City Council -School Board Joint Budget Work Session   12/18/2025

But we do have the possibility of remote participation by one of our school board colleagues, Ms. Richardson.

I'll second.

Okay, and just for clarification for the record, she will attend virtually from her personal vehicle or her work location due to a professional work conflict.

Yes.

Okay.

Any discussion?

Any opposed?

Wonderful.

All right.

Ms. Becker, would you call the roll?

Here.

Here.

Yes.

All right.

I apologize.

Present.

Councilor Bien, Councilor Pinkston, back here.

Councilor Shull.

Here.

Wonderful.

Wonderful.

And carrying on with our meeting protocols, if we can have a motion to approve our proposed agenda.

So moved.

Any discussion?

All right.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

All right, thank you all so much.

Good evening, school board, Madam Chair, members of the school board, Mayor Wade, and City Manager Sanders,

Before I get started, I wanted to make sure that I introduce the city school staff located behind me.

We have Ms. Lewis, who is our Director of Human Resources.

Behind me, we have Carolyn Swift, who's our Director of Assessment and Accountability.

We have Dr. Anna Isley, who is our Chief Academic Officer.

And we have Ms. Rachel Rasnick, who is our Director of Student Services, all representing and supporting us with schools.

Oh, and to my left, we have Ms. Hoover, our Director of Finance, and then we have our Chief Operations Officer, Kim Powell.

And I'll just add a few individuals for city staff.

Mike Goddard is our deputy director for public works.

John Maddox is city attorney.

And Ms. Chrissy Hamel is our budget director.

We're just a mess.

Got it.

Yes.

All right, we can go on to our next slide.

All right, so to get us started, we do always start this presentation by reminding everyone that the Code of Virginia requires that the superintendent prepare a budget that estimates the funding needs to support the school division.

And this is commonly known as a needs-based budget.

This presentation will include projections of what we expect to be reflected in the FY 27 budget.

Next slide.

The budget development process.

So during my tenure here as Superintendent, we have continued to refine our budget development process, making it more collaborative and intentional.

We have used our strategic plan as our guiding framework, particularly because it outlines our priorities through 2028 across the four areas you see here on the slide.

This presentation also reflects feedback from a wide range of stakeholders.

The budget before you represents the collective voices of our school board, our division leadership, school and program leaders, various bargaining units, community members, all grounded in the needs of our school division.

Next slide.

Our budget priorities displayed, you see our budget priorities which were informed by our extensive stakeholder engagement.

Listed in no particular order, the first priority is staffing compensation and retention, and we continue to support our licensed and support staff through our collective bargaining agreements

and this work has reinforced the competitive compensation and focus on retention are essential to strong employee relations in a positive work culture.

Our second budget priority, student support, achievement and wellbeing.

While we have seen a lot of successes in our overall student achievement, we recognize and continue to focus the need on our student outcomes

particularly for certain specific student subgroups.

Facilities maintenance and capital improvement is another budget priority area.

Given the aging conditions of our facilities, ongoing investment is necessary to ensure regular maintenance and continued enhancement of our school buildings.

And then lastly,

We have early childhood education, which remains a priority here in Charlottesville.

We understand the importance of early learning and stakeholders consistently emphasize the need to make an investment in our students to support their long-term success.

Displayed on this slide are the, in the white boxes are the priority areas that are listed in our strategic plan through 2028.

And then at the bottom, what we've done is we've placed those budget priority areas that I just presented to you.

We've identified how they align to our strategic plan.

Next slide.

So as we transition to the next portions of our budget presentation, which focus specifically on our students, who they are, how they achieve, I want to pause to recap on how we started our school year.

Over this summer, I charged our division and instructional leadership teams with deeply disaggregating data related to black student achievement.

I asked them to examine trends over the last 15 to 20 years and to honestly assess which systems have been effective and which have not.

Our first meeting took place one week after the school year ended with a clear focus on ensuring that the right systems are in place so that every student can be successful, especially our Black students.

This work continued into our opening professional learning this fall

In my opening keynote address to staff, I was very candid about the challenges we faced and emphasized that nothing can be changed until it's faced.

Drawing from James Baldwin, I challenged our staff that during the 25-26 school year to confront the barriers that have limited Black student success and to put intentional actions in place to change outcomes

We are already beginning to see the impacts of that work.

The systems we have put into place are working, the structures implemented over the summer and into the school year, we are seeing measurable progress.

For example, Summit is no longer a federally identified school and the negative labels that once stigmatized that community, those stigmas are beginning to fade.

The dedication and hard work of our teachers, staff and administrators as staff are translating into improved outcomes for our students.

Next slide.

So I'll start with our fall membership data.

Presented here is our student enrollment over the last, our student enrollment data.

And as you see over the last two years, we are still remain relatively flat, but we've seen a decrease of about 86 students.

You will notice in our subsequent slides that we are seeing some decreases as it relates to our English language learners and some of these numbers will start to correlate.

And I think we always do this every year.

If you have questions as we go along, as I go through the presentation and we go through the presentation, please feel free to ask your questions and you don't have to wait until the end.

Next slide.

So demographics data.

For the purposes of this presentation, the student demographic information shown on this slide does reflect the 25-26 school year because that is the information that is

public facing to our community on the school quality profile.

I do want to note that there is not a significant variation as you saw in the last slide between our school enrollment data from the 24-25 school year to the 25-26 school year.

and we will continue to update our student information as we continue to do our next student record collection.

And Ms. Rasnick also wanted to note that the students that are included in the students with disabilities that are listed here, those do not include our students who are privately placed.

So there is a total of 557 students who we serve across all settings.

So our English Language Learner data, we are presenting this data a little differently for you.

On this slide, you will see the trends over the last 10 years.

This data is presented differently, as I just said.

It reflects both the students we serve in our English Language Learner programs and our students who have formally exited, which is different than how we presented the information even to our school board back in November.

It is important that we felt that it's important to show you this number because not only are we serving the students that are in our programs but just because a student has exited the program we know that those students still need support with being successful.

So we wanted to give you a true picture of the number that we report to the Virginia Department of Education.

So again, this is one of those numbers that if you look at the school quality profile, this is the number that the Virginia Department of Education looks for.

So for the current year, as you see on the slide, there are a total of 924 students.

As Dr. Jeannie Fouts presented to the school board in November, she presented that we are currently serving 721 students.

But we do feel like, again, so that you know what the need is, the need extends beyond the students that we're currently serving.

This is what was reported in the last record.

Right, so is that going up or down?

If you could just tell us, not specific, but is that

Are they staying with social services and hotels?

So we have the McKinney-Vento program.

All public schools do.

So when students are identified as unhoused, homeless,

We are required to serve those students regardless of where they're living and Ms. Rasnick probably can speak to this at a finer detail than I can.

So if a family's been displaced and they're living out in Albemarle County,

We have an obligation to go and pick them up.

Sometimes we pick them up in a car or on a bus.

We go and pick them up and then we bring those students back to the school division to be serviced.

And it includes students who are in shared housing situations as well within the city.

Thank you.

Advancing back to our English learners, the number that we report to VDOE as opposed to currently serving, can you speak to or explain why VDOE wants the higher number and then speak to a little bit about how we continue to serve them?

Dr. Fouts probably can and I can send you an explanation of why they want the students who have recently exited.

But I will tell you that how we continue to serve those students are through our general education programs.

So I mean, they may be receiving, you know, if they're not being successful in our general education programs, then they may be receiving some tier two or some tier three supports.

Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely.

And I appreciate that.

And I think, I don't know how everybody else feels.

I'd be curious to just look at, at some point, not rush, but just financially, what type of supports go after they've tested out.

