School Board Meeting   3/2/2023

Ms.

Bryson Morsberger.

Here.

Ms.

Dooley.

Here.

Ms.

McKeever.

Here.

Ms.

And our student rep Ms.

It's a proposed agenda.

We have a second.

OK.

Yes, second.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Motion passed.

Okay, I, Emily Dooley, declare that I have a personal interest in a transaction of the Charlottesville City Public Schools for the reasons set forth below, but I believe I may participate in the deliberations and voting on the transaction as permitted by Virginia Code Sections 2.2-3112B1

and 2.2-3115H.

Specifically, one, the transaction in which I intend to participate is deliberation regarding and vote on the Charlottesville City School Board's operating budget for the 23-24 fiscal year, which includes pay to my spouse.

Two, my personal interest in the transaction stems from my husband's employment by the Charlottesville City School Board as a social science teacher at Buford Middle School.

Three, by way of my association with my husband, I am a member of a group of three or more all employees of the school board.

the members of which are affected by the budget deliberations and approval, and four, I am able to participate in the budget deliberations and vote fairly, objectively, and in the public interest.

It is my intention to orally disclose the existence of this interest during each meeting of the Charlottesville City School Board at which the 2023-24 operating budget is discussed and ask that each such disclosure be recorded in the respective meeting minutes.

The next item on the agenda are comments from members of the community.

So the Charleston City School Board welcomes comments from members of the community.

Speakers are encouraged to keep their comments to three minutes.

So if you're in the audience, I'll start with you first.

If any of you in the audience would like to speak.

No one, okay.

Mr. Connick, would you like to come forward and speak?

I feel very hopeful today about what we can accomplish in the collective bargaining process that we're about to begin.

I hope that over the next several weeks, through rich discussions in our school buildings, we teachers can decide on the two bargaining topics that we feel will have the greatest impact on improving our students' learning conditions and build democracy in our schools.

I think that just as important as what we bargain for, though, will be how we bargain.

The contract negotiations that will begin in the coming months should be open to all teachers and staff members and to the public at large.

We are public employees.

You are public servants.

The public should know what our bargaining priorities are, what stances we take and what lines we draw.

Only then can the public understand the compromises each side will have to make to achieve success, a fair and funded contract.

The process by which the collective bargaining resolution that will be passed tonight was negotiated could have been a preview of an open bargaining process.

Instead, teachers and staff were left in the dark about negotiations for months at a time while a small number of people negotiated behind closed doors with no regular reporting about the status of the process.

This dramatically decreased teachers' engagement and resulted in a missed chance to educate staff and the public about how collective bargaining will work in our division.

On a personal level, I'm sad to say that the closed process led to my former organizing committee co-chair disengaging entirely from organizing work, as she felt that she was unfairly scapegoated for an early breakdown in negotiations, while in her view, she was vigorously representing the interests of her colleagues.

What actually took place in that session cannot be verified because it happened behind closed doors.

Open negotiations are not yet the norm in collective bargaining, but there's a growing movement to make them so, especially in the public sector.

Just in the education context, open bargaining has been employed in Chicago, Concord and Brookline, Massachusetts, St.

Paul, Minnesota, and other localities.

In Colorado, all public sector bargaining is now open to the public after a ballot initiative was passed by a 70% majority of the state's electorate.

The president of the Colorado Education Association explained that, we want to be open and transparent with the community and the public.

The president of the Concord Teachers Association added,

Being a witness at the table is completely different from getting a report afterwards.

Members who witnessed the process themselves feel more informed and they get fired up.

Open bargaining can take various forms, but a typical arrangement would allow for a designated number of in-person attendees from among school system staff and from the general public.

In addition, there should be a live stream available so that anyone who is not able to attend in person can nevertheless be witness to the proceedings.

I believe an arrangement like this could work extremely well in Charlottesville.

As a wise woman once said, transparency builds trust.

Good evening school board members and Dr. Gurley.

I'm Allison Duggar, a senior at Charlottesville High School.

In my four years here, never has there been as many acts of student violence during the school year as this year.

At first thought, it is easy to push the blame on administration, but the truth is, it is not their fault.

Even if there is someone or something to blame, why is that the focus?

Why do we not focus on making the change that needs to happen?

I come to school every day trying my best to forget about the violence that has happened at my school, and I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.

While it would be easy for me to point my finger and say that it's the students' fault for the violence, I know it is not.

It is the system that has failed them.

Instead of having a system that will help prevent violence, we have a system that reacts to violence.

When students act out violently, it is not necessarily them just being immature.

In fact, it is so much deeper than that.

Violent teens are a cry for help.

And as a school system, the place where children spend the majority of their developing years, it is your responsibility to answer these calls for help.

But how do you do that?

We must start at the root cause, mental health.

There are a number of reasons a student could be suffering from mental illness, from home life, peers, or simply just the lack of mental health resources, to name a few.

It is important to be able to recognize the sign of a student struggling before it gets to the point of them acting out violently.

Having a combination of more administrative figures and mental health professionals in the building, I believe can help a student struggling with mental illness be got quicker.

Because when a student creates a bond with a faculty member in the building, they are less likely to get themselves in trouble because they feel as though there is an adult in the building that they can talk to when they're struggling or having issues.

I've seen admins, CSAs and counselors all make these types of bonds with students and how it positively affects that student.

We just don't have enough adults in the building to be able to reach all the students

While there are many more topics that I could speak to you on, unfortunately, I am limited to three minutes.

In all honesty, while I believe student violence is a serious issue here at CHS, the main reason I'm here is to get your attention.

There are so many reasons why students do not feel safe coming to school.

And while I cannot speak for the whole student body, I know that many students feel that admin and school board are not making it a priority to make us be and feel safer at school.

It is time to start the conversation with students because those are the people you are here to serve.

Come to the schools and talk to students from all social circles.

See what it is like through a student's perspective.

While I understand that it might be a lot to ask, I do have another proposal.

Like you have this monthly meeting open to the public, I suggest having a monthly forum open to students during Black nighttime here at CHS.

School board could come and talk to groups of students on issues they feel passionate about because not every student can make it to these school board meetings.

In fact, not every student knows about these meetings or how they work.

It is time for the students to be brought into the conversation about their education.

It is time for change.

Good evening board members, chairman, and superintendent Gurley.

My name is Derek Hartline.

I'm a community member, lifelong Johnson Village resident, an Atwater Johnson Village board member, a Johnson School graduate, Buford graduate, CHS graduate of 1989, also a former Johnson School teacher.

The reason why I'm here tonight is to talk about the name changes of the school.

I want to give my thoughts and concerns on specifically renaming Johnson.

Looking at the participant survey that was given out to the public,

People that were taking the survey couldn't just select to keep the same name, making the results invalid.

Did the survey reach a meaningful population was one of the suggestions that I had taken on.

What percent were from Charlottesville as there was only 272 participants?

And was a survey the best option for such a controversial issue?

How thorough was the research that was done?

What information came directly from Dr. Johnson's family?

Many of the results I saw came from local Wikipedia and the research was compiled by a committee member, not a non-biased party.

I had to ask myself, why was Dr. Johnson's father referenced in the information?

As educators, we don't judge students by their parents' actions.

So why are we doing that here?

The vote for Johnson was very close.

It was less clear with a five to three margin.

More information is needed.

I took it upon myself

to create an old-fashioned petition to see what city residents around where I live of voting age thought.

