Special Board Meeting   10/19/2023

We are interviewing our candidates.

Well hello, how are you guys?

Okay, thank you.

My experience and skills to enhance this board and policy making decisions, striving to make sure that every student has a positive educational experience.

Also as a retired planner, we know the value of a strong school system in economic development.

Where it can be used to attract employees to our community and thus

that will have a positive impact on our policies, enhancing our goals of improving education for every student of Albemarle County.

My experience as a planner has taught me to seek consensus.

When taking a project from paper to fruition, building basically from the ground up.

As a coach, I have learned how to motivate my team,

into being the best that they can be through encouraging and helping each player individually gain their personal goals and then adding those goals back together in a team atmosphere.

And as a parent, I've learned that every child needs opportunities and tools to succeed.

I have worked on budgets on the city level, incorporating the school budget in our overall balanced budget.

I have worked with the school systems in bus routing during emergency situations, ensuring that our roadways are safe and clear, ensuring the safety of our students.

I also worked on routing our students' afterschool programs using our transit system.

I've developed sidewalk plans for installation of sidewalks connecting schools with the surrounding communities so that every student and every parent can walk back and forth from home to school.

As a community leader, my husband and I started an AAU wrestling team that not only produced a female national champion, it's produced many state champions, both male and female.

and after 15 years of this program we've talked to multiple parents throughout that have gone throughout our program and one of the things that really impressed me was that our program helped the students

in their academics.

The things that were taught in our program allowed a lot of our children who are ADHD, it gave them coping mechanisms that helped them not only in wrestling, but also in their schoolwork and hopefully they carried it on throughout their life.

As a coach, as a softball coach, I've coached girls.

My favorites are the 10 through the 14 year age.

And in that I install in each player instill instill in each player, the self confidence that they need, the instruction of the game, and the team spirit that I hope will help them maneuver throughout the rest of their lives.

And lastly, I am a very proud parent of a beautiful trans femme child who attended public schools, also Clemson University, and is now teaching English as a second language in Japan.

and I attribute her success to the IE programs that she had during her educational experience.

She was diagnosed with ADHD and working together with her teachers and the system as a team, we found the way that she learns best.

and we help create good habits that have led to her success.

That's a snapshot of who I am and I'd be happy to answer any of your questions.

First question.

What do you see as the role of a school board member?

Okay.

Well, my role as a member of this team is to work together to help us develop our goals and also evaluating the goals that we have already set.

It's also to help evaluate the policies that ensure that all of our students have a good educational experience.

And it's also our job to approve the budget to fund those and give those resources so that we can achieve our goals that we set out.

My

for as to your second question on the Rio district.

I see growth issues.

And I believe that my experience as a planner

would be an added resource to this board and guiding not only this board but the community through that process of from paper to fruition.

And how do I serve?

Mainly by listening.

It's theirs.

Thank you.

Hello, Ms. Combs.

Alright, our second question.

Tell us something that excites you about our strategic plan, Learning Fall, and something that gives you pause or concern.

I love it.

It gives me hope.

That is the best thing I've gotten out of it.

It is well written, it's fact based, and it's fact based with achievable goals.

I look at it as a path forward, and I'm very excited about it.

It talks about the whole student, not just the snapshot that we see in the Bellwether report.

The bad part or a part that shows me a little concern, I personally would like to see a little bit more professional development stuff in our teachers.

That and instructional coaches.

We're talking about teaching the entire child.

because that child may come from a different culture and we need to make sure that we are providing that for our teachers as well.

Can I tell you what I didn't see in it?

it's a snapshot of what we're doing but I don't and I wasn't here for the presentation so just reading the report just blankly I didn't see

It factoring in the pandemic and what we're going through with the pandemic.

Because to me, and as a planner, I know that usually lower income and special needs children, they need more time to adjust.

and the gaps were there before the pandemic but I think the pandemic made them worse because a lot of the resources were from the school system and when the schools closed they did not have those resources.

also having an 88 child I know that structure is very important and when that structure kind of disappeared it those kids you know they fall back into their bad habits so I've read the report

and I think the impact of COVID was harder on these students and I think that the recovery is a little slower.

I know that we're improving on this and my first reaction would be to let this program and this strategic plan that's only two years old kind of work a little longer.

Let's monitor it closer before we make any more big changes.

The board adopted an anti-racism policy in 2019.

In what ways do you think we have been successful in implementing it?

And I don't come before you to not having all the answers.

If I did, I wouldn't be sitting here.

I'm human.

I think the fact that you actually have an anti-racism policy is a good step.

It is, racism is very destructive.

I think we need to do a better job in communicating what we are wanting this policy to do with the public.

We need, it's written well.

But you get the public views of institutional racism and things like that and while I believe that it's there, I've seen it.

as it is.

I do believe that this board, I'm trying to find my notes,

You've done well in polling your employees.

Raises, trying to get them up to a competitive level, expanded leave, and things like that.

The second thing that we can do is find ways to support them further.

I've already mentioned professional development, things like that.

And the third way I feel that we can improve retention would be to make our employees feel valued.

They're on the ground level.

And as a policy board, we should have those policies that help them.

Wow.

Thank you for asking that.

I am a practicing planner, and you'll hear me have several sayings in that.

As a practicing planner, my job, once again, was taking plans of a municipality, whether it's a school building, let's see, I've done development

public through that process and it's a very cumbersome process anytime that you do that.

The first thing I've learned as a planner is people don't like change.

and I understand that, but the world doesn't stop.

We also have what we call the three E's of planning, and this will get to working together.

educate and evaluate.

And anytime you have differing opinions, you need to engage.

We are all the sum of our experiences and everyone in this room has had a different experience.

So we're going to look at things differently.

We need to engage with each other and try to figure out why we stand where we stand and the things and see if we can do that.

We need to come find common ground to start with and then go from there.

The educate part

is to educate myself or yourself on the facts.

Having facts in front of us, it's so easy to get caught up, especially with Facebook and Twitter and all of that, to get caught up into people's opinions.

And we as community leaders must deal in fact all the facts.

and evaluate.

Constantly evaluating if what my position is or what my position is goes back to our overall goal of providing an excellent experience for our students.

Is that it?

I don't have any questions.

I will say that if I'm chosen, I am retired.

And I will devote all of my energies to making this a success.

I love working with people.

I love communicating with people, so those I represent need to, I'm an open book, come talk to me.

I'd love to have a cup of coffee and, as I said, engage.

I think that's the best way that we can help.

I hope I bring a different view to this board, more of a global aspect, looking at things.

You've got some amazing things going on, especially in this plan and I'm excited to be part of it.

I'm even more excited on our, hold on, I'm to the budget.

I can't get away from the budget.

The long range plans, the structures you have, I think I can be a big asset to this board based upon my experience.

Not only can I know the difference between a site plan and architectural drawings, I can help bring those things to the community.

and I thank you very much for this opportunity.

I'm excited.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Thanks so much for coming.

Great.

So good evening, and thank you for taking the time to meet with us.

I know you all are busy.

My name is Jim Dillenbeck, and I'd like to be considered for the position on the school board from the Rio district.

I've been a member of this community for about 35 years, which makes me feel very old.

We've been residents of Albemarle County for the last 22 years.

My wife, Tamsie, is an oncology nurse at the cemetery north of Jefferson, and we have four grown children.

