School Board Meeting   1/4/2024

I would like to call this meeting to order.

We will start with a moment of silence.

At this time, we will do the election of the school board chairperson.

Do we have any?

Oh, I'm so sorry.

Yes, Dr. Gurley.

Mrs. Burns?

Here.

Ms.

Ms.

Dooley?

Here.

Ms.

Ms.

And our student rep, Ms.

Kesey.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Dr. Gurley, I would like to move that we elect Ms.

All right.

Any other nominations?

All right.

Can I get a second?

Any discussion?

All right.

Can we get a vote?

All opposed?

Yes.

Mrs. Burns?

Yes.

Ms.

Miss Dooley?

Yes.

Mr. Morris?

Yes.

Miss Richardson?

Yes.

Yes.

All right.

It looks like we have everyone in favor.

Congratulations.

Thank you, Dr. Gurley.

And thank you, everybody else.

All right.

Ms.

Thank you, Ms.

Richardson.

Is there a discussion?

Any other motions for vice chair?

All right.

Any opposed?

Great.

Thank you, Mr. Morse.

All right.

Madam Chair, I would like to appoint Ms.

I'll second that.

Any discussion?

All in favor?

Aye.

So that's the recommendation.

I'll do so move.

So I'll do the motion and then Ms.

Thank you.

All right.

All in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Great.

Thank you.

Appreciate you both.

All right.

So just real quickly, I do want to thank you all for allowing me to be chair and work with all of you.

And I do want to just take a quick moment also to welcome our new cohort of board members.

We're very excited and grateful that you all have stepped up and are willing to do this work with us.

So we appreciate each and every one of you.

So thank you for that.

And second.

Any discussion or questions?

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Any opposed?

Great.

Thank you.

Next, we're going to move on to comments from members of the community and a slight modification to our agenda this year.

We have identified 7.1 as a time for comments from students.

Students are welcome to make comments at any point in time, but this is just a little tweak to our agenda and our process.

And I've shared that with Ms.

Heafey so that coming forward students right after school can come up and make comments as well.

So if there are any students, which I don't see currently in the media center, they could come at this point and we'll just move on at this point and go to comments from members of the community.

So we do open this up to people who have signed up for in-person comments, and then also we have the option to make comments from Zoom or online.

I'll start right now with those who have signed up previously.

So our first speaker could be Mr. Derek Cartline.

And if you will come to the podium, please remember that you're limited to three minutes.

Please state your name and address.

Good evening, returning and new board members, Dr. Gurley.

My name is Derek Hartline, lifelong city resident, 1517 Antoinette Avenue, Charlottesville.

At last month's board meeting, the board voted to allow facilities to be named after people.

Given this 180 on renaming from the original motion, I feel it necessary to revisit the name Buford versus Charlottesville Middle School.

The process to change the name of Buford did not follow the protocols set in place by the renaming committee, but instead it was solely on Dr. Gurley's request.

He left out what Phil Varner had to say about the namesake of Queen Charlotte, for which Charlottesville is named for.

In September 2020, Varner published a changing the narrative piece entitled The Myth and Reality of Queen Charlotte.

In it he states,

Quote, the life of Queen Charlotte is the epitome of white supremacy.

CCS has been using Varner's work as the only playbook for evaluating who schools are named for, even though it has been proven that much of what he has written aligns former CCS employees that many of our schools are named for.

Soon after the name changed, the identity of Buford started disappearing rapidly.

In a recent survey about the look and feel of Buford, it was stated that the mascot Trojans needs to also be changed because it doesn't build pride for our diverse school community.

Where are the findings for such a bold statement?

When now current board member Ms.

Burns made PTO comments, she referred to the Buford student community or school community as Trojans on social media, and no one ever complained.

The coach at my school, LMA's principal, and the division's own supervisor of equity are all graduates of Virginia State University whose mascot is also Trojans, which stands for pride.

So why isn't it good enough for our middle school?

Once you've changed the name, mascot, and look at the building, what could possibly be done to erase Buford anything else?

I'm about to tell you what that is.

As a Buford graduate, I struggled academically as a teen.

It wasn't until I met Joe Westcott, who taught me not only academics for two years at Buford, but taught me to also believe in myself as he believed in me.

I credit him for helping me to become the teacher I am today.

Sadly, Mr. Westcott passed away in 1993 before I could tell him how much his support meant to me.

A bench was created as a memorial in his honor, and for decades I have visited one at Buford.

To my surprise this summer, his bench went missing at the same time Nielsen started their construction in Beaufort.

In November, I asked the COO what happened to his bench.

She said she didn't know where it was.

I reached out to the community and found the caring teacher who did the legwork for getting the bench, and she too wants to know what happened to it.

Doing away with names, mascots, and now a memorial is like a modern day raising.

The community deserves answers.

Sadly, it has taken media attention lately to see change.

I'm asking the board tonight for two things.

One, please get to the bottom of what happened to Joe Westcott's bench memorial and explain what is going to be done to remedy the situation.

Two, after the budget is approved, please reassess the entire renaming process with a new perspective.

Thank you.

Good afternoon.

My name is Jerry McCoy Lloyd.

I was a health teacher for 23 years at Buford Middle School, home of the Trojans.

from 1980 to 2003.

Not only did my students get book learning regarding health, they also got practical experience as well, from hiking to cooking, walking, turkey trots, and activities that helped them take pride in their school and very much in their community.

Several teachers at Buford were avid gardeners.

We, including me, Ava Alderson and Marty Bass, got permission to garden the island in the bus circle.

I personally paid for those huge rocks to be delivered and installed.

Faculty members and students helped plant grasses, flowers, and bulbs.

Many people in the Buford community donated the plants.

Even the Department of Parks and Recreation became involved.

They provided flowers, bulbs, and mulch to the island for several years.

In 1993, Joe Westcott, a beloved science teacher, friend, and faculty member at Buford Middle School died.

Students approached me, Ava, and Marty asking how to honor his memory.

We came up with the idea of a memorial garden.

We obtained approval from the superintendent's office.

and members of the Buford community.

We had a fundraiser donation process to fund that memorial garden.

With the funds raised, we purchased crepe myrtle, Japanese dogwood, Joe's favorite plants, and more importantly, a granite bench engraved with Joe Westcott's name for all to use to sit and reflect.

Many was the occasion I witnessed students sitting on the bench during my tenure at Buford.

I was brokenhearted on my recent visit to Beaufort to see the beloved memorial garden destroyed.

All trees, plants, and the engraved bench gone.

Their beauty, purpose, and memory ripped out.

Personally, I and many members of the Beaufort community would like to know where the bench has gone.

Too many people have put a lot of love and work into this memorial.

I personally paid the lion's share for that bench.

you as members of the school board could and should have the common decency to locate this bench and return it to its rightful place as the memorial to a beloved teacher, friend, and Buford Middle School community member.

It is extremely disgraceful and very disrespectful what has been done to this memorial garden.

If the school board chooses not to return the bench,

but definitely knows where it is, I would like to ask for possession of the bench.

It would be placed in my personal memory garden in honor of those I have loved.

Thank you.

Anyone else here in the media center who'd like to make comment, please come to the podium, state your name, address, and you're limited to three minutes.

Hi, my name is Amy Gardner, 753 Belmont Avenue.

My son Ben is a junior at CHS and I wanted to say thank you to all of you.

Tireless work that you are doing, many hours put in and I appreciate it very much.

I attended the last school board meeting and Dr. Gurley, I heard your remarks and I have to say I was very touched.

I thought they were very meaningful.

They gave me a lot of hope and a lot of optimism for where CHS is headed.

Some of the changes that you've already implemented and things that I've seen happen make me feel really good about the future.

This next comment is a little oddly placed in terms of timing because four of you are new.

Congratulations, now the work begins.

I heard Dr. Gurley apologize.

and take responsibility.

And then what I heard from, I think, most if not all of the board members was, it's not your fault.

And it's not, but it is your responsibility.

And then ultimately for the school board, it's your responsibility.

But I didn't hear anybody from the school board say, take any ownership.

Say, as Dr. Gurley's employer,

We are ultimately responsible for supporting him and his role and helping him do his job better.

And so you didn't cause the problems that created all of the nuttiness for the last however many months.

But yeah, it's your responsibility to make sure it's being managed well.

And the other people sitting with you, it's their responsibility to make sure that you can do your job well.

So I just like to see that going forward.

I haven't heard anybody from the school board like

really stressed out or owning any of it.

And so as a community member, I think that would be like a good first step to how we move forward with this issue.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Anybody else here?

Thank you.

I'm Tom Kormans, 1116 Forest Hills Avenue.

And I'm the father of Brooke Kormans, a CHS 10th grader, as well as two 11-year-olds whom my wife and I hope will be future CHS students.

I want to start by thanking the school board and Dr. Gurley for your public service.

in very demanding and extraordinarily important roles.

And especially to thank Mr. Leatherwood for stepping out of retirement to lead CHS through what I think most of us would agree has been a time of crisis.

For many parents, teachers, and students deeply concerned about CHS, we saw positive signs and positive momentum at the end of last year.

I'm here tonight because I want us to build on that momentum and ensure that it does not subside, recognizing how far we still have to go.

CHS has phenomenal and committed caring teachers, rewarding extracurriculars, engaged students, and it represents many of the best things about our diverse, multifaceted Charlottesville community.

That is why I so deeply want to be able to have confidence

that it is a place where my child and all her classmates and teachers and other staff can be safe every day through 2024 and beyond.

And we are not there yet.

Last year, parents and teachers were given several reasons to hope that we were at a turning point.

Mr. Leatherwood stepped in as interim principal and changes were made at CHS that effectively addressed the frequent and violent fights.

while a sustainable long-term solution will require more and bigger changes, Mr. Pitt's resignation, the teacher walkout, and videos showing the public some of what was actually happening in the hallways and even in this library successfully drew enough attention to these longstanding problems that they were addressed and the situation improved.

One thing that tells us is that these kinds of fights in which students and faculty were physically injured and the associated dysfunction and fear were and are preventable.

and then something happened at the last school board meeting in December that the last speaker also referred to and expressed appreciation for and that's that Dr. Gurley accepted responsibility for these severe problems at CHS and the fact that he and the district did not address them sooner.

I and many other parents, teachers and community members were very grateful to hear this acknowledgement of responsibility and accountability.

But in order to continue the forward progress, the school board needs to affirm that responsibility and accountability.

We as parents, teachers, and community members need to hear clearly that the school board, composed of elected officials representing us, the public, are prepared to recognize Dr. Gurley's accountability going forward and ensure that the forward momentum continues.