And I ended up with over 100 signatures that just said, keep Johnson the same, which is more than the number that said that it needs to be changed.

I know I'm just one person collecting the data, but if one person could do this, what can more people do?

I'll be giving this information to the clerk.

I was on the Zoom call in January and there was only 34 participants.

All the suggestions except for one was to retain the name Johnson School.

Two parents of Burleigh Moran said that they really wanted to see the BME initials kept.

It was a very interesting coincidence that a BME option existed when Venable, Clark, and Johnson didn't have this option to retain their initials.

One committee member who also is a Burleigh Moran administrator

was on this committee.

I had to ask myself, is this leading?

Was the choice to have Blue Mountain Elementary done impartially.

Blue Mountain is in Pennsylvania, where Blue Ridge Mountain is in Virginia, and a region for identification in the fourth grade SOLs that we submit.

More third and fourth graders wrote in Johnson to retain the name.

This is more than any other choice.

Why didn't the staff have a write-in option on their ballot?

Since we have no control in the era we live in, how is it that we can judge Johnson for the era he lived in?

Now that it's March and we're kicking off Women's History Month, together, Burleigh and Moran had 98 years in the division.

We should honor their names and not cast them away.

This year, we were given this shirt that has all the names on it.

On the back, it says Better Together.

When the names were together, they were better.

but now we're just separating them and turning this into a relic.

Thank you, Mr. Hartline.

Is there anyone else in the audience who would like to speak at this time?

There's no one with their hand raised, but I will give the final call.

If you're in the attendee gallery and you'd like to speak,

Thank you all for those of you who came up to speak.

Our next item on the agenda is the adoption of the consent agenda.

Any discussion?

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Motion passed.

Next item on the agenda is the approval of the collective bargaining agreement, Dr. Gurley.

Good evening, Mr. Bryant, members of the school board and those assembled in the audience.

It gives me great pleasure to stand before you this evening to make the request that you approve the collective bargaining resolution.

As you know, the school board, teachers, central office staff and an education association has worked tirelessly

to craft a document that is

of the proposed bargaining units.

Before I ask for your recommendation, I would like to make you aware that the CEA has asked that the committee review two sections of the resolution, section 4A2 regarding the authorization cards and section 7B4, representation of the bargaining unit.

In an effort to not delay the action of accepting the resolution tonight, I ask that you accept the resolution as presented.

Additionally, the Collective Bargaining Committee will reconvene to discuss the two proposed sections.

If minimal modifications are made, I ask that you allow me to add the revision to the consent agenda for your future approval.

So at this point, are there any questions about anything that I just stated?

Yes, I would like to move that we, Charlottesville City School Board,

Is there a second?

Second.

Discussion?

I just have some discussion.

Okay.

So I just wanted to say thank you so much for your evolution on this topic.

It's been so helpful and your guidance has been really helpful for me personally.

So thank you for that.

I,

I find it interesting the way things are always changing in terms of the goalposts here.

So I am fascinated by that.

I think we need thoughtful negotiation with the CEA and fired up is not how I would describe any of the negotiations that I would want to see in the future.

I think we need deliberate, thoughtful negotiation.

and that does involve incredibly honest difficult conversations that should not be necessarily open to the public just to retain the trust amongst the people in the room.

So I appreciate and I've always championed collective bargaining.

I do always want to be on the front edge of this and I appreciate this board and it's also evolution on

in this arena.

I do want to say that this is incredibly challenging.

It will continue to be.

And I know that you have been so gracious in your willingness to take it on.

And I just hope that what Mr. Koenig asked here today was for just transparency, but also communication.

And I want to say that

I feel like our side, if there was a side in this negotiation, attempted every effort to be communicative with our, amongst ourselves and with the public.

And I just think if there are, there needs to be, what do I want to say, understanding that both sides need to communicate with their members and their constituents.

And it's not solely on

of the superintendent side to make sure that teachers all are all aware what's happening in the room.

Like that is just not a way to get things done.

You need to communicate.

You're going to be a bargaining unit.

That is very important.

The communication needs to start on in your leadership.

So I really hope and appreciate that Mr. Koenig for bringing that up today, because that is something that we as a board feel really passionate about.

I don't want to speak for anybody else, but I feel passionate that communication is the key.

and the communication really needs to come from all of the teachers and all of the staff in the buildings.

So thank you.

I look forward to voting for this.

And I know it's been a long road and thanks for your patience.

Mr. Morris.

I'll just keep my comments pretty short.

You know,

Thinking about this as this was coming towards us and specifically after last meeting, I just kind of appreciate being in this country and having the opportunity to have a First Amendment right and being able to speak as individuals.

And this also that that First Amendment right and being able to speak is, you know, what lends its hand to teachers being able to to advocate for themselves as well.

Without saying the entire speech that I had in mind, what I would like to highlight is Ms.

Allison in regards to the student voice.

The collective bargaining agreement gives teachers the opportunity to enhance their voice.

but ultimately what we wanna do is make sure that our students know that they're being heard, their voice is being heard, that we engage with them as well as ensuring that their success is at the end of this collective bargaining agreement, that we know that they are,

our main customers, if you will.

We want our students to be successful.

So Ms.

Ms.

Wang.

Ms.

Yes, thank you.

So again, I do want to thank you, Dr. Gurley.

I mean, I reflect back and I know probably many of the teachers can reflect back to when Dr. Gurley stood at the podium with Ms.

Taylor when we first brought this forward as a topic to consider.

So we've come a long way and we have had a lot of

A lot of meetings, a lot of hours, and a lot of discussion, as Mr. Moore said, ultimately for the good of the students.

I mean, that's what we're all here for, all of us together.

So I look forward to this.

I think we all have agreed that there's still a lot of pieces to this that are unknown because we haven't gotten beyond this point before.

So I know that we will be diligent and continue to work well

together and figuring out those pieces.

In all honesty, some of my concerns throughout this process were that I think we have a champion of communication and somebody who wants to hear from teachers and staff about what's going on.

And I don't have the answer to what collective bargaining will do to that process.

I mean, it will change that a little bit as far as

how and when grievances are filed.

So that remains to be determined.

And we all trust that we will continue to represent and support each other the best that we can throughout this.

As again, like I said, there are a lot of unknowns.

Also, conversations that we as a board had was wanting to make sure that whatever

exclusive representative is chosen and voted to to represent the teachers, truly represents and equitably represents all of the teachers.

and reflecting back to who shows up to speak in favor of collective bargaining.

It was really important to us to wanna make sure that each teacher has the ability and equitable access to voice their concerns.

And then when things are brought to the superintendent or his team throughout this process, that everybody's voice remains heard.

Well, I'm happy that we have reached this moment.

And yes, there are a lot of unknowns and a lot of, there'll be a lot of wrinkles and complexities as there always are.

But I would like to just say, I really appreciate all of the effort and the passion that has gone into this process.

and I mainly just want to celebrate the moment here.

Ms.

I just wanted to echo some of the things that my colleagues have said.

Thank you, Dr. Gurley, for going on this journey with us.

And for all the teachers, thank you guys for being patient while we worked through the process and we all got here.

And so, yeah, this is a good night.

And I just want to kind of echo part of what

Well, not what Miss McKeever was saying, but the idea that we're here and collective bargaining going forward, we are going to have several more meetings and tough conversations and that things get uncomfortable.

