School Board Meeting   8/1/2024

But through the leadership of Coach Braun and his coaching staff and this dedication of his players, the goal was immediate.

The team faced some challenges.

They started the season with a tie to Stanton, which they then followed up with a 7-0 win.

Then they had close losses to Western Albemarle and district play that I'm sure if you asked all of them, they would like to play those games again.

And then they lost in the regional championship to a very good Jefferson Forest team.

However, the theme of redemption played out for the Black Knights by advancing to the state championship to face Jefferson Forest again.

This time, the Black Knights were ready.

And with the support from the community, which showed up in huge numbers at the game, thanks to Dr. Gurley and division staff with supporting a spirit bus, the Black Knights pulled off a 2-1 overtime win over undefeated Jefferson Forest to win the state 4A championship.

They finished the season with a record of 16-4-2.

The boys' soccer team's journey exemplifies resilience, teamwork, and the unwavering support of our school community.

Their accomplishment, their achievement, not only brings pride to Charlottesville High School, but also serves as an inspiration to all aspiring athletes and students.

At this time, I present to you the 4A state champions, the Charlottesville boys' soccer team.

Please come forward as I call your name.

Number zero, Jacob Meader.

Number one, Graham Stevenson.

Number two, Sammy Gabbardini.

Number three, Gilbert Kishindi.

Number four, Landon Neal.

Number five, Cole Davis.

Number six, Matthias Zimmerman.

Number seven, Garrett Williams.

Number eight, Mulamba Mucuna.

Number nine, Timson Duallo.

Number 10, Amin Zakari.

Number 11, Abbas Noor.

Number 12, Elias Zell.

Number 13, Anthony Medina.

Number 14, Omar Castillo Lara.

Number 16, Guy Maguma.

Number 17, Solomon Ross Milligan.

Number 18, Jackson Elmore.

Number 19, Cooper Moreland.

Number 20, Ethan Salvatierra.

Number 21, Dylan Bazzoni.

Number 22, Leo Manca.

Number 23, Jonathan Alomar.

Number 24, Reese Williams.

Number 25, Zion Tello.

Number 26, Wendell Carr.

and number 99, Jonathan Irani.

The soccer team was coached by assistant coach Ayat Mohamed, assistant coach Saeed Osman, assistant coach Andrew Manning and assistant coach Hussain Osman and head coach, the Central Virginia coach of the year, Martine Braun.

They know how to do this.

They're used to getting pictures taken.

Good job guys.

Thank you.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks coach.

Well, thank you.

These achievements marked a year filled with men's school pride for Charlottesville High School but also served as an inspiration to our entire community.

I appreciate the school board for formally recognizing and celebrating the accomplishments of these state champions.

By honoring their achievements, we celebrate the values of excellence, perseverance, and teamwork that are integral to our school's commission.

I have to jump in here because if we let this season end without saying a great big thank you to the person who has stepped into this role so capably, so ably with such spirit and such leadership, then shame on us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you on behalf of the school board, all of the student athletes, and Mr. Jones, thank you again.

All right, we're moving on to adoption of our consent agenda.

Yeah, I don't know.

Are you on?

Testing.

I'm gonna, I'm talking, I'll try again.

Alright, so we there we go.

We did have a motion from Dr. Mr. Morse, and then a second from Miss Dooley.

For the adoption of our consent agenda.

There were no indications that anybody had questions.

Yes.

Any opposed?

Great, thank you so much.

All right.

First up, we have the appointment of clerk and deputy clerk.

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Any opposed?

All right.

Next, I will ask Ms.

Swift if she will come forward.

You know, we brought forth our policy updates back during the spring.

Yes.

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

In our last board meeting in May, we presented the 24-25 VSBA policy updates for your review.

I move that we approve the policy updates as presented.

So we had a motion by Ms.

Dooley, a second by Ms.

Cooper.

Any questions, discussion, concerns?

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Any opposed?

Thank you.

All right.

Now our items for discussion.

Up first, we have Dr. Odie with our student reps for the school board from CHS.

Fancy.

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

I am honored tonight to present the names of our 2024-25 candidates for student representatives to the board.

Our representatives that have been selected are Harper Ulrich, who is an 11th grade student at the high school,

I don't think the other, oh, Anya, Anya is here as well.

So we have two of our representatives here tonight.

to the board.

I would love to bring all three of them again next week when we can have all three available to take pictures if that is the will of the board.

Any questions, discussion?

Second by Ms.

Cooper.

All right.

Any questions, discussion?

Yes.

Thank you.

I am, I'm actually really grateful to be here.

I appreciate this.

Greetings, by the way, Madam Chair, Dr. Gurley, members of the board,

I do know Harper Ulrich, our school board rep, and I got a chance to meet Anya and Nolia this evening and so I'm proud to be here as they represent us and to celebrate our Charlottesville High School soccer team, state champ tennis team, as well as Pierce, Atlanta Pierce, rather.

Just a lot of exciting things at Charlottesville High School.

So I am principal

monitoring this of Charlottesville High School.

I have updates on several safety features or processes that are impacting.

So I'll be going over our cell phone procedures, including an update on state guidance, exterior door access control, the weapons detectors for events with anticipated attendance of more than 250 participants, the improved visitor management system, the commons bathroom construction update, and our e-hall pass system.

So first, as it relates to our cell phone policy, the expectation is that it's off and away.

We expect to be in compliance with state guidelines and look forward to the governor's continued guidance at the state level on what this policy looks like from the states end.

We recognize that cell phones and similar personal devices can be disruptive, but we will maintain our work in building and prioritizing relationships with our students and with our families and build off the success that was experienced over the course of last year in redirecting cell phone use and engaging students in meaningful opportunities for redirection.

and through our relationships with our students and our relationships with our families, we will continue to enforce an off and away expectation throughout the day in all spaces throughout the building.

We certainly believe that the less time on phones and the experience that they have with social media takes a step towards improving their mental health along with our off and away expectations and the other tiered services that we provide through CHS and our relationship with our students and our family.

We're hopeful that our expectations will be met.

We want students to rise to those expectations.

So for the, is my mic on?

For the sake of the public, could you please just again in a little bit more detail explain what our current policy or practices are and expectations are and then how we can look to support

The expectation for Charlottesville high school students is that their device is off and away.

So that expectation is that the device is off and away as they when they come into Charlottesville high school and that exists as they transition through all their spaces.

So instructional spaces in the hallways and in the commons areas or cafeteria spots where they would be where they would be dining.

The expectation is that if a staff member engages with a student to ask them to put their phone away, that expectation is met.

We recognize that there have been certainly some difficulties and sometimes in responding to behaviors or levels of defiance around that.

Our work continues to be in refining our practices, how we build relationships, how we engage students in redirection, how we engage students in the classroom as well for

meaningful and engaging instruction during the times that they're in that space to help create greater opportunities for the phone to be less of a distraction and less of an issue specifically in instructional spaces.

So my understanding last year as far as the practices went, if teachers needed help and there was some pushback regarding phone management in the classroom that they would call for an administrator to help.

Yes.

So in conjunction with the administrative team, other partners that might be in support

include our CSAs that if there is a challenge that exists with a student not being compliant with either putting their phone away on their own person or in the classroom, that we would be in a position to respond and support both that student and that teacher in helping to meet that expectation.

And then that expectation exists if that becomes a

If it grows in contention or if we feel like that's unsuccessful, then we will continue to work with that student and their family in helping to understand the importance of meeting this expectation and following these expectations.

And then last year, I mean, there were a lot of things going on last year, but I know that there had been talk, I believe amongst the committee at a certain point in time about trying to roll this out to grade cohorts to have a designated session or cohort meeting where they really did some education and communication to the why and helping the students understand the why.

So we've already started the messaging to families via Parent Square and through our media platforms.

We will continue to refine this work and this expectation with a staff next week as we meet during our pre-week time.

and then we have already established a school-wide assembly for the first week of school and then cohort grade level expectations meetings are already set for the first few weeks of school where we will be both communicating and reinforcing this expectation.

It is also going to be, as we are refining what our current schedule is, including what we are doing with our Black nighttime with a focus and an emphasis on social and emotional wellness and connectedness, that we're hoping that the culture that informs these responses is steady and both positive and stable.

What I understood from some of the experiences I do understand where there had some challenges to be sure was that there was a growing responsiveness from students to me beating this expectations and staff feeling

to a certain extent successful in engaging students positively and effectively and students following those expectations.

Hi, Dr. Malone.

Welcome.

I want to ask some feedback that we received last year from parents and families was how do they contact their student when a need arise at home, change of plans, any communication needs that they need to have with their student.

Yes, certainly.

And I have a high school student as well, so I understand the value that we put in that communication and for it to be direct and accessible.