Our youngest child, Hallie, graduated from Albemarle High School in 2017, and as a proud parent, I can say she still holds a school record in track and field there.

I graduated from UVA with a history degree and put it to good use doing construction here in town for one year and at the end of the year decided I wanted to pursue education so I went to JMU for a post baccalaureate education program and spent a year there.

When I completed that program, I was hired to teach eighth grade civics in Lynchburg at Linkhorn Middle School.

So I taught civics and a course that I helped to design called Global Studies.

I also coached three sports.

In 1990, we were wanting to get back to Charlottesville, so I interviewed for a position that had opened up at Albemarle High School and actually remember my interviews here in this building back in 1990.

I was hired at Albemarle High School to teach world history and eventually U.S. government.

and I taught there from 1990 to 1997.

I also coached JV football, boys and girls track and field, and eventually boys cross country.

In the spring of 1997, our third child was born and I made the difficult decision to get out of teaching.

My wife was not employed at the time, although she worked very hard.

We found it very difficult to live in Charlottesville as a family of five with a teacher salary of $35,000, which included my coaching stipend.

If selected to serve on the board, I would be a very vocal advocate for improving teacher compensation.

I don't want to see what happened to me continue to happen to others like me.

I went to work as a sales and customer service rep for Lakeland Tours, which is now World Strides, helping teachers set up their educational field trips to Washington DC, Charlottesville, New York City, just as I had done with my students when I was teaching at Albemarle.

After 9-11 that business was hit pretty hard and I began to explore other careers and I transitioned to the financial services business in 2002.

I've been a financial advisor for the last 21 years and a certified financial planner for the last six years and as such I teach and coach my clients rather than a room full of 20 or 25 teenagers.

helping my clients manage investments, insurance, and long-term planning.

Over the last 25 years, I've enjoyed coaching recreation soccer, Little League baseball, upward basketball, and helping with local track and field and cross-country events.

My wife and I continue to teach Sunday school elementary grades at our church.

My main motivation for applying for this position is my love for kids.

and my desire to see all of them thrive.

I know that's a key goal for the strategic plan in this county and I'd love to see them survive, thrive regardless of their race, gender, disabilities, socioeconomic status and primary language.

I applaud the incredible work that you all and the staff across the board at ACPS have done over the years, especially during the pandemic.

and I believe there are opportunities to improve the good work that you all have been doing over the last few decades.

Although I don't have a PhD, I am a CFP with 35 years of deep roots and connections in this community.

I'm a small business owner and no longer have kids at home, so I have time to visit schools and meet with teachers and parents and administrators just as Jono and I'm sure all the rest of you have done.

As you all know, Albemarle County Public Schools have an incredibly critical role to play in community development.

The students of today are going to be the teachers, nurses, business owners, carpenters, marines, and possibly even superintendent, as Dr. Haas pointed out last week, of the next few decades.

I'd be honored to serve alongside you all as we seek to continue this vital work.

Thank you very much.

Sure.

Great questions.

I see the role of a member of the board as being several different roles.

One is obviously to communicate with the parents and the people of Albemarle County that we serve.

As a teacher, I can remember having conversations with very few parents, and usually it was the parents that didn't really need to meet with me.

And so I'm guessing that most of you all have had communication with parents to hear their concerns for what is going well, what is not going well with their children.

So communication with parents, communication with staff is important.

I want, if I'm selected to be on the board, I want to spend time with teachers hearing their concerns and administrators as well.

And being a conduit between the teachers and the school board so that we can

have a system in place where teachers feel really, really good about their job.

They have a difficult job, obviously.

We all know that.

So really, communication.

And then I would say, I think it's really important for the board to be advocates to the board of supervisors and the other, the state board of education, the state funding.

Going through the budget the other day with Dr. Haas and Dr. McLaughlin and Maya, it strikes me that

The funding, and you all talked last week about how it may take 30 some years to reach the renovation goals that the board is hoping for.

That's a long time.

So it's really being an advocate with the funding sources to try to get more funding coming to the ACPS.

So really it's communication and it's advocating on behalf of the staff of ACPS.

And so my thought is, I would love to be able to offer a forum for parents to come from the Rio district and meet with me on a regular basis.

I could see doing quarterly meetings, just inviting any parents that want to come.

I know it may be a gripe session, and that's OK. That's why we're here.

And being able to offer to meet with them one on one, if they would prefer.

Alright, second question.

Tell us something that excites you about our strategic plan, Learning Fall, and something that gives you pause for concern.

I

I love the Learning for All strategic plan.

The first goal of seeing every student thrive is really important to me.

One thing that I learned when I was teaching is that every student has some interest, some strength, whether it's math, music, drama, sports.

Identifying that strength for every student, all 13,000 and almost 500 students, is critical.

And I think identifying those strengths and interests as soon as possible is critical.

I was talking, I think it was Dr. McLaughlin who mentioned the community engagement office

as one of the things that I believe, if I heard him correctly, is happening is that there are folks that are reviewing the PSATs that students recently took and saying, you know, you have real strengths in these areas.

Let's develop a plan to help you pursue those strengths.

When I was at Albemarle we had 1700 kids and if they weren't involved in activities, if there wasn't something that was driving them, then they were going to be at risk for absenteeism, discipline problems.

So identifying the strengths and interests of students is a big part of learning for all.

One of my concerns as I read through that is how do we as a county measure success?

How do we know whether the wonderful goals that have been set forth in this are being reached?

I've been in the business world now for 26 years and in business there are metrics.

We know whether what we're doing in business is working or not working.

If it's not working we need to identify that and correct that or else we're not going to be in business for very long.

And so if there are, I remember my

my mentor teacher way back in 1987 saying that your goals need to be measurable and specific and if they're not being met then you need to figure out why and so I think that one of the challenges for the county is to determine are we meeting the goals that we've set forth or not.

and yeah, I'll leave it at that.

I think that there are some areas of concern that I see.

For example, three of the 15 elementary schools are accredited with conditions.

That's an improvement over last year, but there again is an opportunity that we have to

to see some improvements.

The other issue that is troubling to me is to see the fact that we have only 11% of the teachers in ACPS are people of color and roughly 39% of students in Albemarle public schools are non-white.

That to me is a problem.

and I have some ideas about how to recruit and retain more teachers, people of color.

I also saw something that alarmed me, which is that only 5% of African American and Hispanic or Latino students have been identified as gifted

I'm not sure at what grade level that is.

I think that was second or third grade maybe.

And 70% or so of white students have been identified as gifted.

That's a problem.

Good to see you.

and anti-racism policy in 2019.

In which ways do you think we've been successful in implementing it?

Yeah, great question.

I was impressed with the fact that as a school division, our dropout rate,

is low, lower than the state average and our graduation rate is higher.

Okay, those two make sense, correlated.

And I think it's, in reading through the statement

or the policy, I think it was really good that the board policy spells out different types of racism, individual, systemic, etc.

Because I think it's important to make those distinctions and I love the wording

that we won't tolerate racism and we're going to try to identify, we know that racism exists, individual, systemic, and so we're going to pursue a course to eliminate racism in every possible way.

One idea that I have to help improve, again, the fairly wide disparity between minority students in AP classes and in terms of teachers who are white versus people of color, I would love to see

like to see people of color come in, business owners that could come in to speak with middle school kids, high school kids, give white and non-white kids an opportunity to see

people of color in positions of leadership and business, see them thriving.