We know that there are larger problems in Charlottesville and in the world, but we can and must have a safe and functional learning environment in the midst of a very imperfect world.

In fact, our ability to make the world a better place depends upon our ability to do that, to ensure that our schools are in upward spirals for our kids and our community, not downward spirals.

We cannot afford to equivocate for even a moment about whether or not the district is responsible for the safety of our kids.

Taking ownership of the problem is an absolute prerequisite for addressing it.

It is important that this school board explicitly recognize where the buck stops.

Thank you, sir.

Anybody else?

Good evening.

My name is Chuck Moran.

I live at 932 Bing Lane here in Charlottesville.

I'm a graduate of Venable and Lane High School and Dr. Gurley, Madam Chair.

and members of the school board, I would like to congratulate the new members and welcome them to this room and to the challenges that lie in front of you.

I would also like to thank the current members that are somewhat holdovers from the last board for their continuation of their service.

I rise tonight with a familiar refrain to many of you in this room, and that is my objection to the school renaming process.

Again, as I have done in the past, actually going back nearly a year, I am objecting in strong terms to the disparaging documents that have been floated out there for over a year now that take down the good names of many of our namesakes.

And when I say many of, they do not take down the namesakes of all of our school namesakes and I'll get back to that in a minute.

As you consider the flaws in the process going forward and determine to either move forward or halt any changes in the renaming process, I ask you

seriously to take a look at those documents.

Take a look at the documents that Phil Varner wrote and try to look at them objectively as educators and as community citizens.

They are literally shot through with bias and opinion.

They literally are opinion pieces, not historical scholarship.

They fall short of meeting the standards for scholarship set out by the American Historical Society in many ways.

Historical association, correction.

The writer relies on misuse of sources.

He actually anonymously refers to his own writings.

in parts of what he presents on these web pages.

He uses logical fallacies and confirmation bias throughout.

These are things that a ninth grade English teacher would have failed him on.

And I honestly ask you to take a look at these.

I think many of you, maybe for the first time.

A linguistics expert has referred to them as Swiss cheese, and as I look back over them, I constantly learn new things.

The writer Phil Varner literally uses exactly the same phrase when he takes down my great aunt, Sarepta Moran, and Miss Carrie Burnley when he says that they held a uniquely

effective role in the historic activism of being members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and having something that he never really refers to properly as rewriting the textbooks.

And in fact, when he was challenged by a local journalist who was often in this room, he was not able to substantiate any of his claims against my great aunt.

Is this fair?

I don't believe it is.

So the documents are dishonest at their core.

They denigrate formerly revered school namesakes, but not all of them.

This is hard to say, but I would like to ask you all, do you know that these namesakes, the way he's referred to them, he only takes down the Caucasian namesakes?

The African-American namesakes are spared his vile and dishonest attributions.

This is something that I think the board really needs to take a strong look at.

Nanny Cox Jackson is spared and is shown to be a woman of over approach.

Mr. Moran, you're out of time.

I'm out of time.

I'm sorry.

We appreciate your comments.

Thank you.

I just quickly close, ask you to please take down those documents or replace them with factual scholarship.

Anybody else here in the Media Center?

All right, Mr. Como, do we have anybody signed up who has an interest in making public comment now?

All right, thank you.

We'll close that and keep moving.

We now again have a minor adjustment to our agenda and just the process now will open up an opportunity for our student representative on the board if they have anything that they would like to report.

So Ms.

Yeah, I just first want to start off by thanking everyone for having me here.

I'm really grateful for this opportunity.

You know, as a senior at CHS and being in this building, it's undeniable that it's been a stressful time, but I'm just really thankful along with a lot of my peers for the school board, for administration, for just so many of you guys in this room.

and watching for addressing the concerns and taking action.

I guess the one thing that I will say really quickly is as a student and surrounded by peers in this building, what is I guess the biggest concern is how long this hands-on action is going to last.

I think that it's important that we continue this, whether that's people in the building, whether that's you know these preventative measures that needs to persist throughout the year and beyond.

This isn't, you know, while yes, this was a hard time, a difficult time that was brought to the attention of larger audiences recently, the good and the bad is not new at CHS.

And so, you know, this isn't a quick fix.

This is something that needs to continue to be addressed.

I just am really, again, grateful for the support of all you guys.

And I, yeah, I really appreciate you guys having me up here.

Thank you.

And please keep in mind, like I said before the meeting, I'll circle back and you're more than welcome to make comment on anything that we're talking about or if you have any questions, but did want to designate that special time for you.

So thank you.

All right.

And if there are any questions or discussion, now would be the time to bring that forward.

OK, all in favor, please say yes, yes, yes, yes.

Any opposed?

Great, thank you.

Madam Chair, Members of the Board, Dr. Gurley, good evening and Happy New Year.

Last month, staff presented the draft 24-25 program of studies.

After our discussion, we have removed the grading scale from the program of studies at the board's request.

We'll present that to you at a later time this year.

Thank you.

And I did just want to reiterate the question that I had raised and sent to Dr. Gurley.

And this was specific to the CTE sequencing course for the unmanned one and two courses.

So I didn't know if we had any information back from Ms.

I do have some information.

I believe Ms.

Fitzgerald is here, but I did reach out to Mr. Bennett who is not able to be here since he works really hard on the scheduling.

Ms.

Fitzgerald, if you want to come on up in case.

He did share some information with me.

Basically, this year it was

Easier to add the unmanned drones courses.

There were two sections that were added this year because two avid courses that were taught by engineering teachers were removed.

That was changed.

So this year there was minimal impact because of those two removals of the avid from the engineering teachers course or course loads.

Next year, as you know, in the program of studies, unmanned drones two has been added so that there is a sequential opportunity for students so that they can become CTE completers.

So if we, what he shared that is if

Every student that was in unmanned drones one wants to be a completer and takes unmanned drones two, there could be some impact because we would need to have those two courses added in to accommodate the students who took unmanned drones one.

And then if there are students who also want to take unmanned drones, one, new students, then we have that as well.

So there would have to be some decisions that are made.

It would impact engineering because these are engineering teachers that also teach.

unmanned drones.

So there would be some decisions that need to be made on whether courses are offered based on, you know, as as this program of studies is approved, then we move into the next phase of getting students course requests and all of that.

And when Dr. Otis is saying, excuse me, when she's saying the completers, when I mentioned to you sequential elective, that's the same thing, same terminology.

And as far as the data for engineering enrollment and just that pathway, we are seeing a slight decline.

And in this year, we do have lower numbers in our engineering one courses that could that impact that could allow room for an unmanned aircraft systems to course for next year if we are following the trends from the enrollment data.

So I don't think this is going to impact, it's going to do a major hit on the engineering program.

It's adding an additional pathway, and it's adding additional work-based learning opportunities in the engineering program.

I also think that when I look at the enrollment for unmanned aircraft, one half of those students are current seniors right now.

So I definitely don't want to give the impression that I'm not supportive of the sequencing.

So that this is not what this is about.

But I guess a couple of years ago, a few years ago, we had made an effort as a board to, I believe, offer an introduction to engineering.

And I don't remember if that was at Walker or Buford.

And I'm looking at both.

And I know

Ms.

Thompson, does that happen at Walker?

You know, in an attempt to increase exposure to some of these kids and then hopefully increase numbers and the diversity of students and I just don't want to see that impacted so that if we

Add this, which I understand why we need to do to add this sequential.

I don't want it to impact, say a big number of kids who might be interested, um, and just looking at that as an equitable, um, decision.

And I feel like it's hard because we don't have a magic ball and we don't know, um, what the numbers might be, but I also don't want to hear

next year, you know, during enrollment that we don't have a teacher to teach engineering one if we have increased numbers.

So maybe I'm off a little bit, but I just wanted to at least bring it.

And we did discuss if there was an issue with the master scheduling, if there's a conflict where we do see an actual rise in enrollment numbers for engineering, that the priority would be that Mr. Miller would teach engineering sections and we will not offer the second.

course.

While it is a sequential course and we want our CTE completers for our CCCRI numbers, we know that it's only going to give us just a handful of extra completers versus if we didn't offer engineering one and two.

Right now, the suggestion is 12 due to equipment and safety.

They are.

I just talked to Kelly Davis with VDOE CTE.

They are reviewing the curriculum right now.

So if you go on to the CTE Verso website, you do see that the curriculum page is down for both unmanned one and two because they are making changes to it.

And so we

I think she said that it'll come out any day.

And so the enrollment cap may change.

It may increase.

So minus the seniors, what do you anticipate?

So we couldn't do it concurrently, I guess was where I was heading next.

One way to look at it.

These are some tough decisions that we will have to make, but we are on the cutting edge and offering some some great courses and opportunities for our students.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

I'm going to turn to board members here for questions.

I don't know.

Miss Heafey, do you have any questions?

Mr. Meyer, Burns, Mr. Morse.

Ms.

Cooper.

Okay.

You're good.

Any questions?

Thank you so much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

All right.

And any further discussion or questions?

All right, we'll take a vote.

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Any opposed?

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And thank you, principals, for being here.

All right, next we have 10.2.

As you know, we have been working collaboratively with Albemarle County Public Schools with regards to with regards to KTEC.

And so we do have we do have an MOU that we have developed jointly with them.

Thank you to Ms.

Powell and to both legal teams from both sides.

We do have a document that I think definitely supports both organizations and continues to help career and technical education thrive here in the Charlottesville area.

What I am asking this evening is if you will authorize me to sign on behalf of Charlottesville City Schools to sign that document.

The superintendent from

Second.

Any questions or discussion from anybody?

All right.

Yes.

Yes.

Any opposed?

All right.

There you go, sir.

Thank you everybody for your work on that.

Thank you all.

Now we have 11.0 items for discussion.

We will start with 11.1 and we will give a CHS safety update.

We will do this in two parts.

We will start with Mr. Leatherwood and Dr. Johnson, who will give us an update and then after their presentation, we will have Mr. Kugler, our safety coordinator, give an update.

And as always, as they go through the presentation, if you have some questions, feel free to ask while they're going through.

All right.

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

It's been my pleasure to be with you this evening to give you all updates on how we're moving forward as the Black Knight Nation.

As you know, I returned to the building on November 27th.

Before that, on November 20th and 21st, our school underwent a reset.

During this time, our staff participated in restorative conversations on how to improve our school community and brainstorm solutions to issues that impacted student learning and school culture.

Those days provided the foundation of how we moved forward.