And I certainly believe that with their own personal Chromebook device, for example, that the features that exist within that device, so whether or not that's direct email or through Google Chat,

that there are ways.

They are often up during instructional times.

They're accessible to students during instructional times.

So I think that's certainly one mechanism for families and for a mutual reciprocal dialogue between a student and their family.

and then certainly if there is an urgent matter that needs to be communicated that the office staff and the administrators or someone who's in a position, personnel or staff who are in a position to help will help deliver those messaging as well.

Hi, Dr. Malone.

Hi.

My comment is to encourage you and your team to also think about as you're thinking through kind of the discipline response matrix to also think about if there's opportunities to celebrate the student body successfully embracing this new norm.

And if there's ways that we can help support in that regard, you are really mic'd up now.

Congratulations.

Yeah, so just thinking about the positive reinforcement as well, not just a punitive response to students who are having trouble.

This is a big change for all of us.

I can say to that point I appreciate that and I do think that that exists not only around the acknowledgement and the affirmation around sort of this device conversation but in so many other ways of students because there's obviously something very special about Charlottesville High School and the remarkably of our students

they're often doing really amazing things a lot and so being in a position our team is focusing on both through our positive school culture work but through our admin and leadership team of developing multiple opportunities of positive affirmation and positions of seeing and acknowledging both from staff to students but through our student mentors with each other as well so I affirm and concur with that.

Thank you.

Alright, thank you.

So the next feature that is an upgrade to current systems at Charlottesville High School are the exterior door access control.

Currently, our staff in Charlottesville City School staff use a FOB for FOB entry.

I think it's prevalent on almost every exterior door at Charlottesville High School, and that also exists at other Charlottesville elementary schools.

The change specifically that this speaks to is there is now going to be a two-way feature.

So staff who are with a group of students that are going to be transitioning from an interior instructional space to an exterior space for an instructional purpose, they will use the FOB.

They will activate the FOB on their regress.

And then as they go out with the group, once their group is left,

There's another access control panel that they will then use the fob to activate that the door is now clear and that the group that has left is authorized to have leave and then the door is then shut and it is a mechanism to affirm that whoever exited that door had permissions to do so as evidenced by their fob use.

In the event that someone exits a door, either without permission or without their FOB, that door will activate an alarm.

A localized alarm will sound, and an alert will then go to the administrative team and to our CSAs.

It'll send a notification via email and via text that someone exited a door.

possibly without permission and that alerts us to then go and to respond to that situation.

The weapons detectors for public ticketed events, the Chaya Open Gate Detectors will be used at public ticketed events with expected participation of 250 participants or more.

Largely we're thinking these are gonna be our outdoor athletic events.

In addition to having clear bags for ticketed events, we have had some training already about their use and their capacity.

That training included some division staff, Charlottesville High School administrators, our CSAs, and we will continue that training with our staff and the athletic department to be sure.

I believe that signage and other communication about its use and its functions is forthcoming.

Pat, can I get three mics?

I don't know if we're supposed to joke them.

The improved visitor management system, this is also through the securely package.

It's adopted at some of, at least, I think at least one other elementary school was using something similar.

The visitor management systems have been in place in city schools.

And essentially, I think this upgrade is that it's a,

License to the identification is scanned and it goes through a background check and alerts if something comes up.

And we already were doing this.

OK, moving on to the restroom renovations that are underway in B Commons.

They are so very near completion.

We expect that this is completed by next week.

I think they are in the final phase, I think, of getting the floors sealed and cleaned and getting the doors installed.

But ultimately, this is going to be an all gender single stall toilet space.

I think we have over a dozen or so.

It's gonna encourage better privacy, accountability.

The project was begun back in the spring, and I think we're, again, we're close to having it at completion.

And it'll be essentially stalls around, individualized stalls around the perimeter of that space, and then a common sink area for hand washing that centers in the middle of that area in B Commons.

So the e-hall pass system is also a through the securely suite.

And this is something that the Charlottesville high school staff did some initial conversations and some training on last year.

We had some staff that were curious about this option and went and visited some schools and participated in some dialogue about this system.

And essentially it's a digital pass system where a student can generate a pass

from their device that is then alerted to the teacher at their device.

That teacher can acknowledge that that student has asked for a pass and then approve it.

And then what it does is that student then has a dedicated amount of time and to go to a dedicated space that is determined on that pass.

This system, because it is a digital platform that teachers will have a dashboard, we're going to be able to be accountable for our own actions and staff as facilitators of our instructional spaces.

It's going to be super important that our work include bell-to-bell instruction and that we preserve those first 10 minutes of transition to an instructional time and that last 10 minutes of that transition of the instructional time are preserved

for quality instruction.

So we are not permitting students, unless there's an emergency, to transition in the first 10 or the last 10 minutes of a period.

This system helps us to be in better support of a structured response to that.

fairly accessible and having used it both on the student side and on the staff side, we find that it's an efficient use.

It works really well with our devices.

We're able to limit the number of students in a designated area that receive a pass.

We're able to set time limits and then we're able to run information over a period of time to see what our trends were about our pass usage and to either the frequency that

Teacher might be using passes or maybe using them at a time that they shouldn't or a student who is in overuse of the passes.

So this is going to put us in a position of being accountable and structured around our actions and expectations as it relates to student movement through the hall.

And I think this is going to be a significant opportunity for us to improve on multiple students being in spaces at times when they shouldn't be.

We will have, I think it's important, the administrative team has already done some training on this with Securely.

We've had at least two training sessions with their staff.

Our staff will be trained in this next week during pre-week and that'll include an overview of its use from the Securely representatives and then we will, as a staff,

workshop and simulate what it's like to use this pass.

We will have staff be in a position as teachers as well as students and sort of role play this system to keep working in refining our systems and processes about how this will work.

So I think I heard you say it has the capability of limiting the number of students, say, on a hallway that are out.

So how does that work?

Yes.

So there is a dashboard that the teacher could keep up on a device that they have in their space.

If you were just toggling through tabs, so if you're doing your instructional work, you could easily toggle back to a dashboard that will indicate the number of students that currently have passes that are out there, and that can alert that person, or the teacher rather, that we cannot approve a pass at this point.

But it'll show a real number relative to a location at a certain time, and give that feedback on a dashboard.

That same dashboard would exist for any of our staff that are on duty in these and spaces that are close to where these transitions might take place.

One of the things that Ms.

Waters shared with me when I sat with her back in the spring when she shared the little video is that if Emily and I are not getting along and my counselor knows that we're not getting along, that we can be tagged to not be out in the spaces at the same time.

So let's say Lisa needs to go to the restroom and I generate my pass.

Dr. Malone has approved it and I'm out.

It's far too long for you to be out.

Let me say that off the bat.

My stomach was upset, but I'm now wandering the hall.

So what happens then?

One, well before that 30-minute marker, we would want to be alerted that Lisa has been in the hall.

She had a restroom.

The approved time was this time.

And right now, she's not returned.

And we need someone to help locate where she would be.

That can come through.

our own internal communications.

So we would ask the teacher if the student is gone for that inordinate amount of time without knowledge and without understanding as to the purpose, then they would need to have alerted us much sooner that we would need to then go and make sure that we are accountable for your location.

but I want to make sure that in so in that moment what can also happen is our CSAs do have a device like I think it's like an iPad mini that can also have this dashboard that exists out there so they can also be able to check passes in real time as we're moving through the halls and monitoring those spaces both as an admin team or as CSAs or staff that are on duty then we will be monitoring in real time

Hey, I saw Lisa at one point, now she's in a different location.

Great.

That was my next question.

Thank you.

What we would be able to have at a minimum would be the devices that the CSAs use.

That's my understanding of their functionality.

That's a great question.

I do believe that the CSAs all have a dedicated one.

We all have our other devices that we have.

I'm going to pivot to Ms.

Powell.

I can speak to that.

The system's web-based, so the iPad minis are there for the CSAs because their role is portable and in the hallway, and then all teachers and all staff have your instructional workstation, which is your board, and your Chromebox, and then they have a professional workstation, which would be a recommended spot for these passes, and so it's a web-based system.

So anybody with web access will have access to the interface, but specifically for the CSA is because of the portability issue.

It feels like we're asking teachers to do one more thing, which I know we are.

But wonder if like, are there automatic alerts?

Or is a teacher going to have to keep refresh, refresh, refresh?

Or, oh my gosh, I have three students out.

Let me check.

Like,

I just don't know if you have any reference point to that versus like a more manual mining of information versus an alert that come like somebody's indicator turns red you've been gone greater than 15 minutes versus being so focused on instruction 30 minutes later you're like oh gosh did Lisa come back I think she did where

I'm thankful that you're thinking about it from that perspective as well.

This is initially staff-driven transition and consideration.

The way I have been thinking about this particular system, is it an improvement over what we currently have?

And so those same expectations and that same accountability for generating a pass or waiting on a student currently exists.

