School Board Meeting   6/1/2023

Good afternoon, everyone.

I call this meeting to order.

Ms.

Ms.

Dooley?

Here.

Ms.

McKeever?

Yes.

Yes.

Sorry.

Ms.

Torres?

Yes.

Present.

The next item on the agenda is approval of the agenda.

All in favor?

All opposed?

Motion passed.

Just before we get into tonight's business, I would like to make a statement.

No, but it's a statement in regards to one item in the consent agenda.

I want to comment on an item approved as part of our consent agenda.

The board unanimously approved a new contract with Dr. Gurley to extend the period of his service until June 30th, 2027.

Dr. Gurley, we appreciate you, we support you, and we want to see you leading our school division for many years to come.

I do.

The board needs to approve the consent agenda first.

Sorry, I came too early.

Now, thank you.

Is there a second?

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Thank you.

Motion passed.

Thank you, Mr. Bryant.

I want to thank the school board for your unanimous vote of confidence in my leadership.

I want to say that I do not take this lightly that you all have been trusted 4300 learners and 835 staff members to my care.

The last two years have been perhaps the most rewarding of my 21 year career.

Charlottesville has proven to be a beacon of hope for dreams and aspirations for our young learners.

To that end, I get to come to a place each and every day where students are loved, adults are loved, and I also feel loved.

Lastly, I do want to go on a record by saying that there is no better place to live, work, and learn than Charlottesville City and Charlottesville City Schools.

At this time, we will have comments from the community.

I think first on the list is Mr. Derek Hartline.

Hi, my name is Derek Hartline, 1517 B. Antoinette Avenue.

Good evening school board members and Superintendent Dr. Gurley.

My name is Derek Hartline, lifelong city resident.

I'm here to talk about the continued concerns with the school renaming process.

On April 13th, a motion to commit and continue the process of renaming schools while taking a pause on any new names was made by Ms.

Kraft.

That motion was not seconded even when Ms.

Torres asked for clarification.

Therefore, the original motion according to parliamentary procedures should be treated as if it never occurred.

A new motion to pause the process was proposed by Ms.

McKeever and seconded by Mr. Morse.

The discussion about the pause affirmed that a name change would not occur because the entire process would be on hold until the board could commit to a process that members could stand behind and also include community input while being more transparent.

The electronic board meeting notes in the minutes of her approval tonight from April 13th do not reflect that at all.

And actually in the minutes, it states that Mr. Morse made the second to Ms.

Craft's motion, which is not true.

And that it was a six to one vote, but how could that be when Ms.

Dooley wasn't present?

Therefore, the minutes from April 13th should not be approved.

The process did not also pause as Johnston and Burley Moran had discussions with the consultant and a few central office members about finding new names just this last month.

The world will also discuss renaming Buford tonight and vote less than a month from now during the summer when people go on vacation.

With a pause in the process, how did the board get to this point?

No input was given from the almost 30-member renaming committee about Buford.

but all of a sudden the name Charlottesville Middle School emerges.

No survey, forums, and certainly no appropriate timeline.

The COO will be showing you slides telling you that this quick turnaround is needed for sensitive construction deadlines.

However, on September 1st, VMDO laid out the timeline to the board and it hasn't changed in nine months.

So why didn't Buford's name get looked at then instead of Venable and Clark, or even in January instead of Johnson or Burley Moran?

If you look closely at the slides, you will also see that the presentation and rendering pictures already have Charlottesville Middle School written on them.

Seems to me this dead set push to change the name of schools is still occurring.

If this perception is not reality in this situation, please explain to the community why you really are going on with the pause process, why they are just finding this out, and why the vote results in minutes from the April 13th meeting are false.

Lastly, Florence Buford,

also deserves the same consideration as the other schools being looked at after the pause in the process and when a new or better process is put in place that everyone can get behind.

I, as well as the rest of the community, look forward to hearing answers in tonight's discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Hartline.

Is there anyone else in the room who would like to come and speak?

Hi everybody, I'm Andy Joslin.

I'm a teacher here at Charlottesville High School and I live out in the county.

I just wanted to make a quick comment.

I'm mostly here to hear Gloria Gay of VIP, and I'm so grateful that I get to go ahead of her and not after her.

But I just wanted to say to you, Dr. Gurley, and to you, Dr. Odey, thank you so much.

And to members of the board that have been a part of conversations around cell phones in the schools, I really appreciate you taking the issue seriously and

I'm excited by the progress we've already made and excited for it to keep getting better and coming up with a better plan.

So thanks, y'all.

Thank you.

So we have two people online.

You have another opportunity later on in the meeting to come forth and speak if you'd like.

Ms.

Beth Chuck.

I am here to stand in for Andy Jones because quite happily he is busy assisting our soccer teams as they compete for regional championships tonight.

Yeah.

Hi, I'm Kayla Edwards.

And we've been coaching the CHS debate team this year.

It's been a fantastic year for the team.

At the team level, the team won the VHSL regional and super regional championships.

They were runner up at the VHSL states.

Thank you.

and they compete in a couple different leagues.

So in the Shenandoah Valley Forensics League, they won the small team championship.

And that's based on the sort of cumulative performance of our debaters.

So thanks to Kayla who gave up a lot of weekends to help judge rounds and drive to tournaments in far-flung parts of the state to get a competition.

And also to Andy Jones who supported the team and made sure things stayed

on track.

It's a busy group of students, but three of them were able to be here today.

So Nava Kergil, who along with Ali Burt, who was here but had to go to a cello lesson, won the state championship in public forum debate.

There were also super regional champion and regional runner up for VHSL.

Allie is also here, Gabe Damiani.

He and Allie were alternates to the national speech and debate tournament from Virginia, finishing fourth at the state of Virginia districts.

Thank you.

They were third in the Shenandoah Valley Forensics League as a public forum team.

And Gabe made the

elimination rounds at a big national online tournament, the Tournament of Champions qualified, so awesome work.

And Lily Curtis, our Lincoln-Douglas debater, was the regional and super regional champion and finished eighth in the state of VHSL.

And then there were a couple of folks who weren't able to be here, but I wanted to recognize them as well.

Sully Goluboff-Schrager and Sophie Brissett finished third at States and were regional champions and super regional runner up.

Basically, they locked out the top two spots with their teammates at regionals and super regionals.

And Sully is going to be one of 24 students from around the country elected to the National Speech Invade Association Student Advisory Council.

So awesome accomplishments for them.

And I have everybody, Josie Fishman

brought home a second place finish at the Shenandoah Valley Deferensics League Meet 2 and a second place finish at the Cosby High School Clash of Titans debate in the fall, along with now.

So it's a fantastic group of kids.

It's been a lot of fun to coach.

None of them are seniors, so they're all going to be back next year.

And if there are any parents in the audience, we are always looking for new folks to join the team.

It's an amazing set of skills that they develop, the research and the public speaking and knowing that you're going to have to get up and defend what you say point by point is just super valuable these days.

As someone that knows literally nothing about debate, they've just been so great.

And it's like, like the words that he just talked about are like winning the Super Bowl in debate.

So like, just so you'll have an idea, like it's incredible.

Congratulations to each and every one of you.

Congratulations again, each and every one of you.

Thank you.

I guess we should go to AVID and scholarships first, and then I'd like to make an amendment to the consent agenda related to the minutes.

Good evening, board chair, members of the board, Dr. Gurley.

I'm here today to talk for just a few minutes about AVID and to recognize our seniors tonight.

AVID is an educational nonprofit that Charlottesville City Schools has been working with since 2010.

The mission is to help close the opportunity gap for students.

and that's achieved through an AVID elective that actually starts at Buford and we have at Buford and at CHS.

I apologize if my voice sounds shaky.

I don't like speaking in front of people, but I'm going to try my best.

Okay.

I believe in the power of the collective.

Throughout our lives, we encounter experiences that shape our perspectives and beliefs.

One such life-changing journey for me has been my involvement with the AVID program.

AVID has not only supported my academic growth, but has helped me understand and appreciate the power of the collective.

When I first joined AVID, I was welcomed into a community of individuals who share similar aspirations and goals as me.

The AVID program provided a supportive environment where we could express ourselves, exchange ideas, and offer support to one another.

This sense of belonging within the AVID community laid the foundation for my understanding of the power of the collective.

AVID emphasized collaborative learning as an essential part of academic growth.

In AVID classrooms, we worked in groups to tackle challenging assignments and projects through these collaborative endeavors.

I discovered that when we pull our strengths, knowledge, and perspectives,

we can achieve far more than we can individually.

When you see the collective intelligence and creativity of my peers, opened my eyes to the immense potential that lies within the collective.

One of the most impactful aspects of AVID was the peer tutoring program.

As an AVID student, I had the opportunity to serve as a tutor to my fellow classmates.

Engaging in this role not only allowed me to support others on their academic journey, but also taught me to value the impact

the empowering of others.

Winning seeing my peers succeed through my systems reinforced the idea that our collective achievements have the potential to uplift us all.

AVID has also focused on college and career readiness, fostering a shared vision of the brighter future among the students.

Through college visits, guest speakers, and mentorship opportunities, AVID exposed me to a world of possibilities.

Discussing our dreams and aspirations within the AVID community made me realize that when we share common goals,

We can inspire and motivate each other towards achievement.

AVID has helped me understand that our collective dreams are powerful motivators that fuel... Hello?

Okay, sorry.

I'm grateful for the lessons AVID has taught me, and I'm excited to carry this understanding of the power to collect it into my future endeavors.

Thank you, Gloria.

We wish you the best of luck as you go to UVA this fall.

Chelsea Park, our CHS AVID coordinator, is going to come and share some highlights about scholarships.

Hello.

Hello, everybody.

I just wanted to quickly announce all of our AVID senior scholarships winnings.

So out of our 30 AVID seniors, 12 of them have received scholarships.

both local and merit-based scholarships and combined from those 12 students alone, they have received over $506,000 in scholarships.

If you would like more specifics on where they got their scholarships, what colleges they got into, you can refer to your slides.

I believe it's $180,000.

Jashawn Johnson, $181,000.

Can I just say a quick word?

Like I just was at the baseball field the other day with a baseball party and talked to a mom there and she was like, I just require all of my kids to go through AVID.

And it's just such a, her kids, of course, speak volumes about the success of the program, but also just starting at Buford is just such a valuable resource.

Thank you, Ms.

McKinnon.

So before we move on to action items, I think you had an amendment.