Yeah.

Yeah, I will tell you that I did not realize until we were doing that and we were looking at the school quality profile.

I did not realize that they also include students who were formerly L's who are still enrolled in your school, which I do.

I mean, after I saw the number, I said, well, that is a better way to look at it, because I know that what we present to you all is normally the students we're serving.

But just because our students exit the programs, I mean,

That does not mean that they don't still need us.

They do.

Anyone else?

So I'll conclude by saying that last year we graduated 25 English learners.

We had 55 to exit the program.

We had 62 new enrolled this school year.

And then what Dr. Foutz shared with the school board back at the November meeting is that there have been no new refugee resettlements taking place.

All of that has been paused.

Alright, on this side, so as we transition through our student performance, I want to begin by noting that this is the first year for the Virginia's new accountability system.

Along with the new system, the assessments themselves changed significantly.

The governor, our governor, reported that back in the spring, the tests that our students took were 40% more rigorous than the tests that they had taken the previous year.

We didn't know that until he told us that.

It's important to keep this in mind as we review the results because despite the rigor that was mentioned by our governor, our students still made modest gains.

And this suggests that had the test made remain the same, we probably would have seen even greater gains.

Under the new accountability system, Charlottesville City Schools, as you see here, we are fully accredited.

The system categorizes schools into distinguished, on-track, off-track, or needs-intensive supports.

Students must accumulate 80 points to be considered on-track.

And so the numbers you see on the slides are not percentages.

Those are points.

You're given points for various areas in the new accountability system.

It does require an advanced level degree to really understand the complexities of this new system.

So these are points you see.

So as you can see, most of our schools are meeting or exceeding, well, I should say are approaching or exceeding the 80 points.

And I think, you know, this is a really good start for what was brand new this school year.

So, I mean, all of our schools are falling right near the 80 point target.

Based on the results, and these results for the new accountability system, so for our council folks, you know, we normally get these results back during the summertime.

We received the results for the new accountability system about, it's been about two weeks, maybe not even two whole weeks.

It's been about two weeks.

We received them very late.

We normally receive these in August.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's in my script, Ms. Stu.

Sorry.

Yes, and so because of the results, because the results were just released in the last two weeks, it's challenging for us to use this data to inform our practices.

Like Ms. Dooley said, normally when you get this data, then you say, okay, this is what we need to do differently.

We are literally at the end of the second, at the end of the first semester.

So what do you want me to do with this?

But we have a plan.

However, our instructional team, so we use this to inform our practices.

However, our instructional team led by Dr. Anna Isley and our principals, they did not wait for this data to come out.

They have been proactively diving into the work and addressing, identifying and addressing the areas that need support.

One thing I wanna point out to you, if you look at Trailblazer,

while they scored 83.6 points and it's technically on track, they were moved down a level to off track because of black student performance and students who are identified as economically disadvantaged.

And so, and then another example, another thing that like you could note here is that under the last system, there was rounding.

If you look at Charlottesville Middle School, who had been previously accredited under our, who has previously accredited and met the benchmark under our old system, under the new system, they scored a 79.9.

They are listed as off track because

The new system does not round up or down.

What you score is what you score.

So these are just some of the challenges that we're facing.

Again, I mentioned in my earlier slide when we talked about what we face we can change about how we are seeing new strides with Summit Elementary, formerly Clark,

As you can see here, they scored 79.2.

I mean, everyone is approaching that 80 point target that was set out under this new accountability system.

and I just want to conclude that slide by saying like we recognize the work ahead, we own what the work is, we're committed to being focused on equity and student outcomes and so we know that there's a lot of work that still needs to happen here.

I want to begin our look at our student performance data

by giving you a picture of who we are in terms of our student data.

So I just gave, we looked at like who our students are, how many English language learners we have, students with disabilities, et cetera.

So we often are trying to figure out who do we compare ourselves with?

So Charlottesville City Schools is in what they call Superintendent's Region 5 by the Virginia Department of Education.

So what we've done is we want to look at our current region and see who has similar makeups.

And there are people who are similar, but definitely not the same.

So I'll talk about that a little bit.

But what we've done here is in region five, we have taken all of the cities that are located here.

and so if you look you have cities such as Buena Vista and Stanton where their performance is higher their performance is higher than ours and but then when you take a deeper dive at like who makes up their student enrollment data it does not look like Charlottesville City Schools

But we included, I wanted to keep them because they are in our superintendent's region and these are people who we are comparing like what does the student performance look like.

When you look at the far right column, you see that the state average, so the red bar is reading, and this is all students.

When you look at the red bar, the red bar is reading.

When you look at the blue bar, the blue bar is mathematics.

When you look at it,

We are not near the state average.

So Charlottesville City Schools was 67%, and this is raw pass rates, 67% for reading and 67% for math compared to the state average, which is 74 for reading and 72 for mathematics.

So we definitely are not making the target

But remember, this is the year where the governor said the test was 70 was 40 percent harder than it was previously.

And we made gains.

But it's one of those things where I feel like I always say that when students start to do a little better, they change the finish line, the goalpost moves.

And and so I think that that's what you see reflected here.

But again, plenty of work for us to continue to do and that's the charge for the school year.

Next slide.

Displayed on this slide is the reading achievement gap among cities and Region 5.

As you can see, a significant gap persists.

Something where we, I mean, this is, we've been aware of this for a very long time, that this gap exists.

This has really informed the realignment of our work.

So this was the work that we did back in August.

Well, I'm sorry, we did this work starting back in June, looking at the systems on really like, how do we continue to shrink this?

How do we shrink this gap?

How do we crack this code?

Because, I mean,

around the Commonwealth.

People are struggling in this area to understand why the gap continues to persist among our Black students and our white students.

And we do feel like we can be a leader in this area if we implement the right systems.

What we've done, our initiatives thus far have included strengthening our teacher accountability with professional learning communities, ensuring that we have the systems in place to support good Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 instruction.

We recognize the long-standing gap is unacceptable, but we remain committed to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to reach proficiency.

And that's the language that we're using as a school division this year is that every student should have the opportunity to reach proficiency.

And that's what we've done from the start of this school year is that every child will achieve at higher levels.

Next slide.

The math pass rates are similar to our reading slide.

There is this gap that continues to exist between our black students and white students, that we want our students to meet the minimum, to at least meet the minimum expectation, which should be proficiency for every child.

Every child should reach proficiency.

and we anticipate to see growth.

And we are starting to see it.

Our map data, our map data, that's one of our normed assessments that we used in the division.

Our map data is showing increased outcomes for our students.

Dr. Gurley, can I ask a question about both of these show for Charlottesville, what would appear to be the widest gap, certainly on this slide, and perhaps even in the state.

I'm just wondering, how does that gap compare to years past?

Is it essentially the same and continuing?

I think it's remained about the same, Mr. Snook.

What we find is that as our Black student achievement increases, our white student performance is increasing as well.

So the gap has remained about the same, but we, again, I think what we're focused on now is we're laser focusing on ensuring that our Black students reach a bare minimum expectation should always be proficiency.

So, you know, I know sometimes people say, well, you know, this year wants students to get to 60, where we're saying, no, we want students to attain 70.

We want students to get to 75% because those are the proficiency targets.

And this slide, I just put this here to show that this is all the student subgroups across the school division and how our students are performing.

So I want to come back to that

At the beginning of this section, I told you that this school year we had changes in the accountability system.

Well, I want to tell you that in the year 2026-27, there are going to be changes again.

So every time it seems that we are getting a handle on what the expectations are, it changes again.

I've reiterated over the past few slides that we have charged our staff with this work and most certainly they've stepped up to the challenges.