So I think in that way, I think that that's fairly linear.

I think that in the instructional space, I totally think there's gonna be some adjusting to how this works.

The dashboard and the pass themselves are big buttons, red,

I have a good visual cue that just gives me an indicator that I can act and take action.

I wonder if in some ways

and we do have some refining to do.

We've not used it and this is why I sort of love the idea of us teachers who know students really well and know their own work systems and processes really well of workshopping and simulating the what-ifs so that we can keep working on what that refinement looks like.

But the way I have perceived it and through the training and the visual and the way the dashboard lays out, one, I think it certainly is going to help improve our own accountability, which I think is significant.

But I do wonder if it's actually going to really improve our

accessibility of just this pretty straightforward, very, very common practice of I need to go to the restroom.

Where do I go?

How long do I go for?

Great.

Sure.

Well, thank you.

Any other questions?

Well, appreciate it.

We will continue to be communicating about this work and these expectations, along with so many other things that we're excited about at Charlottesville High School.

So I appreciate you all taking the time to listen to me about this.

Hi.

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

Tonight, I'm going to share with you an update on the multi-tiered system of supports.

I am going to be brief, but I could talk on this for decades.

So our multi-tiered system of supports is woven throughout our strategic plan framework.

It's within goals and strategies for increasing academic achievement, providing a culture of safety, wellness, and belonging, supporting our staff, and

fiscal responsibility, it encompasses it all.

And while I'm here sharing this information with you, I want to acknowledge that the hard work that happens on a daily basis in Charlottesville City Public Schools to implement, evaluate, and refine our processes is the collective efforts.

We have Joe Bain coordinators, we have Patrick Farrell, Jody Murphy, Stacy Readall, Melissa Mitchum, Bianca Johnson,

They're working to, their work is essential to our framework to be aligned and integrated.

Our principals and assistant principals invest in this work with their time and their leadership at their schools.

And then our domain chairs, our problem solving teams, our teachers, interventionists, everybody is working together to refine and align.

That's the big thing really with our MTSS framework.

All with the goal of benefiting students.

So I'm going to touch base a little bit on the overarching principles of the multi-tiered system of supports.

So they're not separate, but I'm going to try to present them a little bit separately.

So the first one is screening.

So we implement universal screening to identify whether students are at risk for not meeting

their grade level benchmarks.

And that's not just for academics, we use universal screening measures for non-academic areas as well.

And we know that in addition to assessments that are aligned with our assessment calendar, our early warning system that combines attendance, behavior, and course completion is essential for us to know whether students are on track to graduate.

Then we have our multi-level prevention system, and this is our continuum of instruction and intervention across the domains.

So reading, math, our positive school culture, attendance, student family engagement, and mental health domains.

The MTSS teams ensure that what we're providing to students is evidence-based, culturally and linguistically responsive, and is matched with our students and our students' needs.

and we provide a resource guide to our staff where they can get that information and make decisions based on evidence-based practices.

So then we have progress monitoring.

So progress monitoring is used to evaluate the effectiveness of what we do.

So that's the effectiveness of our core instruction.

We gather data at the student level, the grade level, the school level, and division-wide in order to make decisions.

at all of those levels as well.

At the division level, progress monitoring is our strategic plan dashboard, right?

That's how are we doing, are we doing the things we said we were going to do, and are they working for our students?

So then one of the pieces that ties all of those things together is our use of data to make decisions about instruction and intensification.

So our progress monitoring and our universal screening data

is combined to be able to make those good decisions for students.

Some examples of this, so if a student is in a reading intervention and their progress monitoring data shows that they are approaching their goal, their reading goal.

then we know that we need to provide that.

As their universal screening data increases and they're nearing grade level benchmarks, we want them to exit from that intervention.

Another example would be like at a grade level, our PLCs are using unit assessments, map data, progress monitoring data, make sure that the classroom instruction is matched with the student needs.

Our instructional coaches are essential for that work in PLCs.

but then a domain team so our positive school culture team might look at our office

and see that there's an increase in a certain type of student behavior.

So how are we going to respond to that with our school-wide lessons?

Are we going to have a cohort meeting if it's just one grade level?

Are we going to increase our supervision during transitions?

So what Dr. Malone was talking about, even with the e-haul pass system, that provides us data to be able to respond to our students and adjust accordingly.

And then at the division level, we use data to effectively allocate resources based on the needs at schools.

And we'll hear a little bit more about that when we get to attendance.

The straight numbers, so by the numbers for our multi tiered system of support right now all of our benefit our tier one core instruction across those domains.

But then at the end of 2324

About 3,500 total intervention plans were implemented in Charlottesville City Schools.

They used 68 different evidence-based strategies.

We had 160 people attach those interventions doing that progress monitoring and support.

And what's great about how we collect that data is we can even see like down to the domain how many interventions were provided.

And then we as a division level team have used that data to make some decisions to support our schools more effectively.

So I wanted to bring a spotlight to attendance.

We are tackling attendance using this multi-tiered system of supports framework.

We know that good school attendance requires some things for all students and families.

And then as students need more intensive supports, we want to layer those on top.

So one of the first things that we set ourselves the task of doing was ensuring that our attendance data is accurate.

So we are using an enhanced dashboard to be able to quickly identify students who are at risk for being chronically absent.

The division level team this year led by Patrick Farrell has put together a handbook to ensure data accuracy, but also help teams know when to intervene and how to verify whether a student is at risk for chronic absenteeism.

It includes protocols that will align our practices across our schools to make it bring clarity to when it's appropriate to access court services when we want to refer to outside agencies for additional supports.

and that we want to be addressing the root cause for the individual student or the family.

And so if the root cause is part of how the student and family feel engaged with the school, that's going to be a different type of intervention and support than if it's an individual student who needs mental health support or a family that needs resource support in order to get their student to school.

on time every day.

And then we also identified through our end of year data that we had some schools, we used a combination of behavioral and mental health intervention data and attendance data to identify that we had three schools that required additional

Boots on the ground, hands on support for families and students.

We identified those schools to be Summit, Jackson-Biah, and CHS.

And so those schools are going to get additional social work support this school year so that they can continue to provide the high quality mental health intervention and provide additional interventions to students and families with the goal of getting kids to school on time every day.

This visual is from Attendance Works, which is our hub for accessing evidence-based interventions for attendance, but I really appreciate how this highlights that our multi-tiered framework

leads to the positive conditions that encourage students to come to school.

And so we can't, this isn't a student and family engagement domain team meeting and talking about attendance.

This is literacy and math ensuring that there is high quality engaging instruction.

It's our events that happen during the day and after school.

It's what's available

and to build their mental wellness.

Then it's that positive school culture that's established through safety and belonging each and every day.

So this year you've heard kind of a little bit about what we did at our division leadership team this year.

We really focused on developing practices and systems that were equitable and common across our schools.

Each of our domains has an implementation guide that lays out month by month what those domain teams should be focusing on.

And we've laid out the professional learning that supports all staff, people who are on domain teams, and then individual interventionists for MTSS throughout the year.

So then next year our division team is shifting to a focus on fidelity.

So what we've said what we're doing and next year are we doing it and is it working?

So one of the first tasks that our attendance teams, school-based attendance teams were given was to look at what practices are going to be provided for all families, what makes your school a welcoming place,

and those teams are going to bring that information to the leadership team and we're going to look at their absenteeism data and share some knowledge and best practices among each other.

I have a quick question.

Thanks for this presentation.

So we'll be implementing a program at Walker that's focused on substance abuse prevention.

We got a grant and that involves Jessica Brantley with Health and PE, Joni Murphy with mental wellness.

And so at Walker we're really focusing on prevention

and then we're working with Region 10 to expand and refine what was available last year and evaluate whether that's meeting the needs of our students, what else we need to do both to bring awareness to and prevention as well as respond to students that we know have personal health needs.

Right now, we have a provider who's trained in one method of addressing substance abuse.

I feel like we've heard that before and I just want to say and make it clear that is the service our students need and if Region 10 is not the answer we need to employ services elsewhere.

We've been having this conversation about substance abuse.

We know that it is an issue and I really look for a substantial effort to be made in that space to see progress and work done.

And then another question, have we identified maybe students that struggled or have historically struggled with attendance over the last one, two, three years?

And are we proactively summertime gearing up, reaching out to those families, reaching out to those students?

Yeah, so we can identify all of the students who were chronically absent in previous years.

That information is available to schools, to our school mental health professionals, and our school social workers return next week, and we'll be hitting the ground running.

We hope through this differentiated staffing model for social work that it also, looking to next summer, it really intensely focuses on keeping that continuity going because our social work staff are 10 months, so we need to use all the resources we have and look at how they can be used over the summer.

whether it's through like using some of the all-in funds for hourly and working with community providers and partners.