On the 27th, we reopened with support from the community who cheered on students and staff as they entered the building.

That morning we held a school-wide morning meeting where, as a school community, we were able to reaffirm our commitment and expectations of being present, being respectful, being responsible, being safe, and being a learner.

One of my takeaways from that moment is that our students wanted the same things we found that our staff wanted.

They wanted the structures, systems,

and support that would build a community that we're all proud of.

So immediately following that meeting, we began to work toward an environment that reinforced safety, routines and community.

With the help of volunteers and division level staff, students were encouraged to make positive choices.

and staff were empowered to uphold expectations.

This has been our ongoing effort.

After the reset meeting, one student shared with us that based on the reflection she had about her own choices up through that point, she wanted to do better and be better.

She said that she decided that she no longer wanted to skip classes and wanted more for herself moving forward.

She would make the necessary changes.

She and so many others have been doing just that.

One of our goals is to be transparent and forthcoming, which is why I wanted to take a moment to discuss the discipline issues that have occurred during school hours since the reset.

This slide showed

shows high level infractions that resulted in serious administrative responses from November 27th through December 16th, shown using the state's reporting codes.

In the top section, you will see that we have had five incidents that fall in the behaviors that endanger self others category.

one incident that falls in the behaviors related to school operations category and three incidents that fall in the behaviors of a safety concern category.

Again, these categories reflect the Virginia Department of Education system for collecting data about student behaviors in schools' administrative responses.

The notes on the bottom half of the slide explain the exact nine incidents that are captured

within those categories.

There were two verbal altercations, three physical altercations, three incidents involving marijuana, tobacco, or vapes, and one incident where a student refused to comply with staff.

Of course, there were many more than these behavior incidents, disciplinary consequences were serious enough, need to be reported by the state.

There are other situations where the student behavior was not as serious or where staff were able to address the matter with restorative practices.

Threat assessments of which there were two during this time are not included in the state codes.

Since fighting has been a topic of focus at CHS, I'd like to take, I'd like to give further information about the three physical altercations.

One of these fights was between friends where horseplay became serious and one of the friends was slapped.

The second was between two individuals who were in a relationship.

And the third was between two siblings.

We will continue to address discipline through restorative and equity centered lens where we firmly establish boundaries and expectations while remembering that these are young people.

who are constantly growing, learning, and developing.

As administrative leaders, we are focused on working toward appropriate and consistent processes for responding to student behaviors.

And what I can report is that the school's culture is improving.

One way we are working to improve the school culture is by creating a space that can serve as an office space for community partners and restorative circles.

Partners who work with our students can now be present in our building regularly, mentor, and build new proximity.

An example of one of these partners is Daniel Fairley, who is the Youth Opportunity Coordinator

for Black Male Achievement.

We're also implementing a new set of safety practices that include a new student sign in, sign out process starting on January 16th.

Students will be asked to sign in if they arrive at school after it starts at 905.

They will also be asked to sign out every time they leave the building.

Our attendance secretary, Amber Jackson, along with our interway attendant, ISBE staff, and our student support specialists will be supporting this transition.

Over the next few weeks, we will be transforming to a main office entry only.

Right now, students and staff members can enter when school starts from the Performing Arts Center.

Moving forward, beginning at the start of the second semester, we will only have one point of entry for our staff and students entering the building at the start of the school day.

Excuse me.

I used to talk a lot.

Additionally, at the start of the semester, we are requiring all staff members and students who drive to school to have a parking pass.

Parking passes for students is a practice that has historically been done here at CHS, where we are reestablishing that expectation.

We have filled our in-school detention position and have repurposed and clarified current support positions, including the roles of our graduation coach and our student support specialist.

We have given them both focused caseloads

formal systems that provide better supports to those who they work with.

Just yesterday, we met with our graduation coach to discuss ongoing organizing, I'm sorry, organizing the college visits for students who expressed interest in going to college but didn't know what was available for them.

Daring our kids to dream, then supporting them through the steps it takes to reach them is what we are charged to do.

High expectations, daily affirmations, and positive experiences will be an essential part of doing this.

We're improving and streamlining systems to ensure every area of

The school has supervision.

We have created a plan that maps out the identified coverage areas for specified staff members during arrival time, lunch, dismissal, and class transitions.

We've also completed the facilities walkthrough with Dr. Gurley, Dr. Johnson, Kim Powell, Julia Green, Mr. Kugler, and Mr. Katina.

During the walk, we identified areas that needed improvement and placed work orders or created a plan to address the need.

For example, during the walkthrough, we noticed we had a significant peeling of paint on several points of our hallway corridor.

To address this, we will be hosting a beautification day on January 13th, starting at 830, where we will repaint these spaces.

Thank you to the city for providing the supplies we need in order to make this day of service happen.

Moving forward, our goal is to tell the true story of what it really means to be a Black Knight.

I spent many years as an educator within these walls.

What was true in those early days still remains true today.

These students excel in many ways.

Our award-winning marching band is just returning from a stint on the world stage at the Rome New Year's Eve Day Salt Parade.

Our undefeated girls and boys basketball teams won the scrimmage play Winter Classic.

Two alumni created an inspiring new mural in our gym lobby.

The CHS Quiz Bowl team recently won its match on Central Virginia's Battle of the Brains TV show.

And one of our Bacon Robotics team has already secured a spot for the state tournament.

On top of all these discreet accomplishments day to day, when I walk these halls, I meet students who are working hard, supporting their friends and family, and building pride by being themselves.

Thanks to everyone, students,

staff, alumni, community who make up our Black Knight Nation.

To make our Black Knight Nation great, I should say.

And thank you for allowing me to share this evening, all this information with you this evening.

Go ahead, that's fine.

Yes.

Dr. Loeber, principal Loeber, thank you very much for that presentation.

On slide three, going back a couple of slides, you listed some of the behavior issues that have happened.

How does these two weeks that you have there relate to the previous couple of months before?

Ms.

Burns, do you have any questions?

Mr. Morse?

Maggie, I don't want to forget you.

No?

Okay.

Ms.

Ms.

No, Miss Richardson.

My quick question was when you mentioned coverage areas and you've assigned staff for those areas, is that admin or teachers participating in that?

Well, actually,

A combination of admin, our CSA's, those groups and support staff where this is a big building and we want to have people in different areas of the building to make sure everything's covered.

And it's bigger now than it was back when I was started many years ago.

It's a lot of

And one thing that we did not mention in terms of adding additional staff, we've worked with Ms.

Powell and so we will now take two current crossing guards and they will be serving as hall monitors slash cafeteria monitors to give us extra hands.

Because what we know is that the building, we've said over and over, the 76 doors in the building,

and the building was constructed during a time that really wasn't trying to keep students contained to a space.

It was kind of a more an open flow.

So having those additional bodies during the lunchtime will help to keep students centered into a space.

And so we will be bringing them on shortly.

Thursday, see Ms.

Powell saying Thursday,

So that's next Thursday.

They will begin, so that's two more people that will, there'll be two additional bodies.

So that's the kind of coverage, a lot of coverage, a lot of bodies are needed.

Doctor, really quick question.

No, they will be noticeably different from CSAs and we've talked about that.

They will come in and they will be stationed like when I'm here.

as a barrier that, no, if you don't have a pass, I want you to go back and get a pass and then you can come through.

So they will be there in those spots where you saw the adults.

They will be there.

CSAs will continue to work their specified areas.

Great question.

Any other questions, board?

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Leatherwood.

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

You're going to have to.

So we have two general topics that we've been working on as far as general initiatives to update the school division.

Communications is one, physical security measures being the second.

Currently within the different schools, based upon when they were built and what resources have been allocated, there's varying levels of communication capability within each property.

We have the traditional intercom systems that are hardwired into the buildings.

Some of the schools utilize two-way radios at various levels.

And you have phones, but not every classroom has phones, depending on which building you're in.

The two-way radios we use are very simple, much like the family service radios that you can buy when you go camping.

If one person's talking, nobody else can.

And if two people try to talk at the same time, then nobody's talking.

So they're very simple.

We have some schools have actually invested in some of the family radio systems so that every teacher can have a radio to communicate.

Some of the other schools have a higher dollar version which hasn't specified frequency like we have at the high school and the middle schools.

But they are limited in range, usually to about maybe an eighth of a mile, depending on terrain.

It doesn't afford us any ability to communicate with first responders if they're responding to the building, which that was one of the things that we lost when the SROs left the campuses.

They had the ability to talk directly because they're using that radio system.

We don't have that capability currently.

So what options we have moving forward?

We're looking at upgrading radios.

The regional radio system was updated this past year.

So Charlottesville, UVA, and Albemarle County all got new radios and a new radio antenna array.

There is space and allocated for the school system to have its own talk group on that radio network.

We have not invested in the actual radios to use it.

The only current

subset of the school's administration that uses the radio system as transportation on the school buses.

Where this becomes important to us is often in places where the radio traffic is busy, such as the high school campus.

If we have two people trying to talk at the same time, they cancel each other out.

The more robust radio system doesn't allow you to have two people talk at the same time.

It also provides a greater range

So for our elementary school campuses that have walking buses, the current radios we have are very limited when they get to the end of their walking bus and it's not giving them a good measure of safety without using cell phones.

We've got a slight cost estimate depending on how many we invest in.

An initial investment to see how much it would benefit us would probably take about 30 radios and that's about $100,000 investment.

They work out, do the math, they're almost $4,000 apiece.

So they are more expensive than what we're currently utilizing, but they're more robust and it gives us a little more discreet communication and the ability that we can communicate from school to school during a crisis.

There are also some opportunities available with some of our existing software suites, as well as some others that we've investigated to allow communication from the classroom to administration,

and throughout the buildings directly.

I have another question.

It does give us the capability.

They can switch to our channels and talk to us directly.

We won't have access to their channels.

About the best way to describe it is each organization has a page of channels or two pages, and they have the ability, because of their authority, they can switch down to our page, but we can't switch over to theirs.

For Charlottesville High School here, what system is being or systems are being used?

They're limited in their capability.

They're functional as far as range and coverage in the building.

There's also some etiquette.

I think also what we've talked about, there's some etiquette issues there as well in some situations where people are just getting on the walkie talkie.

And I think there's some opportunities for us to work with people that, you know,

what needs to be communicated and when, because I think to Mr. Kugler's point in the past, when we've had situations, everyone's hopping on the radio and everyone's canceling, everyone's canceling everyone out and we've not really been able to communicate effectively.

And so that's when we run into the bulk of those issues when we're having those high, high

tense situations and everyone's trying to get on.