And I think that everyone wants to get to the same place.

So just I hope we all keep that in mind as we move forward to the process that there will be disagreements and discord and that's bargaining and how it works.

But I'm sure that we'll all get to where we need to be.

And

Since we are one of the few boards in the state that will have a collective bargaining unit, I would also like to see us move forward on some ideas to get more student voice involved because I would like to hear more from students and their perspective and ideas and how they'd like to see the school community and the board

you know, how we can help them and what they'd like to see us do.

So, um, that's it.

Dr. Gurles, I certainly want to thank you for being open and leading the charge.

Um, this is a great day for our teachers and our students.

And I want to again thank, um, Ms.

Torres and Ms.

Dooley and the CEA members for their, for all of the long meetings and

and the negotiations back and forth has led us to this moment.

So it is a great day for the Charlottesville City Schools and yes, moving forward, there are a lot of unknowns, but I'm sure we will rise to the occasion and figure it out.

So congratulations and thank you again, Ms.

Dooley, Ms.

Torres for your hard work and the CA members who are part of this negotiating team.

So are there any other comments?

Ms.

Ms.

Dooley?

Yes.

Ms.

McKeever?

Yes.

Ms.

Motion passed.

Congratulations.

Chairman Bryant, members of the board, Dr. Gurley.

I'm here tonight to share with you the process that the members of the Naming of Facilities Committee have had since January and with recommendation at the end of their presentation.

You can go to the next slide, please.

So in January and in part of February, we did have a survey for both Burling Moran and Johnson, which was on our website.

I'll mention more about that in a second.

We also had a community forum on January the 26th.

We had student voting at both schools, grades three and four on January the 30th, a committee meeting on January 31st.

We had staff voting at both schools on February the 9th, and then a committee meeting on February the 21st.

And so we're here

this evening with the results of those meetings.

So what I will do is talk about Burnley Moran first and then talk about Johnson.

So some of the data that we used for the Burnley Moran discussion was a survey that was mentioned, the student vote, and then the staff vote.

One of the questions on the community survey, which was answered by 396 people was,

questions listed here.

Do you believe that Burnley Moran should today be named for Kerry Burnley and Sarepta Moran?

And when we looked at the numbers, you can see that if someone rated it a one, they strongly believed it should continue.

And if they rated it a five, they strongly believed it should be changed.

When we sort of look at the ones and twos versus the fours and fives, we had about 22.8% or 23%.

We thought it should be the same.

And a little over 61% who felt that it should be changed.

So that was one of the data points that we looked at and the committee determined that we should look at a name change.

And so then we started looking at different names to consider.

Next slide, please.

and also on the survey we did have some names that we discussed just to give conversation starters.

Some of the ones that we looked at were ones that are listed here and these were the names that the committee chose to take to the students in grades three and four, Blue Ridge or Blue Mountain Elementary which would maintain the BME which was something that many of the people at Burnley Moran were interested in doing.

Plus we had Blue Ridge Mountain Elementary

We had Rivanna Elementary, and you can see the vote totals for each of those.

We did have seven students who chose not to vote, and then we had 29 write-ins.

And really the only one that got more than one vote for write-in was either Burnley Moran again, or it stayed the same with 21 votes.

So it was pretty decidedly that if we had a name change that we would go with Blue Mountain Elementary.

The committee met again and decided to ask the staff

what they felt.

And so February the 9th, we had a survey that went out to the staff, 42 voted on that.

And you can see that what the vote totals were Blue Mountain, 33, Rivanna, seven and two chose not to vote.

So that is when we decided as a committee to bring forth as a recommendation, Blue Mountain Elementary for Burnley-Maran.

That is the end of the information about Burley Moran at this point.

Any questions?

Okay.

We can go into the next slide, please.

So for Johnson, we had very similar information, the survey, the student vote, and the staff vote.

Next slide, please.

Had the same question on the survey asking if you believe that Johnson should today be named for Dr. James G. Johnson.

If the rating was one, it was a strongly believe yes.

If the rating was five, it was strongly believe no.

The information was a little closer here for the ones and twos, which would be strongly believe yes and then believe yes.

It was approximately 30%, a little over 30%.

For those, for the persons who said either four or five that they believed or strongly believed that it should be changed, it was 49.6.

So right about 50% felt that the name should be changed.

So again, we had been looking at some possible names as not just placeholders, but discussion starters.

And from there, the committee whittled down the names to three names that we took to the vote for the students,

Cherry Avenue Elementary, Forest Hills Elementary, Landmark Elementary.

Again, had write-ins.

We didn't have any abstentions from the third and fourth graders at Johnson, but we did have 46 write-ins and only one got more than one vote and that was Johnson or either to keep it the same with 29.

The committee met again and it was decided that we would ask the staff the opinion and did a vote with them

Rather than taking three names, it was decided that two names would go and the two names that were decided were Cherry Avenue and Forest Hills.

So the staff voted.

Next slide, please.

Had 36 staff members from Johnson to vote.

And the breakdown here 23 for Cherry Avenue and 13 for Forest Hills.

No extensions.

So I'm going to this

So as a result, the committee met again, I think it was the 21st of February, and talked about all of the information that we had received.

In addition, we had received some correspondence from community members and family members, which you have also received.

And in following all of the information that we had, the recommendation from the committee has been to rename Burling Moran Elementary as Blue Mountain Elementary School.

and to rename Johnson Elementary as Cherry Avenue Elementary.

Mr. Kuever, do you have any questions?

I'll start in your direction.

Ms.

Dr. Crea?

Ms.

Torres?

Ms.

I guess it's back up to me.

And I apologize for not sending this out earlier.

Do you happen to know like where Cherry Avenue came from?

I feel a little bit weird about naming a school.

Like is it just Cherry Blossoms?

I don't know the origin.

Let me clarify my question.

I don't know that.

I know that Cherry Avenue is because the school's on Cherry Avenue, but I don't know the origin of how it became Cherry Avenue.

Someone else may have that information.

Mr. Morris, there is a very helpful directory of street names and their origins on the internet.

And for Cherry Avenue, it simply says botanical name.

All right.

We've gotten a lot of emails and we've had lively debates about these subjects.

And I guess I would be remiss if I didn't address it.

And so I guess because a lot of the letters, they talk about changing the name and erasing history.

And, you know, just as a board member and a parent,

You know, when we talk about leaving the names the same, it's, I don't know, just like, am I always supposed to tell my kid things are named after people with an asterisk?

Like, it's named after this person and they were principal or they were superintendent.

You couldn't go to the school during that time period, but they were the first, you know, female principal or they were, I don't know, it's just really hard for,

to talk about these names without being honest about the things.

I think I'm an awesome person.

I don't think you should name anything after me because everyone has a blind spot.

People are just problematic in general, and hindsight's always 20-20.

But I just felt the need to say these people can be amazing people to you and in your family, and they can be great.

In the educational setting, do we just tell the kids to go to these schools?

We're honoring the people with their names on the building.

You would not have been welcome in this building when they were here, but we're still honoring them.

And so I think that those are important conversations too.

And I don't think that your name not being on a building erases

History.

The history is still there.

It's the person was still a person.

They still did all the things they did.

It's just naming things after almost just most people.

It's problematic in general and kind of have to address these things, especially in education, because kids ask questions.

They're curious.

They want to know.

And so

I don't know.

It seems problematic to me that there's always an asterisk.