Ms.

Raznik, I think along the lines of some of my board members, fellow board members here, I mean, I think we all do agree that

last year.

I mean, there was a lot of discussion about what other types of supports we could have for substance abuse and thought we were heading, you know, a certain way with an MOU and that didn't work out or the services weren't what we thought.

And I think we are just all very supportive.

I want you to know, and I know Dr. Gurley knows this and is aligned with this, but I think we really want to be proactive and being able to

cement some type of program and supports for our students like yesterday.

So whatever you need, please let us know.

And Dr. Gurley has charged us with looking at what a job description would look like, what we need for our students.

So as we are evaluating our current model, when we get into the budget season, before we just jump all in, we want to make sure that we've evaluated all the resources starting from Walker on up, and then really think strategically about not just, you know, we've talked about what a position would look like, but like how this person who

you know, credentialed in substance abuse, but also in some other things because hopefully this person can, you know, fix our problems and this is not all that they will do all day.

I appreciate that.

I just want to be mindful that a lot of our kids

struggle with substance abuse, and I don't want them to write, turn back to school, we knowing that this is an issue.

And then they're kicked out of school for maybe coming with marijuana or getting court

A lot of our young kids are vaping now or getting caught with a vape.

Absolutely.

I think we all are at the same place.

And I think that's why we have to just press our region 10 partners and we get what staffing looks like.

I mean, we're experiencing the same things.

OK, next we have our non-resident enrollment, Ms.

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

This evening, the goal of this presentation is just really to revisit our non-resident tuition rates and to be clear, there's no changes proposed for this year.

That should be a sale.

But we want to look ahead to next year and get ahead of the next budget.

So, I know we have a lot of new faces.

Pat, are both of these supposed to be on?

One of them is supposed to be off.

All right, thanks.

All right, here we go again.

I'm not touching anything.

So just to make sure everyone has some background about the non-resident program, it started in the early 2000 era in response to the declining city schools enrollment.

The policy, JECC, actually

shows that it was first approved in 2004, but when I was digging through the records of my predecessors, I found the first enrollment numbers dated back to 2000-2001 school year.

That's the first record I could find of it.

I came here in 2014 and it was well established before I came.

In that first year or the earliest year I can find data, we had 83 elementary non-resident students, 26 middle, 70 CHS for a total of 179 students.

So that's how far back it goes.

And the policy that governs the program, the key components are that the prospective student needs to meet in full the admission standards.

So, you know, on track with their SOLs and things like that.

And then there needs to be sufficient room to accommodate the student in the grade of the school requested without additional

So what are the pros and the challenges of the program?

There are a lot of pros.

It provides an important employment incentive for CCS and city staff, and you're going to see some numbers behind this in just a minute.

Staff students are subject to the same admission criteria as other non-resident students, but the tuition is waived.

And this, of course, provides sort of that convenience of bring your child to work with you sort of thing, especially since so many of our staff come from outside the city into the city.

It's also, I think, related to why some of the surrounding localities pay tuition to come, because when families are coming into work, it can be more convenient to have their child here as well.

But it's also because we have a product that's worth paying for, for sure.

It does help us smooth out enrollment fluctuations, which can be helpful, especially when you're managing enrollment across six elementary schools in a 10 square mile radius.

It can help you kind of fill some gaps as they come up in the different residency zones.

On the secondary level, the larger student body helps support our wide array of elective programs in areas such as the fine arts and athletics.

If you look at the

athletic teams, like some of the breadth we offer with field hockey and lacrosse, and our total enrollment, a lot of schools with our total enrollment number don't necessarily fill out all those teams.

I always say we play big for a school division our size, and I'm talking about orchestra, I'm talking about the breadth of the athletic options, and that's all really, really great, I think.

And it does help maintain our overall enrollment and our state revenues.

Enrollment is the most heavily weighted component of the LCI calculation.

We have a lot of factors working against our LCI.

It keeps going up because we're always being compared relative to every other locality in the state when it comes to state ADM, true value of property, adjusted gross income of the residents.

the population and the taxable sales.

The single biggest driver of the LCI is your ADM, your enrollment.

Okay, so those are the benefits of the program.

The challenges are that enrollment and space availability, it fluctuates, it changes over time.

And I will tell you that once a family is accepted as a non-resident student, they do have to apply, reapply every year.

There's no automatic renewal.

That includes employees' children.

But at the same time, once a family is with you, you know, you're kind of,

Hopefully in it with them for the long haul, right?

But also the students' needs can change over time.

And that's sometimes something we have to take a hard look and assessment at because we have to be fair in managing this program as, you know, stewards of the tax dollars that we're charged to manage.

So those are some of the challenges.

But overall, you can see the pros column is a lot longer than the challenges column.

So data for the current year, this shows

the numbers by school, by grade level.

You can see the total enrollments, 264.

Of that 264, 81 are the students of our employees.

And just as FYI, like the preschool program is not open to non-residents.

LMA, programs that are very specialized with limited enrollment are for resident students only.

And so unfortunately,

If we ever had room in preschool, it'd be great if we could offer that as a benefit for staff, but we don't have that with our preschool program.

And I don't know if we would get there or not.

It would depend on the space and things like that.

But city employees are at 18 and tuition is 165.

So about half the program are employees, most of which of course are schools employees, but there's a fair number of city employees who take advantage of this.

And that's a good help to the city because their folks are often coming in from outside as well.

And so that's how the breakdown is.

for, actually I said current, apologies, this is 23-24.

So I don't really count any numbers as final for the current year until we get on into September.

And we are still, to be clear, like at the high school especially, we're holding off on approving.

So we have a list that's longer than what we're able to fully approve at this time.

But there are other schools that are still in the evaluation process as well.

So here's the history of how the numbers have run from 2000 to 2023.

And you'll see that in total, we generally fluctuate between 200 and 300 non-resident students across all levels.

The breakdown, as I dug into the data, is actually pretty consistent.

No matter what year I did the snapshot, it wasn't off by more than a percentage point or so.

It's usually about 42% low 40s for elementary.

than about 19% are in the Walker Buford schools and then 38% right around there.

Very little variation in that breakdown, which I thought was interesting.

I thought looking that far back, I might see more variation in how it breaks down across the levels, but pretty consistent.

So what we're really here to talk about tonight is tuition rates.

The current tuition rate has been unchanged since the pre-pandemic budget action for fiscal year 2018

to raise the rate by 5%, which was pretty typical back then before the pandemic.

Every couple few years, we'd come to the board and we would raise tuition by about 5% at a time.

Because it has been a long time, relatively speaking, since we've touched the tuition rate, what we need to look at is where we go from here.

The rates are up there for your reference.

The way it breaks down is K-8.

There's a, you pay $1,337 for the first child in the family.

And then if you have multiple children that you're enrolling with us and many families do, there is like a $243 discount for the second and any subsequent children.

And then grades nine through 12.

So this is for the high school.

It's 1,701 for the first child, $1,458 for each additional child at the high school level.

What is,

Eye opening to me, and I really hadn't looked at it this way until the past year or so, these rates are equivalent to less than $7 a day for K-8 and less than $9 a day for being a student at CHS.

So how do we move forward?

This is a recommendation for your consideration, no action for us tonight.

But this would also deciding now I think gives families lots of notice.

And I think that's a really good thing with whatever we decide to do.

10% increase is recommended for the 25-26 school year, followed by annual increases of 5% for the subsequent two school years.

And the same thing would apply to the second child discount or multiple child discounts.

What that gets us to is by the 27-28 school year, we finally get just over the $10 a day rate for CHS.

The actual year-to-year increase, for example, for the K-8, it's $134, is the K-8 increase for that first 10% jump.

And then the high school goes up $170 for that 10% increase year.

After that, the increases are $73 and $94, $78 and $98 respectively.

So it goes down to less than $100 a year after that first jump up.

of 10%, but with inflation and how long it's been since we touched it, I think this is at least a good place to start the discussion.

Sorry, I still haven't touched anything.

And the only other thing is looking ahead as we complete the new middle school with reconfiguration and we move through the elementary rezoning analysis that we need to start embarking on with all the housing developments that are unfolding.

as we get more information regarding particularly the affordable housing developments which we contracted with the Weldon Cooper Center at UVA this past year to update our housing yield rates and our housing yield rates aren't going up except in affordable housing where it's pretty significant increases in the yield rate per unit, if you will.

So, you know, I just think we have to take a hard look at the tuition program as we move forward.

But that's not for now.

I think that's just part of a bigger thinking process.

But the tuition rate itself just wanted to get out ahead of even ahead of the budget and make some decisions about that.

That's all I have for you.

OK.

Perhaps the tuition rates can go towards this microphone situation.

How are we coming to these numbers?

So are we trying to increase funds, something that there's a shortfall?

Is this just kind of an arbitrary increase because of inflation?

