:35:00] the field of health and medical sciences, in addition to sharing our exploration in the Health and Medical Sciences Academy. Industry experts shared information relative to current job needs and also shared the skills, attributes, and competencies they seek in potential employees for the workforce. The inclusion of higher education representatives also yielded rich and thoughtful conversation around the potential for HAMSci. This event was exciting and inspiring

[00:35:34] and further demonstrates LCPS's continuous commitment to providing high-quality learning opportunities for our students while sustaining and expanding our business partnerships to really ensure that we are preparing our learners to be future-ready.

[00:35:51] So one of the positions that would support a successful implementation of HAMPSY is the HAMPSY coordinator. So I want to take some time and share with you some of the roles and responsibilities for this position.

[00:36:11] This coordinator would coordinate and supervise all central-level activities and programs related to Health and Medical Sciences Academy. They would coordinate the acquisition of supplies and supplementary materials for instructional use and ensure that industry credentials, work-based learning, and partnerships are aligned and in place, develop long and short-range plans to provide coaching and professional learning opportunities for our teachers, assist with the teaching and learning and student services on items related to health and medical sciences academies, such as special permission, transportation, or school counseling,

[00:36:48] is responsible for the pedagogy and administrative leadership of the program, and is the main point of contact between the school and division of teaching and learning. They would collaborate with teaching and learning and the high school office on program implementation and would be assisting in leading the curriculum with and supporting teachers in the planning and the teaching of courses associated with the health and medical sciences.

[00:37:13] I'm happy to share that one of our partners actually funded this position, and they did so for two years. Next slide, please. And we have Claude Morph Charitable Foundation.

[00:37:29] They have been great partners through this and kind of guided us and gave us some information about different outreach and other business partners. So they've been a great example of partnership. So this is a general timeline. It's a high-level timeline and an overview of the HAMSci development.

[00:37:47] This plan would have, if we are able to proceed, this plan would have the Student Opportunities Portal open in the fall of 23-24 with full implementation in the fall of 2027. And we provided a comprehensive plan for you in our proposal that kind of outlines everything.

[00:38:09] And I'll turn that over to Dr. Ellis. So she is referring to the proposal that's outlined in Regulation 5115. there are multiple steps to that proposal. When creating the template for the proposal, we wanted to make sure that anybody who was interested in proposing a special program or academy was able to provide all of the detailed information that we would need to present to you to move forward.

[00:38:36] So you'll see all of that in the proposal. We won't walk through it line by line, but we're just hitting the highlights here for you. So in terms of cohort planning, we as renee mentioned full implementation we are hopeful for the 27 28 school year we would have students in grades 9 through 12 and that would look like this that you see on this slide so we are hoping that we have two high schools and i'll talk a little bit about how we will if if we get board approval go forward with selecting the high schools in just a minute and in that first year

[00:39:16] we would start with grade 9 with 75 students at each high school and as you can see progress each year for a total of 600 students 300 at each high school participating in the program this as is outlined in the in the detailed proposal this is a lottery base so so any student in grade 8 could apply to participate in this program so we did our best to estimate what the budget would look like over the next several years, there are many question marks here and many

[00:39:54] TBDs that could potentially be big-dollar amounts, so I just want to be very transparent with that, and again, that goes back to us really needing board approval and support for even continuing these conversations at this point.

[00:40:10] So the boxes in green are grant funds that we have received from our partners. So the HAMSCI coordinator, as Ms. Dawson mentioned, has been graciously funded through the Claude Moore Charitable Foundation for two years.

[00:40:28] Our partners at INOVA have funded the HAMSCI camp, and the HAMSCI resource teacher is funded through the Perkins grant for a maximum of three years. We've done our best to identify additional costs.

[00:40:45] see that technology and equipment and consumables will will be a part of this as well as curriculum and professional development for the teachers now the the school staffing really references any additional staff that would be needed and the way that we've done that with the IB program or the pre IB program is through staffing standards so we're not very concerned about that transportation is the biggest unknown it is and as you three four know and probably the most costly and so the transportation team is is ready and

[00:41:25] willing to work with us work through this challenge and it will be a big challenge but we are committed to providing these opportunities to students we think that two schools will actually be easier than just one school given the the size of our division so that's why we're looking at doing two schools simultaneously but just again just to put it all out there transportation really is the biggest unknown in terms of in terms of funding

[00:41:55] and with that I will turn it did I miss anything okay I'll turn it back to you miss Sheridan happy to answer questions and hoping we can talk about next steps thanks do you have any questions board members mr. Morse thank you the the curriculum this is going to be hosted at not at the academies but at two different home schools how many how many credit hours is the plan is this gonna be a half day how many how many days a week have we do we have some kind

[00:42:31] of idea on how how that's gonna work out so students similar to the IB program students will become full-time students at that school if they choose to participate similar to ROTC and JROTC as well they will become full-time students at that school in terms of the percentage of their time working with working in those classes in particular Dr. Smith absolutely so the classes will be every other day for 90 minutes just like it is in a typical high school

[00:43:02] AB schedule. Mr. Sorokin. Thank you, Madam Chair. So just following on to that, from the program proposal, it looks like for freshmen, it would be one elective. For sophomores, it would be one elective. And then junior and senior years, two electives each. So that it would more or less be an elective sequence that students would take as they progress through high school. But then all of their other classes would just be what they would ordinarily take at that school. Is that accurate? Yes, that's correct. So is this, I'm trying to understand how