All in favor.

Aye.

Aye.

So we'll now move on to the action items.

Good evening, Chair Bryant, school board members, and Dr. Gurley.

At our last school board meeting, we presented for review our Title I, Title II, Title III, and Title IV applications.

Discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

Motion passed.

Thank you.

Lisa.

Next we have Miss Lewis.

Okay, so Miss Hoover's next.

So just for clarification, that motion was for all three, right?

That's what Mr. Farrell, he said he presented, they presented, we presented for all three.

So we're asking for action on those.

But yeah, do we need to

Separate, okay.

Separate, okay.

Is there a second?

Second.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Motion passed.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Good evening, school board members and Dr. Gurley.

Last month, I presented to you that the state was reducing our budget that we adopted in February by $334,659.

All in favor.

All opposed.

Motion passed.

Thank you, Ms.

All right.

We now have items for discussion.

First up, we have the strategic plan update.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm messing up now.

I'm sorry.

I'll be quick.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman, board members, Dr. Gurley.

Tonight, I bring before you a revision to the 2324 program of studies regarding AVID 9 and 10.

In these courses,

The revision involves the students receiving an elective rather than a CTE credit for those courses.

All in favor.

Discussion.

Yes.

So the difference is historically we have lumped AVID and engineering together.

I suspect that historically that happened based on staffing.

There was someone who was in the engineering department who needed another course.

And we said, you're going to teach AVID and

At that time, it helps students to get an engineering credit.

But what we have since learned is that it's also creating a barrier for students because they have no interest in AVID.

I mean, they have no interest in engineering, but they want to be an AVID.

And so by doing this, we're not restricting it.

So right now, AVID is restricted to

Ms.

Parks and Ms.

Fitzgerald.

And then we also have avid teachers who are also endorsed in engineering.

So we are freeing it up so that it's no longer associated with engineering.

I think we may be one of the only places where, again, I think it was done like that to satisfy someone's course load historically.

So we're just moving avid away from engineering

because when I substituted in a class, I had a student tell me, yeah, I don't want to do anything engineering related, but I am interested in Abbott.

And just to add, Dr. Gurley, when we have someone leave and they had that engineering endorsement, finding a replacement

for that person with that endorsement is a barrier.

There's a challenge with finding a replacement that has that specific engineering endorsement.

So this removes that barrier.

Our numbers have dropped a little bit because of the disinterest in the engineering piece.

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

I mean, it makes perfect sense.

I guess I just don't understand the relationship.

But you're saying that it's going to be easier to find staff.

Yes, right.

It's going to be apparently more open to students.

Nail student engineering right now.

Students are like I haven't.

So currently it's a student sees avid and they're like, I have no interest in engineering, so I don't want to be an avid.

And so this opens it back up to get more students in that avid that avid pipeline, because

The numbers, if you look at the numbers from Beaufort, the numbers are higher than what we get when we get the ninth grade here.

And there's no specific licensure requirement.

So an English teacher can be the AVID teacher, whereas the way it is now, you have to have that specific.

And the other thing is you have students who are in the engineering program who did not do Abbott because the two things aren't the same.

So you have students who are in our Abbott program down here who have never taken an Abbott course.

It's because the two things aren't the same.

I think I understand why someone did that a while back.

I mean, they thought it would be

like the pathway to, but it's not increased, for instance, it's not increased the black and brown numbers into engineering.

And CTE though, is like kind of eligible for additional funding through the federal government, right?

with the Carl Perkins.

Well, it doesn't change what happens with the Carl Perkins grant.

No.

Are the current staff right now endorsed in engineering?

There is a gentleman, and he will be leaving.

So not all of them are, though.

We are.

I just had a question.

So in my experience, at least at CHS, we have two AVIDs, AVID leadership and AVID engineering.

And my second question is with the CTE, because I do understand the part about taking away engineering and AVID.

I think that's needed.

My confusion comes from, it's like the CTE part coming out.

So I received a CTE credit from AVID through AVID leadership, not through AVID engineering.

And that's because I took work readiness programs throughout AVID leadership that allowed me to get my CTE credit.

which then allowed me to, I was able to then not have to take CTE classes at the high school level to get my advanced diploma.

So my question is, are we getting rid of the CTE, so we're getting rid of the CTE in general from AVID.

No, so the leadership, so when we refer to AVID leadership and AVID engineering, leadership is a component of AVID.

So I think we were making a distinction that there were two different things, but the leadership component is a fundamental component of AVID.

So all of those things, so what you experience will be what

Students will experience in Abbott as we move forward.

And as a reminder, you board members, you may remember that when we approved new courses for the program of studies, there were a couple of additions.

Are there any other questions on this side of the room?

All right.

More questions?

Yes.

Is there a motion?

We already did the motion.

So you're done.

Who's got the vote on?

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

The ayes have it.

Thank you.

I'm really just keeping you updated on the process.

plan for approval tonight.

We decided to slow that down and do more detailed work on the specific strategies and targets, the kind of feedback and comments that you all were giving us at the workshop.

We believe the fundamental pieces, the larger goals and priorities in the foundational documents are in good shape.

But we would like to continue teasing out and gaining internal feedback and feedback from the steering committee that's meeting later this month.

about the more specific targets and strategies.

Sorry.

It is that night.

It is that night.

Thank you.

It's everybody.

Thank you, Michelle.

Any questions?

Any questions?

All right, we will now have the middle school modernization update.

And that'll be a tag team.

We've got the whole crew here this evening.

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

We have a really exciting update tonight regarding our middle school projects.

So lots of good things to talk about.

And I am very grateful that

We have Wick Knox here from BMDO as well as Mike Goddard from Facilities Development.

So thank you both.

big things to discuss, exciting things.

We have some big news, a big decision that we do need to talk about.

There's some big creativity that's gonna be taking place, big release, some great pictures and some big milestones coming up.

So first the big news, we received $17.6 million grant from the state.

It's the SCAP grant, the first round of the school construction assistance program.

And so we are very excited about this money because it will really help alleviate

budget pressures on the CIP with all the other work that needs to be done with city facilities, including our schools, as well as frankly a pressure on the future operating budget.

So this is very exciting.

The city partnered with us in submitting this grant.

They did a letter of support from Mayor Snook and also Wick Knox was a great collaborator with me in this process, did a yeoman's job on the narrative.

So just a lot of gratitude and a lot of appreciation, a lot of celebration on this point.

We were one of the top 10 awards in the state.

You can see them listed there.

The top award was for 30 million.

The awards are based on a percentage of your eligible project costs, which excluded certain things like the architectural fees and things like that.

But most of the project costs could be considered.

And then the percentage you get awarded is based on the LCI if you were found eligible.

And so we're super excited about all of this.

And again, we're hopeful that the state will continue to put out opportunities like this because Charlottesville is not alone in having older facilities that need to be addressed.

And so, moving on to a big decision that we need to talk about this evening.

As we started the conversations in May about environmental graphics, it became clear to us very quickly that

The lead times associated with some of these things mean that a decision about the names, the name for the middle school will need to be made sooner than later.

The naming process that we've been going through for some time was methodically going through the elementary schools and then progressing from there.

And you know how that process is going.

It wasn't anything intentional.

It's just, here we are.

And in fact, I will tell you, and certainly Wick could elaborate on this more, things like some emergency panel has to be named.

It's not even a graphic element so much.

It's a technical element.

And the lead time for that is shockingly long.

And so I'll turn things over to him soon to talk about that piece.

But in talking more about why this recommendation is being made to move forward with the name Charlottesville Middle School, first, again, there's these lead time considerations that are now upon us that we weren't

fully aware of or appreciating earlier in this process as we were all just pushing to get the project done and worried about what scope we would be able to accomplish.

Now we're here.

This recommendation is in keeping with the trend to move away from names that honor individuals, especially from a period of time that may not be consistent with values that we have now, but it's just consistent with that overall recommendation that's come out of the committee.

And then with the facilities and the new grades being served, this modernization, it marks a turning point in the city's history.

It is really a moment of significance.

Moving forward,

The point where all the city's children come together is no longer Walker Upper Elementary.

That point is the middle school.

We are all of Charlottesville now starting with the school and Charlottesville Middle School just reflects is a reflection of that.

It starts to create that sense of community.

When you start having the school colors and consistency with your high school mascot, you're building that sense of community earlier.

Eric Johnson, the former principal at Buford, used to talk about how one of the challenges with the PTO involvement, and this is one of the reasons for the Walker Buford United PTO that we have now, is you almost, when you're going through a school in two years, you kind of got one foot in the door and you're feeling like, oh my gosh, now I'm going to be moving on to the next school before I know it.

And it's hard to invest.

We feel like the name Charlottesville Middle School and leading right into Charlottesville High School and becoming Black Knights, we can build that sense of community and family sooner.

So that's some of the thinking behind it.

Certainly other people may have other thoughts they want to add, but we want the community to provide feedback on this recommendation.

And so that is what we would like to be the focus for the month of June.

If the feedback clearly points in this direction, along with some other items that we're asking the board to act on in June, it could be acted on in the month of June.

But with further discussion with VMDO, we are hearing that if there isn't a clear consensus from what you hear during the month of June, a decision could be made in August, but we really do have to make a decision by August so that it doesn't hold up ordering different things that have to be ordered and named at that point.

So the environmental graphics meeting we had early in May really started to focus us on this.

And I'm going to turn this part of the presentation over to Wick because they're the experts in this area.

He may also want to add some commentary around lead times and what's involved with this.

Thank you.

I want to say before I start that I enjoyed working on the grant application with Ms.

Powell and somehow both of us misread the application and I will tell you there is a huge difference between a thousand words and a thousand characters for our narrative.

So that was quite a scramble we went through to change that at the last moment.

So the design process for the building that the contractor is going to provide us

We have a contractor and that's going to start next week.

But there is another component to it that we are still working on, which is the environmental graphics piece.

Environmental graphics covers everything from the sign on the door that says 301

Mrs. Smith or English or whatever it might say, to emergency and ADA signage that's required by federal law and local code, to wayfinding.

You go this way to get to the library, this way to get to the gym.

And then beyond that, all of the things that make it a place that feels like it is for and about middle schoolers, that brings color and excitement and interest and images into a project.

We are working on starting that process now.

We'll be forming a working group with CCS to review design proposals and help us come up with design stuff between now and really kind of next spring.

And in the process, we are going to be producing proposals that we will bring forward to the community for input on for all kinds of

Environmental graphic opportunities in the project.