Do we look at the jurisdictions around us who actually do accept out-of-district students to see how we compare?

We have not looked at surrounding districts and what they're charging.

So it's, I hesitate to call it arbitrary because it's in line with increases of the past and it's just acknowledging that we stopped doing the 5% increases.

and we need to do a little bit of catch up is probably in order and then we need to get back on track.

But and there is when you look at it, and I didn't bring this, but if you do the math on those numbers up there, forgive me, I didn't bring it to have it handy.

It's not funding anything specific other than trying to offset the cost of service delivery.

And of course, when you consider the cost of service delivery, we do have to remember

It's not as much, it's definitely not, it's never been about the tuition that you actually get from the students so much.

And in the past, when I looked at the analysis that Ed Gillespie did in particular, it's not even so much about the per pupil money we get from the state, because even when our LCI was 0.6 and 0.7 range, we're only getting three, $4,000 a student.

It's about the LCI itself and maintaining ADM so that

We hold that LCI down as much as we can because the LCI impacts, not just your pure pupil funding, that LCI factor applies to almost every line in the state funding template.

And so through a lot of the in-depth analysis that was done before I ever got here, that's always been where the game is, but it does seem at a certain point not

No, I would be in full support of increasing the non-resident tuition rate.

My question is, is this enough?

And so I think I would be interested in knowing more about what other jurisdictions are doing.

Just to see, I don't want to make this untenable for people and then we end up creating a problem.

you know in relation to the enrollment numbers.

We can bring that back for the next meeting.

Just before we it seems like we have a little bit of time before we need to take action while still recognizing that we want to give families enough notice.

Can you also elaborate on so there are students who have applied to be non-resident students

So if they apply after I believe this year it was after June 1st so we encourage right basically if you apply late there's this point where we're like you're going to have to wait and see so if we open it up around the same time we open up the kindergarten registration right after spring break and then there's a push and people who are planning to come you know they we make decisions on them if you know before

the summer starts, but if you're applying during the summer, then we have to see how things are shaking out before we can give decisions.

And it is the process, I didn't share this, but the applications go to the school first.

If there are any notes on there about special needs or whatever, the principal checks with the coordinator to make sure what's the space like in this program.

That can be true for ELLs or for special services or anything like that.

And then,

Once those things happen, it comes to my office.

And this was the first year with the help of Pat's team, we moved away from paper application process.

It's part of school meant now.

So that's been a nice enhancement, always working, you know, working through some kinks the first time you do it, but it's, it's good.

That's all.

I would echo Miss Dooley's sentiment that I think it would be helpful just to see area localities and what they're doing.

Any other questions?

All right.

OK.

All right.

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

I'm here to provide a human resource update in regards to the 24-25 staffing.

Thank you.

priority three focuses very much on human resources and getting our staff employee first and start recruitment and retention of properly endorsed teachers.

And then we want to engage them in meaningful professional development.

And then at the end, find the voice, make sure that they have a voice.

Next slide.

I'm going to do the numbers right now.

So at the beginning of our hiring season, 63 openings is what we had.

This included 10 elementary openings and then an average of 10 openings at both HS.

I would like to highlight as a note that Greenbrier and Johnson retained our staff, so we were designed for support staff at those two locations.

I also want to let you know that six late resignations happened this year.

Just to give you a point of reference, the peak time for 2023, we had 73 openings, and they were largely instructional assistants and secretary openings.

We didn't really have elementary openings.

Opening were gifted, part-time reading specialists, and instructional assistants.

Next slide.

So here's the breakdown when you're looking at the specifics.

There are 12 classroom teachers, and then there are seven specialists, which includes at least one part-time specialist, three instructional assistants, and last year we had 20 open age board instructional assistants.

Two nurses, which happens to be one part-time nurse, one custodian, a performing arts center manager, and a coordinator.

So we're looking for 27 individuals so that part-time specialist and part-time nurse equates to one physician.

There are now three classroom teacher positions open at the elementary school.

And this is only a recent transition.

We had a recent resignation this week.

And we had data from enrollment.

So one school has got two openings and another school has one classroom opening.

The rest of them are specialists and instructional assistants.

Next slide.

There are non-classroom teacher openings at Buford or the secondary level, Buford in the high school.

They do include our engineering, computer science, math specialist positions, and then world language.

The school has already started to work on securing long-term subs for positions.

So I know we have a long-term sub for urban farming at Buford Middle, a long-term sub for a science position, and then at the high school we have a long-term sub for world language.

And all of these candidates are working on licensure right now, but they're not properly licensed.

Want to let you know the retention rates are trending up.

So like I said just a couple minutes ago.

So 73 was the number of openings we had last year, and we started out with 63, so we are retaining more of our staff.

We also went a new way and recruited for teachers through Indeed.

Most of the time, we only post for leadership positions through Indeed, those hard to fill positions through Indeed.

but went through the process of adding an elementary posting and we secured seven teachers from that posting.

People who are returning to education, who are relocating to Charlottesville, or are true career switchers.

And then I'll note that we've already hired the two stipends, so we appreciate that.

So our next steps, we're going to continue to advertise, interview higher employees, highly qualifying candidates.

We've taken on a little more ownership of making sure that they get properly licensed and supported.

So we'll do that and then pair them up with a mentor and then do some strategic marketing.

Any questions, anybody?

All right.

Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, those who are assembled.

This evening we are going to bring you an overview of our strategic plan.

Since we plan to bring you a comprehensive overview of our year one data,

In October, we thought this would be a great time to share with you all how we got here.

We know that there were some board members who were not a part of this process.

So this evening, we thought it would be beneficial to talk about the things we're monitoring, how we're measuring those things.

Please remember that throughout the presentation, if you have any questions, please feel free to stop us with those and ask those questions.

Just an overview of the presentation.

We will talk about our vision and core values, our priority areas, which will include our goals and targets and measurements and strategies.

We will end with some next steps, which will include the data dashboard.

Included in the work that we did throughout the planning process, we generated a new vision statement, mission statement, and core values.

And I just want to just highlight our vision, which is Charlottesville City Schools will be a community of hope, growth, and learning where all barriers are eliminated and possibilities are limitless.

And then, of course, you know our core values are relationships, growth, well-being and the joy of learning.

The next four sections of our presentation will cover the increase in academic achievement and creating a culture of safety, wellness, and belonging, support our staff, and ensuring effective and efficient operations.

Each member of our executive leadership team will cover those areas.

And then at the end, I will come back with the next steps.

I don't think I can see through your glasses Dr. Gurley.

And thank you, Dr. Gurley.

Good evening again, Madam Chair, members of the board.

And Dr. Gurley, our first priority area is to increase academic achievement.

On this slide, you see our three goals.

They focus on future readiness.

And that is ensuring that all of our CCS learners graduate with a clear and actionable plan for their future.

This encompasses career planning, higher education preparation, and life skills development.

Our second goal is about rigorous and inclusive learning, providing all of our CCS learners with access to challenging, inclusive, and relevant learning experiences that includes differentiated instruction, equitable resources, and engaging curricula that cater to diverse student needs and interests.

Our third goal is about academic mastery and equity, focusing on all of our learners demonstrating proficiency in reading and math.

The aim is to close achievement and opportunity gaps, ensuring that every student, regardless of background, achieves academic success.

Next slide, please.

So here we're talking about our targets, and on the screen you see sort of a set of themes from our targets.

Graduation and post-secondary readiness.

This includes ensuring high graduation rates.

equipping students with post-secondary plans, meeting college career and civic readiness index standards, and those are shown in targets one, two, and eight in our strategic plan.

There we have equitable access and achievement.

And with that, we're talking about increasing enrollment in KTEC, which is in Target 3.

Matching AP and dual enrollment course demographics with overall student demographics, that's in Target 4.

Ensuring mastery and proficiency in Tier 1 instruction, that's in Target 3.

from target five, implementing equitable grading practices from target six and increasing access to rigorous and differentiated instruction from target seven.

Then we have academic achievement and proficiency which includes raising reading proficiency to at least 75%, raising math proficiency to at least 70%,

and increasing early literacy proficiency to at least 75%.

And those are shown in targets 9, 10 and 12.

And there's targeted support and improvement, which includes reducing failure rates in math and reading for African American students and students with disabilities, which is in target 11.

And then finally on this slide we have Data-Driven Instruction Improvement, which encompasses utilizing various data sources to track student progress and outcomes, such as

Naviance data, SOL pass rates, map growth, and multi-tiered systems of support data, as Ms.

Raznick just shared with you.

And that is encompassed in several targets, two, five, seven, nine, 10, 11, 12, so many targets that really focus on this area.

Next slide, please.

Here we are going to talk about our measurements.

So the measurements for priority one are summarized through these five bullets.