They are implementing the strategies with fidelity and again through some of our most recent data such as MAP we expect to see improved outcomes.

I do want to preface that our accountability system is changing yet again.

And it does feel like an uphill battle as a teacher, as an administrator, as the superintendent, as the school board.

It feels like it's never ending.

Why is it continuing to change?

Historically, and I say this and I stand on it, that historically every time we see improvements, specifically for Black students, the benchmark shifts.

Under the new accountability system, proficiency is going to increase again.

So, for example, for our non-educators, as it currently stands to pass an SOL test, you get a 400.

That's what we've been working towards.

Well, now that's getting ready to change.

For some, depending on the assessment, a pass could be 470.

And so things like that make it really difficult as a teacher, as a parent.

It just feels like this numbers game when we're really just trying to help our children read, write, be successful after school.

And so these are the changes that are making it difficult.

These changes are occurring in real time.

So we're gonna see them this school year.

They're occurring in real time.

And so this is gonna be difficult to communicate to our families.

and I think I just want to end this part by saying that I know we talk about sometimes that there's a decline in enrollment in ELLs or maybe this group has changed, but what we know is that the needs of our students continue to increase.

So even if the enrollment changes,

You know, the students who need us the most are still there and that need never, that need never changes.

This makes it essential for us to look at resources that are strategically distributed around the schools and we continue to reallocate those resources internally.

Current funding levels, you know, they do.

They remain insufficient when we talk about how we address behavioral and social emotional needs.

I mean, there's just a lot of times there's just never enough money

available to support some of our students who have the greatest needs.

As we look at instructional funding next steps, we will reevaluate the supports at schools based on the newly released accountability data and our mid-year student achievement results.

How do we allocate our resources differently based on the current needs?

We are reviewing our budget requests.

Budget requests were due last Friday.

So we are reviewing those requests that focus on our key priorities, which include, as you see on the slide, supports related to class sizes, interventions and supports, and reading and mathematics, updated instructional materials,

and expanded college and career readiness opportunities.

These are all the things that we will be prioritizing for our funding for our budget requests that were submitted by staff.

This is what we will be prioritizing.

And then additionally, as we develop the FY 27 budget, we will explore how we can leverage the efficiencies and how we can utilize reconfiguration to absorb much of the costs related to some of the needs around our school division.

So we've talked about our students, but the people, the people that make it happen, we know that people matter.

Having the right teachers, support staff and administrators are critical to our students' success and the operation of our school division.

On this slide, you can see that licensed staff make up the largest portion of our workforce, followed by support personnel and administrators.

We have celebrated significant improvements in staff retention.

As you see, the teacher retention number continues to climb.

For the 25 to the 26 school year, we had a division retention rate of 86%, but that teacher retention rate is what we celebrated, which is 85.7%.

which we believe is outstanding.

We do know and we do believe that a lot of this is tied to our collective bargaining agreement that teachers, they feel value within their compensation and they do feel heard in the processes that happen within Charlottesville City Schools.

For the FY26 salaries and benefits total $91.9 million representing 74% of our budget.

Education is fundamentally an investment in people providing the instruction necessary for our students' success.

Based on our collective bargaining agreements, we do estimate that about $4.7 million, that there will be about a $4.7 million increase in compensation that includes benefits directly tied to salaries.

An early projection of our health insurance is based on an 8% trend, which is about $821,000.

and we know that the VRS Board of Trustees has published a decrease in rates.

However, until the VDOE's budget calculation is released, we will continue to use the current number.

So for context, the current number is 16.6, while the trustee rate is 14.14.

We do not use the trustee rate because in a previous year, the governor and the general assembly did not implement the new

A little clarification on that.

For which for?

Okay.

Yeah.

So it's in that number, but the school board has not received it yet.

We're still in the final, final phases.

Early education.

The final priority area on the critical importance of early childhood education.

Our stakeholders consistently emphasize the need to prioritize funding for preschool expansion.

We are also

Internally, we are also expanding ways that we can support our staff by providing preschool opportunities for their children.

Ultimately, our goal is to expand and maximize the space we have so that more students in our communities can access a high quality early childhood experience.

Good evening.

So we had a question at our last school board meeting about the facilities maintenance contract in particular and how that cost is determined each year.

So I collaborated with city staff to confirm and put together this summary of how the cost is determined.

First and foremost, the staff is divided into two groups.

There's the HVAC.

They're just called HVAC, but it's actually all the people who do HVAC and electrical services.

That's one group.

The other group is the general maintenance group, and these are the folks who do the plumbing.

They oversee or do painting work, door work, windows, roofs, floors, elevators, and anything else that's not HVAC and electrical.

Basically, those are the folks involved with that.

So they're

They're assigned within those groups into school or city for purposes of budgeting and cost allocations.

So that's the labor side.

The job supplies are tracked by the job through the work order system, which is what we all use to submit requests.

And a lot of supplies are purchased specifically for jobs, but there are obviously some things that are stocked on the trucks and in the warehouse.

And stock supplies in the warehouse, they generally take an alternating approach to maintaining the stock.

So they'll do one order, charge it out to schools.

The next they'll charge out to cities or to city.

That's the way that was described to me.

And then the utilities are tracked specifically to the building.

So those are just actually tied to the facilities by the meters and so forth.

So that's at a high level how the costs roll up and the budgeting is done.

Now, I do want to point out there are quite a few services that we do receive.

We collaborate with the city and these things are not included or costed in the annual dollar figure that we budget.

It's not in our allocation, but these are services we do receive.

One you're very familiar with is capital development, which we used to call facilities development, but I believe it is now capital development.

and that's Mike, Stuart Harding and the work they do for all of our buildings and our major projects, that project management and so forth.

Then there's what Parks and Rec does for us with ground services.

That's the mowing of mulch and leaf work and oversight of the playgrounds in general because they also serve any of the outdoor play spaces that also serve as public parks.

and then last but not least is the sustainability team.

We work most closely there historically with Kirk Vizier who monitors our energy consumption as they do for all city buildings, reports out to us, works with principals if they see anything getting off kilter and just always working to lower consumption.

and then the educational work, which Jill Greiner tends to do a lot of the lead with that, which is quite a bit of work with our students actually.

K through 12, they come out and do programming with them.

So those are all the pieces.

And then we are working on an updated MOA.

We had a first draft provided to us, I think I want to say around October sometime.

I've met with Mr. Frias.

We've got another round of edits that we're working on right now.

And so we're not quite finished with it, but we're making good progress.

And what I'm happy to report is the document doesn't really change our current scope of services.

It's really a lot about providing greater clarity for what the standards will be around the services.

And so we will have this work finalized before the next fiscal year in July.

But because it's not really aiming to change scope of services, it's more of a clarifying process and just, I don't know if we're better bringing the document up to more current standards.

It really in and of itself doesn't have a budget impact is our position on that.

As far as the maintenance contract is concerned, Ms. Hoover put this together.

You can see from the graph sort of what the history has been with the contract.

We are seeing some accelerated growth in the cost, if you will.

And what she's doing right now for the school budgeting purposes is she's applying a five-year average as a placeholder for what

The next contract could cost and that number comes out at 394,379 as far as the increase.

Shifting gears to our other major contract, the other major operational area where we partner with the city transportation and the headline here is really just the challenges we face with the ongoing pupil driver shortage.

You can see the different classification of positions there and the issue is the 30 to 39 hour roll.

We face a 58% vacancy rate there, which drives our overall vacancy to 32%.

And I will tell you that right now,

We are, things are very hard with people when they call out for illnesses or other things.

I mean, it gets hard fast.

Everyone up to the operations manager gets behind the wheel of the bus and drives and sometimes we're still doing some double backs to make things work.