I think it's better to just have a nice, clean name that's not about a person that we have to explain away some part of their history or de-emphasize membership in the Daughters of the Confederacy and try to just have a clean slate, whatever it's going to be, Cherry or Blue Ridge or Blue Mountain.

Just, I felt like in Charlottesville, like this is part of the conversations we need to have is that a lot of these places are named after problematic people who have some problematic things in their history.

And no one really wants to address those.

When we have the discussion, that's just an afterthought.

And for me, it's not an afterthought when I have to explain it to a little kid.

The committee had very in-depth discussions about this topic and not to say that there's anything wrong with any of the people for whom the buildings have been named, but looking at our current values and trying to look at the names of schools

having purpose in place more so than names.

Even in media inquiries, we've made the comment that we're not to say that any of the three people that we're talking about for this decision are bad people at all.

Just looking at getting away from names for reasons that you've said.

And we've talked about in the committee that one of the recommendations to the school board would be a revision in the naming of facilities policy to look at moving away from that.

Okay, Ms.

So the Blue Mountain is in Pennsylvania.

That is my concern about Blue Mountain.

OK, but I hear that, but I'm sure if other schools had had that option, they might have brought that up as well.

Did anybody from Johnson suggest that?

No.

OK.

Were Clark preventable?

No.

OK, thanks.

Well, I guess I would just say that I guess a couple of things.

One, there's a blue mountain.

I don't think there was a desire to pick a particular mountain in the country, but just

That is a name.

There's a brewery named Blue Mountain as well.

And there's probably a lot of other things that are named Blue Mountain in different parts of the country.

And this is just the name.

I don't think it's intended to reference a place in Pennsylvania or anywhere else, but just it's a nice name.

And that was the preference for the people in the Burley-Marin community.

I do just want to echo the thought about naming after people.

And I can see where if you are a family member or descendant of some of these people, that you might feel that they're being disparaged.

And that is definitely not our intention to do that at all.

and so I think we've realized as we've gone through this process that just the idea of continuing naming after people is just not a good idea moving forward and we want to do this in a way that does not disparage anybody because we don't know all the history of

You know, these people's lives or what their thoughts were.

We just don't have all the information.

Thank you, Dr. Babbitt.

Next on the agenda is Amanda Corman, strategic plan update.

Thanks, Leslie.

Good evening, everybody.

Thanks for having me this evening.

So this is going to be a relatively short update about where we are in our strategic plan development.

So like we talked about last time, we have an ambitious plan for having a strategic plan, a next five-year strategic plan in place by August of 2023.

and so here we are a month later and we are still in the significant stakeholder engagement phase so I just wanted to remind everybody I just wanted to remind everybody what our stakeholder engagement plan looks like for here

So we have formed a steering committee, which is a cross section of our stakeholders, both staff, parents, leadership and community partners who are meeting monthly to elevate key ideas and to bring information to the executive leadership team.

But obviously the really important piece is our engagement with our community.

And that's mostly what I'm going to be reviewing tonight is our community survey, which closed on February 27th.

So we don't have results from the community survey, but I just wanted to tell you about how, how it did.

And then obviously we'll be coming to you as a school board to give you monthly updates, but also review the dates that the school board is engaging more directly with the planning process too.

So our community survey, I guess I'm missing the top.

I think that just says community survey overview.

So the community survey was a big picture and we told folks it would only take five minutes to complete.

So the idea was we wanted to make it accessible.

It was really asking about high level priorities for the division.

Just to tell you a little bit about how we got the survey out into the community was an English version and a Spanish version.

And through our Google suite, it's also translatable into the other languages that are in our division.

We opened it February 15th and it closed February 27th.

We sent out two mass communications to all staff and families to launch it and to remind folks about it.

We posted about it on social media.

We posted about it on Canvas, which is the program that students can access.

And we did some outreach for student input at Walker, Buford, and CHS.

And I'm particularly happy to see how much our students at CHS engage with the survey.

And we also did press release and we had some media coverage.

So we're appreciative of that.

And these are some of the communications for those who saw them.

So what happened?

We had 1,173 total responses.

Wow.

This is my spirited GIF.

because I am really excited and grateful to the community for taking the time to engage with this.

So 1,173 people doing a five-minute survey.

That's about 100 hours of community input just through this survey.

So very excited about that.

Again, as I said, we don't have the data put together tonight.

going to be what our consulting group Insight has data analysts that will be able to give us a really in-depth read of what the community said, but I just wanted to tell you about who we heard from.

So this is a quick chart.

So we heard from just under half of the respondents were parents.

But we also heard from about a quarter of the respondents were our students.

And again, most of those were CHS students.

So we saw a lot of engagement from our Black Knights.

And I'm really appreciating that.

And their voices are so important since so many of them have had their whole education in our school system.

We also heard from 217 employees and then 72 folks who are both parents in our system as well as staff and then additionally and importantly 57 community members.

And then we also asked what schools and programs people are affiliated with most.

So, it looks like Charlottesville High School is, is the most well represented but in fact, if you actually, you know, Charlottesville is double the size of Buford and Walker so, and then Buford

Walker, you know, kind of collect in from the elementary school.

So it's actually fairly, fairly well spread across all of our programs.

And we did hear from all of our programs.

So we heard from LMA Hospital, Ed Learning Center, Central Office and KTEC as well.

So, again, this is going to be a stay tuned to be continued because we don't have the responses.

But I am excited to see that that we have had such rich engagement.

And this isn't the only way we're going to be

working with the community on this.

Our steering committee, part of their mandate is to be ambassadors of the strategic planning process and to be holding focus groups with different people in their communities, right?

So we're absolutely and definitely going to have focus groups with different groups of students.

who are not on the steering committee because we were just concerned that the schedule that we keep was not consistent with, we just felt we couldn't ask that of our students, but we're going to make sure we're hearing from them in different focus groups, but also, sorry, also focus groups.

going to be in a lot of different neighborhoods, different community partners.

So this is the work of a steering committee that's about 35 people strong is going to be able to hear again from another broad swath of the community in a more in-depth way than a survey may.

So the what's next piece,

is that our consultant will be doing a data analysis.

We will continue getting feedback and the steering committee and the executive leadership committee are going to start drafting priorities.

And actually at next month's meeting, I expect to be sharing some of those with the school board.

And then just a reminder for the school board about the meetings that we have planned for a more in-depth engagement with you.

And that's it.

I'll start on this end.

Ms.

Thank you for your presentation.

I had one kind of just aside.

So together with the other two school board student reps, we actually had a small scale focus group to kind of just go over some of the items that were on the

strategic plan.

And I think so these were all students that obviously had a lot to say about the policies that have been in place and will be in place.

But there were a lot of them that just that had not filled out the survey.

And I just want to I mean, I think you're kind of touching on the areas where there are going to be gaps in the people who respond.

But I just want to call that to attention.

I appreciate that so much and I particularly appreciate the effort that you and the other student school board reps put in to hold that focus group and any information that you have with that you please if somebody took notes or if you had some themes that came out of that we would absolutely love to see it and we'd love to work with you in the soon to do to do more of that so I just really appreciate you yeah

Ms.

Torres, Dr. Graff, Ms.

Dooley.

Well, thank you so much, Amanda, for sharing this valuable information.

And we look forward to getting to the final results soon.

And thank everyone

that participated in the survey up to this point.

Thank you, Mr. Bryant.