Graduation rate and post-secondary readiness where we're working to maintain graduation rate at or above state average across all student groups.

We want to ensure 100% of graduating students, again 100% of our graduating students have a post-secondary plan documented through Naviance data and post-secondary enrollment and plans for college, career, and military, and or military.

and we want to use avid data from our cohorts to support these goals.

Then we have career in technical education, CTE enrollment, where we're looking at data to see where we are with increasing the number of CHS students enrolled at KTEC by 10% annually.

And we want to measure the percentage of students enrolled at KTEC.

We also have AP and dual enrollment participation and some of those measures include ensuring that the percentage of students enrolled in AP or dual enrollment courses match the racial and demographic enrollment percentages.

Measuring that, you know, we have the target, we're measuring this through data.

We're tracking completion rates of these courses disaggregated by student data.

You see here instructional quality and equity as a measure and here we're looking at the implementation of our division literacy plan.

You just approved that in the spring and so we're ready to go move full force ahead with implementation.

So we'll be monitoring that.

We're also ensuring that 80% or more of our students demonstrate mastery and proficiency in Tier 1 instruction.

That's that first instruction that teachers are providing and we're using data through multi-tiered systems of supports, MTSS.

We will be looking to how we're increasing the percentage of classes using equitable grading practices, such as standards-based grading that we're moving towards.

And of course, you recall the presentation we shared in the spring about our progression over the years with that.

And we're monitoring the number of students receiving Ds and Fs, ensuring standardized report card processes.

And our last theme in measurements is rigor and academic achievement.

And here we're looking at increasing students' access to rigor and critical and creative thinking through various metrics, evaluating student responses related to rigor on the state climate surveys, tracking students identified and served in our gifted program,

measuring the percentage of unleveled courses and those using collaborative models for students receiving special education services and providing professional learning resources for differentiation.

That is ongoing.

Next slide, please.

The final area for priority one is a focus on strategies.

We have 14 of them.

The top themes in the strategies include those there on the screen equity and rigor in academic planning where we're enhancing academic advising with a focus on equity that's in strategy one.

using unleveled courses to create scaffolded rigor, that's in strategy four, implementing an equitable master schedule, strategy five.

We also have personalized education and career planning that surfaced as a theme in our strategies where we're doing things like creating personalized college and career plans.

for every student that's in strategy two, expanding opportunities for middle school students in CTE and advanced courses, strategy three.

And there's a lined and differentiated curriculum there, which encompasses providing a coherent and rigorous 3K through 12 literacy English language arts program.

That is in strategy seven.

and providing a coherent and rigorous 3K through 12 math program, Strategy 8.

and then we have support for special populations, which includes ensuring individualized instruction and supports for students with disabilities, strategy nine, increasing supports for English learners, strategy 10.

And finally, professional development and transition support, which involves training teachers in best practices for early childhood and literacy instruction, strategy 12.

creating smooth transitions for students and programs during organizational changes, and that is seen in strategy 13 and 14.

So that gives you an overview of priority one, which is increase academic achievement.

Dr. O'Dee, I have a question probably not just for you, but for the rest of the team and Dr. Gurley potentially.

And I know when are we seeing our dashboard?

It's a presentation.

We're going to do a soft rollout at the end of September, the week of like the 23rd-ish.

And then, so it will go live then, and then we will also integrate it into the presentation that Ms.

Swift is doing in October when we go over our accreditation data.

Great, awesome, I'm excited.

So when looking at our strategic plan and the finalized draft and we're looking at the strategies, so when you look at strategy one and strategy two for the year 23-24 and some of these other ones as well,

So they're designated whether they're still in the planning stage, whether they're ready to be implemented or whether we're going to revise them.

So strategy one, two, five, six, 12 and 13 all indicated last year that they were in the planning stage.

So at what point, and I don't know if this is in the dashboard that these actually then turn or in what way are you and the team

How are you evaluating whether the planning is done and those are ready to be implemented or whether they get to turn to blue?

Certainly, I can start the answer to that.

I constantly have conversations with the instructional coordinators, their monitoring strategies, targets that are in their house.

And so they're collecting data and are readily sharing those information, those pieces of data with me.

So what you will see when we present the data dashboard is that some of these we're rolling right along with.

As you said, some of them are planning, some of them are implementation.

So many of those for last year's academic year were designated as planning.

And I just want to make sure that now they should be in implementation.

And if not, what can we do or what are you all doing to kind of help boost those along or what barriers I guess you and the team are bumping up against?

Our strategic plan drives our work.

It drives our work.

So it is our goal that if it was a planning year, that's what we utilize it as, and we're moving into implementation in year two.

Right now, I truly can't say that there's a strategy that we need to revise to planning in year two.

I think we're ready.

We're ready to continue with implementation.

We did the work last year.

We had constant conversations about the strategic plan and where our work fit into it and what progress we were making with that specific strategy or target.

So I anticipate that we will be able to confidently share where we are.

Right.

And I will say that, you know, they are much closer to the work.

And so they can speak more personally to it.

But being someone who's a couple of layers back, just as you know, I'm on page eight, where we're looking at the strategies that have the P's.

And so with academic advising, we know that we've already, that's Naviance, we're providing

We're providing training so a lot of this is a lot of the strategies are weeds work that help us to get to the work to get to those to those goals and those targets back so I mean a lot of it is for us so those are the strategies that help us get to those targets and so

For example, we've done Naviance.

When we talk about, when we look at number two, you know, I've had meetings and we were having meetings with PVCC about what early college programs looks like, what is using the fast forward funds look like for CTE.

I mean, all these things, equitable grading.

We had someone come out and do a training with us at our leadership events on Tuesday.

Someone worked with our,

The same person work with our instructional coaches.

So all of this work is happening.

This is our.

This is really our part if you didn't see this, you probably wouldn't know how we're getting to it, but this is like the hour work and and and I don't know if there's a.

I mean, without creating another layer, I don't know how to, this is just the work.

It's the work.

I appreciate that and I definitely don't want to jump in the weeds with you.

The strategies are the behind the scenes work that we're saying, hey, if you're wondering how we got to, we arrived at the target and reached the measure, this is how we're doing it.

Yeah, yeah, I can say that I have a I'm further a little further back from the work and I can speak personally to it.

and I will venture to some of our work overlaps.

So you heard me mention MTSS, that really falls under Ms.

Rasnick, but our work is constantly overlapping.

So I know that she's working with counselors on some of the things that I spoke about today.

So we feel really good about our process and the progress that we're making.

No no no that's no and I appreciate that and I think for the board members who weren't who kind of came on after the fact and I know Ms.

Cooper was part of and on some of the committee and I don't know how she felt and I mean I had been on the board and I mean I knew this was this part of it was like whoo

Wait, I mean, I sat back and I let the experts do the work and appreciated that.

But to see this and to know that there were years that were designated for planning, I just want to make sure, you know, as we the board approved this strategic plan that that we are moving that way.

So I minimally I mean, I just wanted to hear.

And in some respects, we're ahead.

If I could, I think even as a board, as we are learning, especially the new four, as questions come up and as issues arise for us to look back at the strategic plan and see where does that question align with the strategic plan?

Where does that fall?

And

How are we measuring that work before just running and jumping to needing to know, wanting to know, responding to an inquiry?

Does this align with the strategic plan?

And if it doesn't, we got some other work to do first.

Thanks so much.

All right, Ms.

Branson.

Hi, good evening.

So I'm going to cover our priority two.

So providing a culture of safety, wellness and belonging that incorporates a lot of different staff and target strategies and goals.

So, when we're thinking about our specific targets for our culture of safety, wellness, and belonging, we're thinking about our student support and well-being, which incorporates the implementation of our tiered supports across academic and non-academic domains, and that's explicit instruction in social-emotional skills and a focus on school climate.

Health and Nutrition emphasizes students accessing healthy, locally sourced meals and increasing the number of students that meet the governor's scorecard on nutrition and physical activity.

Family and community engagement combines maintaining strong community partnerships while increasing parent, student, and family engagement in school activities and being present in the school daily.

Our attendance targets are geared towards reducing chronic absenteeism and keeping students engaged academically.

and then safety and security encompasses the completion of our designated safety projects across all of our campuses.

So what you'll see when you get to see the data dashboard, there's gonna be multiple different types of measures in this domain.

Some that are gonna focus on our implementation of specific strategies and others that focus on how effective those implementations were.

So implementation measures will consider things like did we finish a safety project?

How many students are eligible for free student meals using the community eligibility provision?

Our tiered fidelity inventory, which schools do annually to assess whether or not they're using evidence-based practices to create a positive school culture.

but then you'll also see whether these implementations are working for students and in that you'll see student or meal participation rates, information gathered through school climate and culture surveys, aggregate data on threat assessments, chronic absenteeism rates,

Also information about office discipline referral rates and universal screening data.