But my assistant Julia Green's been over to work in dispatch just to have somebody to answer the phones to help because everyone who can drive is driving on a lot of days.

So the big question is how do we address this vacancy challenge without over and without unnecessarily inflating costs by just adding a lot more 40-hour positions because the nature of school transportation needs is if we you know we're close to and we're talking about like how many 40-hour positions do we really need but when you start to exceed that

The nature of when you actually need people driving and what you see in other school divisions, it's not a lot of 40 hour positions.

In regards to the vacancies needing the more the 40 hours, is that something that

I mean they have their own collective bargaining unit.

Are we working with them?

Who's working with them?

Because ultimately that ask I would assume comes from them.

I think I saw Mr. Frias is here now.

I mean, I think where we've started is that we're discussing the potential of adding more 40 hour positions, right?

That's the easiest thing for us to be able to do right now.

And the discussion where we are right now is the possibility of adding six more of those positions, which will address the critical vacancies and meet our needs through the remainder of this year and the summer.

Just like the, sorry, build on this point here, because I remember when I first started, my kids started having to take the bus three years ago.

We had two months without enough drivers and it was a mess.

We don't have that problem anymore, which, you know, it's very tight.

But it also brings me back to some of those accreditation scores we get, because we get graded on attendance.

We get points for attendance, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Dr. Curley, but

We have had unfortunately very high unexcused absence rates, which has brought down our scores a bit and

We need to make sure those buses are running on time as much as possible to ensure we're not losing a kid on a day here or a kid day there.

And unfortunately, then losing points that then we're so close on the edge on a lot of these schools.

There's a lot of things we need to do, but there is some really direct impact potentially on how our schools are graded and appear overall based on people's transportation.

We appreciate the city working, trying to work with us through this challenge because it is very much, it's frankly, I feel like it is persisting as our biggest operations challenge.

I'm pushing buttons as if I'm advancing the slides, but I'm not.

So this is just the graphic that shows the student transportation contract cost and how it has tracked over time.

We've seen escalation in cost becoming more steep over the past few years.

Does that assume that the seven, six drivers convert full-time or no?

No.

Okay, so that's just that.

That's a straight average because again, the ideas we've been talking about, there's multiple pieces and so we just don't know how that might net out on your end depending on what the city's able to do.

Okay, so capital improvements.

This is probably the area of operations that's been the most exciting because we're seeing a lot of great momentum in this area after many, many years where the schools had been maintained, but we weren't really advancing improvements.

Our goals in continuing to move forward are continuing to modernize our aging facilities.

The city school facilities planning work group we've met

two times and we're meeting regularly and that group's focused on establishing the criteria for what does a modernized school look like that meets current educational needs and then evaluating schools, each facility against those criteria to kind of ground ourselves and help guide next steps.

The school board really wants to provide purpose-built spaces for interventionists, specialists, and enhanced program supports moving forward.

You saw the student achievement data earlier, and one of the things I've heard VMDO say often, and I definitely see this in the middle school,

The space is never neutral.

It's always working for or against your mission at any given time and so we want to be really purposeful and especially attending to what our students need for their achievement and the work that our professionals do in helping our students.

The city is the largest funding source for the school division by 63%, and we really do appreciate the city as our partners and the support they provide us.

Over the past four fiscal years, starting with 2020,

The annual increase was $4.2 million through the current fiscal year with an annual increase of $4.9 million.

Fiscal year 2025, the school division received an annual increase of $7 million, and this was primarily due to the increase in the LCI rate and to cover the law state revenue.

Overall, the four-year average out to about $5 million.

State revenue is the second largest funding source by 20%.

This year is a re-benchmarking of the LCI.

The LCI for the upcoming fiscal year 27 declined slightly from 0.7702 to 0.7666.

Thus, we are estimating stock revenue for the division will be level because of the slight decrease and decline in our student enrollment.

With the uncertainty of the federal government, federal funding is left level.

The sources that we receive federal funding for is school nutrition, which is about 2.7 million.

And then Title I, we received about 1.4 million.

Title IV, sorry, Title VI-B, 1.6 million.

And then Title II, III, and IV, we receive an average of about 150,000 to 200,000.

School nutrition is under the USDA and this is a highly certain for continuation because of the primary programs of national school lunch and breakfast or entitlement programs and the federal government is legally obligated to provide reimbursement for eligible meals served to students.

Title I is highly certain for eligible school divisions because, like nutrition, it's an entitlement program.

Now the funding can vary based on the amount of the federal budget.

The Title VI-B serving the individuals with disabilities is a formula grant.

It's not an entitlement program.

It's a formula grant subject to annual appropriation by Congress.

What is speculative in continual federal funding is Title II, III, and IV.

Between these federal programs, we receive an estimate of 150 to 200,000.

The next steps after this meeting is the school board will have a work session on January 22nd and before that we will have the VDOE's CALC tool.

We're anticipating it being released tomorrow so we will know what additional revenues we'll be receiving.

We will be evaluating the budget request submitted by staff and prioritizing those requests based on what you heard earlier.

And then we have to look at our positions and realigning those positions based on a reorganization plan by leadership.

So there's quite a big heavy lift before we come back together and refine these numbers.

This is a preliminary summary of the information that you've heard this evening.

I want to emphasize that this is preliminary.

This is not written in concrete.

The compensation and benefits come to about $5.5 million, and then the non-discretionary, which is transportation and maintenance.

of $881,000 for a total of $6.4 million.

We have a significant work to complete between now and January 22nd.

We will be reviewing the budget request.

And again, those requests just closed last Friday.

I provided a high-level overview of those instructional requests, which were related to class sizes and continued supports as it relates to English and mathematics.

and so we will continue to review and do this work together.

Like Ms. Hoover just said on the previous slide, we anticipate that the revenue and savings and some of the other areas we will be able to absorb and so that we can attempt to keep that number that she presented so that we can keep that number stable.

That is the end of our presentation for the joint session.

What questions can we answer for you?

Thank you.

All right, we can pivot over to our crew understanding this kind of an initial first task.

And we've got some good upcoming work sessions.

This is kind of our first pass at this.

So we have a little

preliminary access to the PowerPoint, but I'm looking at some of these things.

This is the first time we've looked at that.

I think, I mean, I personally want to make sure that we continue to really focus and do discussing and taking a look at the early childhood center and where that funding is as far as the CIP.

And I know there's a lot of work being done,

to evaluate and look at the Oak Lawn property and all of that.

I think I shared some of my thoughts at our last board meeting, just really wanting to have a better understanding of what that property is and potentially if there are delays, how that would impact the schools and our kids.

And I know that we as a board with Dr. Gurley need to have some more time talking about that, but we look forward to receiving more information, but also wanting to keep at the forefront that we need to

have a place for our little kids to go.

And this was part of the bigger project as far as reconfiguration with the middle school and the preschool was part of that.

So wanting to make sure that there really isn't a delay and that we're optimizing whether it be this property

for the kids and whatever else this property could potentially do for the division.

And then, you know, looking at Oklahoma as well.

So I know there's a lot that we don't quite know yet, but again, I really feel like early learning, early childhood learning, maximizing the seats and what we can do, not just for our three and four year old kids, but, you know, coming together as a city.

I mean, we're talking a lot about

accreditation and the scores for an achievement gap for black and brown students.

This is something that we've been talking about for a very long time.

We're acknowledging that Dr. Gurley and his team are really looking at it, focusing on it differently.

But what outside of the schools can we as a community continue to do to support, you know, whether it's housing,

Jobs, accessible and affordable early learning for any student or family who needs that so that parents can then get jobs and get into the workforce.

