City Council Joint Meeting with School Board   1/10/2024

and Friday morning.

So welcome.

Thank you, and we have a forum barely, so we may have some other members coming, but we're here and ready.

So if I may first have our clerk call roll for the Charlottesville City School Board members.

Yes, Mrs. Burns.

Mr. Meyer.

Here.

Mr. Morris.

Here.

Thank you.

I would, I don't know, Mayor, if you'd like to call roll.

Thomas, are we going to call roll today?

Here.

I would now entertain a motion from one of our school board members to approve a proposed agenda.

I move that we approve the proposed agenda.

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

But for the sake, I'll just say of myself, would you mind just quickly kind of interviewing some of your staff and the department leads that are here with us tonight?

budget.

The important stuff, all of it.

And Sam Sonders with the City Manager.

Thank you all, thank you so much for joining us and now I guess I'll turn it over to Dr. Gurley.

and first up we have item 4.1, which is our Charlottesville Albemarle Technical Education Center update with Kim Powell.

Maybe if you take the seat on the front.

Here you go.

There we go.

So happy to answer questions.

Because I think of some concern that, you know, the county students would kind of drive that because of their numbers.

I don't know if that was helpful for you, but being able to point while I talked was super helpful for me.

So are there other counselors to have questions?

So anyway, kudos to you and your team for pulling this off.

Is that something that Albemarle has discussed as part of this at all in terms of even a possible intention of constructing that and what that timeline may be?

Yes, but I think what we've heard from them is that right now there's no intention to do that because KTEC can continue to serve them well.

You know, there are lots of different folks who see these opportunities for the great opportunities that they are and we're just excited to be able to serve in that role for the area.

CIP requests that would be necessary or what fiscal years those would come in at for the city.

you know pieces have been handled by the different partners and one that Mike Goddard and his team have been managing the roof replacements and the BAS upgrades and all of that for years so the good news is we didn't you didn't acquire this asset without knowing a lot about its condition there's not any like big capital maintenance items hanging over our heads if that's the question I mean the city's gained a great asset what happens with it in the future as far as programming or whatever

Yeah, I'm thinking more like proactive future investments about expanding programming or services on site.

And that'll be something I think advisory will be key in determining.

Okay, thank you.

if they sign up for more than one class.

Okay, great.

How many are there approximately total?

Okay.

Thank you.

Sure.

We have Mr. Trotter, who will introduce you to our night school program.

I will be happy to take any questions if there are any.

Yes.

But ultimately, sir, it's us trying to connect those young people that are not employed with job opportunities.

So what is an asynchronous learning opportunity?

What is an asynchronous learning opportunity?

Whatever that phrase was, you just used.

So that's just one particular example of what we want to do outside of the conformance of the academic day.

I guess I was just, I'm not familiar with a lot of the educational terminology.

Yes, sir.

Asynchronous seems like a word that I don't understand how that fits in with what else you're doing.

So, so it allows the students and forgive me, I hope I'm answering correctly, allows the students to work individually on a particular assignment or project outside of the academic days, more so what that looks like.

And I'm not an educator, but my daughter to figure that out.

How many students are actually in the program?

And so with that, as the students are placed to the night school, the ultimate goal is to have 30 coming from the division.

I feel like there's the need to like double or triple it at some point or?

And so that's ultimately where the vision and hope will be for the support of students in those particular measures.

Thank you.

I mean, this is a wonderful, wonderful opportunity.

What that number of students you might estimate would be that would be just paid in the program?

and so I think that that's really unfortunate that we're now in a space where students and the community see the value, but we're having to turn those those families and students away because we're limited by space.

If resources weren't an issue, kind of what is the scale of the number of people that

Mr. Trotter sees that number.

So that's, I hope that answers your question.

And I think that's another like lingo, when we have CTE for students, career and technical education, but certainly the adult aspect is on our minds as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so we're doing this in pockets where we can.

Are there other kind of specific things in mind that you're thinking of in terms of what those expansion opportunities would be?

is a team of one and she could not do that with every family in our school division, but we do have an opportunity through our night school program and through our LMA program to offer some of those things so that we can become generational supports for our community.

Are there specific metrics you're looking at in terms of impact of the program graduation rate is it test scores is it trying to develop metrics of post graduation outcomes or.

I'm pretty sure that then I would have to share those particular metrics and expectations out to the division as well.

So all of these things are things that we can quantitatively communicate to any of our stakeholders to request that information.