We would hope that that data reflects our increased implementation of different targets and goals.

So specifically regarding our strategies, our strategies to provide a culture of safety, wellness and belonging, including include implementing culturally responsive teaching practices, providing high quality social, emotional learning opportunities for all of our students pre-K through 12.

That explicit social emotional instruction allows our students to acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage their emotions, and feel and show empathy for others.

We ensure that staff and students have access to the mental health supports necessary by providing all of our schools with trained mental health professionals and partnering with community organizations for referrals and prevention.

And we provide mental health care coordination through Care Solace for both students and staff.

Our schools encourage teachers to expand their learning to the outdoors.

Examples of outdoor learning spaces can be seen across our schools like the courtyard at Greenbrier, the racetrack around Jackson Viya, and in the gardens at all of our schools.

Our schools and family and community engagement teams incorporate feedback from families to increase awareness of opportunities within the schools and enhance our different partnerships with community organizations.

And our implementation plans for our engagement teams include ways that those teams can assess the effectiveness of the programming, who they're reaching, and how they're reaching those families.

Sorry if I don't know.

Meal and Nutrition Services.

Are those free this year?

Again, do we know?

At all schools.

Thank you.

Good evening again, Madam Chair.

I'll move over here.

I'll try.

Use your teacher voice.

Members of the board and Dr. Gurley, priority three focuses on supporting our staff.

And the focus starts with recruitment and retention of licensed and properly endorsed staff.

And we also aim to engage staff in meaningful, relevant, timely and personalized professional learning.

We're going to recruit and retain teachers of color and value staff voice.

When looking at our targets, there are five main areas for staffing.

We want to be fully staffed at the beginning of the school year.

We work closely with school administrators to recognize the shifts early and explore new recruiting opportunities.

We also strive to annually hire additional licensed and professional staff that match the diversity of our students.

and we're supporting new staff or unlicensed staff in getting licensure.

And one of those pathways is IAs to teachers.

Number two is professional development.

One of the ways to retain staff is to make sure that you provide them effective classroom professional development, just in time targeted professional development for all staff.

These professional development opportunities also include an opportunity for licensed staff to pursue leadership opportunities and we want to embed culturally responsive content and equity focused teaching practices when we're doing this.

The workplace environment is understanding the importance of the culture within the school.

That is critical.

We desire to make improvements on school culture.

We will survey our staff and integrate their input into the decision making.

We will work closely with our staff regarding attendance rates, providing guidance to staff for creating a division-wide created

Handbook so that they have the guidance and tools of resources that they need.

Diversity and conclusion would be the last one.

We recognize the importance of having a diverse staff that mirrors our student population.

So it's just something we're going to have to continue to work.

All right, next.

The metrics we're going to use to measure our support to staff, we're going to measure the number of vacancies at the start of the school year, and then we'll measure the number of people who are properly licensed and endorsed.

Second, as far as retention, annual retention rates.

And I'll provide a written report of that information, and it will be aggregated by demographics so that you can see clearly.

And it'll also include years of experience.

Next, hiring licensed staff of color.

I'll provide that update to you as well.

But we're going to measure and hopefully continue to recruit and retain persons of color.

opportunities for leadership.

We have an active cohort right now that is working on getting their administrative endorsement and we'll give you statistics about how they're performing, who graduates, their transition into leadership, providing them opportunities.

and Pathways for unlicensed individuals to become licensed.

We have a number of staff who are either career switchers, IA's that are transitioning into educational programs and we'll give you data and statistics on that.

Next slide.

Well, you went one more, I think.

So you go back one.

OK.

Here are some of the strategies.

I keep reiterating the importance of recruitment, but we're going to have a recruitment plan, collect and analyze the data trends, realize where we're getting applicants from, and then continue to go to those communities to solicit and secure new teachers.

Professional development, we constantly get surveys and feedback from people as they go through the professional learning.

They'll give us feedback on what their needs are and how effective our practices are.

We're going to have collaboration and co-teaching.

We're going to establish some co-teaching opportunities, increase the interrelator reliability of the evaluation process,

and then work with administrators for alternative licensure pathways.

We'll continue to recruit for a diverse staff and try to increase the culture and climate effectively in our schools.

Nope.

I think we're good.

Thank you, ma'am.

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

Last but not least, goal area four, ensuring effective and efficient operations.

The goals in this area are focused on modernizing our facilities to meet our students and staff needs and serving them all as best we can, advancing different operational efficiencies and upgrades, promoting sustainability and environmental awareness, and demonstrating fiscal stewardship in all we do.

So targets in this area, and there's a lot of them, so we'll get my notes here.

When it comes to infrastructure and modernization, our targets are things like, it's been mentioned before, completion of projects.

We've got a lot of big modernization work.

And another thing, things that are maybe less visible are things like aligning all of K-Tech's technology and maintenance systems and security systems and IT systems with our standards.

Upgrading, this is like really behind the scenes, but it's super important.

Things like upgrading and replacing all the cabling in our building to make sure that it's Cat 6A or greater.

That's one of the targets in Mr. Cuomo's area.

So all of these things are really about updating and improving physical and technology infrastructure and some of it's very visible to you and some of it's not but still very important.

The sustainability and environmental responsibility targets, those are all embedded within the city's larger dashboard and so they are supposed to have their dashboard up and running

around September, October, the same time we're going to be launching ours.

So it should be connected and you should be able to see how we're tracking via their dashboard.

That's the plan.

And that has to do with things like Energy Star scores and energy use intensity scores and water use intensity scores.

And so that's where you'll find that information.

And that's where the targets are.

It's embedded in the city's dashboard.

Remember, we are most of their physical facilities.

Most of the physical facilities of the city are in schools.

Another big area where we have targets is transportation efficiency and accessibility.

This target includes things like eliminating the wait list for bus transportation and increasing the efficacy of bike and pedestrian commute options.

And I'm very excited to report that as of today's trip meeting, no wait lists.

So we're super happy about that.

Louder.

It's been a long time coming and a big lift by a lot of people.

Pat's team's been instrumental in that work.

We've done a lot to improve our routing efficacy, our ability to quick turn demand.

Right now, if a student is not routed, it's either because they haven't completed registration and they're new to us and we have no visibility of them, or if they're a returning student, they got routed based on the information we had from last year.

So if that information changed,

But we have some real great talent in the routing office now at city transportation, and it's a lot of work that's been done by a lot of good people to get us where we are now.

So, yep, that's a good thing.

Okay, so back to the targets.

In the area of operational effectiveness, again, that's really an overarching theme with all these areas, transportation, facilities.

but Mr. Cuomo and his team again have some specific targets in this goal area such as ensuring that all of our school campuses and offices are connected on the private fiber network so again one of those things you don't necessarily see you may have seen some of the disruption and the digging around town that's a huge project and it's going to be such a great foundation for our future

And then also just making sure we are consistently decreasing the age of the network equipment that we have by 50%.

Again, that's the type of thing nobody notices until it fails.

And so these are really important targets.

And last but certainly not least, under the umbrella of fiscal accountability and strategic budgeting,

ensuring that all of our budget allocations support the strategic plan priorities that was mentioned earlier in some of your comments.

That's target nine.

And then achieving recognition for the work we do, the work that Renee Hoover and her team does with things like the ASBO Meritorious Budget Award, which under her leadership, she's gotten it at least two years in a row now and she really started that process.

So, okay, next slide.

So, measurements with these targets.

Thanks, Leslie.

So, as Ms.

Raznick mentioned earlier, I thought I took this from her idea.

I really like thinking about measurements, particularly in this area, in terms of there's implementation measurements and progress towards implementation, and then there's the effectiveness measures.

So, some examples of measurements you'll see

When the dashboard comes out in this goal area are things like where we are percentage-wise in completing annual facility modernization projects, where we are in that process of converting all the KTEC systems to be in alignment with our standards and our systems, and where we are in the progress of making all those private fiber network connections, and so you'll see percentage

where we are in relation to our goals of 100% in all these areas.

And then for effectiveness, you would see things like how much of a wait list do we have?

And again, right now we're sitting in a good spot.

Where are we with the age of our network equipment?

How are we tracking with getting the meritorious budget awards?

Things like that, that's the type of things you will see in the metrics for this area.

So strategies, the work we are executing on to hit these targets and to meet these goals are things like all the project management and coordination around modernization projects.

The big banner project for that right now, of course, is the middle school.

but things like our, you know, improved bathrooms here at the high school and how we can continue making progress with things like that.

Those are all exciting projects and very visible.

Preschool, the early childhood center that, you know, we're going to get the preschoolers all together at the Walker campus and that's a project in and of itself but then we don't want to, we don't stop there.

We hope, you know, achieve the vision of

that modernized preschool center, a center that's really made for our youngest learners.

Sustainable and secure facilities.