And I think the best way to show this or the rendering.

OK, I think the best way to show this is in some of the renderings.

All right.

So here's some examples of environmental graphics.

So it can be as simple as a room sign that says conference room, like you see in the top left.

You could use your room signs to to reinforce a theme that you might have for the building or an idea for it.

or it could be something really big like you see on the right there where it's not just identifying a floor level but using some environmental graphics.

This was a school in Harrisonburg that used the geography of Virginia to identify the different wings of the building, something that we do a little more in elementary schools.

But it's a huge deal and it really makes the space sink.

That's the work that we're going on.

Forgive me for not knowing the slide over here.

One of the things with the name too is there's a general theme that's come out where we want the work we do to be about sense of place and sense of purpose.

That's correct.

So the.

This is a great example of an item that we have to kind of figure out soon that's not related to a name, but it is related to the design of graphics.

So the the rendering you see up there on the piece on the right is the gymnasium, and it has a west facing glass wall.

So we get natural light in and kind of look out on the fields and see see the tree line, which will be really great.

But in front of that, we have a perforated screen, a metal screen that has a bunch of holes in it to block that low Western light that'll come when a lot of middle school basketball games occur at five, six o'clock.

So, and what we have, what we purchased from our contractor is the opportunity to have a big graphic design on that.

And the design is created by the size of the holes that they drill.

So this is something that could have a lead time of a year

So kind of figuring out what that image is.

Here we're just showing a bunch of hands.

And I'm going to show you in the renderings coming up why we need something there that of course is not a word.

It wouldn't say Charlottesville Middle School because if you look at it from the inside on the gym, it would be backwards, right?

So it's not going to be word art.

But this is the kind of the best example we have of some of the opportunities we have with graphics, but we have to make some decisions.

So onto the renderings.

This is the front of the school.

This is what the school will look like when we complete the new construction.

So we'll still just have 7th and 8th there, and they will move into the new parts of the construction while we renovate the existing buildings to remain.

But it has to have a name.

So we either keep the current name

I'm going to just take you through the renderings.

the construction documents and we bid the project and then after that we kind of go back and do renderings to kind of show the public for the next three years until it's ready what the project is going to look like.

And so this was the opportunity to show those for the first time, although I hear the PTO got a sneak peek at them last night.

But this is when you move to the inside.

This is the top floor coming through the doors.

So the

existing those columns on the right side, or it's the existing west, I'm sorry, north face of building A. So this shows how we're opening the project up and introducing a lot of natural light into the building and making a common space for the students.

If you go down the stairs, this is the bottom level.

So this is currently the level where you enter the building from the exterior and spaces for display of student art and

Gathering spaces, study spaces.

That should be pretty fun.

This is the cafeteria.

We're going to take the ceiling out, open it up, give it more space, add a lot more acoustic treatment, replace the flooring.

And there's an example where you see some, and those are just placeholders.

That's just some graphics we pulled from the internet and slapped up there.

But some opportunities to introduce some color and some interest to the project that we'll start to work on.

This slide is a good one because it shows two different examples of public art.

So the bright colors you see on the right side are part of the environmental graphics package that we'll produce and put up and have there on opening day.

Through the window, looking out towards the west, that's the wall of the new gym building.

And that is a big mural.

One of the ideas that we had and what we heard from our community design group is,

Yes, we definitely need to tear down Building C. It leaks.

It's terrible.

But it's got this great mural that we produced in 2013, I think.

And it's going to be a shame to lose that.

So this is the opportunity.

This is the place that we kind of designated for a mural to go.

And that will come.

That won't be by us.

That won't be by the contractor.

That'll be something that'll come later and can be a school and student led initiative.

And here it is on the outside.

and an opportunity for that to occur.

So we've been thinking about places for public art and for student art throughout the building.

And if I could even go back here, you can see the student art.

All of that on the left is student art opportunities.

So this is when you come down a level and go on the exterior, this is the art classes or the studio rooms where you could teach

Art or any other project based learning and had these outdoor spaces, which was something we heard a lot from the community design team about having indoor and outdoor learning.

This is pulling back a little bit, and this is, in my mind, one of the most exciting parts of the project.

So you can see on the right, the Boys and Girls Club building.

You can see the signage for that.

So the design is allowing us to have a accessible at grade connection at the Boys and Girls Club.

So someone could park in the Boys and Girls Club lot, be in a wheelchair and come over and be able to enter the building here at this point where you see the glass and all the students are walking doors.

So when we come in that, this is what the interior looks like.

And this is a story stair and a big stair that goes from the first floor to the second floor.

And then we have the second big stair that's at the entryway.

Here you see another example of environmental graphics.

We did this on purpose because I want to remind you once again that on a construction project, you've cut trees down.

There will be some trees coming down.

We're going to plant more than we cut down.

But this is the big tree that's out front of Buford.

So maybe the environmental graphics celebrates that tree.

I don't know.

That stuff we'll work with the group and try to figure out what that might be.

Down at the gym level, this is outside of the fitness rooms.

There's a climbing wall, exterior climbing wall and opportunities for outdoor fitness of any type and the ability to go straight into fitness rooms.

And then here's the gym, the interior of the gym.

So you can see that perforated screen wall from the inside.

Again, it's got a blue color on it.

We can add a color if we want, or it can just be stainless steel metal.

And then the perforations, the holes make a design pattern.

So that could be really cool.

And then we think our recommendation is that the gym is the place where we use the school colors and the school mascot, whatever that's going to end up being.

More so than plastering that all over the rest of the school and using different colors for wayfinding and graphics and opportunities.

And then pulling back and looking from the outside.

This also shows you some of the accessibility that's being added

to be able to move through the site and even get down onto the fields right now.

Right now, as you know, it's very haphazard.

You drive down and kind of park on the grass and kind of just slopes down into into things.

And then at night, it should be pretty, pretty neat looking as well as the glow from that gem comes through.

So, I mean, it really is a signature piece of public art, that screen wall.

So big picture of phasing for this project.

When we start on June 12th, from that point through the summer of 2025, we're going to be building in the bowl with the gym coming down and building that new, big, beautiful building you just saw and a new gym.

And our seventh and eighth graders will be learning

in the current spaces, the current main academic building, and then the auditorium is not really in play at this point.

So that is what will be happening at first.

Of course, we've already discussed during this period of time, there's no access to the athletic fields or the gym, but we reviewed the plans for health and PE and athletics at the last regular monthly board meeting.

So that's phase one.

And then when we move into phase two,

The seventh and eighth graders move into the new buildings and they have a gym.

And at that point, the main building and the auditorium building are going into play.

The one piece of building A that has to be usable when the students are there is the cafeteria.

So that is a part of the project that has to be executed in the span of a summer.

We are moving Buford Summer School programming, Buford Summer programming to this campus starting this summer.

Those plans have all been worked out over the past week or so.

Very appreciative of the CHS team and Dr. Odi's team working through all those details.

We've got that ready to roll.

So none of the Buford Summer programming is being sacrificed, but it's happening here.

And that's gonna be true for the summers that we have coming up while this project's going on so that the contractor can really maximize that time

on the site to get things done.

We'll be happy to entertain questions at the end for now, but that's phasing.

So the big milestones that are coming up is we have a ceremonial groundbreaking on Friday, June 9th at 9 a.m.

So our Beeford students will be able to be there and I'm hoping all of you will be there as well.

and then our construction kickoff is Monday, June 12th.

We have the first of our regular weekly meetings tomorrow.

I mean, we are getting underway.

It's very exciting.

So again, as far as next steps, the board will need to discuss how you want to approach the recommendation that's been made as far as moving forward with the idea that Charlottesville Middle School would be the name

when the seventh and eighth graders move into the new building.

And that's what this slide is, just spells out what the recommendation is.

Thank you, Ms.

Powell.

Thank you, Ms.

Powell.

And so I think as we've seen in the presentation, there are some decisions that will have to be made, that beautiful, perforated screen being one of them.

And so it is the superintendent's recommendation, my recommendation that we move forward

with the name Charlottesville Middle School because we have to give consideration to a whole host of things.

And one, that if the name is going to change, it may have some implications for what we put on that screen in terms of color, in terms of mascot, in terms of something that's

Not reversible, can be reversed and be seen from inside the gym.

But I think also what we've talked about as a school community is just building community.

And this is the place where building community starts.

And so that's my recommendation.

Sure.

Ms.

Chuck is back there.

She has already, I think I got most of the list, Ms.

Chuck.

She's placed in the newsletter to our families.

It's gone out to our fourth grade.

It's gone out in a whole host of different communications even prior to

this board meeting so just making people aware that this is the thought process that we are having right now and so just as we have with some of our previous processes we've asked that if you all that if our community

If they have some thoughts about it, that they could send emails to the board.

I believe the board, they've gotten maybe a handful of emails thus far with regards to the name.

So that's really where we are asking people to give feedback.

I would add to that that usually after the board meeting we send out some press releases about some of the top topics that you've talked about.

So that would go on and I suspect you'd get in the past we've had widespread media coverage for these decisions.

So I suspect that will happen.

We also have reached out to the neighborhood reps in the areas impacted by the school decision.

So in this case, that would be the entire city.

So I will be emailing the various neighborhood reps to make sure their neighborhood groups are aware of this.

And then finally, I would say that really one of the opportunities we have right now is to capture people's attention before they go away for the summer.

If we were to wait for the longer timeframe of August to make this decision, then we would really be trying over the summer when folks are very disengaged from the community.

to try to get this feedback.

So I think it's important that we try to, you know, that's why I'll be sending out press release.

That's why we'll be getting some media attention.

I'm going to start talking about this and Mike may want to jump up here.

And so the reality is we don't know exactly when we would want to make that move for the seventh and eighth graders to go into the new space.

We have speculated it could be over a summer, but if construction is moving along well, we could

The reason we can talk about doing something like that is these new spaces are fully furnished, all new tech.

The vision and ideas that other than some classroom sets of books or some things like that, I mean, we're talking just a few boxes maybe that a teacher may need to move to the new space because they are going to have

That's accurate.

But also, I should add that if a quick move or a slow move is necessary, we'll be there to help with moving support and all that sort of thing.

It's not going to be the teachers carrying their boxes by themselves across the parking lot.

We'll be there to support and we will have some lead time, so we'll be able to let everybody know what the plan is, what the process looks like.