Decent pay for our early childhood care providers.

So again, this is bigger than just the schools, but this is our community and these are all kids and this is our future.

So I think it really is warranting a bigger conversation and looking at how we can be creative and maximize what we do have, but really looking beyond just what the schools can do.

As far as budget and taking a look at where the governor's budget, the outgoing governor, is going to land and then

Looking at the new governor and she's going to be able to edit that a little bit and then vote in the delegates and the senators, make some changes to that.

So there's still a lot of unknowns.

I mean, I think it's going to look hopefully better, but there are a lot of needs and we know that from the federal level all the way down.

Again, I don't know that I have a lot of comments yet about what was presented for the schools, but I have a lot of questions and a lot of concerns.

As I know, Mr. Sanders, I'm going to listen to your presentations to council.

And I know you were all looking at that as well and trying to take care of this community.

And we know the schools are a big part of it, but we've got, you know, housing and all those other things.

And so I'm well aware of that.

and I hope the community is aware and listening and paying attention to because you all have some big decisions and I do, like has been said by Dr. Gurley and Ms. Huber, appreciate the supports that you all have offered and provided throughout the years for the schools, but there's a lot to do.

Like Lisa said, this is the first time I've taken a deep dive in this information, but I would say for me is

you know, to both city council and to the school is like, like really focusing on like the achievement gap and how we look at that and being able to provide that support for families because we can't pour all of this into the children and we're not pouring into the overall family.

And so look at how we are pouring into not just the children, but the family as a whole.

and just kind of you know being in the housing space and kind of serving on the school board and I know that it's 95 but I think that for like the homeless but a lot of of our homeless population is going untracked and so like they may be living with like a family member sleeping on somebody's couch

and we don't know about it.

And so I'm quite sure, like Mr. Wade asked the question, I'm quite sure that number is a lot bigger.

We just don't know about it.

And just understanding how the housing crisis, the cost of rent in Charlottesville affects families and families having to work two to three jobs just to be able to provide for their family.

And so if

You are, you know, a single parent or single family household and you have to work two or three jobs just to limit Charlottesville, how that affects your child's education.

So it's just not like, you know, the burden is just not on the school.

It's on the community to be able to wrap these services around our families so that we can see the success that we're looking for in all of our children.

You know, my colleagues actually said most of the stuff that I intended to say.

So I'll just simply say this in terms of the standards changing for accountability from the state.

You know, while they might change at the end of the day, it's really, we can observe if our kids are mastering the skills or not.

We can observe them when they're writing emails.

When they are writing resumes and cover letters and applying to the job and we're working with them, we can actually see that.

So, you know, while the state standard might change, what's happening in real life really does inform their mastery of those skills.

I'll just second everything that they said, but I won't say everything.

I do think it's really important to have that community approach.

And I think literacy

We'll take everyone.

By the time students get to the schools, in some ways, it's a little late.

Thank you.

I'll just, along the lines, I think, of my comments, but I've been struck now out of basic services I think our school division provides.

to a lot of families and members of our community.

And then Dr. Gurley, when we think about FTEs and look at the support staff, like piece of the pie there, how many FTEs do you think we have on staff that are not necessarily, I mean, everything's related directly to education, obviously, but just helping provide the students a meeting to meet their basic needs so that they can actually be in the classroom and learn.

I mean, it's a significant portion.

Like support staff, right?

And then some of those are for instructional learning, like reading specialists, et cetera.

But we also have outreach specialists just to make sure kids are sending to school.

We have counselors.

We do.

Yeah, I mean, I think that we are staff way higher than, you know, schools, similar school divisions of 4,300, 4,400 students.

I mean, I definitely think we have way more FTEs than the average school division.

I mean, and I will say as a person who's in the work daily, it doesn't feel like enough

most of the time.

So I'm not saying that we have too much.

I'm saying that on any given day, it still feels like we don't have enough.

And that's why you'll see some of the things that I know like Ms. Rasnick has been working with schools on like, what would it look like to have a registered behavior technician?

Because we're seeing just a growing need

of students who are in elementary school with escalating behaviors and sometimes it's you know we don't these children have not gone to you know formal preschool this is the first time they've been in a structured setting and so we

We're taking that burden of like trying, having to educate a student because we're required to and we're going to, but doing that in a setting in a classroom with their peers and we're not talking about students, that these are necessarily students with disabilities.

Thank you.

I would echo

Everything my colleagues have said prior and will not repeat them.

I think what I'm looking forward to is Dr. Johnson and Dr. Sharika Jones-Lewis doing some of that community and schools work to try to tie some of the services that are in the community and bridge the gap, maybe differently or better.

than maybe we have been doing so that some of those services can be married a little bit differently and hoping that provides more robust services for those students that you speak of, Dr. Gurley, and just appreciate the work that's gone into this, even though it's a first pass.

I know there are a lot of needs that our students and families have and that I appreciate you working with just the resources that we have, the funding that we have to

make it work and not ask for 12, 14 million dollars to add 20 more positions, because that would be really great.

But I appreciate you repurposing and being mindful and how we do this work and evaluating the staff and roles that we have and what's working and how we might have to do things a little bit differently without a budget implication and really just bringing forward what we're seeing

A collective bargaining agreement, 90% or better is from collective bargaining and I am hopeful that we get that contract soon to review.

I was hoping someone from CEA would be here tonight to weigh in on public comment, but we'll see anyone.

I'm hoping we get that soon and that we can have a robust conversation about what that looks like.

I'm just going to wrap up our comments just again drawing back to that compensation piece recognizing that of this preliminary numbers, you know, the vast majority is related to compensation and benefits.

You know, recognizing that the city is going through collective bargaining with a number of your staff and personnel as well.

But I think the retention rates are going to start to tell the story of how well collective bargaining is working in our division.

When we make our schools a desirable place to work, we get to be more selective and choosy about who is working with our students.

and that retention that leads to longevity and continuity just helps with everything.

The relationships that are built with students, the relationships that our staff has in working with each other, the training that we implement, just all of that builds on itself and when we're not having constant turnover,

The impact that it has on our students and in decreasing that achievement gap, I think we're going to start to see.

So, appreciate your consideration of the impacts that collective bargaining is going to have.

We know that personnel is the vast majority of these budgets, so when we start talking about those numbers, that's where we see

You see the number get big quickly.

I do think

I've got two things to talk about.

The first one, are there volunteer programs that community members should know about if they want to come in and help like read to kids or do math tutoring?

Yes, so Dr. Denise Johnson, who's behind us, she is the person who spearheads all that work.

There is a spot on the website, but she is the direct contact.

She can help with the going through the volunteer trainings.

There's like a level one, level two, level three.

She can assist with like what areas.

There are some gaps where we need some folks.

Great, thanks.

And then my other point slash question is there's a lot of community problems that have symptoms that show up in the schools, like behavioral issues, lags in reading achievement.

Those community problems that can be at the root of that are, you know, like parental drive insecurity, food insecurity, housing insecurity, and then, you know, the transportation needs.

If students are not able to get to school, that's

Bad for our budget, of course, but it's bad for the kids.

They're missing out on days of learning.

So while there are innovative ways that the school can provide what we need for our students, our responsibility is to think about that on a broader level.

So I'm going to bring up something that I brought up at a meeting before, but I don't know if everyone

I definitely know that everyone in this room was not there.

So I would bring it up again, because I think that everyone, all the people that we need to make this decision are in the room.

So I want to plant that seed again, which is being able to, as we build new buildings and shift our land use on school property, we have the ability to include housing in those plans.

There's nothing but sky above us and the city doesn't necessarily need to provide the funding for that.