But on that day to day, you know, we're, we can communicate.

But I think what we've also seen is that there's just some etiquette things when people get on like who should be coming, who should be on who should be off.

Okay, but so sorry, I'm understanding this, but that's okay.

The

The current system works well when something happens in isolation.

Question.

Do we have any sense of if these radios are available?

Are they ready to be shipped if we say, let's do that?

We purchased one in a state contract and they should be available.

Usually standard outfitting for the actual radios themselves is about four to six weeks.

All the supporting equipment, battery chargers and so forth from the vendor that I spoke to just today.

There are no back orders on anything.

Great.

Sorry, just go back a little bit.

Yes, that's not an issue.

That's not an issue because the teachers are not calling out on the radio.

I get caught in a poetry or anything like that, they get another person on the line right away?

Yes.

I think one thing I do want to clarify, because we heard that during the reset, I think part of the issue is teachers were calling down to a number that was sometimes bringing busy or not having an answer.

And I think that's the part that Dr. Johnson and team are working through.

and that's what came out of the reset to move the number that's being called from the front desk to a number that doesn't get a lot of traffic, that's always managed by someone that when that phone rings, they know that it's emergency, someone has a need and we're still on track with that, correct Dr. Johnson?

Yes, that has been put into place.

So we have three phones that ring to specific areas if there's an emergency.

And then we have a non-emergency number that is internal that they can call directly as well.

Any other questions?

And that's two.

That's two schools because for clarification, the Clark there's more than one, but there's more than one walking train.

One more than one walking bus.

Yes, there are on a low day 40 plus kids walking.

Some days there's upwards of close to 60 or so.

So there are more than what a yellow school bus would hold participating in the walking buses for Venable and Clark that we sponsor with school staff supervising that part of the product.

There are

Really clear protocols with cell phones and the school office, you know, is on call until every, you know, until we're all clear.

So there's definitely ways to communicate.

But one of the requests that the that the walking bus brought forward to us that it would be nice to have a radio that would make the whole walk with them.

But so they're not trying to rely on the school radios now for that coverage.

Part of the protocol is they are walking with their phones.

But some of them may also use their school radios because that does provide coverage for some fair portion of the walk.

Prior to the pandemic, we were transitioning over from the Ocularis security camera system

to the Genetec system primarily because Genetec would allow to integrate access control with our security cameras into one software suite.

So currently we have the Genetec system here at the high school and it monitors both our cameras as well as our access points.

All the doors on the building to the exterior are already monitored to know when they're propped open beyond a certain

essentially distance or when they're open and closed.

What we're doing in our next phase is we're upgrading our access control to where we're gonna have our electronic fob access to both enter and exit at many of the exterior doors.

All the exterior doors that are remote from the front door where someone's sitting throughout the day,

We'll have an electronic card reader that you'll swipe in that's going to disable a local alarm on that door and allow teachers to escort students out for outside education.

We have five access on the outside to allow them to come back in.

This serves two functions.

It allows us to maintain that ability for outside education, plus it also allows us to directly monitor when those doors have been accessed without permission.

The alarm will sound until someone resets it with a fob.

And in the remote areas of the building where we've had a lot of illicit behavior, that's been a problem because they're out of sight from where staff typically is.

There are low traffic areas.

This will directly address those issues.

The Genetech system has a mobile app which we are investigating to see if it's going to serve our purposes.

There are also other alerts that can be directly tied into it to send out text messages or emails to let us know that an alert has occurred that meets certain priorities.

This expansion is

Already in the works.

We haven't gotten a work order set up with our vendor as far as when they're going to start work.

Sorry, this is just for Charlottesville High School.

This is right now.

It's just for Charlottesville High School.

It's going to be as we transition.

We're currently working on Greenbrier as well as the new construction of Buford will also be built out with Genetec.

There are going to be upgrades to our camera system to cover some blind spots that we currently have.

We only have cameras in our public areas.

We don't include them in the classrooms.

Most of the camera points are covering our exits and entrances, as well as our large gathering areas.

The only two large gathering, three large gathering areas that are not covered is the performing arts center, the gymnasiums, and the library.

Are there plans to cover those then?

As we get into expanding the system, the library will be first because it's the most highly trafficked.

It's going to incorporate both the walkway above it as well as this area, but we're not focusing actually on the engineering classrooms down at the end.

The gymnasium and the

Can I ask a quick question?

Sorry, back to the doors, the alarms.

We're moving forward with the open gate.

Sorry, sorry.

No, go ahead.

Just a quick question about the cameras.

The current law per the state is that any public camera that is in a school system can only capture video.

Okay, what about like exterior areas as well?

Same thing?

We're moving forward with Chia Open Gate.

It's a lightweight portable weapons detection system.

We can utilize it both inside the building as well as at special events outside the building, such as football games, soccer games.

It's very similar to what you see at UVA and any of the large special events run by RMC events.

It's not designed specifically for a particular type or

type of threat.

It can be scaled depending on what you're trying, how specific and how fine you want to screen.

Your sensitivity there is based upon how fast you need to process your population.

It's currently being utilized by Louisa County as well as Monticello.

And you can see it, similar system set up in Henrico County already this year.

It's got reporting software built into the system which will allow us to track not only how fast we process the students through the screening process, how many students we process, the number of alarms, and we can then verify how many of those alarms are false alarms.

Correct.

I mean, the only thing that there's no way to physically stop somebody.

We have other physical measures built in place.

Our entry vestibule is built with that intention.

My question is, is there a protocol if something is found on a student?

Yes, I've explored both not only how Louisa County implemented their system, but also how it's been utilized with a couple other campuses.

And typically the way it's done is the education process goes out first.

You explain this is how the system will work and what the expectation is of the students.

As the school buses and students arrive, certain items like tablets, laptops, aluminum water bottles, the students will have those out.

As they approach the gate, they will hand those items off to a teacher who's going to be standing adjacent to it, and that gets passed around.

The student then walks through the gate with their backpack.

If nothing alerts, they gather their items and go on to class.

If something does alert when they walk through with their backpack, they hand their backpack to an administrator, they walk back through the gate.

If they don't alert on their person themselves, then the administrator goes through their bag to determine what set it off.

Some really large three-ring binders and other things that have a combination of density and shape will trigger it as a false alarm.

So if it's the will of the board, I would like to request a follow up just on what the protocol is going to be specifically for the high school.

So the staff allocation, I'm hearing teachers involved, admin needing to be there.

It'd be helpful just to know what is the timeline for implementation?

What is the communication plan to families and students?

And then what are the responsibilities of our staff members in the building?

And then as Ms.

Cooper mentioned, should something be found?

What are the next steps?

Is this search happening in front of all of their peers?

Is there a separate space?

I would agree.

I think I think everybody is in agreement with that, so thank you.

I guess that would be on a follow up.

I just wanted to know the expected date of placement.

Approximately $120,000.

So there's a lot of things that you're presenting with some price tags.

Once a list is compiled of all the costs that they're anticipating to implement this, we'll examine it against our current budget and to see if we have any vacancy savings that we can use to apply for it.

And then we also have the security safety money that we have been

putting aside in the Fund 25 for local expenditures.

Thank you, Ms.

Hoover.

You might know this off the top of your head, but potentially it's for the next presentation, but does this actually deter

As far as deterring illicit items being brought into campus, if you talk to school systems that have put it in place, they find that typically within the first week or so of them going in board, the bushes outside the school get filled with those contraband items because the students don't want to get caught bringing them in.

As far as a determined aggressor, is this going to stop someone that's determined?

I would like to say it would, but it won't.

And the presence of law enforcement has shown to be a measure of deterrent, but not uniformly, because there have been incidents at schools with SROs.

There have been incidents at schools without them.

Currently, we would test them here before expanding them out to other campuses.

There are some limitations depending on physical space as far as where and how they can be utilized.

As an example, Louisa County has run into a couple issues where the building itself has some high power lines running in the building that have caused some interference, plus their lack of connectivity to cell phone towers has caused some problems.

So they're working with the vendor directly to try to get around some of those.

As an example, Lugo McGinnis might be a good opportunity for another test place, but because of the physical dimensions of the space, it may not really be feasible to set one inside the building.

Most of the buildings are getting the entry vestibules like we have here and at some of the other elementary schools.

Curious if anybody's speaking with

Nielsen or Mr. Goddard, who happens to be in the room.

You know, as far as what the middle school will be capable of, if they will house them or if there's already other, I'm sure there are other safety mechanisms being put in place through the construction, but.

Thank you.

My only other question was, so I guess I wasn't real clear on whether as far as radio and communications that you're bringing

the best and recommending the best for us.

Or if there's going to be further discussion or if there needs to be further discussion about that.

Well, specific to the radios and we are early in the

investigating exactly how we can implement this, and it will be something to be added into a budget request going forward, not for this current year, is that the radios are professional grade.

They're designed to be both intrinsically safe, which means they can be used in hazardous environments, as well as their, for lack of a better term, public safety grade radios.

They're designed to be dropped.

They're designed to go into hazardous environments.

They're professional grade radios.

Currently, they operate off of a digital 800 megahertz frequency that is restricted to public safety and government access.

So that eliminates a lot of the issues we have with interference from other devices.

It also brings in the capability going forward that the radios themselves can have a Wi-Fi connectivity built into them, that when that system is turned on, if they're inside a building that has a Wi-Fi network,

Then they can use that for radio communications if for some reason the radio itself cannot reach the radio tower.

So if we're purchasing before the next 12 months, I mean, is that an upgrade or are we going to have to, you know, it's already, it's, it's, it's inherent.

It's just a matter of having it.

Sorry.

Just to be clear and going back to the communication, there's the much better solution out in the future, but we've definitely improved upon the systems.

We have a place at CHS now, not only through, I guess, protocol, but

Well, we are maximizing the capabilities we have with our existing radios through a better discipline in radio use, where I'm writing the protocols on how to communicate and what to communicate and what needs to be moved to some other means of communication.

And so the staff will get that training.

In the near term, I don't anticipate any new equipment coming into the high school.

I think we're good.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mr Cooper.

Up next, we have Miss Rasnett.

Good evening.

Good evening, Madam Chair, board members, Dr. Gurley.

This will just be a brief presentation, but due to kind of the variety of my roles, you'll be seeing me again a lot over the next few months.

And I wanted to, we wanted to do this because many of us take the opportunity of the new year to think about our physical and mental health.

make some improvements on our behaviors.

And so we wanted to remind you, our teachers, our families, and our students how to access the student mental health support that we have at school year round.