Next on the agenda is Ms.

Good evening, Chairman Bryant and members of the board and Dr. Gurley.

I'm really excited to be talking about this topic this evening.

I'm going to give it just a minute for the slides to get queued up.

It's a brief presentation, but we're

So on February the 6th, the invitation to bid was out on the street so to speak.

and you can see the other details.

These processes are always a process.

There are multiple steps because it's quite a technical process for the bidders to go through to ascertain all the information.

They ask questions and all of that good stuff and the important date is March 14th when the bids will be received.

Bid opening will be that afternoon.

We're very fortunate to have here with us this evening with Knox, who's been our VMDO leader through this project.

A really very thoughtful process was done by the steering committee.

Many of you were part of that, or two of you.

It was a two-by-two process.

being very intentional about laying this process for the project and interlacing it with the budget process that we're in right now.

And so what this slide does is it shows where we are in the budget process as we head into March.

and then where the March 14th falls in the context of the other dates with the budget.

So, you know, after the bids are received on March the 14th, soon after that is a community budget forum.

Then there's a council work session for the CIP.

And then there's the first reading of the fiscal year 24 budget.

And then approximately one month after those bids are received, it is at that point that councils adopting their next budget.

I really don't think it could have been planned any better.

This reflects a lot of intentional planning and so a lot of credit to the work VMDO did and all the other folks who were involved in that process.

Next slide.

Okay, so this is a graphic that VMDO provided you so if it looks familiar it's because you saw it back in the fall and the green box is kind of the we are here part of this chart.

We're in the bidding part right there in 2023, and then you can see where the blue construction box begins.

That's June, you know, halfway through 2023.

June, this coming June, construction begins.

How long construction will take exactly and how much it will cost?

Those are the questions we can answer much better in about 12 days.

So it's a very exciting time.

And I just also think this chart is a great reflection of a lot of hard work that has been put in by a lot of people, including you all, to get us to this moment, which will truly be a transformational moment for Charlottesville City Schools, for our students and families.

So this is really, we just felt like this was an important time.

A little bit of a, I don't wanna say calm before the storm, because this is the eve of a very happy thing.

But just a good time to remind everyone of where we've been and where we are in this very important process.

And I'm happy to take questions at this time.

I'll start with you, Ms.

McKee, do you have any questions?

Is there any way, do we have any idea how many bids we expect?

More than one.

More than one.

I've been talking with Mr. Goddard of the city about that, and I can tell you that the interest has been good.

And that is a very good thing.

I'm just curious about how do you decide on the best bid?

I don't have as much experience with this as Mr. Knox.

It is price.

It's open public procurement.

There are two criteria for all the bidders in addition to price.

One is you have to have worked on a school project worth a construction value of $30 million or more over the last five years.

You have to have done two of those.

And you also have to have experience working on an occupied school site where school's in session.

Good to see you both.

And it is exciting to kind of get updates on this.

So I appreciate the update and where we're at in the timeline.

And as Ms.

Powell said, I mean, Wick, I was always so impressed with just your intent on the timeline and just always being five steps ahead of us with that.

So really, really appreciate you and your team and all of the work.

Ms.

Wong.

Any other questions we can, oh, you got to give us the update Ms.

So again, we'll give it just a moment to get the next set of slides up.

Okay.

So we also felt that this evening was a good time to provide the community with an update regarding KTEC and so

The first thing that we want to do is before we talk about moving ahead, we think it's worthwhile to just take a moment and provide a quick reminder of how we got to this point with the board moving to acquire sole ownership of KTEC.

First and foremost, we know the board and this community recognize KTEC as an incredibly valuable community resource that diversifies learning opportunities for students and adults

It's operated for over 50 years through the partnership between Albemarle County and Charlottesville City Schools.

There was a letter in June of 2022, a letter of intent to purchase was sent from Albemarle County Public Schools.

to the Charlottesville City School Board.

And that letter did offer slots, but it didn't address how the operations would be maintained to ensure access for Charlottesville City School students, short-term or long-term really.

So there were a lot of questions and concerns with that.

And so then fast forward to two days before our winter break in December of 2022, just this past December, Albemarle County Public Schools initiated the process under the 1969 Partnership Agreement to dissolve the partnership

and that required a decision by the Charlottesville City School Board within 60 days to either buy or sell at the price set by Albemarle County Public Schools.

As a sub note to that, the value established in the offer from Albemarle County Public Schools was more than $1.2 million below

the independent valuations that were received by the Charlottesville City School Board.

But I will point out that is smaller font sub-bullet because truly, in all the deliberations of the school board, this valuation piece was minor in comparison to the concern and the desire to ensure both near-term and long-term access to the valuable KTEC programs for

for the area and for Charlottesville City School students.

So that's how we got here.

Next slide, Leslie.

Thank you.

I don't know why I can't, the arrows aren't working for me this evening.

So here's a timeline of where we are now.

Again, you see December.

This is just a timeline view and the star shows where we are now in February of 2023.

Albemarle initiated the process, the school board made its decision, and we are now embarking on transition discussions and meetings.

And those have started.

Looking ahead, KTEC does continue to operate under joint governance as the transition work continues through the upcoming school year.

And then on July 1st of 2024, KTEC still continues to operate, but it's under the sole ownership of Charlottesville City Schools.

Next slide.

So I also want to just let everyone know, Dr. Gurley and Dr. Haas, they have been talking quite a bit since the board action.

And we've also been in regular communication with Ms.

Stephanie Carter, who is the leader of KTEC.

And in fact, we had our first sit down, starting to do the deep dive type of transition meeting earlier this week.

And this is just the beginning of many, many transition meetings.

that lie ahead of us because there are many details that need to be addressed.

This slide just summarizes the major areas of transition that we need to address in each of these areas we're forming transition teams.

So you have accounting and finance.

We actually met this morning with Renee and I were at KTEC this morning working with KTEC staff in this area, human resources and personnel.

There's actually all the programming and the partnerships around those programs.

There's infrastructure and facilities, which this area is one we already know quite a bit about because in the division of duties and the partnership, the facilities piece and the CIP that was already under our facilities development team with the CIP.

Then there's technology.

Mr. Cuomo was at our first transition meeting.

There's a lot of details to be worked out there.

And then there's other miscellaneous matters like notifying VDOE and a host of other little things.

We have pages of checklist items that Ms.

Carter has taken the lead and starting to put together.

And we're all thinking a lot of the same thoughts about this moving forward and we're excited to do the work.

So we'll be working with KTEC staff throughout this transition.

Next slide, Leslie.

So the goal for Charlottesville City Schools is to work together to ensure continuity of operations and programming for the staff, the adults, the high school students for Charlottesville Albemarle and the surrounding area.

The transition team, just like you see, you know, the actions that

We're taking to initiate this change and put the board in a position to make the decision.

That's the drop in the water, right?

And all the work we do as a core transition team and all the subteams, everything we do is with a lens to make sure that the transition

is a series of smooth ripples and not big waves.

That's the best way I know to describe it.

So that's a very popular image up there, but that's the goal.

That's what we want to convey to people.

That's what we want people to know.

And next slide, Leslie.

So I want to wrap up for all the details that, and there are many of them, that we are still working through.

I want to kind of end on this note and that's what's in a name.

Well, K-Tech is a big name in this area.

It is a brand that is well recognized and it has a ton of value.