An outside developer can come in and help support that so it doesn't cost us any more, but then we have near housing for maybe teachers who have just moved here or any other community member.

There's a need for workforce housing, for teacher housing, for low-income housing, for market rate housing, and we can help provide that by using our land differently than what we currently do, especially as we embark on these construction projects.

I don't want that to be a missed opportunity.

We've got space.

We can do stuff with it.

If you have examples of where that, I think it would be very interesting to be able to review some case studies or where that's been implemented.

Yeah, I don't think it's a particularly common thing.

Sure.

There are a couple down in North Carolina, California is piloting some who they know of.

So there are a few, but I'd be happy to connect with you and maybe it's something you and I

I know Ms. Torres has looked at this as well, so maybe it's something the three of us can put together and really start working on.

I think this is something you and I have talked about.

And I think as we're looking at the land that we're hopefully coming upon, kind of on, and then what might happen here, I think it is quite wise to look in that direction.

Yeah, there was a presentation years ago.

Maybe the first couple of years at the SBA with some examples, I think Eastern Shore, North Carolina, that did some things like that.

And I think there have been several of us who have expressed interest in looking at that.

And could we do that?

Similarly, I would love to look at like

and we do an early childhood learning center and subsidize it somehow for city employees, teachers, even a joint effort with the county.

I mean, I think there's potential, there's a need for all of that.

So whether it's workforce housing or early learning or early childhood spaces, I mean, there's a big need for a lot of these things, but I think there's definitely an appetite to look at that and to consider it.

Great.

I'm glad to hear that there's a warm reception to that idea and not necessarily a nervous one, although there are things to think about and safety concerns and all of that.

I had a couple of comments.

Doctor, girl, I have to tell you, seeing the difference in those test scores, they just

It pained me, brother.

It pained me.

Because 20 years ago, when I was on council and when I was on the school board, we were looking at, if not the same, just the similar discrepancies or difference.

And it's hard to find the right solution to it.

I know that we have been

you know, trying to address it as a city, as a school board.

I know the school board members and I know their passion and working at it and those staff is doing it as well.

Just trying to figure out like what, you know, what we can do.

I'm talking to other mayors around now that I'm in this position, other mayors, they're having the same issues as well.

And

Just trying to figure out, is it the approach?

Are we looking at a different widget to try to address it?

The curriculum?

I heard your speech at the beginning of the year.

It was, you know, you had me fired up, man.

I wanted to go back and get my teaching degree to see if we could do it.

The first thing I want to say, Mayor Wade, is that I think we have to think about this two different ways.

I think a lot of times when people see the, let's just say the reading achievement data, so that's about students who have passed the SOL.

So sometimes what's frustrating is that people will see that and say, our students can't read.

And that's not an assessment of how students read or how well students read.

We have assessments internally that tell us how well students read.

So I think the first thing as school staff, we get a little deflated because we hear people say, well,

Black students can't read.

And that's not what that score is.

That score is did they pass an SOL test?

And so as we talk about what we've done, so as we started this summer and it was the first week after our students got out of school, we looked at the systems that are in place, systems that our Black students would be accessing.

And what we asked our staff is that what would you do if this was presented to you and we had them to work independently.

So a student is coming to you.

They're deficient.

They need these resources.

and in our head we would expect that they would all give us the same answer and so I'm just going to use seven.

We had seven people give us an answer and we got seven different answers.

They all arrived at the same conclusion but they did it seven different ways and that was not our expectation because we feel we know that if we have a system in place

So, say if a student is not reading, a student is having difficulties reading, we would expect that the process would be very linear, that you would do step one, then you would remediate, then you would provide this intensive support, that there would be this progression, but often people were responding during that session saying, well, I don't know how I would even access the resource to support the student.

So we knew that that was a problem.

That was our problem, right?

So we had to fix the system so that the practitioners who were in the building understand how they respond to the intensive needs of the students.

So that was the very first thing.

Fix the systems.

Make sure that people understand how to access the tools.

Make sure that people understand where to get the curriculum resources to support our students.

That was the initial groundwork.

And then we had a subsequent meeting where we had our leadership advance where we wanted to then hone in on like, what does it look like

and we are calling these things out.

I mean, I mean, we're being very specific, like no one's like whispering these things.

So like, what's the problem?

Our black students are not achieving.

So at the Leadership Advance, what we did was we looked at what does it mean for a black student to be successful here in Charlottesville City Schools?

So again, when you say what's different,

What are the resources that they can access?

How are we ensuring that we're not just dumping all students who are achieving at one level and setting the expectations very low?

How do we create a space where we're creating, where we're saying what we minimally want to happen for students is to be proficient because every student

owes the opportunity to be proficient and then to reach and then to extend far beyond that.

We were not providing our students.

We had not been doing a good job of providing our students the opportunities to reach proficiency.

So, I mean, I think

We have been very intentional about how we look at the data.

We are reteaching principals how to triangulate data so that they can work with their teachers on how to triangulate data.

Let's not look at one data point.

I mean, we were finding that a lot of times, Ms. Oschrin, professional learning communities, PLCs, we were finding that teachers were getting in PLCs and they were using a data point and they may be using two data points,

But what are those data points telling you and what would you expect?

Dr. Isley did a very good session on helping principals to understand that if students have been successful one to two times before and you're not seeing success now, what is happening now because

What we realized long term is that we would expect this student to see proficiency.

I mean, for so long we have been talking about the importance of a growth mindset, but what we realized is that the growth mindset sometimes is what was creating a space for us to be stagnant because we were celebrating that students were growing

but they were growing year after year after year after year and then we would look at those students trajectory over time as they were matriculating through Charlottesville City Schools and those same students who had been growing never reached proficiency.

So there was something that we were doing, there was something that we were doing there that we needed to do differently.

So it's how we evaluate the data, how we use the data

So I mean we are having our school success meetings where we're in our school success meetings and we're being very prescriptive in those meetings that we want to see like these are the things we want to see when we're there and we're we're literally saying on the form now like what does that look like for

a Black student to be successful, like what does engagement look like for the student in your classroom?

Because I feel like, and I said this, you probably heard this in my opening statement, that I think for so long in our spaces, we've been

Well, not we, me.

People have been afraid to say that this student, this black student is not doing well.

And then we were getting tears when we were just saying, okay, we know what the problem is.

Let's prescribe, let's diagnose, let's treat not just the symptoms, but what the actual problems are.

So I mean, it's been a lift, but we are seeing the needle move.

And again, I think that we're living in an unfortunate time, and I go on the record about this every time, that we have made what happens with students about SOL scores.

And that's not the defining moment of what happens for students, because that's ultimately a test.

um that's a test and it's a test that's being used adversely to impact some of our most marginalized students when we've been saying we have performance tasks and we know that when we give our students performance tasks we get much different outcomes for our students so it's just a lot I mean I could go on on for days about this work because

Everyone around me is as impassioned about this now.

Like, I'm not just the face anymore.

So, Dr. Gurley, and your board or your Madam Chair may have asked you this as well.

What would you need with that needle

to go, let's say from 40, I think it's 42, 90 and 90, say to 60.

Well, I'm going to say to 75, right?

Because I want all of our students to read proficiency.

So we're going to have to continue to work in stride

and on pace with the students that we have.

But what changes what's happening is what happens with our students before they get here.

What happens when they're on winter break?

What happens when they're on spring break?

I think you've heard school board members say like, I mean, we've been tasked

in the schools to do every single thing and I think if you had a room full of teachers in here they would all be snapping because I mean the the greatest lift that we have and it's it's a big cognitive lift cognitive load right now that the school is being tasked

with doing everything and what's going to change is what happens to our students before they get here.