So this is tied into how we provide a culture of safety, wellness, and belonging in Charlottesville City Public Schools, specifically how we're supporting our social, emotional, and physical wellness.

And I included two targets, but I'm constantly reminded about how our mental wellness impacts us across all aspects of our life.

And we have many strategies and initiatives in place that align with our strategic plan.

So if you remember one thing from today, it's this.

Our school counselors at each of our schools are the initial point of contact for anybody who is concerned about student well-being.

students, staff, caregivers, about oneself or about each other, your school counselors, your point of contact.

So I've included their faces because it's always nice to put a name with a face.

So these are our wonderful elementary school counselors.

You can reach them by calling the school, calling your teacher.

And then we have our Walker and our Buford school counselors, and so they're by grade.

And so you can again reach them by calling the school, their teacher, reach out to them directly.

And then our CHS school counselors are broken up a little bit differently.

They're by letter of the alphabet.

And so if you need help finding that, they're on the Charlottesville City Schools website.

Those are all listed and the counseling department has their own website as well with lots of information.

So we also have our school counselors at Lugo McGinnis and a friendly face, Ms.

Butler at KTEC.

So briefly, if you have a concern about your child, about a friend, about yourself, when you reach out to a school counselor, they're going to do an initial assessment of what that need is.

So that assessment might include

talking with you or the student, consulting with teachers, looking at grades, things like that.

And then from there, they're going to respond.

So sometimes our students reach out to school counselors because they've had a disagreement with a friend.

And so they meet with the school counselor at lunch with their friend and it's resolved.

Other things are not necessarily resolved in one session.

It might be that you have a concern about a friend who's experienced loss.

And so the school counselor really does that initial one to six sessions with a student to hopefully get them back into a good frame of mind and learning and being successful.

If concerns continue after that, either students continue to have concerns about themselves or the people who love them do, that's when we're pulling in a multidisciplinary team to look at our more intensive level of support for student mental health needs.

And so from that point, that team not only considers what the need is, but what interventionists in the building are a good match to support that students need.

We know that our school counselors are there for

academic advising, social emotional wellness and career exploration for all of our students.

And so this is when we're tapping into our bigger school mental health professional team that provide that individualized solution focused more long term or extended duration support.

This is also where we may be referring to community-based mental health providers.

It's where we've invested in like Care Solace, which helps families connect with local community providers who take their insurance, which is always a challenge.

Where we have programs like the Student Assistance Program, TDT, which is a Medicaid funded program for individual students, as well as grant funded programs like Evergreen at Beauford.

And so, again, I really, this was just a way to remind everybody, if you're worried, talk to your school counselor.

The school council will be able to direct a family or a student to any services or supports that are needed.

and as well as an opportunity to thank the board and Dr. Gurley for your commitment to a robust student mental health support team.

We have a large team with a tremendous amount of expertise who are active in both the community and in our schools to improve student mental health.

So that was it.

Let's start with Ms.

Richardson.

Do you have any questions?

Ms.

Can you or Dr. Gurley speak to how our staffing levels compare to the standards of quality set by the state?

All of the above.

So the state sets their standard.

I think the first part is that all the other things that we do aren't even in the SOQs aren't required.

So I think when you look around the region, we are at the top in terms of the amount of SEL support in some form or fashion that we're providing.

So I mean, the only thing in the SOQs are school counselors, and social workers, I'm sorry, social workers, social workers, psychologists, those are definitely in the SOQs.

But then I think you will see that we are exceeding in the other areas.

I know that we are above the SOQs.

Don't go to any additional work.

Ms.

Mr. Morse?

Yeah, I think I remember back there in 2019, 2020, there was a Medicare program that I think was paying for a lot of deep

Services that got cancelled.

So you're probably thinking about our TDT, our Therapeutic Day Treatment program.

The rules through Medicaid changed in the past few years and it became more stringent for families to access those services.

So we enter into contracts with organizations that provide the services in our schools.

But the services themselves are between the family and the provider.

And so we have TDT in almost all of our schools.

We just heard today at Walker, they're getting another TDT staff member.

So that program is kind of growing again after the changes in those regulations.

They are not included in the 41, nor are our partnerships with Region 10 or Evergreen.

Yeah, I have a quick question.

First of all, thank you for everything you do.

As a student, it really means a lot.

And I really hope you guys recognize that we appreciate all you do for our mental health, especially in a time like this.

I guess, really quickly, my question is, the school counselors, especially at CHS, they have so much going on.

And they have a ton of kids and a ton of jobs.

Aside from the counseling team, I know that their space is the calm space that is at CHS.

I just don't think a lot of people necessarily understand what those spaces do.

So a lot of those spaces are pretty school dependent.

All of our schools have

comm spaces, reset zones, focus areas, things like that.

And so each school really develops their system for how they support students in accessing them.

But in speaking with Dr. Johnson and CHS admin that has come up of how do we make what we have more known to students.

Just keep on.

So would you say that if the counselors at schools, there are there enough supply of them, I say to meet the demand?

We can always use more.

What we always want to be focused on is quality over quantity.

So we don't want a ton of people and then not having quality or equitable services across schools.

Wow, can I follow up in a written report?

I think where what's less important is the position and what's more important is what they do.

So making sure that all of our students have access to professionals who can provide

individualized targeted counseling supports, as well as professionals who have a breadth of knowledge to provide the academic advising, career exploration, social emotional learning at all the schools.

So I guess what I'm looking for is

If you had another half a million dollars or a million dollars to spend on this, how would you allocate it?

It's not FTE is fine, but again, and we don't have to get into it now, but I guess that's what I'd like to see in the budget is, okay, we're doing great, I think right now.

And I want to thank you and I don't want to see this as a, I'm criticizing in any way, but how do we take it to the next level?

Cause my assumption and what I've seen with my children and my understanding from the elementary schools where my children go,

is there's a lot more need now, you know, post COVID and everything else is going on in the world than we were at four or five years ago.

And so if we're just meeting that four or five years ago need, we're not actually meeting the actual needs.

And so I think we need to increase that.

And so we, there's, I think,

Half a billion dollars, we need to focus on a large continuum that would include supports for students with emotional disabilities, identified disabilities that impact their mental health, increase the intensity and availability of support.

So students can remain in our public schools and not access private day as frequently.

But then there are also many students who have acute or long-term crises that need support.

And so where we could

And one thing that we've heard from our CHS students on yesterday, Dr. Johnson, Mr. Leatherwood and I met with Sohi and Ella.

Ella is a 23 graduate.

of CHS.

She's at UVA now.

And so they have challenged us to look at some alternatives along that continuum.

And so one of their suggestions is, how can we incorporate mindfulness?

Like, where's the space for that here?

And so we are working with our students, amplifying them.

Again, the answers are in the building.

And so we're giving them the platform to say, like, what does it look like?

How can we make this happen?

And so hopefully that's something that we will be able to, down the road, be able to bring forward and say this is something that

was birthed in our school from our students.

Any other questions?

All right.

Thank you, ma'am.

Thank you, Ms.

Resnick.

Good evening, Dr. Gurley, members of the board, and Madam Chair.

I'm always excited to talk with you about our facility improvement projects and what we have going on with the capital improvements plan.

That's the rolling five-year plan that drives this work.

It's really important work.

You'll see very big, glamorous projects like the middle school discussed here, and you'll also see less glamorous but very important projects in here like roof replacements and HVAC replacements and things like that.

Mike Goddard and his team manage this work for us along with colleagues in the facilities maintenance team when it comes to those big capital maintenance items.

Thank you, Kim.

Go ahead to the next slide.

First of all, it's important to discuss how we prioritize the work that we do.

Just for everybody's awareness, some of you have seen this a million times, some of you haven't.

But here's an outline of our prioritization schedule.

And I'm not going to read it all to you, but it's, as you would expect, it has to do with legal mandate, code requirements, health and safety, all the way down to like to have sort of things.

So we can go on from there.

Also, it's important to understand our process for prioritizing projects and our process for identifying projects.

There's kind of two tracks for that.

One is the CIP process.

These are line item projects.

And basically what we do with these projects is ask for specific funding from city council directly for one individual process.

That's the process we used for larger projects like the Buford project, for instance.

And basically the way that works is that we take facility condition assessments.

We do those on a five-year cycle, as well as need assessments that we get from the city schools.

FD staff does prioritization.

That's usually me.

And then we bring it to the school CIP committee, which is a group made up of council members, school board members, city manager, etc.

And then we bring it to the city manager for city council approval.

We also have lump sums, and this is an interesting way of handling some of our emergent needs.

We have some lump sum funds that are given to us by city council that we can use in a more discretionary manner.

We use two of those funds, one for smaller, one for larger projects, and it's a little more of an indirect feed on those.

different people basically tell me what they need and we try and make it work as best we can.

And usually we can do that.

So we've had quite a lot of work going on this year.

So much that it's making us all tired, I think.

We have the middle school reconfiguration, which I think everybody's very well aware of.

We'll talk a little bit more about that.

Greenbrier modernization, Johnson modernization,

Phase one and some other less visually interesting projects.

We've got some electrical equipment upgrades in this building, which are actually fairly expensive and expensive.

And it's work that you probably would never see.

It's all hidden in mechanical rooms, but it's all very important.

We have a new roof that's going on to this building in three phases.

Phase one is complete.

Phase two is upcoming.

Phase three will follow.

We did a bunch of little roof replacement projects around the city school buildings.

We managed some drainage problems at Clark.

And we are working currently on the CCS admin building doing some ADA and security upgrades.

So first, the middle school reconfiguration.

We can go on past this slide because it's less interesting than what follows.

This is a fairly current snapshot of what the middle school looks like.

The screen left there is the operational middle school building.

And I think you can imagine how challenging that is for everybody.

both on the construction side and on the school side, keeping that school running while we're digging very large holes in the ground and unfortunately finding tons of stone in the ground, which is expensive, but that's another story.

We can carry on.

Just some more shots of retaining walls being built and holes being dug.

In the background there, you can see where they're digging geothermal wells to, uh, to help with the heating and cooling of the school, make it more efficient.

Um, interestingly, we're working to get a grant to pay for a lot of that work.

Um, hopefully we'll get, well, it'd be nice if we got about 6 million back, but we'll see, uh, everything needs to be determined.

You can carry on.

And here are the renderings of what the school should look like when we're complete.

On the left of your screen is what the A building that currently exists will look like when we're done renovating it.

On the right-hand side, you see the building that we're building right now, what will sit on top of that big trench in the ground.