So that's one idea.

Another is, I envision, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could talk to Coach Elliott or Coach

and say, hey, we would love for you and UVA students at Madison House to come into our elementary schools and spend some time with kids who need some guidance, need some direction.

And I think that if that would serve those kids that are

You know, maybe not college bound or having trouble reading, that sort of thing.

But it would also give white kids a chance to see, hey, here are

Black student athletes coming into our school who care enough to spend time with the kids in my school.

And I think that that is another way that we can gradually begin to sort of change the culture.

It's very difficult, if not impossible, to mandate or legislate attitudes that will reverse racism that's existed for many years.

teacher recruitment and retention because it's such an important issue and that's what this question focuses on.

So recruitment and retention of our employees is incredibly important.

Yeah, it's a great question and I can speak as somebody who if I had been paid better, I probably would still be teaching.

although I'm getting up there because I loved it but I couldn't afford to do it and I think 28% or 25% of our teachers don't live in the Charlottesville Albemarle area because they can't afford to.

So, although it was nice to see the raises that were instituted in the last year or so, pay increases for teachers at five, six, seven percent, I think that's wonderful.

but it doesn't make up for the decades of time when teachers have been underpaid.

That spring of 97, I went in to see Larry Lawell, my principal at the time, and he said, Jim, I have good news.

I've found $70 more for you next year.

And I was thinking, is that per day or per week or what?

And he said, no, that's for the year.

And I would have made less money had I come back the next year because our health insurance rates went way up.

and I thought, I can't sustain this.

I couldn't see continuing to do that.

And so I think that while I applaud the pay increases for teachers, I think we can do more

I was talking to Maya on Tuesday about the funding that Albemarle County gets from the state.

I think we get 25-28% of our funding from the state and a portion of that's based on the LCI, the local composite index, which penalizes counties and cities that are wealthier than others.

So far, year to date, the Virginia Lottery, which I'm not a big fan of, has brought in $890 million of profit.

So we're on track to hit a billion dollars this year.

And just based on the number of students in Albemarle County, 13,500, our portion of that, if we were just basing that on the number of students, would be $10 million.

We're getting four million from the state lottery.

So I would advocate kind of a two-pronged approach.

One is to lobby the state to either change the LCI or somehow make a provision to get more funding to those school districts that have a higher population.

As Dr. Haas pointed out the other day, in I think it was 2020, one individual, one wealthy individual in Albemarle County

had a big windfall and that bumped our LCI rating from 64 on average up to 68 or 69.

So we were penalized for that year.

We got less money from the state because of that.

I'm also a big advocate of going to the Board of Supervisors and saying, look, we have buildings that are, in some cases Albemarle High School is 70 years old.

It's overcrowded by 200 or 300 students.

Mountain View Elementary School, overcrowded by 250 students.

So we have to get more funding from the county.

And I believe that it can happen.

This is a desirable place to live.

Working on a board requires working collegially as a team, even when views differ, being a problem solver, focusing on long term strategies and governance, and being able to thoughtfully engage with the public.

Yeah, that's a good question My wife reminded me the other day that I'm a bridge builder and not a bridge burner.

I think I got some diplomatic tendencies from my mother and you know, I've served on a board of a

charity group for the last nine years that has raised $1.2 million for Blue Ridge Area Food Bank and for WorldServe providing water in Africa.

And we've had disagreements about certain things, and we have to work through those things, keeping in mind the goal.

The goal is for the Albemarle County Schools

is that every student will thrive.

And so I think as issues come at the board, it's imperative that the board work together and keep the main thing the main thing.

And to set aside our personal feelings about this issue or that issue and realize I represent, if I'm appointed, I represent the people of the Rio district.

and I may not agree with their opinions, but my job is to represent them and work together with the other members of the board.

I'm saddened by what's going on in Washington and the House of Representatives right now and that's an example of poor leadership and so in my opinion it's imperative that anybody on the board has to be a team player and I see myself as

as doing that both in my time as an educator and also in business.

When I was teaching middle school in Lynchburg we had a program called Junior Achievement and I know they've had some here and to have young people or even old people come in from the outside business world and talk to the kids was great.

and I've done some tutoring, you know, partnering with Madison House and even when I was teaching, and I think this is still true, high school seniors have to have community service.

So let's get some of these kids, whether they're on the football team or not, who need the community service and partner them with second graders, third graders, helping them learn how to do math or reading.

Do you have any questions for us?

I do.

A couple of questions.

One is, and please stop me if I'm out of time.

One question is an issue that's just fairly recent.

The issue of how do you deal with

AI, artificial intelligence, and specifically chat GPT.

As a government teacher and world history teacher, I used to assign writings, which my students loved, essays and so on.

And today a student can say, okay, I'm going to write a paper on the Supreme Court.

and they can download and have artificial intelligence write the paper.

That's a great question.

We haven't discussed that as a board yet, right?

I know I work at UVA, and I know that they're dealing with the same things.

So that's why I'm trying to answer you right now.

Yeah, it's one of those things that in 1995, it was not even on our radar, obviously.

We had just gotten Netscape.

Another question is, so my oldest son, who's now a nurse at UVA Hospital,

got a master's in nursing, but before he did, he went to KTEC to get his CNA certified nurse's assistant.

Can you give me kind of an update on what's happening with KTEC?

I know the partnership with the city has changed recently.

Do you all anticipate that KTEC will continue to be a viable option for those students that aren't going to go to college but want to get a plumbing certification or whatever?

We're working on those details now.

I had a question from a parent recently who said, you know, those college bound kids taking AP courses, they're going to be great.

They're fine.

Special ed programs are great.

God bless those teachers.

I couldn't have done that.

But it's the big group of kids in the middle that really just need a push, need some attention.

In some cases, I think, if I'm not mistaken, somebody mentioned the number, percentage of kids, John, I think you mentioned that

Don't go to college.

Don't pursue any education.

Yeah, good question.

I think overcrowding is an issue.

Redistricting is an issue.

You know, we live on Huntington Road and the kids across the street or next street over went to Woodbrooke and our kids would have been at Agner Hurte.

So, you know, redistricting.

So overcrowding is an issue.

How the school board policy on transgender and related issues is playing out.

Are there going to be individual bathrooms in the schools?

I noticed, it was mentioned last week in the meeting, that kindergarten enrollment's down by 12%.

So I think families are wondering, do we send our kids to Albemarle County Schools, which have been terrific over the years, or do we seek other alternatives?

And I think, as Maya or somebody mentioned last week, one of the three

One of the reasons why people are leaving or enrollment is down is because families are seeking alternative education.

We lived in Seattle for three years and we're part of this in the Snohomish County area.

public schools would open their doors to homeschool families or private school families to come in and take classes for an hour or two a day and the state gave the county money for every student that was there for a time and there were hundreds of students throughout the county that came to these sort of satellite education centers

And we chatted about that the other day and I think in in Albemarle County there's fewer than two dozen students that are doing that so I think An issue in when I talk with the neighbors is You know do we send our kids to Regent or to Covenant School or home school or do we send them to Agner hurt?

Thank you for your time

I was born and raised in the Midwest, Illinois.

I lived there for all of my young life, and then graduated high school and made one of the more mature decisions of my young life and decided I wasn't quite ready for college yet.

So I decided to join the military.

I was in the army, and after the army, moved here to Jordan, and I worked there for about 10 years.