There's going to be a robust plan of punching out all the spaces and making sure they're fully ready to go operational before we move over.

So all that tech is going to be tested ahead of time, the light switches, all those sorts of things.

We would make sure all that stuff is done before we make a move.

I remember back in one of the previous iterations, we looked at the bathrooms and you were showing us that bathroom where it's like the mirror.

Yes, the restrooms are still the type of restrooms where they're individual toilet rooms that actually have a lot of privacy.

It's not like a stall at all.

It's like you're going into your own little room and then you come out and you're actually in kind of a public area where the sinks are and the mirrors and it's always off of a main corridor.

Now, I mean,

admin and staff can go in restrooms if they need to or have to.

Of course, we don't have camera coverage inside of restrooms, but the sink areas and all that, we will be able to have a lot more visibility, a lot more coverage, and it's that individual private restroom mini rooms.

I don't know how to describe it.

I think you have it right.

It's how that works.

These are sometimes referred to as gender neutral bathrooms.

I like to call them universal because the idea is to remove the idea of gender from it altogether.

And it's a place where there's a toilet behind a door with acoustic privacy.

And you do that and you come right back out into a public space where you're washing your hands and there's actually no mirrors.

And so it

When Dr. Gurley first came on, one of the first things we did was get on the phone and the teams with a lot of, a couple other school districts around the country that implemented this to kind of get their feedback and across the board, it has solved a lot of behavior problems.

So we're looking forward to that and just kind of getting, removing gender, taking gender out of the picture.

That was one of the things that stood out.

And then the other question is, maybe at some point when we're moving closer, I would like to see what the spaces are that the kids will be in temporarily, whatever the mobile units are.

There won't be any.

Oh, there won't be any?

Part of our plan is that we will use the existing school building, the A building, while the construction of the new volume is being done.

And then the entire student and staff population will move to the new building temporarily, exclusively, and while we're doing the renovations of the A building.

Modulars cost a lot of money, and then you have to throw them away.

Okay, and then this is my final question.

It goes back to the bathroom access.

No, no.

Like if you all are doing work at Beaufort and kids are in a more condensed space, how will you address the capacity issues there for bathroom access?

And like, is there anything, you know what I mean?

So that there's enough.

So one thing that you see in Northern Virginia a lot when they do occupied construction is they'll literally build a whole other school like a stone's throw right beside another building.

We have a great luxury in this case, but in those cases, they're taking the same number of grade levels and they're literally transplanting them over to this other building and then they're going to maybe sacrifice a gym or something and rebuild something else on that site.

This is actually, as hard as occupied construction is, this is a great scenario.

We have this whole grade level of worth of swing that's going on here.

So literally when you look at the renderings, and I don't know if it's possible to, if we can actually see it in any of those views, I don't know that any of them are like that overhead type view, but there are two learning communities that will ultimately be for sixth and seventh grade, but they will be for eighth, seventh and eighth grade until that A building is done.

So,

Okay, I understand.

I finally caught up.

Yeah, I just wanted to echo everybody's excitement over the grant and to thank everybody again who was part of that.

And again, Citi and Mike, thank you for your advocacy and the council meetings leading up to that.

So really excited.

And then just to say out loud that all those add-ons that we were talking about and we were working, I mean, we're going to get to do all of those.

So it's really exciting.

Hey, Mr. Johnson.

Any other questions?

Well, thank you all so much.

We're so excited.

And thank you all for your hard work.

We are so excited.

Thank you all.

Another another project to update on.

This is a smaller project, but it's been a long time coming.

It's been rolling around on the CIP for years.

Those of you who've been looking at the CIP for years as central office ADA renovations because we've had a significant AD.

We have a significant ADA compliance issue that the building was grandfathered, but we've been looking at this for a while.

So it's been it's been hanging out on the CIP and we're finally moving forward on it this summer.

The planning and design started a year ago or more, and the ADA issues to be addressed primarily are the access from the lobby back to the rest of the building.

So if someone's coming in to visit with Dr. Gurley in his office, those doors are not ADA compliant from the lobby to get back further into the building.

The other thing is we do not have an ADA compliant restroom in that building.

And so as a big part of this process, one of our two restrooms will be converted to be ADA compliant.

If you're going to do that kind of work in a building like this, we might as well address all the other myriad of issues that have not been addressed since I don't know how the building was when it first opened.

I think I have some of the original carpet still in my office and I'm not kidding.

So while they're in there, they have to do asbestos abatement because there is asbestos in the building and you can't do what has to be done in that middle section without getting into asbestos abatement, which then affects the whole building.

We will secure the lobby.

We recently added access control for that building, but in conjunction with putting the ADA accessible doors to go from the lobby back

will be able to control those doors from like a reception office that'll be there in the lobby so that'll be nice.

For my colleagues who work out in the middle parts of that brick box where there's absolutely no natural light they're going to put some solar tubes in to give some natural light and then since they're in there anyway they'll make uniform changes so that all of the ceiling grids are the same and they look some you know current

And then all the carpet will match.

They'll go through with all new carpet.

So it's just and then painting.

So it's the things you would expect while we're all moved out of there.

It'll all be addressed.

So the project will take four to six months.

So this graphic just highlights the changes.

What you'll see where the dark boxes are, where there's actually like construction sort of.

taking what's now sort of a record storage closet and it goes back to the mechanical room and that's where they're going to make that ADA bathroom and then the walls and the doors have to change right there in the middle to create ADA accessible access points and then the break room that's in the back

to try to maximize what little space we have, and we sometimes use that as a meeting room as well.

Instead of having two sets of doors, we're going to close in one set just to make that a more functional area, just close in the one door.

So those of us who live in this office are pretty excited.

Here's the timeline.

June 14th, there'll be these cones that go in place in front of the building, and then this mobile mini, which is larger than the storage pod.

It's more like a tractor trailer, so it's a pretty big storage unit.

That's going to be delivered.

And then we'll be moving stuff in there and then June 20 is our drop dead final like moving day where we have professional movers coming a lot of

us and our colleagues.

We're taking stuff home.

We're boxing stuff up.

Some folks are moving things as they can.

But anyway, that's the moving day.

And then we have some specialty movers coming in to take care of the cubicles that we have, because those are nice cubicles.

They're not that old.

We want those to be handled properly so we can put them back in place.

Asbestos Remediation Week is the week of June 26.

No one can go in or out of the building for that week.

And then after that week, the conference room

through the side door facing Walker will be accessible if it's needed.

So we'll have some files and stuff in there that we don't want to lug elsewhere.

July, I mean, September through October, somewhere in September to October timeframe is when the work is estimated to be complete.

Hopefully September, but if things are going not as expected, it could bleed into October.

So where will everybody go?

Because we couldn't finish this project within the span of a summer.

We couldn't just pick out some spots in schools because when we, by early August, we would have to clear out and we'd have nowhere to go.

So human resources and our payroll person are going to be down in the annex.

We worked with Dr. Odie and her team and we've identified enough spots we can make it work.

So that is really good.

Finance.

Dr. Hastings graciously is shuffling some things around and he offered a modular unit behind the auditorium building.

That's where the finance team will be located, which is near Crowpool.

And then everyone else, Dr. Gurley and myself and Dr. Odey and other folks who are in the division administration office, we're going downtown to 700 East Jefferson Street, which is a facility that's owned by the city.

And they're graciously giving us a cubicle, basically a cube farm kind of space with a couple small offices that we where we can kind of camp out until this project's done.

And we're very grateful for that, because it really helps mitigate cost for this project.

So here's some things to be aware of if you're visiting folks in the downtown space.

It is a city-owned building.

Again, we're very grateful because the custodial and trash, everything's included.

It's a secure building.

I mentioned the furnished cubicles and two small offices.

The secure piece is important.

This is formerly part of the SNL building.

You can only get in with an access card, so you'll have to call in and someone will need to let you in if you're visiting there.

But Dr. Gurley and all of us have decided in general, we're going to schedule meetings elsewhere often so that people don't have to come downtown, worry about parking.

We'll try to meet in schools and things like that.

But other building tenants, there are other people in the building.

You can see who they are.

They're listed there.

And parking is not provided.

There's a lot of free two-hour parking, but that's just something to be aware of.

So this is the list of who will be down there, of who's currently, and that little circle shows the part of the building where we are, if you're coming in from the 700 East Jefferson Street side.

That shows the view of where we are from the 7th Street Northeast entrance, if you were parked along that street, because we want everybody to know where we are.

and this is what it looks like inside.

This is the side of the building where we'll be and you'll see it's just these cubes and then there are two small offices back there.

So it'll work.

It's good for us.

We will have a new neighbor on the same floor.

The regional emergency management team, the ECC, they are moving in as a longer term tenant.

So they'll be on the other half of that floor.

And as I was telling my co-workers, since we've been preparing for this, this is a little piece I put at the end for them.

Let's do this.

Remember, no pain, no gain.

Thank you.

Do we have any questions of Ms.

I remember the current administrative space having problems with things like rats and snakes.

We've had some very interesting conversations about what they're going to find when they take down that ceiling grid.

So when they're in there doing the asbestos abatement and putting the ceiling grid in,

We've also had to have quite a bit of plumbing emergency plumbing work done in that building at times.

I think most of that's behind us.

But they've been forewarned and so I'm sure that they'll be looking for whatever they need to look for once that ceiling is fully opened up because yes, that has been a problem.

We've been kind of laughing about

Lord knows what's going to fall out of that ceiling when they get into it.

And so whatever has been able to get into the building will no longer be able to get into the building prayerfully.

Okay, we've just been part of the discussion.

Yes.

Miss Torres.

Sorry, I couldn't help but see Ms.

Well, that is no, we know there is asbestos.

And not that I call you all too much, really, except for maybe Ms.

Thacker.

Are phones going to be forwarded?

Yes.

So, phones will be forwarded and we'll work out a mechanism for

because currently, there's actually a member of the HR team who serves in that front desk role that's receiving the 2400 calls.

Any other questions?

Okay, so these were the numbers that were provided from people transportation as of May 15th.

1,663 of our students are being transported through our people transportation services.

Of that, 16 of those are by contract services.

So those are McKinney-Vento and or special needs transportation situations.

And then there's a breakdown by tier because as you can see, like our buses run in three tiers.

And so you can kind of see the numbers and how they're broken down by tier.

Waitlist, you know, it was fluctuating.

Honestly, it's continues to fluctuate because you'd be amazed that students still move in even very late in the school year.