Another shot of the backside of the building.

This is kind of looking towards the opposite side.

On your right there is

the existing A building cafeteria.

The little terrace there is where a lot of us dug dirt a few months ago to kick off the project.

Straight ahead in that image is the new building that we're building right now and to the left is the gym building.

And this is a view as it will be seen from the play field looking up towards the building.

Again, on the right is the new gym building.

The center of your screen is the big new building we're building right now, and on the left is the Boys and Girls Club.

We are also working on the Greenbrier modernization.

Actually, work is completed there.

We did a library modernization there.

I think it was a very successful project.

It came in on budget.

It came in on time.

And reports from the school, this happens to be where my kids go to school, are very positive, at least according to my children.

I don't know about anybody else.

Go to the next slide.

It's kind of a composite of what it looks like now.

I think it's a pretty nice library space.

So this is the second modernization that has involved a library of fit.

And both of those, I think, have been fairly successful libraries, as it turns out, are the center of a successful school, in my personal opinion.

Next up is the Johnson modernization, which we've completed phase one of.

Phase two is a little complex.

Phase one involved new furnishings and some technology upgrades.

New paint.

Phase two is a roof terrace, which this rendering clips off probably the most important part of what should be shown, which is kind of the vista from this terrace.

This terrace is meant to sit on top of the existing gym building.

So it's basically taking what has been a closed off roof section and turning it into a usable space for

Learning or gathering or whatever you like.

It's going to be nice.

And we do have a contract just now to begin work next summer to get this finished.

Some other stuff that we're working on, as I mentioned, CHS electrical switch gear.

Phase one is complete.

Phase two is complete.

Phase three is upcoming.

I could go into all the details of what we're replacing, but it would bore you all to tears.

But rest assured it's very important.

The roof replacement, as I said, is finished with phase one.

We're headed into phase two now.

And then after phase two is complete, we're going to put a solar array on phase two.

Phase three will begin sort of simultaneously.

And then we are hoping to put more solar.

The entire roof is solar ready so

There are some issues that we need to work through about how Dominion wants to sort of pinch our ability to put a full-scale solar array on that roof, but we're working through it and hopefully we'll come to a positive conclusion there.

And then some small roof replacements.

As I mentioned, you'll see little buildings all around the city.

Probably the nearest one are the ticket booths over at the stadium, which we just put new roofs on.

Clark Drainage.

This was an interesting little project where there are those handicapped ramps that go down into the basement level of Clark kind of on either side of the ground entry from the playfield side of the school.

Those were all drained by one small floor drain and there are big oak trees that sit over those and two or three of those oak leaves would cover the drain and then water would just pour in the area.

So we put in some long linear drains to kind of help save that and added some more area drains at the bottom.

Not that interesting, but it does keep hopefully the cafeteria from flooding so that we can follow up with a flooring replacement project down there.

And the administration building, you see an image there of the work that's ongoing there.

I think we're a little further along than that now.

That's kind of a dated image, but we are adding some security for the people who sit right up in the front of the building.

Also, there was not really any ADA access.

The building was built back when that wasn't considered important, I guess.

So we're adding an ADA restroom, doing some minor finish replacements and remediating asbestos tile that was kind of all throughout that building under the carpet.

So our plan for a fiscal year is 25 through 29.

So we do all of our, uh, CIP planning on a five-year cycle.

So we ask for money for things kind of way ahead of time to put it on the city's radar.

The most immediate, which is actually in design right now, is restroom reconfiguration for this building.

This was kind of a priority response to some emerging needs that were brought to our attention.

by Kim.

And essentially what we're trying to achieve is more privacy for students in the restrooms while also making the restrooms a little more easy to control.

Yeah, thank you for the jump ahead so that you can see what we're trying to achieve.

So there'll be gender neutral single occupancy restrooms with a shared lavatory facility.

This kind of helps with a few problems that we might have, one being security and sort of disruptive behavior in the restrooms, but also the question of who belongs in what restroom is kind of made moot when you reorganize a restroom in this way.

That's okay.

You can jump back.

Thank you.

The Burnley Moran roof.

I guess let's just go forward and I'll go through these in their order.

So the CHS restrooms, first floor.

The plan right now is to do two restrooms in this building.

So restrooms are incredibly expensive to do.

So we have to kind of pick them off one or two at a time.

I think our plan is to get two done this coming summer.

And so this is what the first floor restroom will look like.

We can jump to the next one.

And then we've got another one on the second floor that we're planning on picking off this summer.

And we have a little bit more of a floor plan that'll give you, if you can see it, some kind of an idea of what that's going to look like.

So restrooms that are kind of on the right hand side of the image, they're kind of like a single cell, not very large, but big enough for one person to go in.

of course also some ADA restrooms are included and then kind of a common lavatory area which is viewable from the hallway so that staff can keep an eye on what's happening there.

And the similar concept but on a smaller scale for the second floor restroom and these are nearing completion in schematic design and so we are going to start into

putting together a bid package for those pretty quickly, and hopefully we can get it bid and built this coming summer.

This one was kind of a rush, so hopefully we get it done.

Do you want to jump back to the list because I don't have images for all of those, but I'll run through them quickly.

We've also requested funding for the Burnley Moran roof replacement.

This went into our budget request last year, so this is just a continuation of that request.

Jackson Viya will follow, so this is fiscal year 27 and 28.

You'll see one for 29 as well that will follow a little later in the presentation.

We're upgrading the CHS generators, so hopefully we can make the CHS gyms an emergency response space so that they can handle people, the public, if there's some sort of an emergency that requires it.

We also have the CHS turf field replacement coming up, which

that is not $900, but more like $900,000, maybe more like a million dollars, I don't know.

And that's just to replace the turf covering on the field.

There may be some conversation about how that goes down, but the funding request is out there.

The Jackson Viya Modular Classrooms,

Mike, real quick there, can you

Quickly.

Yeah.

Long story, very short.

It seemed as if the schools were growing very quickly and they were going to outlive their capacity very quickly.

Very soon, in fact, most of them were above functional capacity at the time.

So we hired an architecture firm to do a study and tell us where we stood.

The result was that we were over capacity for the most part, some schools worse than others.

And we set about trying to figure out where we would put modular classrooms for an emergency situation on each of the class or each of the school sites.

We accomplished that on all but the Jackson Viya site.

due to some site issues that were pretty difficult to solve.

Then COVID hit.

We didn't really have to worry about capacity for a little while there, so that one kind of fell off the radar, busy as we are.

And lo and behold, it seems like we may be having an emerging capacity issue again.

And surprise, surprise, it's at the one school where we don't have a ready solution.

We're working on it, but hopefully we can get it solved faster, then the problem becomes critical.

OK, so these are the new requests for our budget for FY 25 through 29.

First was the pre-K center at the Walker campus.

I don't know if anybody's ever thought about that or is thinking about it currently, but there's been some talk about a pre-K center at Walker.

So we put that request in for fiscal year 27.

That's a little bit movable, I think, but it's intended to follow right on the heels of the Charlottesville Middle School completion.

The Johnson Elementary roof replacement, that's just the third in that series of roof replacements.

Seems like we always replace school roofs in series, so there we go.

By the way, each of those school roof replacements is meant to have a solar component as well.

And we're working with our friends over in the Office of Sustainability to try and figure out how that gets funded, whether it's direct cash funding or whether we do a PPE or something like that.

Clark window replacement.

We asked for some money to replace a lot of windows over at Clark because they were failing before their time.

There was a bad design of some windows that we bought about 15 years ago.

And so we're going to have to replace a lot of them.

And that 450,000 is a partial request.

It's actually probably a million dollars worth of windows that we'll ultimately have to replace.

but we're phasing it so that we can afford it, frankly.

And then we've got phase one of classroom air conditioning unit replacement program.

So updating AC units, we have some AC units still in classrooms that are using old refrigerants that you can't get anymore and that aren't, that are hazardous to the environment.

So we're trying to replace those as quickly as we can so we don't have to worry about that.

Is that it?

All right.

Well, I'm surprised as you are that that's the end.

All right.

Any questions, Ms.

Heafey?

Any questions, Mr. Meyer?

It is my passion area.

And thank you, Mike.

You're not allowed to leave your job either.

And great to hear you're Greenbrier.

Your kids are there.

Yeah, just a couple.

And then you just mentioned Dominion being a problem.

I think that is outside of my scope besides to say that there are conversations with Dominion

I'm not personally having them.

I'm hopeful that there is some political pressure brought to bear so that that becomes a little easier.

I think that's happening.

Crystal Rittervold would be a great person to ask about that, though, because the Office of Sustainability is engaged in that conversation a little better than I am.

And with regard to the electric buses,

No, Ms.

Yes.

I noticed that our admin building is still

getting some upgrades.

I will have to get back to you.

I think we're probably about a month out on that right now.

We did have some additions that we had to make because of HVAC concerns.

But yeah, I think we're about a month out.

Any questions, Ms.

Cooper?

Ms.

Richardson?

Thank you.

Sorry, Lisa.

Yes.

Just one last great thing.

I heard an observation by some public comments at the beginning about a bench that might or might not have disappeared.

I'm glad you asked.

So when we, you know, identified the bench, which it was pretty grown up around it, it was something I've been walking past for years, didn't realize it was there.

We made efforts and I shared an email with Dr. Gurley.

I went back through Jim Henderson.

That was my starting point through him.

We kind of brainstormed who had retired from here recently that we could reach out to that might know how to reach the family because there was a spouse and one child.

We figured out where the spouse was living, tried to locate them and find them, reached out to people who had been with the school division not too long ago that had retired that would have worked during that same time.

We just didn't have any success in finding anyone who could help us connect with the family to see if they would like the plaque because when we had it evaluated, facilities maintenance said there was no way to remove the bench intact.

because of the way it was put into the ground with footers and because of the way the top was epoxied to the two legs.

So we were making efforts right up until the time where Nielsen was like, we got to put the fence up, we got to go.

And so we gave them permission to remove it.

And then, apologies, I checked my email when the person was making public comment.

I can't find anything in the emails where I responded to the question, but depending on the time when I was asked about it,

Once it was removed, I mean, I didn't know where it was there for a while, but I'm quite sure it's gone from the campus at this point.

We did make quite a bit of an effort to find the family to see if they wanted the plaque salvaged from it.

And I'm truly sorry for anyone who's felt not valued or that we didn't consider it.

I'm sorry we missed the mark in not talking to the right people, but

Thank you for providing that.

Any other questions?

All right, 11.4, Ms.