Two kids both in the Albemarle County Schools

I, in all of my dealings with ACPS staff, I, positive and negative, whatever, I have never run into an individual where I felt like the... Common, and I think it's something worth supporting and empowering the staff to do, which is what interests me in being a part of this.

What do you see as the role of a school board member?

It's actually two questions put together.

We're calling it one.

We'll tackle the first one first.

What do I think the primary role of a school board member is?

probably twofold.

One is oversight, obviously, of the ACPS staff superintendent's office.

And the other is empowering the ACPS staff to carry out their vision for, you know, I got a chance to really go in depth on

the strategic plan and understand the sort of transformational nature of a lot of those programs and I think the school board can really play a pivotal role in empowering the schools and the staff to do that.

As far as the challenges that we face in the Rio district, you know, there's some overcrowding issues, you know, that we are dealing with.

There are some transportation issues.

That's kind of a universal problem, I think, at this point.

We actually started the year without transportation, but then we're lucky enough to get bus routes for both of our kids, because it was a little tough.

We had one starting Lakeside at 9 and one starting AHS at

you know like 905 a little bit of a challenge there at the beginning of the year but it's been great to see how the county has has handled that and and brought on more bus drivers but yeah I think those are probably the two biggest issues as far as how I would represent the district you know I have a lot of relationships with parents and parent groups and teachers

My kids have been in the Rio district all through their schooling.

And I think outreach is a really important part of what a school board member can do to support their community, whether it's just having some

listening meetings or just meeting with parent groups or PTOs from the specific schools and understanding what their concerns are and then bringing those concerns to the board and advocating for the constituents in my district.

So the strategic plan I read through in depth and the thing I

Really appreciated most about the strategic plan is that this notion of curiosity sort of undergirds all of the goals and objectives right whether it's you know Empathy that's I'm curious about how other people feel whether that's Cultural sensitivity, you know, I'm curious about other people's experiences and then obviously academically, you know I'm curious about the world and how it works and I want to learn and

and I love that that is a thread that goes through the entire strategic plan and I really appreciate how the plan is tied to goals and metrics and so the one negative thing

that I saw, you know, being in the trades, it's close to my heart, you know, and a lot of the benchmarks and success conditions revolve around secondary education in college and things like that.

And I know that there are programs that exist to allow

or to expose kids to the trades into different career paths and things like that.

But it would it would also be nice to maybe see that represented in the metrics in the success conditions so that we know that kids are getting that option as they go through.

Yeah.

Hi Luke, it's good to see you again.

Thank you.

The board adopted an anti-racism policy in 2019.

In what ways do you think we've been successful in implementing it?

Well, I think

Just from a metric perspective, you can see a change in the way minority students, economically disadvantaged students, how their learning outcomes have improved in certain ways and how the

Some of the gaps have closed.

That's not to say that all of them have closed, but some of them have, you know, and I think that's a positive thing.

I think that's a move in the right direction.

I also see, you know, the sort of outreach and the community building that happens like especially like an Albemarle High with different communities having days dedicated to, you know, their experience, their culture.

I think that's a really important thing to give each of those kids and each of those communities a sense of belonging and a sense of ownership in their schools.

How could I help?

Well, I would be more than happy to sort of carry that torch to the constituents of my district and sort of

extoll the virtues of it because I think it is a good plan and I think it has worked.

I think there have been some really positive benefits from it and I would be happy to sort of advocate.

I so appreciate what you said in your letter to the board and in your opening comments about our teachers and kind of how every teacher and staff member that you've encountered, you've encountered this person who so supports our students and that's so important to us as well.

And so this question really talks about that.

So the recruitment and retention of our employees is incredibly important.

So I think the division has done well in recruiting teachers.

I think we have gotten a good crop of teachers pretty consistently to come in and work for the division.

I think some of the processes in place to communicate with the teachers, like the surveys and listening sessions and stuff like that, I think are really important, understanding

where the teachers are coming from, what their issues are, whether it's pay or working conditions or whatever, really understanding and getting down into the weeds of what those problems are and I've seen a lot of that happening which is encouraging.

I know teacher retention is a struggle sort of universally right now and

It's a hard problem to

As a community, ACPS has done such a good job of putting students first, right?

There's very much like a student first mentality.

But we wouldn't have the students without the teachers.

And so I think we have to also prioritize our teachers, you know, and whatever that means, you know, whether it's, you know, negotiating new contracts or improving working conditions or whatever, I think,

I'm another Midwesterner working on a board requires collegiality as a team, even when you differ, being a problem solver, focusing alone from strategies and governance, and being able to thoughtfully engage the public.

That's where I think my sort of unique experience lends itself pretty well, especially in my time working for the federal government and the military.

You know, we, I was an intelligence analyst, and we constantly worked on teams.

And you talk about disagreeing with folks, you know, there were some passionate disagreements about what we thought was going on or what we assumed was going on.

And yet we were still able to take, you know,

significant amounts of data

There's another perspective that also should be heard in this case, which was, I think, important.

As far as collegiality goes, if you've never sat down in a room full of generals or cabinet-level staff,

and know what a challenge it is to sort of get them to understand and agree on something.

I have significant experience in that regard.

You know, taking really and sometimes really difficult, really complex concepts and ideas and breaking them down into their sort of simplest constituent forms and then helping

One question I had is, are there any

sort of skill sets, experiences, core competencies that you feel like the board is either missing right now or losing with people that are leaving the board?

I don't know if anyone else has a chance to answer that.

I don't know if there are polls, and one thing that I've learned being on the school board now for almost 10 years is that it helps to have some depth of knowledge in particular areas, but even more important is being able to generalize and look beyond the immediate problems and synthesize different types of information.

That's the one known quantity that you're losing, right?

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you very much for coming and for your interest in me as a school board member.

Excellent.

I'm Gail Lavette.

I have lived in the Rio district since May of 2013.

I began my career as an educator in Alexandria City Public Schools.

I was an elementary teacher, I was an elementary administrator, I was a middle school administrator, so I have a lot of school experience.

As a practitioner, I then moved to Charlottesville and I've worked for UVA for many years in the School of Education.

So I, for several years, was a director of what we called turnaround programs, which I always thought was a misnomer.

It was more partnerships between UVA and several priority identified elementary schools that were across the state.

We also liaisoned with the Virginia Department of Education during that time.

So that was an amazing experience where I got to

go back into schools and work with leaders and division leaders, school boards and the VDOE and of course teachers and students.

I have worked with several initiatives at UVA that have also worked with teachers.

One of them was the Supporting Transformative Autism Research where we worked pretty extensively with special education teachers across the state.

It actually wound up

branching out to across the country.

We had teachers attending from Seattle and leaders attending from all over the place.

And then the pandemic hit.

I was a researcher as well in education for many years.

And so I was a parent of three children in virtual school during the COVID pandemic.

And I watched the teachers working

over time throughout that time and in the 21-22 school year I really felt like it was incredibly important to be part of the solution.

So I left UVA for a year and I was a reading specialist in a Title I elementary school in Charlottesville City.

That was an amazing, incredible experience.

I worked with students who were in need of pretty intensive reading intervention.

I got to work with teachers implementing a core English language arts curriculum and I got to work with leaders both in the school and at the division level.

to implement screening and systems of support for our students in terms of instruction in the classroom level and then also interventions.

I am back at the university now.

I am faculty in the educational doctorate program.