And I think I say that knowing my own child is getting ready to turn three and I feel like

I'm getting her prepared to be a kindergartener right now.

And if she's not meeting that, then she's not going to be successful.

Someone said that on this side already.

So what's going to happen is, how are we supporting our families?

Who are our families?

Mom, Dad, didn't finish school.

They don't have the resources.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, I recall plenty of times saying, you know, before we can begin to educate them, oftentimes the teachers, they have to, that child has to be fed.

You know, oftentimes they need to be safe.

They may need a hug.

And before some basic things are done, learning just can't take place.

And oftentimes it was at the doorstep of the schools.

Thank you.

And I want to say for context purposes, as we talk about, you know, Black student achievement in general, and I think my colleagues will, I'm confident that I'm 100% correct in this.

Some of our most

Our students who need us the most are students who are dysregulated.

They check all of those boxes.

You know, these are black students who are economically disadvantaged.

And you see it across every school division.

So it's not just Charlottesville.

You see it across every school division.

But, you know, we, the state and these tests are creating this one size fits all, which doesn't address the things that they don't, our students are not coming to school with and they don't have the adequate resources when they leave us in the afternoon.

That's kind of a follow up on some of the things you just talked about.

I think we have looked high and low.

I think that the only difference where you, we've looked high and low and when you are finding schools with high poverty

that these are the results you get when the systems outside of the school are not in place.

When you see school divisions where there are, where the Black student achievement is slightly higher, what you find is the common denominator there is there's a higher level of Black middle class.

and I think that that's the thing, that's one of the stark differences that we found is that the, and I hate to say this in terms of numbers because our students are not numbers, but I mean you're talking about test scores and that's what people keep talking to us about.

When you're talking about test scores where you see the achievement, when you see less of the achievement gap, particularly in Virginia,

It's in those black school divisions where you have a higher level of black middle class.

And so I mean, and that's and they're largely they're counties.

I mean, absolutely.

Well, we don't have it.

Well, we could make that relative available.

We've triangulated data by address here in Charlottesville City Schools.

Mr. Payne, I have a similar question.

So, 85% of our black students are low-income, backing out again through some of these graphs, and 34% are white students are low-income.

Just as one data point to look at that.

Yeah, and I think, you know, it's not surprising at all, you know, as a data point that reflects the economic inequality in Charlottesville.

I think it would be interesting to see it, you know, just by income level and in

Which I think connects to this conversation as well.

Because I mean, you touched on it, but I feel like part of what's happening is, you know, as a university town, UVA brings in very wealthy people with graduate and postgraduate degrees.

You look at the Data Science Center and Biomedical Institute that are under development, that's going to make the issue even worse.

And those people come into our community and

We have a working class community in Charlottesville that we've never created a real strategy for community wealth building to have that wealth from UVA trickle down to benefit them.

So you touched on, you know, we don't have a middle class.

I think that's absolutely true because there's no economic mobility here.

It's just UVA postgraduate degrees wealth and people without a lot of economic mobility.

But I know that is far beyond what schools have the power to fix on your own.

And I know very different contexts, so it may not directly apply.

But for CAT bus drivers, we used to have a number of non-40 hour positions.

And what we found is, am I correct in that?

My memory is correct that those positions wouldn't get filled because those individuals were able to take that CDL and

get numerous other positions that paid better with better benefits.

So that was kind of our core problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was, that was an issue.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I do just worry there's, there's no shortcut to just having the positions be market competitive.

But

and people touched on that there's about to be a big change in state government and that's going to introduce a lot of changes in funding.

We may get the one cent sales tax legislation.

I do feel like there's a structural issue in that we are

adopting our budget before we know what the state budget is and every year that creates a weird dynamic but I think especially this year when there's going to be substantial changes in funding and potentially school policy as well.

Many localities in Virginia don't adopt their budgets before the state budget's finished.

I don't know why we do that.

It seems very silly to me.

And I think it leads us to make worse decisions because we're forced to finalize our budget, not knowing a lot of information.

So I'll just say that.

And final question, obviously the school board had made a decision on school resource officers some months ago.

Is that something that's going to come to city council as a budget request?

Initially, it was identified that it would be possibly a request that would require a budget change.

From a budget perspective, it is neutral.

The police department can handle the request that was received, or I guess it's still in the process of being finalized, but I think ultimately it's two officers, so it does not require any additional FTE, so it's budget neutral.

The question is whether or not or how we deploy those two individuals within the school system.

I think that's what's still being worked out for the agreement.

Yep.

Yeah, any expansion would go beyond our current budget allocation.

So anything else would absolutely be a part of a budget request.

Before you close, I would say because I know folks are interested in what I'm going to say.

over here especially.

I just want to just indicate that we have not yet identified what our budget gap is.

I'm waiting for someone to help me see what that is.

She is working feverishly on trying to get that squared away.

It requires a number of submissions internal to the organization as well as external.

So that's what we're waiting on, getting all of that information in.

Once we know what the budget gap is, then it becomes the challenge of us trying to figure out.

where I might be inclined to make adjustments to things to make more things fit or I go back to council to have that harder conversation about what would you like me to do in the way of the two choices that I usually present and that is the red pin for changes or the consideration of additional revenues.

So where we are right now is, and I'm just confirming that I'm hearing an ask for $6.4 million.

could adjust how it gets deployed.

But I'll say that that's a big number, even though it's not $12 million, it's still a big number.

We are not seeing revenue projections increasing.

They're still holding.

They're a little flat.

So that makes us a bit nervous about being able to absorb any numbers that are bigger than what we have seen in years past.

and the requests have not trickled in, they have piled in as usual and we have to then be able to work through balancing those and putting the choices before council.

The budget briefs that I prepared for you on transportation, housing, what's the third one?

and public safety in schools.

Ultimately, I didn't talk a lot about schools because that's what this meeting is for.

So now it really is the big hard task of getting through this holiday break and then the month of January to make the numbers come together.

So we will begin working in earnest at the start of the year, making numbers work and then being ready for the conversation that we will have at the end of the month, end of January.

With regard to Oak Lawn, because I know there is continued questions and interest in that particular subject, our team is continuing to work on the assessment of the site.

The funds are available for the Pre-K Center.

They are in the budget.

There's no question about that.

We've been made an adjustment to when it's available and how much is available, but the fact that we put it in the CIP previously, it is there.

So there's no question about funding the Pre-K Center either here

or at Oakland, the question is, can we make it work at Oakland?

Just like to, we didn't talk about the CIP really and I did want to recognize that you all have been doing some work on that and sitting on the CI committee, in committee with my colleague Ms. Torres, you know I have seen I think

the appropriate amount of money out there at the moment.

Mr. Snook, you mentioned at the meeting, and again, we heard from also from Ms. Powell, how there is a committee that's working on a medium long-term infrastructure improvement plan that would take advantage of a sales tax.

I do think that would be a big 2026.

again after this budget, but that we would have to collaborate on and work on.

So I just want to make sure, and I think you're all aware of that, but we do look forward to I think the CIP subcommittee continuing to work on that with you all and seeing that plan worked out.

I threw that out.

I don't want to convey the impression that somebody has made a decision on that.

I completely agree with you.

So happy to work with you to make sure that happens to you.

All right.

At this time, we'll move on to our opportunity for comments from members of the community.

We have microphones set up here.

Oh, you're at the magic touch.

I came, of course, to talk about SROs.

You all have, and now listening to the rest of it, I have so many comments.

What I heard that was most alarming, because most of it was alarming, that you all are only clear on that there's a potential budget increase and people need to be paid more.

And I'll say that from someone who supported collective bargaining and always supported increase the teachers pay, but also challenged at the same time.

