School Board Meeting   10/15/2024

and speak into this again, about four inches, five inches away.

That's about as loud as it's going to be.

If you could please call.

Yes, thank you.

All in favor, please.

Yes.

Any opposed, say no.

Thank you.

Yes.

Pavlov.

We got you.

...for Richmond.

So we really come and just quickly review the plan goals and our different priority areas.

And the first priority being to increase academic achievement, to provide a culture of safety, wellness, and belonging.

to help us advocate for the needs of our students, our staff, community, and these priorities guide our efforts to improve equity and student and teacher supports by focusing on these areas on your way in.

That kind of sick topic and we're not.

So again, we did put this summary together of some of the priorities and the topics that came up.

And if you don't want to pump this one to you.

So the first one, yeah, that came up.

And if you don't, we can go out of order.

Do you mind that, Ms.

Not at all.

but we can go out of order.

Fourth by our preschool team is that slots are allocated by age as opposed to holistically for preschool and so it becomes a little bit of a shuffle for our so this would be a request it be

total preschool dollars and slots as opposed to being tied to specific ages.

And I don't know statewide how many school districts are serving both three and four year olds.

and Appropriations Committee.

So if you guys want to get me like a one pager on it, I can pass it along to someone on the House side on appropriations who would be seeing it because I would not be it would be a budget amendment.

I'm happy to put in the budget amendment, but you won't have an advocate who besides Katrina actually with two thirds of the vote of the general assembly.

So we had broad bipartisan support.

We thought we were as close as we're ever going to be.

And it was vetoed and is the only bill that we actually tried to override the veto.

Believe he is.

I can't speak in absolutes, but I've heard that he's interested in introducing it again this year.

In general, you know, Republican legislators introduced these bills to affect individual localities.

How have Republicans generated locality in the state?

Probably, you know, that frankly is the way you need to do it, because everybody's got school construction needs.

Everybody does.

Rural localities, urban localities, even suburban localities.

You know, I'll be for this legislature.

It's a sales tax because we have to fix it, and that's too big of a cost to take on in just like your standard operating budget.

The only reason I don't speak in absolutes, there's bill limits.

So right now is right when everyone's juggling.

I was told that it was going to be introduced again.

I can't be certain of that.

But everyone, so last year when there's no bill limits, everyone puts in everything and we just combine them.

But when everyone, we only have 15 bills, so it's a little more like communication.

Well, if you're going to introduce it, then you introduce it.

We're not going to be able to override it.

With the bill limits, it's difficult that bills are going to be introduced right now.

I will let you know if I hear otherwise, but that was always, you know, let us know please.

And we can pass on to city council of, you know, there's a need for voices.

We tend to always show up at the hearing.

So we appreciate that.

Thank you.

All right.

Um, anybody else have anything to say on that?

Okay.

Um, improving a thing, but, but I don't know.

I guess what I would share with you all from my experience was there's definitely a lot of interest in overhauling funding in general because it's complicated.

It's jurisdiction specific.

It creates really disparate educational experiences across the big bill that I've heard education was a math numeracy act that would be drawing sort of from the success of the math or the reading literacy act, but it's different for the math numeracy act.

I was going to be tackled this year, I believe, but people better

That's great that we're tackling math.

It's an equity issue, honestly.

I think it's where we see the most tracking.

Excited about that one.

That one should be a big push this year that you'll be hearing about.

where we continue going through some reform around just our criminal justice system and how it works for people who are in prison.

So happy to talk to you all about that at a later date.

As far as education, the biggest one that I've been trying to work on was the Math Numeracy Act.

I'm hoping I can use those if you want extra money so that you can have better math sources.

There is a little there also, I think, trying to do a bonus for this one and apply to you guys, but for those rural areas that are really struggling to get math teachers right now trying to do a write in a bonus so that you go do math.

I have thoughts, thoughts and prayers.

In fact, if anything, what I would tell you autonomy to do your own, I don't know what that's going to end up.

You can make all the promises and I think Katrina is right now.

You can make all the promises in the world, but you have no ability to raise the money to fulfill those promises.

Nobody else that gets elected to a representative body in Virginia is in that position.