And so we just want to go ahead and put out there that the recommendation, our recommendation is a staff team and a core team is that effective July 1st, 2024.

K-Tech is still K-Tech.

It's just the Charlottesville Area Technical Education Center.

and KTEC moves on into the future, still providing a lot of value and meaningful services for this area.

We understand how important KTEC is for our business community, for our students.

And Charlottesville City School Board's decision that you made, given the choice you had to make, it reflects this commitment and this understanding.

And we have a great team that's going to be working through this transition.

I'll start with Ms.

McKeever.

There's a lot of work to be done and we'll certainly be tapping people into the process as we go step by step, just like that ripple of change goes out and any process of this significance, you start with the core and then you just, it's the people involved and the work to be done, it'll ripple out and there will need to be regular updates because there are a lot of stakeholders in this, right?

Thank you.

I just want to take a second to acknowledge the anxiety that a lot of stakeholders are feeling, both students, parents, both in the city and in the county, PVCC partners, teachers at KTEC,

you know, the local businesses that benefit from the students who graduate from KTEC.

And so just acknowledge that anxiety.

And I appreciate your focus on the small ripples as opposed to tidal waves.

Mr. Morris.

Second Ms.

Dooley.

Ms.

Yeah, third Ms.

Dooley.

But just also to say to the people out there who have anxiety that our initial and our first choice was always to remain operating under the agreement that we had.

But since we no longer had that choice, we thought that this was a good decision because we would like to keep KTEC as a regional resource

and we want to see the program grow and career technical education.

It's just it's really important in it.

I don't think it gets the emphasis that it needs because college is not for every student for a variety of reasons.

Financial being the biggest one, I think these days.

But yeah,

KTEC is very important and we just want to see it grow and blossom under Charlottesville's leadership.

Yeah, I guess I'd also like to acknowledge some of the concerns that I'm hearing out in the community and from people who've been in the community a long time and I think there's a

a lack of understanding and a sense of confusion about why this partnership is dissolving.

sort of why is this happening?

And that's out there.

So there's probably a need to continue to think about that and think about how we are going to communicate publicly as we go through this process.

And I don't know if we are

you know, I don't know, well, I don't know a lot of the details where Albemarle County students might fit into this model or if they're not going to fit into this model and we probably don't have the answers to that question yet.

Another, you know, concerned party I think is that there is a KTEC Foundation Board and I don't know if they have been brought into this process

are people talking to them.

They exist to support KTEC.

So I just want to make sure just I did have an opportunity to meet with the KTEC staff today.

And so I did want to reassure them and and reassuring them again in this moment that

We plan for KTEC to remain the same.

I told them this morning that the only difference is that we may be making a recommendation to the school board that the A becomes area instead of Albemarle.

But we recognize that KTEC is a beacon for the community and we would love to preserve that name.

And I think that that's a great way to capture it.

Also, we know that Albemarle students as well as Charlottesville students are

planning their schedule for next year.

And so we want them to commit to the programs because we've committed to the programs and to ensuring that Albemarle students can access the programs.

So as we continue to move forward with programming, we have standing meetings.

I have a standing meeting with Dr. Haas and Stephanie Carter every month.

And we want to make sure that as a part of this, that we're continued to communicate

to Charlottesville families as well as Albemarle families.

We even have a few Fluvanna families that they can still access the programming there.

That was one of the questions from our, from the KTEC staff members.

What about the Albemarle students?

And we will continue to serve the greater Charlottesville area.

And so I just don't want anyone to have any worries about that.

And regarding the center board, if I may, just to answer all the questions, we're all pretty clear in the core team that there's no reason that that can't continue on supporting those programs for the area, the KTEC center board.

Foundation board.

It's the equivalent of the PTA.

It's equivalent of a PTA.

The programs, to be there to support the programs.

Yeah, just wanted to say thank you for the update.

I mean, I think this is, like you said, the first step in many efforts to update not only this board, but the community at large as far as what's going on.

And we definitely prioritize that.

Just as an FYI too, the joint board has not met since this decision was made.

The opportunity to have that conversation with everybody at the table, I think remains to be seen.

just the timing, the scheduling of the calendar.

We don't meet every month.

So, you know, that's an opportunity again to put some of those things out there.

And I think we, you know, those of us who are on that board can make recommendations or, you know, we can talk about how we share some of this information out from the KTEC perspective and also with Albemarle.

But I think we will definitely do that.

So thank you.

And one thing we didn't mention, we did meet with the city today.

Ms.

Thank you for that date.

And also thank you, Dr. Gurley, for that answered a lot of my questions.

I just wanted to add that I think every student I've talked to at CHS is deeply appreciative of the board's decision to retain interest in KTEC.

Thank you Ms.

The next item on the agenda, the school board committee reports have been duly noted and recorded.

So now this is another opportunity to have comments from the community.

So if you would like to come forward to make remarks, please state your name and your address.

And I'll start with

You are in the audience here.

Chuck Moran and I am a resident and

native of Charlottesville.

I live in the Cherry Hill community right next to Johnson School, and I enjoy walking my dog on the Johnson School property.

But I'm here today to talk about a couple of unfortunate things that I think have led to the conclusion and the renaming.

And I want to say right up at the beginning of my remarks that I fully appreciate how fraught these kinds of decisions are.

And I do appreciate the attentiveness that members of the board have given me as well as the naming committee have given me as I expressed my concerns both individually and collectively through emails and even a video, as you recall, that I sent in to express my concerns.

They basically boil down to two things.

One is that I feel like the sample size and the duration of the fact that the survey was open for such a short period of time is very unfortunate.

And I think having had we looked at other communities, we would have seen that this was a year-long process to forge new names for schools.

I also don't

rabidly object to the concept of renaming schools for precisely your name, your position of having to explain things to young children.

I do think, though, Dr. Kraft's point about disparagement unfortunately did happen in this particular case, especially around my great aunt's namesake.

Sarepta Moran, I'm probably the only person in this room and maybe the only person in this community who actually remembers her.

I, uh, she actually was more of a grandmother to me than my own grandmother.

And, um, I find that as we begin this embarking on women's history month, that we are now in an unfortunate recognition of the fact that Mr. Varner, who did put forward some really good historical facts about Ms.

Sarepta Moran and Ms.

Carrie Burnley, unfortunately disparaged her through guilt by association.

and if you read his remarks carefully, you'll see that he begins with a very factual statement that she was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the DAR.

She was.

If he had stopped there, we'd be fine.

I wouldn't have a thing to say.

The problem is he switches to what the UDC was all about and some of the activities of the UDC and by inference, drags her name into those things.

He talks about historical activism.

He talks about her purge and her ability to

have concerns and control over textbooks and those kinds of things.

We have no proof of that, none whatsoever.

So that is disparagement.

I am a local, as I mentioned, I have two businesses here.

Moran is my name.

And so I see my time is up, but I would just like to close with a simple request that if we ever do this again, that we do it much simpler and that we look at it from

a viewpoint of being a very clean process.

And my last request is that if we really are truly going to erase the name of my great aunt from Burnley Moran, that her portrait and any memorabilia be returned to the family.

And I think I speak for the Burnley family as well.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you so much.

Do we have anyone else who would like to come forward?

Becca Saxon and I am, my address is, my office address is 1 Morton Drive.

So as a parent of a senior in Charlottesville High School, I just want to thank you so much for the historic vote you just took on collective bargaining.