Good evening, Madam Chair, Dr. Erling, school board members.

This evening, I'm going to review the 2024-2026 Local Composite Index, a locality's ability to pay.

It's better known as the LCI.

And this information was released by the Virginia Department of Education on November 27, 2023.

So let me give you some background on the LCI.

It's been in place over 50 years.

It determines all the funding distribution to the school divisions in the state.

And the composite index is intended to measure the locality's ability to pay for K-12 education.

There are three indicators of the locality's ability to pay, the true market value of real estate, the Virginia adjusted gross income, and the taxable sales.

Revenue indicators are the adjusted daily membership, known as the ADM, and population.

These two indicators played a big part in our LCI calculation.

So sometimes in the first year of a new volume of the LCI, the state budget may have a whole harmless funding in it.

This is usually a political pawn in the state budget process.

So it's something that we don't count on until the budget is officially adopted.

Each locality's index is adjusted to maintain the overall state local share of 45% and an overall state share of 55%.

This slide shows the weights placed on each component of the LCI.

The ADM is given the highest weight, thus it is most important of all the indicators.

This table shows the 2024-2026 LCI compared to prior biennium periods.

The LCI is updated in the odd number years.

There's a timeline between the data elements that inform the process and the current actual market data.

You'll notice for the 2024-2026 biennium, the base year for the indicators is 2021.

The results of using the data elements that are two years old make key budget revenue calculations out of date.

Our LCI increased by 7.5% from the 2022-2024 biennium.

This makes Charlottesville's LCI at 77.02% effective July 1st of 2024.

And this is the beginning of our fiscal year 2025, which we're going into budget development.

We will not know the true impacts of the LCI until the BDOE's calculate calc tool is released.

Because our LCI is high, there's a good chance our state revenues will be down.

The higher the LCI, the greater the ability to pay for, the locality's ability to pay for education.

This next slide,

There's 134 school divisions in the state.

10 school divisions are at the maximum LCI.

There are Arlington, Bath, Goochland, Holland, Lancaster, Rappahannock, Alexandria, Falls Church, and Fairfax City.

Charlottesville is the second highest.

The state averages 40.32%, and our lowest is Rappert.

So I mentioned to you that the ADM was a key weight in the LCI.

Our ADM decreased in that base year of 2021 due to the pandemic that had a very significant impact on our LCI and our population.

Ms.

Hoover, do you by chance know

I mean, just across the board, all other divisions, were they affected the same way?

Are they all being hit?

We compared ourselves to Albemarle, and you'll see that later in the slide.

But no, I didn't go into depth and look at all the other school divisions.

Well, that's the reason I mentioned to the whole harmless is that that's where the whole harmless money would come into play.

This next slide is the three indicators of the locality's ability to pay.

We're higher than the state average.

And then this slide compares us to Albemarle County.

And you can see our values moved pretty much in the same direction as Albemarle's.

Next slide.

I just want to remind everybody, these are the budget priorities that we're going to use as we go through the 2025 budget development process.

And then these are our key dates.

We hope so.

I'm looking every day for it.

Tomorrow.

Yeah.

So yeah, while you don't have the exact number, what is there going to be?

I think this year we have $25 million we're expecting from the state or budgeting.

I can't tell you.

I mean, on average, our percentage of state revenue is around 24%.

And it's been consistent between 23% and 24% for the last five years.

Just as we're developing our agenda for next week's meeting with city council, this seems like the LCI piece would probably be a helpful component for council members to understand so that if the state funding goes down, the ask of our locality is going to increase.

Yeah, I think that's, and just since you brought that up, Ms.

Dooley too, so I, and for the newer board members, we typically have a meeting with council where we kind of present the superintendent's budget or proposed budget and kind of discuss the changes that

We'd like to see this meeting as an extra meeting, which is a great opportunity to kind of introduce, allow us to sit with them, and also to meet Councillor Ostrom and just kind of talk.

And they have asked for a couple of things for us to be prepared to talk with them about.

But definitely, I think this is kind of a nice segue to prep us into

coming into that following meeting, which will be the budget.

Any other questions?

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate the repetition of this every year.

You know, I think it becomes a little bit easier.

All right.

We will have

Ms.

Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Dr. Gurley.

Tonight we're going to share recruitment and retention plan for the 22-23, I mean, excuse me, we're going to go backwards, 23-24 school year.

Josh Herndon joined the team in July.

He's an HR coordinator for the division and he brings to us what experience from the classroom and from building administration.

So he's leading the efforts with recruitment for us.

Thank you, Miss Lewis.

Madam Chairman, members of the board, Dr. Gurley, thank you for the opportunity to present tonight.

Our game plan for recruiting and retaining

the best and brightest teachers for our buildings and for our students and for our community.

So I want to highlight a few of the main ideas in our presentation, provide you with an overview of all the great things that we're currently doing, and also some innovative approaches to how we're going to, again, recruit the best and brightest teachers for Charlottesville City.

So I want to begin

by looking at a quote.

I'm a quote guy.

And so better suggests a journey of constant improvement and makes us feel like we are being invited to contribute our talents and our energies to make progress in that journey.

Better in the infinite game is better than best.

And so I believe that this quote represents something that unites us regardless of the role that we play in our school division, whether that's

as a school board member, as a member of our community, as a teacher, or as a building administrator, or a custodian, or a school nutrition worker.

Like I said, we contribute our talents and energy to make progress and continuously improve.

A common vision, a common mission focused on continuous improvement for our students and our community, that is the theme that you will see throughout our presentation this evening, continuous improvement.

As a former building principal, I've always had to remind myself that it's not a sprint, that it's a marathon, and that this work, it takes time.

Culture change takes time.

And so our focus is to embrace the growth process.

All right, next slide, please.

And so I believe that in any endeavor, you must begin with a clear vision and a clear mission.

to unite the efforts of everybody involved in the organization.

And so our vision for staffing in Charlottesville City is to become the preferred destination for teachers, administrators and support staff throughout the state of Virginia.

Our mission is to be fully staffed in each building with appropriately licensed and endorsed and diverse teachers and administrators dedicated to meeting the needs of all students.

And I promise I'm not going to read from every slide.

I just needed to get through those first couple there.

So I believe that everything that we do in Charlottesville City should point back and align with the goals in our strategic plan.

This slide includes the specific targets embedded in our strategic plan with measurable goals.

Something that I appreciate about our division strategic plan is the focus on continuous improvement.

So to know the next steps to continuous improvement, I believe there must be an awareness of where we currently are.

The next eight slides will provide you with an overview of where we currently are.

It provides context of what is going on around the state, but then brings it back to a focus on Charlottesville City Schools.

So the data in this graph

represents the licensed staff hired to our school division for school year 2023-2024.

Our goal continues to be to make annual progress toward hiring licensed staff of color and for our staff minority representation to match or exceed our city's demographics.

I want to draw your attention to the number one reason teachers are leaving the profession in the state of Virginia.

So if you look at that bar graph,

75% of teachers in the state of Virginia are leaving the profession due to inadequate support for teachers.

I believe that if we focus our efforts on supporting our staff, the other areas highlighted will take care of themselves.

Take a look.

Uh, the workload was too high.

Another reason cited school leadership was ineffective or inadequate salary feel that, um, based on what I've heard from other colleagues and our focus on

Support for our students and support for our staff.

I'm confident that will continue to be able to retain our teachers.

And you'll see later in the presentation that the staff retention rate it has improved between last year and this year.

Um, but as I was saying, I believe that if we can continue supporting our teachers continue supporting our staff, these other areas, the workload being too high,

or ineffective school leadership or inadequate salary.

So to bring that back to more local, you'll notice the two highest cited reasons for teachers leaving Charlottesville City Schools were for personal reasons and new opportunities.

Personal reasons can mean many different things.

Every situation is unique.

Looking statewide, what you'll notice in this graph is a huge discrepancy between newly licensed teachers

and then the number of teachers leaving.

And so what we see is a deficit of 5,482 teachers across the state that all school divisions are trying to make up for.

Next please.

So taking a look at our current needs,

Yes, the next three slides provide information about our current needs across our school division that we will look to fill at the job fairs that I'm going to describe here in a few slides.

The first two slides show the positions by building and the third by department.

So, like I said, I'm not going to read every single piece of this slide you can see there.

As of now, I believe we have an update.

And Ms.

Lewis, you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, but we should be at 26 total positions vacant.

We were able to fill one of those positions since the creation of this slide.

OK, again, by building.

and then the slide describing by departments where our openings are.

OK.

All right, so looking at retention in Charlottesville City, as I mentioned earlier, our retention rates have improved since last year.

And I had to make sure I highlighted this picture of Dr. Gurley breaking it down at our staff welcome back in August.

I believe he's dancing because of these increases in our percentages.

So the retention rates as of September 2023, if you look division wide, we increased by 0.3%.

If you look at our teachers, 1.14% increase.

and administratively 12.6% increase.

All right, I know there's a lot of words on that slide there.

And again, I'm not gonna bore you by reading every single word on there, but these are just, this is an overview.

And there are some things I did not put on the slide, but this is a list of a lot of the efforts that our staff throughout the buildings

and at the central office level, the efforts being made to retain our staff and support them.

One of the roles that I really am passionate about and was able to come in and have the opportunity to do was meet with each of our new staff members to the division at day 30, at day 60 and day 90.

And Miss Lewis, that was one of her ideas.

And it's been a, you know,

It's been really fun getting to go into the buildings, meet with all of our new staff, talk with them, and create a connection between the buildings and central office.

I feel like that was one of the things, one of the goals was to bridge a gap between the buildings and central office so that if a teacher has a question, they have a point of contact.

Not just an HR question, but anything

One of our new staff might need to know who to contact if they have a certain need.

Having that early meeting with them provided them that access.

So one of the things also that working in a few different school divisions, one of the things that has really impressed me with Charlottesville City Schools is the professional learning program that is offered to our teachers.

They have a lot of choice in the

Yeah, just professional learning opportunities offered by our division leaders and, you know, through the division-wide professional learning days or school-based professional learning.

Yeah, there's like I said, there's just that there's a plethora of opportunities for our new staff and all of our teachers to engage in professional learning.

All right, some of the highlights, again, unique to Charlottesville City Schools from that list is support for our novice teachers in our mentoring program.

We have embedded school-based supports for all teachers, whether that's through department leads, grade level leads, professional learning communities.

And the new staff, that was one of the common themes when I spoke to our new staff and I asked them how well they're feeling supported.

Oh, sorry.