I work with practitioners who are pursuing an EDD.

I am core faculty in the curriculum and instruction program for that, so I work with our students on identifying problems of practice within their local educational context and work on identifying root causes, possible solutions for them, trying those out, evaluating them, and so that's really

incredible because I get to continue to work with schools in that way.

All right, we have a series of questions.

Excellent.

This is the first one, but it's really two questions.

So what do you see as the role of a school board member?

And what are the biggest issues facing the students, families, and schools of the Rio district?

So I believe, and I see the role of a school board member as being a policymaker.

I see the role of a school board member as being a steward of resources that are

We are privileged to be in charge of and we are charged with.

We are collaborators with the Board of Supervisors.

I spent five years on long range planning, so I know the term CIP and I know the role that the Board of Supervisors play with that.

In that, and I've been in joint meetings with the Board of Supervisors for that, I see the role as being an advocate for our community and being a liaison between the schools and the community members, the families, the caregivers, the students.

And then finally, probably most importantly, I see us as a partnership with division leadership because we are all working towards the same goal of

I was just thinking about the fact that we bought our house in 2013.

I was

had a not even two-year-old and was pregnant with my second child and we bought our house so that our kids could attend Abner Hurte and that was because I spent five years as a teacher and a leader in a school that was incredibly diverse.

We had over 30 home languages represented and we worked tirelessly at that school.

One of the principals who went on to central office used to talk about relentless pursuit.

We had to be in relentless pursuit of positive outcomes for our kids at that school and that's sort of a mantra I've kept in my mind.

So I was very pregnant and had a two-year-old and Michelle Kastner humored me and took me on a tour of the school thinking I probably had a kindergartner at home but I was like no no

and she put me in a first grade classroom and that kindergarten classroom turned out to be my daughter and son's kindergarten teacher later and I was incredibly blown away.

I think Rio is such a diverse community and our community members bring incredible funds of knowledge, funds of identity with us or with them I mean.

But we also have some challenges in Rio.

We have two out of our three elementary schools.

We have pretty staggering achievement gaps for our black students, for economically disadvantaged students in those schools.

I was on long range planning for five years.

I was also the chair of parent council for two years and so I've gotten to interface with lots of different

stakeholders across the schools.

And so I know that we are facing over enrollment in one of the schools and under enrollment that's been persistent in another one of our schools as well.

I know we also are looking at a pretty significant redistricting.

It's exciting.

We're in the North feeder pattern.

We have a new elementary school.

We're trying to decide the site for that, but that's likely going to involve another redistricting.

our neighborhoods especially have been through redistricting before because we are a very dense and highly populated area so I think you know my role in that is continuing to engage the community continuing to liaison between the school system and on long range you know I was out there telling my neighbors and the parents at

PTO meetings about what we were doing in Long Range and the decisions we're making because they are going to impact.

I am a stakeholder until my youngest graduates Albemarle High School in 2034.

This question also has two parts.

Tell us something that excites you about our strategic plan and something that gives you pause for concern.

So I'll probably weave those together.

So there is a plan that the division leadership have put together, and it's data informed.

And the best part about it, when I met with division leadership, is that it's a fluid document.

So they admitted, or not admitted, they agreed that because the Bellwether Port brought out a lot of areas

that the strategic plan needs to address, that there are certain things that they are revising or they are eliminating from the strategic plan.

I think thriving students is what stands out to me, especially in Rio in particular, and I think we saw that the Bellwether report

indicated we need to have rigorous instruction.

We need to have high quality instructional materials for our students, K-5, and also up into our secondary schools.

I think we also need to have an articulated intervention plan.

Many of our students are leaving our elementary schools and going into

Hi Gail, it's good to see you.

The board adopted an anti-racism policy in 2019.

In what ways do you think we've been successful in implementing it?

The anti-racism policy along with the transgender student protective policies I think are two policies that our school district has that are unique to us in a lot of ways that make me incredibly proud to be an ACPS parent.

They make me incredibly proud to be a taxpayer in the county.

You know, I think the strengths of the anti-racism policy are that we're acknowledging that

Structural racism and structural oppression exists and significantly impacts outcomes for our students.

So I think I can help contain that.

I think, well, actually another strength of it is that it is so widely adopted, the policy.

So, you know, our website, school board websites, as 100% of school board members have been trained in it.

I think it dovetails nicely with our culturally responsive teaching and the micro-credentialing around that.

and so I think it's a guiding light or a beacon that we can use to ensure that every decision, every policy we approve, every funding allocation, every capital improvement we make has that as our founding principle.

I think, you know, we saw in the Bellwether report that

there are still ways that structural racism are continuing to perpetuate that's in our outcomes of our students who are in marginalized, historically marginalized groups and so I think I bring a lot of experience in curriculum, a lot of experience in implementing high quality instructional materials for

Recruitment and retention of our employees is incredibly important.

So I was a part of Long Range.

I believe I had just gotten onto the committee when the school board conducted the studies for competitive pay.

I think that's a real strength.

We're using competitive markets as an educator.

That is important.

And I think it makes us attract.

I think we offer the culturally responsive teaching micro-credential which is very unique to ACPS and I think that is certainly a strength.

I think what the Bellwether report showed, I believe it was the Bellwether report, that we're doing a really good job attracting administrators of color as well.

The teacher shortage is a real thing and I work with school districts across the country who are grappling with that and I think it's not only about attracting our teachers but it's about retaining our teachers as well.

So that's really important.

I align with Dr. Berlin.

I align with several of you.

I believe our teachers deserve collective bargaining rights.

I believe they deserve to have input in their working conditions.

I think that looking at area school divisions that

that is something that is going to attract and retain our teachers as well.

But when I think about areas of need, I think about our most vulnerable students.

So my son receives special education and we need special education teachers desperately.

I've worked with them and you know I think as a division and as a school board we need to ensure that we have our

new pipeline in our sort of homegrown special education teachers.

But while they're getting their provisional license, I think it's incredibly important to ensure that they are getting the support that they need, that they do have access to high quality instructional materials and intervention and systematic intervention and training.

Working on a board requires working collegially as a team even when views differ, being a problem solver,

I was an elected family council chair for

two years, I was a member for one of those years.

I think I don't need to tell a room full of people that my first year as co-chair of Parent Council was the 2019 school year, so then everybody does the math and figures that out very quickly.

But we started having some really important conversations collectively that I, myself and my co-chair were leading and facilitating, and they were

They could be uncomfortable.

We were talking about discrepancies and disparities in PTO funding from school to school and what schools were able, who had robust PTOs, were able to provide at those schools.

then sort of talking about it from the aspect of we're in the urban ring and you know we we are excited when we get two thousand dollars we are not able to purchase playground equipment every year and so we had started having those conversations and they were I felt really important but they were also a touch controversial and understandably everybody's a stakeholder in their community

So that was important work and it shifted a little bit once we went online to also facilitating communication between division leaders around the COVID plan, instruction, which was also, you know, very

important and urgent, but also people had a lot of opinions around that.

So I worked to liaison in that way as well.

I've worked through long range with a number of community members, board of supervisors, I've worked and brought priorities of the school board back to long range.

Long Range Planning is an incredible committee because it is such a diverse amount of experience.

And so you sit next to someone whose experiences are very different but so vast and apply to facilities way more than mine do.

So I learned a lot during that time.

with stakeholders in schools that were under review or being reconstituted with the Department of Ed.