Many of you have heard stories of my child over the years and he is not

Imagine that he's a bit stubborn and a bit difficult and sometimes hard to reach and I don't know where he got it clearly not from me it must have come from his other mother because it's not me who's the difficult one but his success in him being have gotten to where he is is because of the hard work that his teachers have

I am so thankful that we are now giving those educators

the opportunity to be truly involved in making the decisions about what this school system needs for kids because they are the experts, they are the people who know what needs to happen and are able to get that done and I am so appreciative that after all of these years

of me recognizing what they have done and their ability to make those decisions that you all have now taken that step to do the same and to codify that and to make sure that that continues in perpetuity.

So thank you so much.

This is a wonderful night for the city of Charlottesville.

And my son, when I asked him if he was gonna come tonight, he said, well, I don't know that I want all the teachers to be able to make decisions, but most of them deserve it.

So thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

You guys did a great thing tonight.

You should be proud of yourselves.

And I want to thank Ms.

McKeever.

I've spoken at a few of these meetings.

That's the first time anyone's ever responded to anything that I said.

Thank you.

I just want to respond to a couple of things that you said.

The quote from the Concord Teachers Association president about being fired up.

It's not about people being angry at each other.

It's about teachers being excited and energized and wanting to participate.

And then as far as what I said about information sharing, I agree with you 100% that that is on us.

That wasn't directed towards the board.

That is our responsibility to share information with the teachers in Charlottesville.

Mr. Morse, I really appreciate your comment too about this being an opportunity to make things better for students and raise students' voices.

A friend of mine who's a teacher here at CHS recently sent me a platform from the Portland Teachers Union that they put together for their bargaining.

And they did so after having multiple meetings with community members and with students and finding out what their priorities were.

and that's what they brought to the bargaining table and I hope that we have the capacity to do that here in Charlottesville to find out what our students want and that's what we should be negotiating for.

And then last but not least,

Ms.

Bryson Morsberger, you mentioned this process won't necessarily be easy.

We probably won't be.

There'll be some difficult conversations and some disagreements.

And I would just return to my point that let's have those in the open.

Let's do it publicly.

Let's put our cards on the table.

We have nothing to hide.

We're public servants.

Let's let the public see what we have to say.

Thank you, Mr. Gordon.

Next.

Hello, my name is Dr. Emily Yen.

I live at 506 Ridge Street in the city of Charlottesville.

And I just wanted to express my appreciation for you all passing this resolution.

I know that it took a lot of time and effort to try to get out all the details.

And I'm very excited for what can come out of this.

I'm very excited for

the ability to find some win-win solutions since there are many win-win solutions that can come out of this process.

Thank you so much.

Hi, I'm Jen Horne.

Thank you so much.

My work address is 1400 Melbourne Avenue right here.

And thank you so much board members, Dr. Gurley.

I'm back.

Let's see.

And it's still the same thing.

I would like to open with the fact that I think we could all agree that virtual school was a nightmare.

and coming back, we all were really hopeful that this place full of human interaction and curiosity and classroom discourse would become magical.

And everyone, teachers, students, parents would finally see the value of this.

And it hasn't been magical and it hasn't been that easy.

And I realized that the pie

of issues is large and with many pieces.

My colleague David Wilkerson just recently wrote a great article that you should check out about our post-COVID experience.

There are outside factors.

There's mental health issues, like my student Allison talked about, learning loss, too many classes that are still online too often.

There's a lot going on.

But there's one piece of that pie that nurtures and exacerbates all of the others, and that is cell phones.

And I am not joking.

They're pervasive.

They're addictive.

They're ubiquitously, universally a problem with every student of every different demographic that we teach.

I'm gonna make a metaphor.

When I was in school, a freshman in high school, this will place me in age, we had a smoking court.

Yes, we did.

And by the time I was a senior in high school, they got rid of the smoking court.

Because as I said, at that time, adults were still able to smoke on planes and in bars.

Can you believe it?

Oh my goodness, it was so disgusting.

But they decided that this thing that was unhealthy,

We were gonna protect our children.

If we were gonna protect anybody, we were gonna protect our children.

I mean, grizzly bears protect their children.

Foxes protect their children.

We need to protect our children.

We should not have cell phones in our school.

I have been doing some back and forth with Hopewell schools.

The Washington district and Pennsylvania have gone completely cell phone free, doing yonder pouches or lockers.

I would love to thank you so much, Ms.

Dooley, for reaching out.

I would love to talk with you about advancing this.

I know it's hard.

I'm not going to give my home address because people are going to come and egg me.

I know it's hard, but it's really important and I'll be back next month.

Thank you so much.

OK, well, thank you all so much for sharing your thoughts.

Now we will have comments from the board.

And I will start with Ms.

I mean, I'd just like to respond to Ms.

Horn.

I mean, recently in talking with students at CHS, that was one of the things that, it's all connected for me, like phones, like

Filming fights and sharing that online and also with the topic of mental health.

I think just at the start of the year, there's a lot of, there's a focus in classrooms on eliminating cell phones and I think

If that becomes policy for next year, I think it would be great to give students and parents a much greater period of notice before implementing that because it was very sudden and parents are not used to having to go through the school and through the office, contact their kids and students

connecting and have to figure out how to connect in other ways.

Ms.

Torres, any comments?

Ms.

Kraft?

I can't get away from that, can I?

I'll always be Dr. Kraft.

I'd like to thank the people who came up to speak.

I'd like to thank Mr. Moran for you for continuing to share your family name, your family story, and your concerns and your points about our process.

I really appreciate that.

I'd like to thank my neighbor, Allison Duggar, for coming up and speaking.

And then also, Jen Horn, I think.

I'm a clinical psychologist, and I've really been thinking a lot and reading a lot about

You know, what has happened with our kids since COVID, you know, from the pandemic to now.

And I think we're only beginning to realize the, you know, I say the damage, but just the

the impact on mental health that that had.

And it's many, many layered, I think.

And it made so much sense when students were isolated the way that they were, that they would turn to social media or online, any way to access contact with other people.

It made all the sense in the world to deal with the loneliness of the pandemic.

But I think there have been a lot of other consequences of that.

And I think we're really at a tipping point with the mental health consequences in particular.

And so I think we do need to really think

deeply and think hard about how to change the culture within the school in a way that we being the adults, the professionals, things that we know are harming our kids, that we do need to

address them and do something about them.

And so I hope we can continue to have conversations, ideas.

I guess Ms.

Duggar was talking about having monthly forums of some sort or opportunities for students to come and speak or for us to go into the schools and listen.

and to really make some hard decisions that will support our students and their ability to, you know, be there as students to learn and to flourish and to interact with each other in person, face to face.

So, again, thanks to everybody who are bringing us some of these issues and concerns.

Ms.

Just a few comments.

First, I just want to start off to say to Mr. Moran, I if my comments came across as disparaging, that was not my intent at all.

So if it came off that way, I do apologize.

Just, you know, in hindsight, this meeting, all the conversations that we have are hard conversations.

And so I just appreciate everybody coming to the table and having them, whether we agree or disagree.

And then for Ms.

Horn, I agree with you.

I think that cell phones are, they're addictive.

There's so much on them to take up your attention and time.

So yeah, it's definitely something that we should look into.

I just joined social media as an adult so I could get to know people for campaign for office.

And at a certain point, I had to just end all the accounts because as an adult, I was like, I'm overwhelmed with knowing what everybody thinks about everything all the time.