But really through the spring, we've had no high or medium needs students waiting.

There have been where families say, I would like to have a bus seat, but I don't have to, you know, we are still very sensitive that those families still benefit greatly by getting a bus seat when we appreciate families just kind of self declaring that.

but the remaining list is almost entirely split between the elementary and middle grades.

There's almost no, unless someone pops on, there really hasn't been a wait list for CHS students for the most part.

So that's where we are with that.

There are 14 total bus routes plus the three car routes that are driven to transport the 16 students that are under special services

This tells you the number of buses running per tier.

And then the bottom part's really the most important.

It's where we stand with drivers, right?

So we are above 10 now.

We have 12 regular pupil drivers, three relief pupil drivers.

So that's good.

You know, 15 total that are actually identified as pupil drivers, but there are still four CAT drivers continuing to assist pupil in various capacities to kind of help cover some of those routes.

Regarding the Type A bus, we did receive one of the two 14-passenger activity buses.

It was received in, I want to say March.

But we do need to get our folks, at a minimum, we need to get our folks through the process.

to get the S endorsement on the regular license.

We had over 14 people express interest some time ago.

But it's hard to get folks in the heat of the school year, I guess, to get all the way through the process.

Some people have done the online part maybe, but they haven't gone through the behind the wheel part because even though

It's on the regular license.

The process is still the same.

You just don't have to do the behind the wheel.

You're not qualifying for a CDL to drive the larger vehicle, which is a barrier for some people.

It would be a huge barrier for me.

I struggle driving a Suburban and Barracks Road.

So, you know, a bigger vehicle can be a barrier.

The idea was that more people will be comfortable with the smaller vehicle.

beyond our regular needs and special needs.

We have a lot of athletic teams and like the debate team that can really benefit from having this type A bus as the way to transport them.

So over the summer we need, I'm working with Andy Jones, that's who I've been working with all along to help make sure we have folks getting all the way through the process before the next school year because athletics are one of the areas where this can make a big difference.

Some staff at LMA had previously expressed a desire because they could use it for their field trips.

It's an appropriate size for their whole group at times.

So I just think the timing of when they arrived has just been a hard time for our school staff to get through this process.

But it is something we need to keep in the forefront so we're ready to really leverage the type A's for next year.

And I don't have an ETA on the second bus at this time.

So as we continue moving forward, we are still having weekly meetings for what we call the trip team.

Pat and a member of his team are an important part of that.

We are constantly talking about our data and how to make sure we're exchanging information correctly between PowerSchool and the routing system.

We've made a lot of progress in that process, and I want to thank Pat and his team for all their work in that.

Special transportation also has a weekly check-in, and that includes pre-K,

McKinney-Vento and special education student discussions about what those needs are, making sure they're being met.

Our safe routes team meets weekly as well.

And we continue to collaborate around infrastructure improvements with the city and our walking school bus groups and our crossing guard program remain a big part of our strategy for moving forward.

That website at the bottom still has the infrastructure

improvement spreadsheet that is still continually being updated with what's going on with the city to improve bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

We need to continue supporting the city's driver recruitment efforts, expansion and improvement of CAT services to increase middle school and high school ridership.

I think that's something we really want to keep a close eye on moving forward, because that could be a really optimal way to move us forward in supporting transportation needs for the whole community.

and so a lot of meaningful progress has been made in that area with students riding the bus particularly to Walker and CHS and there's so much more that can be done there if we're strategic working with the city together and how CAT moves forward.

And then along those lines just continuing to work with the city to figure out what is the best model for transportation moving forward.

So that website is still relevant that's listed at the bottom of the page for updates on

All these types of things.

My next thing I'd like to do is see if I have a step-by-step list of what it takes to become a bus driver.

I want to try to make that more, I don't know if the right word's pretty, but just because it's going through the city's HR process, and I think people need to know what to expect to help them navigate and get all the way through that process.

And so we're trying to, we've been handing that out.

I've worked with Andy, but I'd like to make that more generally available, things like that.

We continue to use that webpage.

We were talking about the waitlist a little bit ago.

I don't know how early the

You surveyed parents for next year about what their needs are, because I don't know, there might not be a big number, but I feel like there's a number of people who just kind of resigned to driving and haven't come back into the system yet.

And families will be hearing about that soon.

We have tried to launch that process earlier and earlier in the spring.

We have shifted over to a new program this year, and that is going to be a great program.

It's working super well for kindergarten registration, but the lift to get it ready for the public has been the returning students has been a little heavier than expected.

Okay, because I know a few parents who are like, if this is the thing I can do to help to lessen the load of the division.

That's right.

And I do think it's worth just giving a shout out to so many families who over the years have just said there's somebody who needs this bus seat more than I do.

And so I just I just want to say thanks to all those families.

But yes, this is a glimmer of hope that we might we might be resettling.

And we do want to want families to at least report the need, even if they report it as a low need.

And then one last question.

You were talking about the 12 drivers.

Can you just remind me what was the optimal number?

Was it 20?

20 to 24.

Yeah, that's so truly if we could get even five more drivers, we would be set with our current with the walk zones.

And that's the other thing I do want to make sure families understand that the walks the when you indicate your your desire for the bus, it really needs to be that

You need to be outside of a walk zone or community responsibility zone in order to be eligible for bus service.

That's not changing.

But if you're outside of that zone, yes, we do want to know if you want the bus.

And we really have appreciated all those families that have said, you know, I'd like it, but I don't have to have it.

That has been that piece of all of all of this has been a big reason we've gotten to where we are.

Yes, and there are a lot of the families out there.

And just for me, I'm thinking of the kids that like during COVID, you know, they were at home.

Well, we are also making great strides and providing the field trips with the buses and things like that.

That has improved.

I can't even remember, oh, downtown on the mall today.

So yeah, I know I absolutely agree.

Those folks who are still there who are bus eligible, that declared a low need, we need to clear that we definitely no one's stopping until I'm not stopping in the colleagues who are working on this.

Quick question just about the walk zones.

Are there going to be any modifications to those?

Have they been successful?

I do.

And I would agree.

We have conversations at the school level and we've not seen, I mean, our attendance data for the most part mirrors our attendance data for previous years.

And when I'm having conversations with parents and if they say, well, when the bus, and I'm like, are you in the walk zone?

Because the walk zones are here to stay.

And I think we have to reinforce that.

Yes.

Yes.

And others and others.

Yes.

Yeah.

Who've come out and who, you know, have done the walks with our students and our walking school buses.

And so we just need to make sure that we continue to, as we budget,

There's some really beautiful things like the walking school buses

We have the two Clark Invitable limits.

So many beautiful things that happen on those buses.

Everything from the way the staff will play music and stuff to the way neighborhood and community members have treats and balloons sometimes for the kids.

It's just a great energy around those.

And I know it's not always easy on the staff, but there are a lot of positives out of these out of the obvious ones of health and all of that.

It has definitely increased the sense of community, seeing the kids, they get a little more independence.

They're riding their bikes to school.

So I think it's helping, you know, with them as well.

So it is, we did make something that was not a perfect situation.

Any other questions, Ms.

And thank you.

All right.

Last one, I promise for me.

There was a request about some safety data, and that prompted me to say, OK, well, we don't have our school climate and working conditions survey results yet.

They're just now coming out.

So they weren't available in time to include that.

But we did want to go ahead and provide you with the data we do have available as of May 19.

This was also something that was requested as part of the superintendent's working group when we developed the safety model.

So we just wanted to follow up on that as we close out another school year.

This first chart shows our first responder contacts for this year.

And I did everything since this is the second year, I'm able to show comparative data to the prior year.

We've had an increase of 32% year to date as of May 19th, and I broke it down by which first responders we're interacting with.

CPD is the largest at 65%.

And then sometimes there's what multi agency means is that you might have CPD and EMS show up or CFD and CPD show up.

So it's hard to know how to classify those.

Sometimes I do want to make sure you note the, and this doesn't happen that often, but parenthetically, if the fire alarm is what calls first responders there, which again can get a multi-agency response.

It's primarily fire.

that doesn't go in the log.

The log is where we have to call for service.

And so the fire department comes a little bit more than what's noted there, but not a lot more.

A lot of times it's for funny smells that the fire department comes.

But anyway, the way we track things, we also have like incident categories.

Other includes a wide range of incidents, everything from where we need to call for a wellness check for a student or family,

A suspected rabid animal on campus and kind of everything in between.

But incidents that can be classified as some type of threat are up over 80% year to date from the prior year.

And on the next slide, I want to talk a little bit more about that.

and Jody Murphy couldn't be here this evening.

The threat assessment kind of threat has two components that where we're tracking it.

So this top part, this is the data that I received from Jody Murphy, who tracks our threat assessments for the school division.

So as of May 15th, 183 full threat assessments have been done.

A single threat assessment can result in identification of both the threat to self as well as a threat to others.

There were 90 threats to self and there were 97 total for 2122 the prior year.

Threat of harm to others was 94 and there had been 85 total for the prior year.

51 of the 183 were identified as transient and 132 were identified as substantive, meaning that some follow-up action was needed.

There were also 156 no threats that screened out based on, there's a set of four questions at the beginning of the process where it can be screened out pretty quickly.

This is a tricky part, but I want you to understand there is some overlap between the numbers above, but they're not entirely overlapped.

The numbers reported in the threat category for the first responders because

we have the option that every school division is required to have like a suicide prevention committee, but you can run that through your threat assessment team.

And we do that here.

And so not all threat assessments involve a first responder contact.

Most threat of harm to self do not need to involve contacting the first responders.

There's another process for that.

There's all, but not all threat and also not all threats that involve first responders go on Jody's threat assessment log

such as the swatting incidents, right?

That's an example and things like that, that that doesn't trigger our internal threat assessment committee to meet.

So I don't want to confuse people, but people need to understand when we talk about threats, there's different pieces going on if you're trying to match up the numbers.

But the bottom line is that both threat assessments and threat response needs have increased sharply since the pandemic.

It's also really important to note this is really consistent with national trends for both mental health and school violence.

When I tried to Google a single reference point, because you hear it so much in the news, and I wanted to put something concrete up here, the FBI reported threats against schools increased 60% nationwide in 2022, and this is just what reached them.

So that provides some perspective of what's going on, and I think most people are aware of all this.

So how are we moving forward?

We will review the DCJS climate and working conditions survey data and when it becomes available, which by the way, I think in my periphery today of emails, I think I saw the email come out that it was just released today or yesterday.