They talked a lot about their colleagues stepping in, checking on them.

They talked a lot about their department.

Come on, Pat.

I think we're good now.

Yeah, so the teachers were talking a lot about the support that they felt from their colleagues, from their building administrators,

Thanks.

I think we're good.

Say that again.

OK, next slide, please.

Okay, so in a lot of the meetings when I met with the new teachers to our division, if you've ever read Gary Chapman's book, The Five Love Languages, one of the things that he talks about is being able to speak to how, like understand how somebody receives love, how somebody demonstrates love.

And so as a building principal, that was one of the things that I tried to focus on was learning how the teachers receive support.

And because I can support somebody in one way, but if they don't, if that's not, that doesn't communicate support to them.

That's not going to register as support.

And so I think our building administrators have done an excellent job getting to know their staff one to one.

And that was one of the things that the new teachers to our division said was, you know, I feel supported.

I feel like they're present.

I feel like if I have a need, I can go talk to them.

But anyway, so that was one of the questions I asked was, what does teacher support look like for you?

And in the first round of meetings, I met with 57 of our new staff.

And some of the responses, they said support looks like specific feedback on how I can improve.

And that was encouraging.

Sometimes people are a little bit sensitive about getting feedback, but the new staff was saying, I want feedback.

I want to get better.

Next one was one-to-one check-ins from administrators.

The third one there, administrative presence.

Like I mentioned earlier, availability.

If there was a concern, that staff member wants to know that, they can go and talk to an administrator if there's a concern.

Words of encouragement, affirmation, and acknowledgment.

The other one was clear expectations and I think we can all agree we all want to know what's expected of us and to help us have a target of what we need to do to be successful.

And then lastly, timely communication and a response.

So to change gears from recruitment to, or I'm sorry, retention to recruitment, looking at our teacher recruitment fairs that we are looking at in 2024, especially here in the next month, we're looking at attending nine job fairs.

across the state in different locations.

We have the typical James Madison University, UVA, Christopher Newport.

There's a diversity in education virtual teacher job fair.

There's a HBCU and minority serving institutions virtual career fair that we're going to participate in March.

Norfolk State this fall in 2024, we will have presence there.

William & Mary, Bridgewater, and of course, our own Charlottesville City Schools job fair that is, we're hosting that Saturday, February 3rd.

And we were intentional about doing the job fair earlier this year because as, when I look at a lot of these other scheduled recruitment fairs,

We wanted to be first.

We wanted to make sure that we had our job fair first before these other ones so that when these college graduates or the other teachers, we get first pick when they come.

And I think back to my days right out of college, came to the job fair over in Harrisonburg back in, and it was February.

got an offer and I was done interviewing.

And so I want to make sure that Charlottesville City has that first opportunity.

So yeah, and that's going to be an all hands on deck type of operation.

We're going to have by Monday, January 8th, we're going to have those jobs posted.

We're going to have some

kind of a blast presence of the job fair so that those teachers can get on there, register electronically, and our administrative staff can get on there and start making phone calls to set up those meetings.

And so on Saturday, February 3rd, from 10 to two, that's when we're gonna hold our job fair here in Charlottesville City.

Yes, ma'am.

So what our game plan is, I wanted to make sure that I communicated the game plan with our current building administrators first, and then we're going to work with our communications department to leverage social media presence and some of the other local outlets around this area.

And Ms.

This is what it's posted on the division website on job placements boards.

Piedmont Virginia Community College has a placement board as well.

The meeting with communications is transpiring tomorrow.

So once we have an update from communications on the new markup communication document, as soon as that's available, it'll be posted, they'll give us an update, but I anticipate it'll be Monday or Tuesday next week, it'll be it'll show up on our website.

And then the proliferation of going out to the other spaces that will happen within the week.

So then the posting is going to be up on our job posting board for

Two weeks for people to come in and apply.

We're going to do a more broad scope of having elementary and secondary so that all of our elementary principals can interview any of the candidates that are under elementary.

All of our secondary principals can interview anybody that's under secondary.

So how do we know what openings we have for next year?

So the intent form has been delayed just slightly for this 2% increase.

As soon as we get the 2% increase communication out on Monday, we'll send out that intention form.

So that's really, you don't want to send out the form before

So the timeline's just delayed just slightly.

By the job fair, we will have, as far as HR, we'll have the data as to the intent form.

The intent form will go out.

If not, I anticipate the day after Martin Luther King Day, and then they have been given historically two weeks, which will close the window before the job fair.

It takes place here at the high school.

So we'll organize the fair to happen with people entering at the front entrance and then that lobby right outside of B Commons or in between A Commons and B Commons will be school setup tables for each one of the schools.

The HR team will have a calendar that says Maria is being interviewed by Burley Moran at 10 o'clock, so each one of our principals will have teams of individuals, typically it's how it is, they decide if they want to interview

AP in principal, or if they want to have teachers and reading specialists, but they'll identify their teams and have a set spot.

Okay.

And are students included in that?

So in the past, and we'll get that communication out to our history teachers,

We've had students from the history classes doing that welcoming of staff, just like they get community service points for being at the school board meeting.

This will be an opportunity for them to get additional community service points, helping, supporting people to the right location.

They know the facility.

We're open to as many volunteers and supports as possible.

So again, we're going to work with communications on tomorrow and start to solicit or publish that solicitation.

And as we learn of community partners, certainly work with Dr. Denise Johnson with our volunteers to figure out what additional partners can join.

Thank you.

And this will be our third annual fair.

The last two have been very well attended.

21 individuals were hired from our last years.

And we also had when you spoke of students, we also had, I remember in two cases where we had students who sat on interview panels, one was an LMA student for teaching position.

It takes the community.

So we'll all be working together for the success of bringing in those candidates early on.

kind of discussed, we discussed a lot of these.

One of the things I wanted to highlight is a new approach to recruiting.

And so one of the things that so if you imagine you were a new teacher and coming out of college and you've got a lot of different options of where you are interested in teaching and you go to our

Our new updated website looks nice, visually appealing.

And then you see a student video or a student testimonial about how much value they're gaining from being a member of our school community and also teachers.

So teachers and students as ambassadors providing testimonials for what makes Charlottesville City Schools a unique and special place to work and call home.

and then we would post these also to the various social media accounts and our school division's website.

Also looking at potentially a referral program like providing rewards for current Charlottesville city staff who refer or bring in teachers from colleges or other divisions and also participation in virtual teacher recruitment fairs.

Next slide, please.

So I wanted to end on a quote as well.

This is something that's been a quote that is personal to me as I want to be a better father and also a better professional and better school leader.

So our focus is on better today than yesterday and better tomorrow than today.

Next.

Yes, thank you for that.

Presentation.

There's a lot of information.

I really appreciated the quotes at the beginning and end.

A couple of things.

One, just along the lines of the retention side, you had some good stats there.

I don't know if we can go back to that slide.

And we've improved year on year, which is great to see.

How do we compare, though, to other districts and or the state level?

I don't know the statistics off the top of my head.

And then the other thing is that I think we're doing a lot of great things and you have a lot of what are areas, though, that we need to improve upon, that we're not doing great at and not trying to lay blame on anybody.

One of the strategic plan goals is to ensure that we're recruiting a diverse teacher population.

And there are times that we do recruit and they're here for a period of time and they depart.

So that's an area of weakness for us.

We need to recruit them.

But then after three or four years, we need to really have them sustained in our community for a longer span of time.

So we've had waves of

High diversity placement, and then four years later, we have a dip in that diversity.

Well, that's going to be a challenge for the community.

The people aren't necessarily leaving because of things that's happening at Charlottesville City.

Some of them are leaving for the culture, the entertainment, the other things that a larger city provides them.

And that's going to be a competitive force no matter what we do.

Sorry.

I can certainly make the environment better.

I think one thing we've heard and we've had these conversations through some of our equity discussions, black people want to see black people, and you don't see black people, you may not see the, I don't have the social outlets within the community, I don't have the professional network, and so I think that that's been

A lot of times when we're asking our employees of color, like, why are you leaving?

I just don't feel connected to the community.

And so I think that that's where we can partner collaboratively with our city and other places.

You want spaces, you know, and I know that

personally speaking for myself.

Ms.

Burns, any questions?

Mr. Morse?

Ms.

Cooper?

Ms.

I mean, I don't know, Mr. Meyers, if there was something specific that you were getting out there.

If you wanted to just say it, that would be helpful.

I think one thing that is on our minds all the time that would help with recruitment and retention is compensation, right?

And so that is something that we are consistently looking at to pay our teachers more.

We know some of the reasons why they're leaving is because you can't afford to live in Charlottesville.

And so I think those are all

elements that we are very much aware of.

No, they're new.

I saw a lot of great things that we're doing, but I right.

Is it compensation?

Is it OK?

We need to have a program to connect our teachers and staff of color to other networks here.

OK, great.

You know, is there you talked about supporting our principal, supporting their teams.

And do we have enough admin staff

to actually provide feedback to all those teachers or not.

Are they getting the feedback they need or not?

And do we need a program to do that?

I mean, those are just kind of the things I was potentially hoping to hear that, again, that we've heard that, again, would maybe help improve retention.

There was a list of things at the state level why popes are leaving.

Maybe you guys can speak to like the exit interviews.

It's not we don't always get that level of specificity.

That would be very helpful.

So the people that are transparent with their departures are often saying it's because of relocation, advancement or personal reasons when you go through and try to

peer down or drill down to the personal reasons.

There's a myriad of reasons that people provide, but they're going to check the box personal reason so as not to.

expose themselves when you're going through the interview.

So there are one on one exit interviews and they'll tell you explicitly there wasn't the support in the classroom with the group of students I'm working with or the administration.

And we take that data and support our administrators by providing

that cyclical approach of saying we need to shore up these systems here when we do hear that information.

I my follow up question had to do with the 3060 90, which I think is great.

So you mentioned, so along the lines of Mr. Meyer's questions, I guess, so when you're getting feedback from them, I mean, we listed things that they felt positive about, but if there are areas of concern, what does that look like?

Are you taking it, like you said, Ms.

So sometimes it affects the structure or the systems that are working in the school building, and we can actually provide

communications support to the school to say we need to make sure we firm up this area or focus.

When it comes to feedback with evaluation, I can also go into the classroom, do walkthroughs with administration as well.

But since we're doing this at 30 days in, we're getting that data really early so that we can respond.

So 30, 60, 90 days, correct?

How about can we like extend that out to the end of the school year so that we get some follow up and see if any concerns that they're bringing forward might have been resolved?