Natalie.

And then also, I love the name.

That answers your question.

Yeah, just there's a there's a focus on the job portion, but there's also a focus on getting them back to absolutely at 100%.

Absolutely.

which is another form of alternative learning which is already housed within CHS or it could be transitioning back to the high school and you still have KTEC as a part of that continuum of supports and services.

You're welcome.

And I wrote it down.

Thank you.

So, man, this is thank you all so much, you know,

And so I don't know where you want to start in terms of that conversation.

I mean, we kind of had the preliminary drawings and fun, you know, dollar amount that came from Mr. Knox and BMDO.

But maybe some of y'all can remember some of the more.

Is there a plan?

within the last couple of years.

Right.

Well, I don't know how current.

I don't know either, because I haven't seen it in the last year and a half, two years.

And so maybe Mr. Goddard can be more clear

And then Chrissy will wrap up the grant aspect of it as well.

And that's taken into account reasonable cost escalation between now and when we kick the project off, which would be fiscal year 27.

So I like your numbers today better.

But I'm trying to also keep a little downward pressure on my team so that we don't get wild.

Okay, thank you.

But if we could do this the way people wanted it to happen, what would be sort of some parameters?

I don't see any timeline issues.

Do you remind me when that was supposed to be done?

So the first building will be complete, not this coming summer, but the summer after.

Okay.

So that's the plan.

So that takes you to when to the end of?

The project is done right August 2026.

But my office can't manage those two very large projects at the same time, along with all the other things that we're doing.

Powell, is that part of your schedule you just mentioned, or is that a year after that?

You know, tenable for safety proofing.

It's actually coming from priority improvement.

It's just this is not a space built for our youngest learners.

So 26, 27.

On that note, can you give a brief recap of the adjustments that need to be made to this building besides like tiny toilets and tiny water fountains?

So it's really not, it's not a big lift for us.

And that money's already programmed.

And we're using that for a couple of different other priority issues that have come up, including the CHS restrooms.

Thank you.

90, 95% confidence in that that's in kind of the ballpark of what we're.

But, you know, assuming that things stay within the realm of normal, I think 30 million is approximately your number, give or take what happens in the world.

And so it sounds like in terms of anything placed into our CIP budget, that would be placement of a number in FY 27 was

Yeah, I think that was when the ask was for 27.

debt payments and debt capacity as part of this budget cycle, I would presume, because I think we it would behoove us to start really seriously planning for what the the fiscal impact will be and how we're going to meet it as a city, because I don't think this is a project that we want to not move forward on.

How much does that cost to get you that extra capacity to be able to again do these things concurrently, the design and the build?

But if you want to know the number, I could put it together for you.

And again, it sounds like you might need to make some investments and staff to be able to make that happen.

I don't think this is something we can kick down the road.

I know that Chrissy, you've been trying to say something you want to come up.

I feel like this is the part where you don't want.

And Sam, I don't know if you have more you want to add.

And then you will begin your deliberation of making some of those other decisions that you have to make as well.

But I don't think we've listed all those out and ranked them ourselves as counsel.

So in a way, we will do what we, what is right for the community and meetings like this is vital to do that.

and we didn't have the slides that we received last week about the local composite index and our projected funding from the state as part of this and I'm not sure if council is interested in hearing those numbers at this meeting or if that's for our next one but I don't know if we have those slides that we can share that's an appropriate time to talk about that because we you know it's not just the capital improvement plans that we're going to be needing funding for the state funding is a concern for us as well

Is it?

Hoover is probably over there like stop talking.

for the locality and perceived income levels, perceived wealth of the locality in relation to every other locality in the state.

And so that all gets factored into affordability.

I see.

Is it possible that staff could look into that as another solution to again reduce that potential CIP budget and do a couple of different things at the same time?

But yeah, it is something we're looking into and working with the Office of Sustainability on.

We've also engaged our financial deposit firm.

So we are covering that as well.

So I think there's a lot of potential also built into what this pre-K center and space could be.

who knows what may need to happen with this building but the good news is in a 10 square mile area that has this pretty landlocked you have some options between this real estate and then the K-TEC property that was just purchased as well but you know when you want to think really big picture those are the kind of things that we sometimes bat around and dream about.

Thank you.

Any other questions from Council?

No, I don't think this has been very helpful.

But we did have that slotted for that but otherwise I want to thank you all and I look forward to seeing you all again and we'll adjourn the meeting.