And it just, I was like, I don't think like we're meant to know what everyone, I just don't think your brain can handle that many things.

So I agree with you.

We should look into that.

So I appreciate you coming and making those comments.

And for more student engagement, I look forward to us finding ways to engage students more.

I like hearing from students.

They have amazing ideas.

They always give you the scoop of what's going on, the firsthand account.

And so, yeah, I would like to get their voices more.

My student at home, she took the survey about the schedule and she was just like, I can take the survey.

I want the whole week off for Thanksgiving.

This is awesome.

And so, you know, I invite her to come to the school board meetings.

I'm like, you can come.

She was like, I can speak.

And I'm like, anyone can speak at the school board meeting.

So finding a way to let students know that we'd like to hear their voices and making it more convenient for them to speak would be

Ms.

Morris, Ms.

All right.

I want to thank the teachers and staff who have attended these meetings and stick around until the end.

It's only, I can't read that far, 6.40.

So it's actually a relatively short night.

I might make it home to say goodnight to my child, which is great.

So I'll talk quickly.

We've had some pretty high attendance at these meetings as we've worked towards passing a collective bargaining resolution.

And I hope that attendance doesn't drop off.

This is really just the beginning of a collaborative relationship.

And so

Please keep coming.

Whether it's two meetings, I know that not everyone can make these.

I've seen several of the faces at this meeting at other meetings this week in the community.

I was really overwhelmed, I guess, by the showing from the school system at Monday's meeting at Dairy Market.

So thank you for being committed to our community.

And I'm just

Hope that what we have done tonight with passing collective bargaining can offer a really productive partnership between the schools, teachers and staff, the superintendent and the board.

So I would just like to actually do something about the self-incarceration.

Can we start a committee of

People to look into and investigate how we can transition away from cell phones in the classroom.

I just love hearing this horn every month.

Don't get me wrong.

But honestly, I'm really I just I feel like we need to do something about that.

And it's exhausting to have to have her come after a long day of working.

So, I would just propose that we as a school board and or I'm not trying to pass a motion but I definitely would like some between now and our next meeting in April to have some leadership around cell phones in our school division with our students and our staff.

And I think fundamentally the most important question for me as a parent is what am I going to, my child texts me every time there's an emergency, can you please come and pick me up?

That is, he's had to do that multiple times this year.

And the anxiety that the students feel is very real.

And I just, you know, as a parent, I cannot have my child feeling that anxiety.

or I don't want him to.

Obviously, he can feel anything he wants, but it is very important to me that he be able to access the comforting place and safe place for him.

So, as a parent and as a student, I just think that's the fundamental challenge.

Maybe we just need to put

phones in our classrooms again and start memorizing numbers.

But we need some leadership around these cell phones.

And I just if we can't make this, I don't think Ms.

Horn needs to go around talking to each one of us individually to make this happen.

I think we've heard a consensus of more than a majority who are willing to look at further.

Time is ticking because, you know, August is going to be in a minute.

Thank you board members for your comments and certainly I would like to thank everyone who came forward tonight to speak and it is a great day for teachers as far as collecting bargaining is concerned.

And Ms.

Horn, where are you Ms.

Horn?

Yes, I can empathize if you as a former counselor, you know, I had some of the same issues with cell phones.

They thought the cell phone was probably more important than what I had to say in terms of

guiding them through this maze called high school.

So certainly Ms.

McKeever has a great idea of maybe having a committee to look to study this issue, not only teachers, but also students as well.

So I certainly concur with you on this.

It's very critical.

And I remember last month you said we can't compete with the cell phones and that is so right.

So it may need, it definitely needs to be addressed.

I want to first thank, first I want to say I feel so fortunate to have been a part of the collective bargaining process.

I felt like as an instructional leader and as your superintendent that I grew so much through the process.

I got to learn from you all as a teacher unit,

And so I'm very appreciative of the growth that I've made and just all of the professional development and reading.

Ms.

Duggar, I appreciate the student voice.

I think that that's what we just long for, more of the student voice.

And so absolutely using the Black nighttime, I know we have

I don't have the date and I probably should have looked on my calendar.

We do have some Black Nighttime where Denise Johnson has set up where we will do the superintendent's advisory.

and continue to get more student input.

I want to say that I accept the challenge from Miss McKeever.

I think the historical perspective is that Miss Horn put a lot of work and also

Jocelyn put a lot of work into the cell phone policy last summer.

And so this is not the first go around.

And so just so some of the notes that I had just jotted while we were sitting here, we have

inconsistent implementation.

And that's about holding each other accountable.

So, you know, part of that is administrators holding teachers accountable, but it's also teachers holding kind of like Mr. Coning said today, you know, teachers communicating with teachers and teachers holding teachers accountable.

So what we know through this implementation

They had a very thoughtful, like, no phone zone.

This is when phones can be used.

So it was a nice compromise.

And so we know that there was some missteps in the fidelity of implementation this school year.

So we have some lessons learned.

So that's why I say we can accept the challenge.

I can accept the challenge because we know what some of the challenges have been.

Teachers

and staff members not implementing it.

But then there's the consistency and the follow up on the administrative staff.

So we all have a part.

We all have a part in this.

We also know that disproportionately we've had

certain pockets of students who you know who feel like I don't have many prized possessions in life and this is the only thing that I own and it becomes this power struggle and teachers have said I'm not getting into the struggle with students about taking cell phones away so I think it's back to that whole

Mental health and systemic issue about like what is the cell phone symbolize like why is this so important.

And so I am I'm definitely team no cell phone.

I can stand behind it.

But we all have to stand behind it because as soon as we get one phone call, we all have to say cell phones aren't allowed in the school.

So we have to take a position as a teacher group, as an administrative group, as the superintendent, as the school board.

And there's like very little room to waffle and waver here.

And I think that that's what we've experienced through our implementation at the high school.

And then lastly, but most importantly, students have to lead the charge with the cell phones leaving the building.

This solely is about students.

If the students don't own this, because we live in a world now where our students are making the recommendation to parents what happens on a day-to-day basis.

And so our students are going to have to take ownership.

They're going to have to take ownership of this, creating this policy, implementing this policy, holding their peers accountable for this, because I don't want Miss Horn

would like to be developing lessons and doing all this.

She doesn't want to be here just for cell phones.

And so I just think that we have a lot of opportunities here, but our students have to own this because the power struggle

Teachers shouldn't have to do that.

They should not have to be placed in a position where telling students the phone shouldn't be here, should be put away, and we shouldn't have to resort to out of school suspensions for cell phones because it's just, we're just creating this other problem.

So I accept the challenge.

I just don't know if you're going to have the answer you want by next month.

But we can definitely, we can definitely, we've been, I mean we had an administrator, teachers, I mean we had a big stakeholder group for this last school year.

We got to get our parents behind us.

We got to get our community behind us.

This is not just the, it's not a one and done.

But the great work has already been started, and I'm appreciative of what's here, but there has to be some fidelity of implementation.

All right, thank you, Dr. Gurley.

Well, Ms.

Carlin-Swift, we'll come with a... You have nothing?

Okay.

All right, well,

A couple of announcements.

We do have March 18th.

The school board will have their quarterly advanced school board meeting at Walker Upper Elementary School at 8 a.m.

March 18th.

And our next school board meeting will be on April 13th here in the media center at 5 p.m.