I haven't had a chance to look at it yet, but we will be digging into that.

We will continue refining our procedures and practices to promote school safety.

Regine Wright, our new coordinator for school safety and security has been a great partner in that work.

We will, this year we are focusing on integrating the concept of owning school climate and culture as a component of owning school safety.

And that's really one of the main themes we're taking into our summer safety summit, which will be on June 14th with school administrators and our CSAs and mental health workers.

and our first responder partners.

This is our second of what will now be an annual summer safety summit.

We are continuing our collaborations with our first responder partners, meeting regularly.

Ms.

Wright has really even increased that above what was being done before she came.

We are continuing to do our school safety audits, our crisis plan reviews and updates.

One or more of you from the school board, but at least one of you will review the crisis plans again in August.

We continue the work of implementing safety and security infrastructure improvements.

A lot of work still to be done there.

A lot of technology continues to emerge there and we're really focused on getting a lot of those things in place.

We will have a very structured and well-planned pre-week safety training for all staff for the new school year building off the work we're going to do at the summit and then you know looking at this data it's concerning and so we we need to continue engaging with community leaders and we need to really continue evaluating our current safety model the data and the trends so the work continues and there's clearly much we need to do but

Let's start on this side, Ms.

My only comment is regarding the pre-week safety training just as we've got administrators moving from building to building and teachers moving from buildings and coming in.

I think some of our early school year issues this year revolved around vocabulary and just making sure that we're all

consistent and on the same page about what is happening.

I agree.

And I want to note that last year, for the first time, we did a really nice video that everyone was supposed to watch.

And we did it through Canvas so we could see that everyone had done it.

But we didn't intend for that to be a replacement for

having each school have their own safety meeting.

And we will be very intentional about making sure that happens because again, we will be having some turnover in administration.

Mr. Morris, Ms.

So I really, you're correct.

I can't speak to that, but I do know that Jody has a very, that team has very intentional response.

to those situations, working with parents, working with community partners, working with the healthcare system.

But I'm sorry, I can't speak to that.

Yeah, thank you.

So regarding, just was wondering a couple of times throughout the year, we've received data on just the status of individual schools and where we are with implementation of door buzzers or locks, all of that stuff.

So maybe not necessarily, I don't know if this is a follow-up or not, but just, you know, just again, as we get closer to the beginning of the school year, knowing, because I feel like

You know, and I know there's supply chain issues and all of that, but it just feels like we kind of hear it's in progress, you know, and it's been a couple of years, several years where we're in progress.

I think what I would like for us to do, looking at our team, I think what we should do is in August,

As teachers are coming in, I think what we can communicate is we've done the walks, all the lots work, or we have this one in progress.

And so I think that just gives everybody, just like we talked about with the language at the beginning of the school year, making sure everyone's using the same terminology.

It just gives everyone a good reset at the beginning of the year to say, at this building, all the lots are working.

then we don't have to worry about people saying, well, we have locks that don't work.

We have, and I would also, every Monday we have a safety systems meeting, which is operations, my team and Pat's team.

And we talk about where we are with all these different projects.

And then Ms.

Wright is in the process right now of doing the safety walks at every school with first responders.

and identifying issues.

So we have two different spreadsheets we maintain.

One is where we are with what I call the big projects that I've been trying to move through all the schools for a while, access control, cameras for all schools and making sure all of those visitor vestibules, all of those things.

So they're tracked.

And then additionally, we've added another tab now where we have the individual things that are being found on the school walkthroughs about like signage improvements or fencing in certain areas or whatever.

Those recommendations are gonna be plotted

because they're more unique to each school.

They're not projects we're trying to implement across all schools.

And so they're being tracked on a separate sheet.

We can certainly do a written or another presentation whenever you'd like, August or whenever.

Thank you.

And then similar parallel to Ms.

Dooley's concerns.

And as you've said, Dr. Gurley, this last school year is a rough start.

So anticipating and appreciating, and I did watch the video that was sent out, but again that my understanding is, and correct me if I'm wrong, was that that's sent out to individuals and it's kind of their due diligence to watch it, just making sure that

You know, in the pre-service week that I mean we're taking somebody through this similarly to the follow up that we we you guys eventually got to that this was important, and I think it's okay for return teachers to go through the process again.

and to hear it and to be able to support it.

And then along those lines, we heard from students that they weren't familiar and didn't understand.

So again, I think we've talked about with Dr. Odeon, the cell phone committee, and there's been talked about the high school resuming class meetings and going through certain things in their class meetings that I think they've moved away from.

Hey, Mr. Johnson.

Okay, Ms.

So, principals, assistant principals, the front office, like admin persons, admin tech, CSAs, some counselors, mental health professionals.

It's really focused on the people who have key roles in the crisis management teams for each school.

but we're really, we got a lot of great feedback from our first summit last year and so we're really excited to have it again this year and I feel like we've even, the preparations are even better.

We're really looking forward to a good day of very meaningful, interactive work.

All right, thank you.

Are there any other questions for Ms.

Powell?

All right.

Right.

So good evening, Mr. Chairman, members of the board and Dr. Gurley.

So you've received the May revised policies for review, as well as the policies that were reviewed but not revised.

Members of the executive leadership team were assigned to review the content of each policy related to their department.

A table summarizing each policy revision is included.

and the revisions are based on the changes in law and regulations and some policies are revised for editorial reasons or to correct technical errors.

So we do ask that you take action and adopt the revised policies at the June 27th board meeting.

I'll start with you, Mr. Johnson.

Ms.

Regarding the health, which one is that?

School crisis, emergency management, medical emergency response plan, file EB.

And I was just curious, and this might not even be housed within this, but where we are as a school division, as far as training with AEDs, and do we have Narcan also?

So I can answer part of it.

That was me.

So we are coaches are required so our coaches are required.

by code to receive the training on the AED.

The AED is a part of the teacher training for licensure.

So teachers are required to do the research on that.

Coaches are required to do the annual training on that.

And then the NRCAM, we've not quite gotten there yet.

I think if you, there is a new, there's a grant

And similarly, I think I would need to have a more in-depth conversation with Dr. Odean, the nursing team to speak to that because I'm not sure if this is an area what you're asking about is sort of it's under crisis emergency management plan and all that, but it also gets into the medical plan and the nursing and

Well, I will say full disclosure that I have not had a chance to go through these in detail as I would like to and I'm wondering if there will be any opportunities to, you know, as I do this, you know, in the next few days next week to just provide some feedback or suggestions, if there are any, but I apologize for that, but it just wasn't feasible.

Yes, and I know that there have been some questions asked, so just copying all board members on there, Dr. Gurley and myself.

Okay, thanks.

And Ms.

Ms.

Morseberg.

Mr. Morse.

Ms.

Dooley.

Ms.

McKeever.

And, and for the board wrap up, we'll add Narcan.

Thank you again.

I'm really just here to kind of give you a preview of the communications tool that we are going to be rolling out this summer.

It is called Parent Square.

And I want to apologize in advance if I sound like a sales pitch, but I am excited about this program.

And I do think it's going to be a useful tool for our families, for our staff, for our principals, for my colleague, Amanda Korman and me, and for students who are now sort of folded into this communications world.

as we move forward.

What it really does is bring us one platform for the kind of mass communications that Amanda and I do through the program called School Messenger.

And principals often use that tool as well.

It also folds in the kind of classroom communications through the program Remind that a lot of teachers have been using.

It even folds in as we grow comfortable and want to

cities.

It even folds in certain school services like forms or registering for conferences, things like that.

And lastly, even in the last year or so, they've acquired a website company.

So it's all one unified system that really simplifies a lot of the content management.

And also, just from a parent's perspective, where is all this information coming?

Where do I even look to find the right information?

So they use this graphic to describe what school communications often look like.

And the back story behind this company is that the founder of the company is a mom in the Silicon Valley who when her kids started school just became overwhelmed by the flyers, the emails, the texts.

Remind messages, et cetera, et cetera, and decided there had to be a better way.

And so in our school ecosystem, again, you might hear from school messenger or remind sports groups might use a GroupMe app.

PTOs maintain their own email lists.

You might get texts or emails, phone calls.

Check the website.

So

The way they want it, they just want to streamline it so that parents know that the authoritative source, the place they should check, students know, staff members know that this Parent Square app is where they should check first.

The images they show here are on your phone, but it could also work if you want to work on your computer.

It works best if you work within the app or log into the website, but it also works, just like Remind also works, if you don't use any app at all.

Some of the functionality will not be available to you if you don't take advantage of the app or take advantage of the website logins.

But you will at least get your messages.

You can at least respond.

Just won't have all the functionality if you don't take that extra step.

and really how it works is quite simply, whether you're a teacher, whether you're a coach, whether you're a PTO leader, whether you're a principal or whether you're Amanda or me, you can push out information either through a web login or through your cell phone and then parents sign up and they customize how they want to receive their settings, which used to be a feature that worked really well on School Messenger and in the last couple of years, we've really struggled with parents being able to set those settings the way they want, so I'm super happy.

It also gives parents full control over the languages, which will be a much better system.

Well, we'll get there later, but it supports a lot more languages.

And again, you can see it on your phone or on the laptop if that's your choice.

So it takes advantage of the kinds of things that Amanda Corman and I do and the principals do, just that one way notification of either emergency notifications or good news.

That's the good news, the newsletters and things like that like they sent out yesterday.

In fact, Amanda and I were thinking that yesterday could possibly have been the last newsletter we're putting together on the old system and we might shift over to the new one.

One advantage is that it even brings your social media feed into the same ecosystem.

So a principal who is crafting a message

has the choice of where do I want to publish this message?

On social media, directly to parents, directly to students, directly on the website.

It just gives people a lot more choices and simplifies their life.

For classroom communications, it works a lot like teachers have grown accustomed to for Remind.

Teachers can do a big classroom message, don't forget the field trip on Friday, or they can follow up with individual parents.

to say, hey, I'm still worried about this issue.

How can we work better together on that?

And those messages can go back and forth again to a translation in the languages that the best meet our parents, families needs.

Yeah, there it is, 100 plus languages that it does, and Jeannie Fouts was on the committee to review this to make sure that it handles our top languages.

Again, my goal, if we could just smoothly replace school messenger and remind and help families do even that basic functionality over the course of next year, I would be delighted.