[00:43:38] similar or different this is from some of the medical related offerings at the academy would this replace any of them is it something totally different entirely you know what what kind of students would want to go through this course as opposed to what's already offered in the pathway at the academy and vice versa great question mr sorotkin so currently at the academies of loud and there is med lab med lab tech rad tech farm tech health informatics this proposal is more biomedical sciences and then in the 11th and 12th grade with options for the language of medicine

[00:44:14] so the courses are not going to be the extension of the academies and they're not going to be the same so they're going to be robust biomedical science courses and are there are there have the two school sites been identified yet or is that still in progress i'm sorry can you repeat the question have the two school sites been identified yet or is that in progress no thank you for that question though because i did promise at the beginning to circle back to that so again we're hoping for two high schools to be identified those schools have not yet been identified we would like to use a process similar to the one we use for the dual language

[00:44:53] immersion program and that is including multiple factors so we would look at again once once board approval to proceed we would look at the data from the family and community surveys that we did to make sure that we're putting a program at a school where there is interest in in that program to draw from the students at that home school so that would be that one piece of data the next piece of information we would look at is the building capacity obviously that's very important and then and transportation is folded into that and

[00:45:30] they will be a part of that conversation from the very beginning so community feedback and interest capacity at the building and then building leadership and buy-in we truly think it's important that the leadership team at the school is enthusiastic about it and is willing to do the hard work to to lead the program and sort of be the the torch bearer for that program and so the process we used for dual language immersion we looked at all of those factors and then we surveyed all of the elementary schools the school principals they submitted an interest

[00:46:06] form expressing why they were excited about potentially being a DLI school and we layered on all of those other factors I mentioned over top of the schools that were interested. So we anticipate using a very similar process. Thank you. Mr. Beatty. Thank you, Chair. So going back to the first bit, you're talking about the kind of the credentials this will go into and how do we anticipate that working? Because I'm looking at the document you've got and it talks about Registered nurses, nurse practitioners, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, psychologists, I imagine doctors.

[00:46:43] So, like, what's the idea in terms of how we're going to focus on credentials, or is this supposed to be very generic so that it could fit any of those? So we are going to convene a subcommittee through the CTE Advisory Committee next school year.

[00:47:01] And that subcommittee is going to specifically focus on our business partners and their input on the Health and Medical Sciences Academy. So the thought is that we can bring them together to have a robust conversation on what their needs are in the industry and then take that back and transform it on what it would look like in the schools.

[00:47:22] Okay. Can I add one quick thing to that? I'll just add that one thing that I really picked up on at the HAMSCI roundtable was the, and this was from our partners in the medical field, and Ms. Dawson, correct me if I'm wrong or if you heard something different, but there was a need for breadth, sort of broad interest in the medical field rather than specialized fields that may not be a priority four to eight years from now when these students are in the workforce.

[00:47:57] So for example, there could be a shortage of LPNs that may not be true 10 years from now. And so they really talked about breadth rather than sort of pigeonholing students in fields before they even graduate from high school.

[00:48:14] And so that's the philosophy we're going with. Did I capture that correctly? That is absolutely correct. Okay, that's helpful. I think that kind of answers my second question, but I'll ask it anyway. So this, would this help fill the gap left behind by the us getting rid of the practical nursing program?

[00:48:31] Or those are, I assume are very different and different goals. - Yes, so the practical nursing program, I think is an example of the opposite. And that is a very narrow program. And we found that students either didn't finish the program, did not go on to be practical nurses, or went on to some other field.

[00:48:53] so it I wouldn't call it a replacement because I think it's a different philosophy okay thank you all right so next steps is obviously you're looking for board approval to continue the proposal piece and so that would require a recommendation from this committee what's the timeframe we're looking at I would say the sooner the better we will continue to plan and it would be I think comforting for the team and make us feel better about starting to reach out to

[00:49:26] schools if we had approval as soon as possible okay many members I'm gonna move to suspend the rules second so moved and seconded all in favor please raise your hand and say aye aye so I'm going to read the recommendation out of board docs that the SPC committee recommends to the school board the approval of the LCVS Health and Medical Sciences Academy proposal and direct staff to continue to provide regular updates to the committee throughout the

[00:49:58] planning process i will second that but for discussion okay and discussion mr morse uh okay so the fy24 is the beginning and that starts july 1st and there's an estimated cost associated with that we don't have that funding 336 000 grant funded but it's only 12 500 for lcps okay okay

[00:50:32] i'm comfortable with that all right so it's been moved and seconded just to um send it to the board so that you can continue your work. So is there any other discussion on this being sent to the pool board? All right, all in favor, please raise your hand and say aye.

[00:50:48] Aye, that will carry three zero. So we'll get it. The chair is sitting here so we can get that on the next agenda. We're sending this to the board. We suspended the rules to put it onto the next agenda.

[00:51:06] I'll talk to the chair. Thank you, I appreciate it. If he could get back to us. All right, so my paper agenda as discussion items, but that's not what's in board docs, so I'm not gonna call that 'cause that wasn't, I don't know what that means.

[00:51:22] Is there any new business? All right, seeing none, we are adjourned. Thank you all very much for all the information tonight. We appreciate it.

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