And so I had to liaison or I got to liaison between Department of Education folks who had priorities that sometimes differed from the school-based or division-based reps and so I had to

Oh, you're welcome.

I don't think so.

It's been a privilege to be here, so thank you very much.

Great to meet you.

Thanks so much for your interest in the Brio District School Board.

So we'll start out with an introduction.

If you have anything you want to share with us for a few minutes, that'd be great.

And then we'll go through a few questions from the two of you.

Perfect.

Well hello everyone.

My name is Kelly Washington and I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to meet with me here tonight and I appreciate this opportunity.

I have been a resident of Albemarle County for 17 years and a local business owner for that same amount of time.

All three of my children attend ACPS in high school, middle school, and elementary.

I am here tonight because I would like the opportunity to give voice to several different factions of our community that are not currently represented on the school board.

I want to be frank.

I attended four years of college with the goal of becoming an educator.

I had to make a choice my final year to continue my student teaching or to keep working to maintain my mortgage because I bought a house at a very young age and I needed to be able to afford the cost of living in the inner city of Indianapolis.

I did not have the privilege to have my family provide me with a college education.

Coming from a blue collar working class family, all of my achievements in education came with great challenges to sacrifice.

I do not regret my decision as they led me on the path to opening a restaurant with my husband here in Charlottesville and we started a family here.

Starting a business in a small college town is not automatically financially lucrative as many people here know.

We have found success as business owners after years of hard work but we also spent many years struggling to make ends meet.

There's a great discrepancy in representation for average families.

You can want to serve the less fortunate members of our community, but you cannot truly understand those challenges for families unless you've experienced them yourselves.

I believe I represent the average citizen and parent in our community.

Not only am I part of the working class, I am a person that has overcome a disability and I'm also a minority as a member of the Sault Ste.

Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians.

I have been hearing impaired since I was nine years old.

Wearing hearing aids is a very obvious disability for a young child, so I know firsthand how detrimental bullying can be for any student for any reason.

As a Native American, I would like to bring focus on how we can overcome the achievement gaps for our students and give representation for a minority group that has historically been underrepresented in Albemarle County in general.

I have previously worked as a school bus driver for ACPS for over nine and a half years.

I hope that my experience will be considered a valuable resource for the school board.

I also believe that my previous employment driving a school bus would allow me to use my experience to represent the current drivers because they don't have any representation at this point on this level, and I would help solve issues with job satisfaction and employee retainment.

My experience as a business owner would also be beneficial as I know firsthand about the challenges of employee retention and have ideas of how to improve in this area for everyone.

I am friends with many school bus drivers and I can also directly relate to the financial and personal plight of the lower income workers within our school district, many of whom cannot afford to live in the county that they work for.

Lastly, I would like to emphasize my desire to work on improving community engagement.

I believe having a more relatable community member on the school board would open many doors for the parents to feel represented and empowered.

We have several questions for you.

First one is sort of two-parter.

I see the role of a school board member as literally a representative.

They are representing each area as the parents and the teachers, the students, everyone.

And I think they can be a good voice for us as long as they are listening to the parents and the teachers and their employees and the children.

I think some of the biggest issues facing the students in particular is obviously coming back from the pandemic, you know, working on reading scores, working on, you know, catching up with, getting used to the schedules and everything has become so virtual and kids are not engaging.

Like my youngest child

I don't know any of the parents because there haven't been enough events at school where I can meet the parents so that they can have play dates and have activities after school.

I mean, that may seem minor when it comes to education, but engagement starts with friends and the parents.

That's the same thing for families.

There's a huge disconnect that I didn't see for my first two children.

and now that they're older they can communicate with their friends and they can make plans on their own and it's just really important.

What I would like to do to represent the constituents, I mean the simple answer is I want to help with transportation.

I really think that I could give a completely different perspective.

I would help the bus drivers feel represented because that is one of the main reasons why they feel

They are not being listened to because it's really hard to engage something that you've never done.

I know a couple of you have driven buses, but it's different to have that role as your main job and just do it for a couple of days.

It's a whole different world.

And I also would like to represent parents in a way that they can relate to.

I'm the average mom.

I'm working.

Okay, thank you Ms. Washington.

This question also has two parts.

Tell us something that excites you about our strategic plan and something that gives you pause for concern.

How do you test the fish climbing the tree versus the monkey climbing the tree versus you know the different

I just didn't serve me.

I needed more opportunities and it would be beneficial for all of them so that they could grow.

Sorry, the last part.

I thought it was, but I didn't want to mis-answer.

I appreciate that.

So I think that

One of the things that they need to work on with the achievement gap is the same thing I said.

It's working on the achievement gap with the parents, because they are the ones that are helping their kids.

And if they can't get that help, then maybe we can set up community engagement where the parents can get help from each other, or they can get help from the community.

Hi, Kelly.

Hi.

Good to see you again.

Good to see you.

I think one of the ways that it has been successful is bringing awareness.

I mean, that is a very clear issue.

Kids feel validated when you talk about different races.

They feel validated when you explain how important it is that they be treated with equity and equality.

One of the things that I think that could improve to make this work better is to open the conversation.

So many times

When I read the policy, when it was presented to parents and employees, it's set out in such an aggressive way and people don't engage in conversation because they feel uncomfortable.

If there's a racial question or a racial situation, people are afraid, and people that are afraid lash out.

and I think that's where bullying comes from because these kids don't feel comfortable talking about it with each other so when they're frustrated with something or they don't understand something, that's how they act.

I mean, clearly you guys have great access to advertising.

You know, you can give me outreach.

I know that you guys use the library and other community resources to have job fairs.

And I think all of those things are great.

I think a lot of it's not so much about recruiting, it's about retainment.

It's about keeping people happy and making people feel valued.

We spend a lot of time talking about empowering students and giving them voice and I think that giving employees voice

and actually implementing some of their requests would be helpful.

An example, and this is not a way of putting down the situation, but as a bus driver, there are things that bus drivers have to deal with that are just so overwhelming when there are disciplinary issues on a school bus.

One of the first things you're expected to do, because bus drivers, they don't just take your word for it.

You can't just say little Timmy, you know, push little Susie down and this is what happened.

They pull the videotape.

And a lot of drivers avoid that situation because they don't want to be scrutinized for every little thing that they did.

And I don't believe that you shouldn't watch for things.

If a bus driver's texting and driving, absolutely.

That should be an immediate issue to be dealt with.

But monitoring simple activities or asking, well, why were you looking over here when you should have been watching this?

And why didn't you engage sooner?

It feels very scrutinizing, and it's not

It's not a comfortable work environment and I really think that realizing these things and talking about those individual situations would greatly help.

And I'm sure that teachers feel the same way.

You know, all staff need, they need to feel supported.

They need to feel like they have community support and they need to feel like they have the support of their supervisors and have safe places to talk.

We used to have engagement things where we would be encouraged to talk with other bus drivers about our, you know, to vent to each other.

Even if you couldn't get anything taken care of you could just talk to them and they didn't really push that in the last few years.

It just wasn't something that was suggested and sometimes people don't feel like they have anyone to talk to.

Working on a board requires working collegially as a team, even when views differ, being a problem solver, focusing on long-term strategies and governance, and being able to thoughtfully engage with the public.

I've had a lot of experience working with schools, working with students.

I've also been an employer for 17 years.