But as our capacity grows, this program is very robust and can bring a lot of functionalities into this one place.

signing up for parent teacher conferences or initiating, finding volunteers for an event, whatever it might be, it has these extra tools, secure document delivery for IEPs or report cards, things like that.

And it even has some, it's got some very slick features if we get there, but it'll take us time.

I'm just going to push through that.

And again, it was, it really made me happy in the time that we've been looking at this company they acquired the website partner.

And so it just makes it so much nicer to really be able to push out this information, all at once.

There's an expression that people who do my job have called COPE, and it helps us cope.

COPE helps us cope.

It's called Create Once, Publish Everywhere.

So you craft this message one time, and then you decide, okay, it goes to the website, it goes to students, it goes to staff, it goes to families, it goes on social media, or any or all of those combinations.

You just check or uncheck buttons.

And so for our principals,

Historically, Amanda and I have maintained, I've done a lot of centralized communications of schools' websites or whatever it might be, but this is honestly such a simple way for our principals or whoever they designate within the building to do some of this themselves.

So this, I'm hoping it will be a win.

So none of this really comes to pass until July because, again, we just want to take a breather.

Families need a time to push away.

But starting in July, Amanda and I are going to start using this for our one-way communications as we get new families in the system, our new kindergarten families or families being promoted within a grade.

We will push this out so that kindergarten families, new families don't have to learn two systems back to back.

Hopefully, they will just step into this new system in July.

And at that point, it's probably the easiest way is to encourage people to download the app.

But again, without the app, it will still work.

And then families can just start setting up their notification processes.

And there's actually a very robust set of videos and equipment and tools to help families learn how to use this in whatever language they like, although one of their bragging points is that if your families and if your staff and if your principals know how to use social media, they already know how to use our product.

It's a very social media-like interface.

And so the timeline for this is that again for one-way communications, Amanda and I will start using this in July.

In two-way communication, the classroom-based communications, that will roll out in mid-August to allow for a smooth start to the school year.

We will have staff professional learning about this during pre-week, and those videos and resources are already available.

We can start pushing those out to staff for any principals or any teachers who really just want to become very comfortable with it beforehand on whatever schedule they like.

I personally don't want to ask people to work over the summer, but for folks who want to do that, those resources are already available to them.

and then in terms of the shift over to the new website that we have an expected launch date of July 1 for that.

So I am going to throw a party if all this works as well as I say it will.

The company is very excited about our data at this point.

They have us down as maybe having good reliable contact information for 99% of our parents which is

almost unheard of they said.

And Ann Skipper reminds me that some of that 1% are actually students who have an alternate placement and so they don't get our communications and so that is part of the 1%.

So at least at this point it is looking good for a smooth transition.

We hope that's the case.

OK, so are there any questions for Ms.

Chuck?

Moving to my right.

I have a question.

And I'll be honest, the Canvas remind and the one before that, if there was, I don't, how it interacts is a mystery to me, and I try.

So this one, there will be no more remind.

And all I have to do is log into this and Canvas.

My goal for the families and students and staff of Charlottesville is to have one login where everything is there.

This company is working.

I'm pretty sure they have a partnership with Canvas.

I think they are working towards a partnership with PowerSchool so that when you log into this, the end game for me, and I believe it is for this company, is that when you log into this tool, you can have single sign-on access to Canvas if you want.

For me, I would

I prefer that you not even have to log in, that a family or someone would not even have to log into Canvas, that there would be a display or a tab or something within this program.

So for the time being, unfortunately, we still will have some multiple logins that families will probably be juggling.

But my hope for them is that even in the short term,

that if they just follow here, they will have good, reliable data about attendance or grades or whatever it is.

But in the long term, they will have robust access to the kinds of things that if you really want to drill into for Canvas or PowerSchool, you can do so.

So no, it doesn't solve your problems immediately.

Not for that, because there's just, we're in a world where we have so many logins for so many things.

And yes, Remind is going away.

And you get the email at the same time.

Okay, I got it.

So this is my last question.

I'm not going to lose it.

I'm not going to lose it.

I think I lost.

Okay.

Okay.

So the schools you were saying, so everything should be on here.

So I shouldn't get a newsletter from different schools to my emails.

Okay.

This sounds like magic.

It is nice.

And you will, depending on the setting set up, you may get an email telling you, Hey, you got something in check, check your parents square.

And if those emails are annoying to you, you can turn those off.

And if you're, if you're really good about going straight to parents square, or if you set up another notification that that's fine too.

That is the goal.

That is right, and honestly, again, I don't want to be over-ambitious as we roll this out, but we've heard from PTO folks who want to get in on this, and it's really designed so that your coach could be in on this, and that's honestly a better system.

If everybody's in the ecosystem,

Our coaches are great, our PTO leaders are great, but this system provides some accountability.

So I'm excited for you.

I don't want to be a party pooper here.

Okay, try.

But I'm on the cell phone committee right now and so I'm struggling a little bit to kind of reconcile because we're hearing examples or I've heard you know that

Teachers text students during the school day to say, come to my room.

And so I know that's bigger, you know, and outside of this, but I think as we use this, we need to be careful.

And I think every time I just look at the graphics here and I see this on a phone, you know, it's just making me feel like, oh, I need to have my phone in front of me.

And I don't know where the committee is going to land and what the recommendations will be from them.

But again, to just balance, you know,

Technology is hard.

I mean, we're immersed in it, but we're also, I think there's a strong message and there's strong data, you know, that

that it also is addictive and it does disrupt.

So as much as I know this is communication and it's like for you and Amanda.

So I just, I need to put that out there.

And I think we do have to, we will try to strike that balance.

I think as we've heard throughout this process and trying to

get what's right for our school and our school community is what we've heard from students is there's this need to have information and they've been left out of this puzzle, particularly our high school age students that they've been left out of the communication puzzle.

affords us the opportunity to communicate with them and with their parents very succinctly.

So, but I do, I think we will, you know, we can take some of our lead from the cell phone committee based on the recommendations that they provide back to you all on June the 27th.

Absolutely.

I think, I mean, and I'm not anti that.

I think from inside a school building, instructional time, you know, if we can make sure that they can access that on their Chromebooks and their devices, as opposed to I need to, you know, I need to see it on my phone to receive it and to interact.

That is exactly right.

It is set up for web use.

And I'll have to double check that it will work on Chromebooks, but I don't see any reason not.

It's web-based.

So I don't know how the notifications work with a Chromebook, but I think that is what, you know, they're very good at this customization piece.

My question is in regards to cost.

We are flat temporarily.

It's not exactly apples to apples because we're saving the money on Remind.

We're saving the money on School Messenger.

And I don't know what our current web costs are.

That money doesn't come out of my budget.

but it's actually replacing all three of those programs and given we really did need to move to a system for web where we were not hosting our own website so it might be it's never it's not in in year three it's more expensive than what we're paying now but we're getting a lot more services for what we're paying and if we take advantage of

Some of the secure document delivery, they have a system to just generate a report for who has not opened up their report card electronically.

So if we were to do that and to start mailing only to those families who haven't opened their report card, which is a service they offer, then we start saving money on postage in addition to these other things.

So for now, I'd say it's pretty much a wash.

So I had two questions.

One, so kind of going off Ms.

Torres about student access and how they can gain access to that.

So starting, I think you said mid August is when the rollouts will start for in classroom.

So I just want to make sure that like, I know in past times when we've introduced new ideas like this, I want to say remind had the same issue when I first started using as well, just allowing student assets in general, because with the Charlottesville City Schools account,

Sometimes it'll prohibit you from accessing certain things, especially new extensions like that.

That's an excellent point.

And my colleague from IT is here.

And I will say that that is why we have been working to roll this out even this spring, well ahead of July and August, to make sure we have whitelisted all the things we need to whitelist and that we've made all the data connections we need to make.

No, that's exactly right.

We worked ahead, planned in the spring, so we could have anything that is a block for students unblocked.

Everything that will work in this ecosystem will work in this ecosystem by rollout in August, for sure.

Now, there's always, in any rollout, there's always unexpected.

But the reason we started this, and we started this last year and got on board with it this year, and based on all the feedback, it's a pretty reliable program.

And then my final question was, and thank you.

It's a combination.

I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Pat, this really indicates how closely technology and communications have connected over the years.

But if I am remembering correctly, one of the questions we're talking about now is when to

roster these classrooms, like what is the date that you want students populated within a teacher's group.

So I think some of that happens automatically.

And I will say we have had issues.

I know we've had some issues this year.

I'm not trying to disparage any program that is widely loved around the world, but I do know that we have had some issues with kids being bumped out of groups and things like that this year.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Thank you so much, Ms.

Thank you.

Right.

So I looked at the minutes and it is Dr. Kraft made the motion.

There was no second.

That's one change I would like to make to the minutes.

And then the second motion was made by me.

And the motion was just to pause.

The first motion was to pause and go back to

Yeah, it was really convoluted actually.

There was two elements to that first motion that did not receive a second.

The second motion was just to pause the process.

And I made that motion, I think Dom seconded it.

So that's where the confusion in the minutes comes from.

So if we could make those corrections that the first motion did not get a second, the second motion was by me and seconded by Dom and then,

Emily was not, I mean, Ms.

Dooley was not here, so to take off her vote and that it was a five to one vote.

So appreciate Mr. Hartline's input on that because

We're scouring those minutes when we're approving them.

So just joking.

Our bad.

I definitely did not catch that when I was reviewing the agenda.

So thank you for that.

Does everybody agree with that?

So if we could make those changes.

I move that we make those changes to the consent agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

All opposed?

Motion passed.

I apologize because we did the vote.

I had one.

I apologize because we did do the vote.

Thank you.

Next item on our agenda is the school board committee reports.

I would like to just have, I just have a comment on the couple of different things.

I feel like the preschool update and gifted annual review is typically something that we have a presentation on and it's not a written report because they're vitally and kind of critically important to us as a school board in significant investments that we're making.

So for example, I didn't really know that we didn't have a Buford gifted teacher the whole year.

And I just think very important to kind of keep up with this as a school board.

And I just want to make sure, like,

I don't know, it just seems like something at the middle school is not working with the gifted model that we have for the elementary schools.

And so that's, I don't know what to do about that.

I would love to hear more from like the gifted committee school board members because it's just so important that the investment work.

And I was disappointed to see

all of the challenges in that report.

And then to have it as a written report and not as a presentation to be able to ask questions about it was a little like, I don't know how to make, I don't, I feel like I would have had a better understanding of things if there was a presentation.

And then same with the preschool update.