And what I then heard was that if you are not in the middle class, which I am still not and was not as a student who started in CCS in 1985, three of my kids have been through here and they were not.

But what I heard was that if you are not in the middle class, there really is nothing that you all can do for people like me.

And that is sad.

That is just so sad.

I've raised three kids as a single mother.

There's just so much to the story there.

They've went to

The top HBCUs in this country, they are amazing kids.

I did not let people sit in rooms like this and talk about them like that, even though they were not the kids who you all are, they were not in the office, they were not in the hallways, they were not the kids.

But still, why are those kids that you are having these conversations about in trouble?

I was one of those kids.

I remember a fight I had on the stairware right near the office, what used to be the office right there.

I remember teachers telling me what I could not be, what I could not do, and luckily I had enough in me not to pay attention to them.

I could go home, which wasn't perfect, but I had people there tell me not to pay attention.

So the audacity to request more money

And I'm glad that we're having these conversations directly about whether what's happening in the classroom, principals are having it with their teachers, you are having it with the principals and the teachers, I guess, whatever.

But what are you asking for more money for?

I have consistently said this.

I had a conversation with Mayor Wade not too long ago.

I don't agree, and I did not agree when Dr. Atkins was here, that CCS can just continue to ask for money and deliver nothing.

It's not okay.

I told her that.

I'm telling you that.

I'm telling the city council that.

It's not okay.

When I was on council, you all asked for tons of money, including Mayor Wade as a councilor, a school board member at the time.

What have you done with it?

Also a point that was made, how are the white students, because I've been in enough non-profits to know that it's not just black students, but your white middle class students can offset how your lower income white students are doing.

So there's also a class piece here that I have brought up many times.

You all don't do well by them either.

So basically you can write off any one

who does not do well and you can ask for money on behalf of them but then you don't deliver anything.

What are you delivering?

So what I did come here to talk about, SROs, the only thing I've heard with certainty here is that you and the police chief are about to sign an MOU.

To police the kids you don't believe can do any better.

When you all asked for millions when I was on council to say you would do something else other than police them.

And now because you haven't figured that out in a few short years, still coming out of a pandemic, now you want the police back into the schools.

Mr. Sanders is not budget neutral.

We all know that.

It's coming from somewhere and there are a lot other places for that money to go.

As someone who has been asked, looked in the face and a police said to us, as a black member of this community, I will hold y'all down.

I was not born until 1980.

Those are the people that you are given power to fix the problems that you all have in the school system.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi, Rochelle Brackney, Dr. Brackney, former police chief here in Charlottesville.

I actually really initially came to talk about the SROs as well, but I'm going to deviate and tell you why I'm going to deviate.

My doctorate is in structural management and leadership.

That means education, teaching, superintendents, how to do this work.

And to start out a conversation by saying all agencies are being asked to do more or be all things.

That is the current state of America.

So we can't default on that as not being able to serve our children and serve our children well.

The other thing that I want to comment on is there are models to do this work inside.

We all know Jeffrey Canada, Harlem Children's Zone has been a successful model on how you educate poor black and brown children in communities and be highly successful doing it.

and part of the motto is for Harlem Children's Zone and Jeffrey Canada is we remove all barriers for our children being successful, not proficient, not barely making it successful in their communities.

And one of the things that I was really concerned about when I started listening to the states is that the rigor has changed.

Well, what's interesting to me is when we do things like data and studying data,

If the changes, the accountability, the responsibilities and the metrics that we're using, they didn't just change for Charlottesville.

That rigor was across the state.

So if our outcomes are still the same and the rigor is the same for every child who took that, we cannot say that because the goal poles changed, our children weren't successful because there were children who were successful using those same metrics.

So we need to start understanding and pushing back on, sorry, Dr. Gurley, just generic narratives that we have been using for a very long time.

Mayor Wade, I hear you when you say these are the same problems.

I grew up in the 60s.

I know what it feels like to grow up in a large city and black community in Pittsburgh, very poor, not being marginalized, but chosen by the states that we are marginalized.

Our children can succeed.

We just have to give them the opportunity and resources to do that.

As for your public transportation, there are ways to do that as well.

When they were facing these same crises in larger cities, CAT here is free.

For the high school students, they gave them the bus passes and created the bus routes so that they could get to every one of the high schools, and we only have one here,

so you can get the bus routes and then that way you don't have to worry about additional employees to get them to schools.

They also contracted out with churches because they have church vans and they have church drivers and they have the insurance and they were able to bring them in and employ people as part-time, give those kinds of contracts.

It's being done there, it's a program called the Oasis Program in Pittsburgh where they use the churches to bring our children to the schools.

So I would ask you then,

Ultimately is think differently.

We don't have to keep doing the same things because you are going to get that outcome.

And lastly about school resource officers, as I said to city council, what problem are you attempting to solve by bringing the school resource officers here?

What problem are you attempting to solve?

And if you cannot answer that question, then you do not need to do something that I literally undid by removing them from this goal.

Thank you.

Good evening.

Yeah, I have a lot of concerns, but one of the main reasons why I decided to run for the Charlottesville School Board is because I recognize that the conversations we were having when I was in high school are circular and they're still happening.

I was in a public speaking class yesterday and I listened to students present on the fact that we have honors and AP courses where students of color are not present.

And

It literally felt like I was sitting in that classroom taking trigonometry or I think I took pre-calc or something in that exact classroom having the same thoughts of what are we going to do to break down these silos within the school community.

And students are saying things like, well, you know, I'm not engaging with certain people who are my peers because of tracking, because of socioeconomic status, like things that are affecting where they are and what classes are a part of.

And so

I've strongly spoken out against SROs, but that's not really the root of what I'm concerned about in this moment.

In this moment, I feel like if we're going to continue to talk about care, which is something that we've been kind of dancing around or alluding to, I do want to ask questions about how we are

maximizing the staff time that we have available.

Like we have CSAs right now, their care and safety assistance.

What care work needs to happen to help bridge that gap better?

So if that looks like adding additional training and opportunities for CSAs to be more active,

outside of just being a hall monitor, breaking up a fight, then I think we need to to do that.

I think we need to have people who are in the school buildings providing those laundry services or whatever the students need in order to be most prepared for their academic success.

And I feel like we are really missing an opportunity to maximize the skills and opportunities that CSAs can take advantage of and things that they can do in the building, because those

Those positions already exist, so we don't need to necessarily hire new people, we just need to upskill the people that we have.

I can agree that it seems like more money is being requested each year, and I get that.

It's warranted because we do have a lot of students that have a lot of needs, but I do want to see us maximizing those positions and those opportunities to get staff more involved.

I feel like, as Dr. Brackney spoke of, the Harlem Children's Zone is a great example of how that care and those wraparound services are offered.

and have led to Black Student Achievement.

So maybe we take a page out of their book and look at how we can implement that more in school buildings instead of just relying on third parties or nonprofit organizations to do that because there's always going to be other hurdles, whether it's transportation or capacity with these organizations.

I think we have to get more innovative and creative with how we are maximizing the funds and the people that we already have available.

And so that again, if that looks like

Exing off a spot in the school building for those care types of things to take place, it has to happen.

And if it looks like building a bridge with organizations like CRHA, Piedmont Housing Alliance, Abundant Life Ministries, City of Promise, United Way, we need to do that.

And so I look forward to joining the board and hoping to come up with some solutions on how we can do that.

Thank you, Ms. Bryant.

And that will conclude our public comments session.

We do have some upcoming meetings.

The next one being Thursday, January 8th, our first regular school meeting of the new year.

And as a reminder, that will begin at 6 p.m. for our trial of a little later start time.