I've learned how to work with a lot of different types of people.

I've had to engage with a lot of customers.

I've worked in customer service and sometimes working with

People with different views is a lot like customer service.

You have to, you know, talk to them about their disagreement.

You have to find a common ground.

You have to accept their complaints and things like that.

I think having different views is one of the most important things for a school board.

Being in an echo chamber is no successful path.

I think I would bring a lot of different views.

I think that I could give perspectives that may never have been seen by some of you.

I agree with

Focusing on the children, I think that education should be our number one priority.

I think that we should really work on community engagement.

I think that is a huge factor for our children and families.

One thing that I would suggest, one of the skills I would have as a business owner and as the daughter of a tradesman

I think we need to engage those types of things for the kids.

We have so many examples in the school community of teachers and successful people and principals and people with college degrees.

And I'm not saying those things aren't wonderful, but not every kid is on that path.

And we need tradespeople.

Somebody has got to be able to build the school.

Somebody has to be able to transport the kids to school and drive them.

All those jobs are important and I think we need to bring those values back to the community and make sure that kids understand how important those things are as well.

Do you have any questions for us?

I do.

I have a couple.

So my first question is a really generic question.

Are you accepting letters of recommendation?

OK. And do all the other applicants know?

I just want to make sure.

I saw that on one of the interviews, and they said something like the beginning.

No, we haven't said anything.

I just wanted to make sure we all had the same opportunity.

Okay, and then my next question, the pandemic brought many challenges to our school community.

I'm not sure, I'm not as clear about its impact on parent involvement, if parents have become really close like they were before.

I just noticed a lot less parents show up to the actual PTO meetings.

And if they're just virtually watching, they're not as comfortable speaking up.

They're not talking to each other.

They're not seeing the expressions of everybody else to see who agrees with what.

And sometimes just seeing someone's face changes so much.

OK, that's what I just wanted to address.

And then this is my last question.

So we have some new people in our community engagement group and I think it's gotten very, they're making a lot of progress in that regard.

In the past nine months I would say, we've had several magisterial meetings where we go out into the community and speak with people.

And do you think that it would be beneficial to help parents to be able to communicate better?

Like, more opportunities to engage, to meet each other, and find ways to give them resources with each other, like finding parents that can help tutor their students or those types of things.

I don't know that that happened at those meetings.

Thank you.

Thank you all for your time.

I don't want to go too much into that.

I wrote some things down that I thought may interest the board about what I might bring to the position to the school board.

I have a really extensive high school background and that's both in the classroom academically, chemistry and biology mostly in my career.

and also on the athletic fields.

I did a lot of that when I was coaching when I was younger, but when I retired, I went back into it again, so I've been doing it at a pretty high level at Blue Ridge.

We had a pretty good team, very good team, recruited from all over the country and Canada.

So I have that experience with that level and

And the teaching part of it for me was important because I enjoyed the relationships with the kids.

That's something that, as an old guy, I really worked hard to make sure that I didn't lose that touch with those kids, that I could still make relationships with them.

But I also have elementary and middle school experience because I was the K-12 science and structural coordinator for 11 years and spent a lot of time in those schools.

One of the things that I'm most proud of my time back in those days was the Odyssey academies that we ran.

I don't know if anybody even remembers those anymore.

They won a big-time award from the state and it was

We ran those for two summers and they were super successful professional development for teachers and an opportunity for kids, many at risk, to get something special and to get ahead a little bit.

And then the elementary school stuff, I most remember working with kids at Camp Albemarle.

We made, and I think it still exists, we made all the fourth graders go out there.

for their meaningful watershed educational experience, which was a state requirement that we embraced.

And we did that.

We had sixth graders go on in canoe trips, and the high school teachers handled theirs.

They did some pretty cool things too.

things like for instance at Albemarle we had we would do stream studies in our own campus we'd go back behind Jewett where there's a really good place to do it anyways and then that time in central office you know that I had the connecting to the way things work down here and then my background in instructional technology

And then, what would I do if I were actually selected for this position?

Well, I looked at your code of conduct for the school board, and I thought that was awesome.

We started developing norms after we had some professional development on it for our groups.

And my vertical team had a really nice set of norms that

that helped us to operate and be a pretty efficient group.

So I would certainly embrace those.

I've served on some very really awesome teams in my life.

The two I can think of that just pop up to the top of my head as a football coaching staff I was on and at Albemarle High School and

I was in a pretty special squadron and we had a Facebook group and we still keep claiming it was the best squadron ever and that was a really highly, highly functioning team and I enjoyed being part of that and I would hope that this would be a similar experience.

I spent some time with the strategic plan and it's something I feel like I can put my support completely behind.

There's a lot there.

I like the way the goals are, that there are measurable objectives under each goal and things that we

are going to try to do.

And I also know that that's not easy.

When I was in central office, we were trying to reduce the achievement gap, and we had some success, for sure.

And we were trying to write

curriculum that was cutting edge and the framework for quality learning was a part of that.

And our lifelong learner standards was similar to your portrait of a learner.

So I have no qualms about supporting that completely.

I'd push into schools as much as I could, the schools that are assigned to me, which would be a lot because I'm not working a regular job right now.

That was something I loved doing when I was a coordinator.

And that doesn't, you know, I would include departments with that, you know, if there's a reason for me to go hang out with the transportation department, I know some of those folks over there, or the building services department, just to learn, just to listen and learn what people are saying, because that would be super important, I think.

And then

When we started the MESA program, I wrote the original white paper for that and arranged for us to go up to the Academy of Science and we looked at that pretty hard.

Now that Academy of Science model is very similar to what you are getting ready to go to.

I think we should look at outside programs in other places.

The board can be part of that.

I took board members with me when I went up to the Academy of Science, as well as teachers and administrators.

And then the other thing that I think is really important is supporting recruiting high quality teachers, especially African American teachers.

And if things haven't changed as much as I believe they haven't, we are probably lacking sorely on the high school and middle school side for that, and we need to work on that.

A long, long time ago, when I was a teacher, I suggested to the assistant superintendent that we just set aside 10 licenses that the recruiters could take out.

If they found a teacher that could get the job done that was a minority, they could just offer the contract right there.

And things have evolved since then, but that was

All right, we have a series of questions, most of all this you've already hit on.

Well, starting with representing the constituents, I would be available for them to email or even call, I guess.

I'm not quite sure how that all works.

I would be open for that, which I think would be important.

The Ryde district has some challenges with, not as bad as the southern feeder, but we've got some enrollment challenges in the northern feeder that I know have to be worked on.

And that would be, what could a board member do about that?

That listening piece I told you about and being in the schools and I've been reading some comments from teachers for the school board race that's going on right now and I'm sure there's a lot of

A lot of angst out there right now and I would hopefully be able to with my background and you know one of the things that I did as a science coordinator is I think I really developed a strong level of trust with the teachers, K-12, 11 years, it's a long time.

I got to know a lot of teachers and I know it wasn't easy.

Western hated me when I first started because I was from Albemarle and they sent a really nasty letter to the superintendent saying all kinds of bad things about me and I worked really hard to get their trust over the years and the middle school teachers and the elementary school teachers and there were times when we did things that they didn't like

took chemicals away from people who didn't want to give them up because they were dangerous.

I'm getting a little off topic here, but I would be listening to what they

are saying out there and then also trying to convince them that we can do these things that are in our strategic plan.