There's lots of activity there.

I mentioned the CHS restroom projects, but when you talk about sustainability, it's things like tracking our progress with getting solar on the rooftops and things like

integrating KTEC fully into all of our systems so that it's all standardized and something that we are well prepared to maintain and sustain.

Transportation and accessibility.

We still meet weekly as a team, IT team.

Beth Chuck with Comms joins us a lot.

myself and Julia Green and our colleagues in transportation and we're always talking about how to improve the data flow and how to make routing as efficient as it can be and as effective as it can be to serve our students and there's more work that can be done there and we're still talking with the city about what organization makes sense as far as routing and where that work should be done and the system called VersaTrans and

how we can improve that to get more functionality out of it for our parents and for you know so you could get real-time information about where your student is with the bus that type of thing there are functions and features we want to push to see brought forward and so those are exciting things and we're always looking to improve and then when it comes to financial transparency and strategic planning again just always trying to be transparent in our communications about finance

We're partnering with a consultant to look at how we're zoned as far as our elementary schools because that's part of being fiscally responsible is making sure we don't have some big bubble

in one of the elementary zones, and then we're looking at having to invest in modular units.

If we can avoid that, we would certainly like to.

So that's part of being transparent, engaging in those types of public discussions, and trying to be proactive to be as fiscally responsible as we can be.

Are there any Ms.

Powell questions before I wrap it up?

OK, so as you all have heard, I know you've asked a lot of questions, very good questions.

There's a lot of work that went into this document.

This is a living document.

It does not rest on a shelf.

We use this to continue to innovate our programming.

We think that our strategic plan is the guiding light that helps our students and staff attain their goals.

As an immediate next step in this process, we will be rolling out the data dashboard.

Ms.

Swift and Dr. Johnson have been working collaboratively with the technology department to ensure that there's seamless migration of data with our technology platform.

We thank them.

A lot of people's hands are going into this project, specifically with the data dashboard.

thought that it would look one way when we finished with the vendor who was working with us and it just did not meet our expectations and we know that we want this data dashboard to be comprehensive.

So as we roll out, as we do the rollout, it'll happen.

It will happen in late September around, I think the week of the 23rd, when Ms.

Swift presents in October.

There will be an accreditation update, but we will also do some year one, looking at year one metrics and how we did.

And I know that was part of the, some of the questions, one of the questions about

How do we know when we're in year one, when we're in the planning, when we're in implementation?

And so what we're going to do is we're going to quantify what does year one look like?

And so we will take some of those measures and we will begin to roll that out.

and then, so that'll be a part of what happens in October.

And that's it.

Unless you have any further questions, I mean, I just wanna, I know we did not hear from Ms.

Hoover, but you heard her, where her work lies in this document, where Ms.

Chuck's work lies in this document.

I mean, everyone lives in this document and when we get to 2028, we will be better.

Any questions, anybody?

I just want to say, Dr. Gurley, thank you for kind of taking this on.

It was kind of a later ask as far as adding this to the agenda.

So thank you and your team for pulling it together.

But I think it worked well as far as what you're going to launch, as far as, you know, kind of prepping us and the public for that matter, as far as what our priorities are for Charlottesville City Schools and then what we'll be looking at as far as the data in the next month or two with your presentations.

Absolutely.

So the next item on the agenda was board response to written reports.

And then we will move to 12.0, which is comments from members of the community.

This is the second opportunity for anybody here, either in the media center or online.

Again, a big shout out to Ms.

Mason, who is always following along.

So we appreciate you.

But if there's anybody who would like to come up, now is your time.

All right, I see no takers.

So thank you for that.

And for anybody who's tuned in or anybody who sat through the meeting, and then we will move to comments from the board.

So I did want to, oh, gosh, I'll save it for later.

We'll start with you, if you don't mind.

Are you ready?

Ms.

All right, I wanted to draw the attention of the board to a recent public notice published in the Daily Progress on July the 27th, 2024.

The notice announces a public hearing scheduled for August 5th of 2024, during which time the Charlottesville City Council will consider an ordinance to increase the salaries of its members.

In July 2024, the Virginia General Assembly amended the code 5.2-1414.6 to allow localities to adjust the compensation for city council members.

Specifically, the city of Charlottesville has been authorized to raise the salaries of city councilors from $18,000 annually to $34,000.

Annually and the mayor's salary from $20,000 annually to $37,000 annually.

It is important to note that the proposed increase would not be effective until July 1, 2026 following the next general election for City Council.

And so I wanted to take the opportunity, given that development, to remind our board that any potential adjustments to our own school board member compensation would need to be voted on by December 31st of 2024 to align with the next election cycle in November of 2025.

This would ensure that any changes would be effective starting January 1, 2026.

and that is in accordance with the Code of Virginia 22.1-32 salary of members and the last salary increase for the board was done December 4th of 2014 which became effective January 1 of 2016.

So I just wanted to bring this to the attention of my colleagues and I will provide you with some follow-up data for the Virginia School Board Association outlining the localities throughout the state and what current compensation is throughout the state and then in District 5 of which we are a member of and just want to bring that to the attention and hope that we can have some continued discussion on the matter.

I also wanted to bring the attention to a few community events happening.

West Haven Community Day happening on Hardy Drive.

That's Saturday, August 3rd.

So this Saturday from 10 to 4.

And that's a great

community event that I know many of us attend and enjoy being engaged in the community.

And then there is the Back to School Bash on the Ting Pavilion that's sponsored by the African American Pastors Council.

That is Saturday, August 10.

And that is from 10 until 12pm.

And then the Better Together Back to School Bash at the Cherry Avenue Boys and Girls Club.

That is Sunday, August the 11th from 10 to 2pm.

I just want to publicly thank Dr. Gurley and the Charlottesville City School staff for presenting the strategic plan and kind of letting us know all of the things that's been happening.

I think it was a lot of people that put a lot of work into the strategic plan and to see that the work is being implemented.

I really appreciate that and I can't wait to see the dashboard to kind of see where we started and how far we've come.

So I appreciate that.

Hello?

Okay, I wanted to say welcome back everybody.

As far as for the e-haul, I would like, e-haul passes, I would like to see a visual at the next meeting if it's possible, like a demo, that would be really great.

Then also for the Google chat, email, communication for parents and students,

I was hoping we can get some awareness on Parent Square just to like remind parents that this is an option.

We do have options besides calling the front office to get in contact with our children.

And then I want to thank the division team for working hard.

It sounds like they have a real strong plan to collect data and like to reflect on what's working.

So I really appreciate that overall.

And I'll attach a demo video for you for EHaul passing my brief tomorrow.

Great, thank you.

I just wanted to say again, thank you to everybody.

I want to welcome, I believe the new hires teacher started today.

Welcome the students back soon.

Just to update everybody quickly, Mr. Meyer,

Dr. Gurley, Ms.

Powell and I did meet kind of an earlier meeting with some of the city staff.

We met with Mayor Wade, City Manager Sanders, Mike Goddard, Crystal Renovale.

Is that it?

I believe and to talk just a little bit about sustainability and some of the CIP work with the schools and just trying to

to initiate an earlier conversation with that.

So I wanted to just let you know that we did have that and also to extend some gratitude to staff at the city level for making time to meet with us.

also was able to, and Mr. Meyers is not here, but he and I both attended or were able to stop by and celebrate our summer graduates.

So we had three graduates here at Charlottesville High School.

So that was fun to be able to be there for that.

And I also, I'm going to try and make an effort.

And if I forget, I'm holding somebody else here to help remind me or to do it.

But I do want to make sure that the public is aware

you know that we are renamed or have renamed two of our elementary schools and both of those are polling places so I know the city has something on their website but just to remind community members that Clark will be renamed or is renamed Summit and Venable is renamed Trailblazer so I think every opportunity that we can all get or that all we all have

to remind people as there is an election coming up in November.

So I think it's important that we do our part to remind people.

And I think that is it.

So thank you so much.

That's it for that.

All right, I'm really quick.

Today was great to welcome so many excited teachers today.

I remember the look that they had on their faces today, so it was always nice to welcome our new teachers back.

We welcome all of our teachers back on Monday.

Very excited about

welcoming them back and just getting out to visit with them in those spaces.

We have our PL Palooza next week and so I think we've invited our board members to join us during our opening and there will be a lot of just learning sessions for our

for different groups, our teachers, support staff.

So the Palooza is just going to be just a great day for us.

And then lastly, just really excited about a fantastic school year.

It will be one that we will, we will celebrate from the beginning all the way to the end.

The fields already are different and the only way to go is up.

Thank you, sir.

Any work session wrap up?

I think we're good.

OK.

As far as upcoming meetings, our next regularly scheduled board meeting is September 5th, and that'll be right here in the media center at five o'clock.

And unless there's any other last minute comments, I call this meeting adjourned.