Like the preschool update is an interesting one because

I always want to see longitudinal data, if that's the correct word, like how our third graders who went to preschool are doing in third grade.

And I've noted all those things.

So and we had a conversation and I ELT about that.

So the preschool update has so on that sheet, the preschool update is normally at the beginning of the year, right?

So we can make it a twice we can make it a twice a year.

I just want to make sure that it's all on this board's agenda to look at data over the long term for our preschool kids.

Because there's a lot of things that we're investing in there.

I think Ms.

Mr. Bryan?

Yes.

Sorry, just in response to that, and both Dr. Kraft and I are on both of those committees, actually.

But regarding the Preschool Steering Committee, I did note and I asked Ms.

Sparks, this is the first, correct me if I'm wrong, this is the first cohort

preschool class that will be assessed with the new PALS and I asked that we or that she or whoever present cohort reports so that we see just year to year to year if that really makes a difference or

addresses or identifies anything differently.

So she made note of it, but I just wanted to, and I know she was going to ask you all, but I did want to pass that on since this came up, but I felt like that was something that's new and really, really important, especially around literacy because it focuses on literacy.

As far as the gifted stuff, I think I agree.

I don't know what the comment was.

I know that we just heard, and I don't know that I had known that we didn't have a gifted person at Buford all year long.

So I don't know how that could or should come to somebody's attention and how we can better support you or support Buford students.

If I may.

The gifted position has been posted for Buford and has not been filled.

I did get a message from Dr. Fouts that there are some good candidates out there right now for Buford.

So it is very possible that we will have a Buford gifted teacher for next year.

We're very hopeful based on the candidates.

I also will share typically what I understand is that the annual review is a written

report.

But when we present the local plan, it is a presentation.

But we're very happy to bring a presentation to you.

If you have questions for Dr. Fouts, we will be moving the gifted under our professional learning coordinator, who will be Anna Isley.

And so if we're going to do this presentation, I would recommend that we do it

the end of this month before Dr. Fass leaves the position.

If that is the will of the board.

If we have the local plan update, maybe with this annual, I don't know, it's just been difficult to, especially with the middle school, like we only have one gifted position at Buford and two at Walker, and the two at Walker are just drowning because they cannot get to, there's classes.

I don't, even hiring one Buford person is not going to be enough or sufficient to meet the needs at Buford.

So,

I don't need an additional presentation.

And I don't need Dr. Faust to come before us again to talk about it.

I agree.

And I kind of allude to that in my brief this week.

It's when we get to that

Ms.

Karen Little and I had a conversation this week just about master scheduling and things get very unique at the middle school.

We start to, in Charlottesville, we start to look a little bit like high school at the middle school level with our master scheduling and I believe that

It starts to present some unintended consequences in terms of how we do programming.

So most certainly we shouldn't let that become the barrier.

We should find a way to knock down those walls, but it does pose a challenge and we do, we are going to have to think more creatively because that kind of one size fit all model that we have at the elementary and it sort of works at Walker.

but then becomes very strained at Buford.

We will have to look at that differently because students start to specialize, it seems like, when we get to Buford and I think that that's why gifted looks the way it looks at the high school level because students start to have their needs met through those specializations and it kind of falls off parents' radar.

versus if it looked like that at elementary, we would hear about it.

And Mr. Chairman, just to be clear, the local plan, the current one, I believe is from 21-24.

It's not redone every year.

Well, I think Ms.

Isley is going to be a very, just a unique energy to come into the gifted program.

Yeah.

Can I just mention a couple of things, you know, being on that committee?

I think it's really challenging to know how to truly assess the effectiveness of this model that we're now using.

I'm hoping that we will, at least in the upcoming year, be able to solidify that a little more so we have a better sense of

whether some of the students who were not doing as well with the push-in model, are they doing better?

What are the achievement measures?

I will say that some of the other challenges have been this is related to our sub problem.

And a lot of times, the gifted resource teachers got pulled into sub for classes this year.

And so I think, you know, there were there were a lot of challenges like that, that, you know, I think I think it's working differently at different schools.

And it would be good to have more of a discussion at the school board level, I appreciate you bringing this up.

I just want to say that my girl told me, she's like, we have IGRT at school.

And I was like, what are you talking about?

She's like, well, our iSTEM teacher left.

So now we have

basically iSTEM and GRT combined.

So I hear what you're saying, Dr. Kraft.

I agree.

And I certainly agree, Ms.

Peter.

Thank you for bringing that up.

Yeah.

Mr. Cuomo, is there anyone in the Zoom room?

Okay, thank you.

Is anyone here in the room would like to speak?

Thank you.

You know, the thing is, I actually don't really go to many things anymore.

I mostly just go to what my kids do, which I have enough of them that I can go to tons of things.

But we did go to the band Concert Walker, which was amazing.

Always Mr. D is retiring this year, which is, you know, as so great because as like, I guess,

My third child, Mr. D is retiring.

My second child, Mr. Reubaker retired.

And my first child was Ms.

Thomas.

So anyway, the programs remain strong and the music is amazing.

And then today I went to the Venable chorus, third and fourth grade chorus, and that was great.

So thank you to all of our fine arts professionals who are

making, I don't know, it just brings such joy to the kids when they are home, so it's a privilege.

Thank you, Ms.

So if you want to retire, one of Ms.

McKeever's kids has to be in your class, apparently.

Yes, so echo all of the gratitude to our staff and teachers for all of the events that are happening.

I'm very much looking forward to graduation next week, a little less so.

I'm looking forward to the Burnley Moran Field Day where I will be manning a water slide station or something.

But the event that I do want to highlight is that tomorrow is Wear Orange Day.

So the city passed a resolution earlier this month.

This is supported by Moms Demand.

And there is an event happening in our community on Saturday from 10 to 2 at Mount Zion First African Baptist Church.

It is a collaboration between Moms Demand and the Buck Squad.

Okay, Mr. Morris.

Ms.

I just want to add a quick comment to the parents, anybody, school teachers, students, everyone who has made it through the school year.

Oh, it's been long ups and downs and so I hope everyone has some time to

rejuvenate and refresh and take a little time for themselves.

We are almost there.

Yeah, just gratitude to everyone in the division who helped us make it through this year.

And I guess we can say we've made it through the year now.

And all the work, all the passion, all the joy, the challenges, everything, but we've made it.

Here we are.

One other event, I think I mentioned this last time, but I'm just so proud of the art program being brought downtown to Charlottesville.

And I can't tell you how many groups of kids, I'm downtown every day, and so many groups of kids from all over the region have come to see the art.

and it's just been a wonderful thing and I hope we continue to do that in the future.

It's been a great addition to the community.

I also want to mention that, you know, we, as I think we all know,

you know we will be electing some new school board members and just for those listening if anyone is interested in applying to the school board the deadline is June 20th to have everything turned in and

including, you know, all of your forms, all of your petitions, and so if anyone's sort of on the fence and thinking about it, you know, you've got to kind of get out there and get going and try to get all of your candidacy forms and items

into the registrar by June 20th and encourage people to do it.

It's really important.

And finally, I'd like to wish Mr. Johnson all the best with all your $180,000.

You have so earned that, and I really wish you all the best in your college career.

I can't wait to hear what it's like for you.

Ditto.

Congratulations.

And congratulations to all the 2023 graduates.

I look forward to graduation next week as well.

And it always surprises me just the depth of emotion that you can feel just sitting and watching students as they walk across the stage and parents and just every single time.

So I love that.

And I look forward to that.

have appreciated just the year and the work that we've all done.

And I look forward to ongoing change and changes for you guys in central office and Buford and everything else.

And also want to just remind everybody, if you have time, I believe that

The boys, her high school soccer team is playing.

They did.

Oh, yay.

And the girls as well.

So wishing them all good luck, and I might have to run over there.

Thank you.

First, I'd like to thank all of our graduating seniors.

I'm going to get you last.

I got a little special for you.

All our graduating seniors.

Thank you for all of your hard work and I know a lot of you all are ready to go off to college or you're going to be career ready, ready to go into the workforce, military, wherever you choose to go.

We certainly do wish you the best.

Thank you for all our amazing teachers and administrators and support staff.

Hanging is almost over.

For the counselors, I know you have been in AP testing for the last two weeks.

and SOL, so hope that all of our students did well on those exams.

And Mr. Johnson, you are amazing.

You are truly amazing.

You have set the standard and I cannot tell you how proud I am of you and all of us are proud of you.

You are going to Penn State away from home

but I know you're going to do well and represent.

So thank you for all that you've done being an outstanding student rep.

Thanks to all of our student reps this year.

All of you have been amazing.

So this is truly a blessing and I look forward to hearing great things about you in the near future and congratulations.

Okay.

Do you want to say anything?

Well, I'm very emotional.

Hopefully, I'll cry later.

I'm not going to do it now in front of everybody.

But having this position twice in the past three years, I really wanted to do last year, but of course, situations.

But I love this position a lot.

And if I could do it next year, I would.

And I think it's something that before I had it, I didn't know anything about.

And I think a lot of students don't really know much about it.

If it's more publicized and more, you know, talked about within our schools and our students really consider this position, it really allows us to get our voices across and to just get experience that, you know, if you're wanting to go into anything like this, gives you that experience that you really need.

But just personally, this has brought me out of my shell and it has allowed me to

I feel more confident in my opinions and my stories and you know what I feel is what needs to be told.

And I just want to tell you all thank you.

I might have had the most conversations with everybody but

Just hearing you all and listening to you all has allowed me to feel more empowered just sitting here with you all.

And no matter how many people are in the library or on the Zoom meeting, just being here with this group of people has made me feel extremely important and respected as not just a student rep, as a member of the board.

So I would like to thank you all.

And I would also like to take this time to acknowledge, I haven't been to any events, but I'd like to acknowledge this being Pride Month and this being also Juneteenth on June 19th, since we won't be in session to acknowledge those.

So once again, I want to say thank you.

It's sad that this isn't my last meeting.

I wish I could come to more, but I know this is

You expect a lot from me, I expect and, you know, very and want to hear about, you know, what's moving forward next August and continuing on with view for modernization and other policies and things that can push forward start next year.

So sucks that I'm graduating early, so I won't be able to see that.

But my little brother, he'll keep me informed.

And, you know, Mr. Bryant will stay in contact and everybody will stay in contact.

Thank you so much for your service.

Just hearing Mr. Johnson reminds me of just students deserve a chance.