We can get more kids in these upper level type of classes.

It's not going to be easy.

It's a K-12 issue.

We have to start from kindergarten, but we can do it.

Hope I answered that question.

In the Bellwether report?

Yeah.

I did look at the Bellwether report.

Well, you know, what was the third objective?

I had it in front of me here, but the third objective, third goal, excuse me, that got into some of the things we talked about with recruiting and retaining the best teachers.

That kind of stuff excites me.

I remember John Baker, who was a school board member and chair, he used to go out on the road and help us with recruitment.

I don't know if that's something anybody could do now, but I remember that.

He used to do that all the time.

So I would be excited about that aspect that you all have identified.

Recruiting and retention is a really big deal, and I know that you all have done a lot to change

to raise our level of pay, which is going to be very helpful in that regard.

Something I'm concerned about.

I am concerned about...

I want to learn more about moving away from the centers that the county is doing and moving into this other type of center.

Dr. Haas and I talked about the idea that the kid would go one building and one day at the other, which was the original model that I recommended to the board years and years ago for Mesa, and we didn't do it.

And one of the reasons why I like that was

because it allowed for kids to maintain their identity with their home school.

They're still a warrior.

They're still a Mustang or they're still a patriot.

I thought that was important.

Although that's part of the plan I think I'm excited about, I'm a little worried about how well we were doing with those centers.

They were very well received by the community.

And can we have that similar kind of success with what we're getting ready to do in the next year?

and I'm also concerned because I know the teachers are concerned about the, we'll call it de-leveling that we're doing.

That has to be done very carefully.

I think there's a lot of professional development that we need to think about there.

There was a recommendation for a great deal of project-based learning, which I noticed had been moved into the strategic plan.

There was that, which, you know, coming from a time when we were trying desperately to get people to do it in the first place,

years ago, and then coming from a school that embraced it just recently, I think that's really important.

The project-based piece, and I always used to push...

I saw the classroom, the learning walk was a piece of evaluating that and learning walks started happening when I bought the software that we used for that years and years, that was a long time ago and I always felt like we tried to look at too much back in the day and we really need to make sure that

What we do with a learning walk as we evaluate what's going on in the classroom is make sure that we're looking at something that is digestible.

It's not too much at one time.

The checklist this long is not really going to help us that much because teachers don't do everything every day.

I always felt that learning walks were our best chance to get administrators into classrooms and seeing what's actually going on, knowing where their teachers are at.

And what I would love to see happen, which I tried to get this to happen myself and it's very hard to get the teachers to do it, is that they identify

Within reason, you give them something that they can latch onto, like Schlechter's seven aspects of quality student work, whatever, but something that they can latch onto, and you say, which of these things do you want me to come in and look for this year?

and then we can see what it looks like at the end of the year and that's a growth model.

It's not necessarily a gotcha or you didn't do this so you're going to get punished somehow.

It's just how can we help you grow?

And that could happen through PLCs.

PLCs could say we want to have these things looked at when our administrators come in the room and

The board adopted an anti-racism policy in 2019.

Right.

I don't have a lot of information on how well it's been implemented.

It's certainly embedded in the plan.

I mean, it's everywhere, and the things that the division, the documentation of the division is living by.

So that's one thing, and that's an important thing.

How well it's being pushed into schools, I don't know, offhand, but I do know that you said students wrote it.

So,

I have a feeling that I'll be pleasantly surprised when I do push into buildings looking for that.

Just seeing if that's happening and talking to people and seeing how they feel about it.

I certainly think it's a wonderful policy.

And I would absolutely fully support it.

and I know you all have a requirement and one of the things that is listed in the plan is for schools to have documentation posted about racism.

So that's really all I know about that, John.

You've talked a little bit about recruitment and particularly retention, so that's what this next question focuses on.

Recruitment and retention of our employees is incredibly important.

Well, I think the division has struggled with this in recent years.

There hasn't been as many people to pick from.

The turnover has been huge compared to most of the time that I worked in the schools.

So those are all things that I'm concerned about.

So you all have taken, you've done something interesting that we did with technology.

We sort of divorced ourselves from the county at one point, literally, and we even were under their, we were beholden to them here in this building.

and I was part of the committee that decided to pull the plug on that too.

We separated ourselves completely and you've taken human resources and moved it into so that you have a separate version of that.

What do you call it?

Employee?

But that I think is a move in the right direction because then those people can focus on that task and I did actually look at the staffing

and I was impressed how many people you all had doing that now.

Last question, Mr. Pace.

Working on a board requires collegiality as a team even when needs differ, being a problem solver, focusing on long-term strategies and governance, and being able to thoughtfully engage with the public.

When I was a science and structural coordinator, there was a lot of working with the public and they would call and I would deal with them.

There was some intelligent designers out there that I spent two years working with.

That was interesting.

But the thing that popped into my mind about working

about being sort of adaptive to new situations was when I was in the service in the Navy, I got assigned to something called, some of you all will know what I'm talking about, it was J-2, which is joint intelligence at headquarters UCOMM in Stuttgart, working for a now famous General Hayden and

And at that point, I had a lot of confidence that I could do whatever I set my mind to.

And they came down and said, we have this.

It was millions and millions and millions of dollars.

They said, we need this finished.

Can you balance this budget for us?

Which required me calling bases all over Europe to get it done.

And I did.

But your original question, can you help me with that?

It was collegiality.

Well, you know you had as a instructional coordinator one of the things that happened a lot was working with teachers and that that could be on an individual basis and I think we talked a little bit about that but professional development was another place where you know you to pull that off

Teachers had to believe that it was worthwhile.

I worked hard to make it worthwhile.

It's hard to get professional development actually in the classroom, and over those years I learned how to do that, but it required a lot of

I had to build relationships with all those teachers and that's something I was proud that I think I did.

And of course in the service I worked in a squadron like we talked about that required a lot of teamwork, a lot of teamwork.

to do what we did during the war and I felt like I was a big part of that.

We had a mission that had been lost after Vietnam and we brought it back and we did it quickly and we did it better than it was in Vietnam.

And I was really proud of that.

So I've always had no trouble working with my colleagues.

That's something that I actually really enjoy.

Thank you.

So that was our last question.

I think I talked a lot.

I don't have anything more.

Thanks for the opportunity.

I know you've got a lot of qualified candidates.

We are going to close session now.

This is about the meeting.

But thank you everyone who came to watch.

And thank you to everyone who is watching from home.

Yes, I move that the school board of Albemarle County, Virginia go into a closed meeting as authorized by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act section 2.2-3711A of the Code of Virginia under subsection 1 for the discussion, consideration, or interviews of prospective candidates for employment,

and the assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining or resignation of specific public officers, appointees or employees of any public body.

The purpose of this item in the closed meeting is to review and discuss candidates for interim appointment to the school board to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Katrina Carlson and

Subsection 8 for consultation with legal counsel employed or retained by public body regarding specific legal matters requiring the provision of legal service by such counsel.

All right, moved by Ms. Osborne, seconded by Mr. Alcaro.

Do we have to do a roll call on this, or can we do an aye?

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

No?

Can I say no?

I move that the board certify by recorded vote that to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from the opening meeting requirements

Moved by Mr.

Page, seconded by Mr. Alcaro.

Could we have a roll call vote, please?

But I think I hear someone coming.

Ms. Cosmore?

Yes.

Yes.