You do what you ask for, right?

And part of the trade-off to get elected to school boards years ago, because it passed in 1993,

Our 92 think we need to come up with your elected representatives to be beholden to other elected representatives to get funding.

And everything comes to about average or a little bit better than average for what the state gives, puts in the local mental health services.

We're wagging the tail when it comes to local government support.

Charlottesville does a good job.

Albemarle County does a good job.

There are a lot of localities that don't, that don't do a good job.

I think we need to, we've worked really hard the last

10 years, school counselors, really counselors, not just career path counselors, not counselors, not just test graders.

But again, a lot of it comes down to what, and we have such a complicated society these days that we've got to put real counselors, and we have such a complicated society these days that we've got to put real counselors in here that can help young people.

We've got a crisis in our teenage population with mental health.

The reality is,

I know, does anybody else have any comments or concerns about that?

So I believe y'all are encouraging school boards.

Kari and I carried around school boards.

Kari and I carried around, I don't know, gun talk, but tenuously shoot.

That got through.

So there have been some wins, but very few, I believe.

And I would get, they're coming back.

I believe they're coming back.

I would tell you that they're coming back.

It's a really high hum.

it's decent but I think there's some talk around this new way that medicare is working or medicaid's working where you can actually draw down some dollars for gun violence interruption programs and there's been some talk about that in our local community with some of the programs that we have so I don't know if that will end up happening but that's maybe one way that in our community in 2020 when democrats controlled the senate and house and had governor we passed legislation to create the uniform back universal background check we passed legislation to create a pass legislation to create a red flag wall to ever taken a position or anything compelling fact that people thinking up your gun

We have a first appearance as one that, you know, that LJAC wants every year just because it's a saying to a point like, this is important, you know, stuff like that.

But no, yeah, it's just a tough year.

Next year, we can do as many as we want.

Well, that's good to know.

And we'll, we'll keep adding to our list.

Learner students will keep adding to our list.

Learner students is changing as far as next they're being evaluated or the tests for those.

I mean, I personally feel like assessing and you probably remember this.

I mean, I personally feel like assessing and you probably remember this Ms.

Carlson being on the school board.

In that vein right now, in this era where we are talking about how we attract them, but we're asking them to bless.

And so when we think about our English language learners to test every fast, we all want that the school orientation model.

So we know that the orientation model, so we know that teachers are working, teachers and staff and principals are working, but then we do this accreditation model that says you're on track, off track, and not making the target.

So essentially it's like a letter grade.

And I was shocked as a relative professional here.

It probably is going to be Democrats.

I agree with delegate cause of thinking about, you know, and anytime somebody, somebody, other than a member of our party is every board, you get every appointment that there ought to be some more qualifications, something like this probably wouldn't require constitutional change in Virginia, Virginia constitution.

But, um, what

and this is this stuff of some of us here but that doesn't mean we get to date of the 50 that has one term this power this is an ancient problem happening that it's like terrible ones because you're like look at their shortfalls we're losing money all of a sudden

But it's a good problem to have.

At 529, you save money for families to save money for college programs.

Most legislators, Democratic or Republican, my view is that they operate in good faith.

They do the best they can with the best information they have.

If you have information about a topic, get it to us.

Don't assume we have the best information.

I know that we've applied for grants for solar or the city has, but if there's any legislation to support schools with that, that's not, I don't know.

It's not, I don't know.

It's one of the things we have big footprint and all the bus miles are a little less so than Albemarle, but there was a lot that we could do.

And it always felt like we were fighting over crumbs from Dominion.

And it felt like whatever our wins were, were someone else's losses, which just wasn't a good feeling because we were fighting over the wattage and okay, we got some big award and we go Charlottesville gets less or Green

I'm not going to say too much because y'all don't need to hear me just on my soapbox, but yeah, Dominion's a really big issue.

The biggest bill I personally hear is guaranteed that we would by 2050 remove carbon from our energy production, but we're not going to do that.

We're adding 5%, more than 5%, almost 6% to our energy demand every year with data solar developments.

The siting issue is going to be probably one of the biggest issues we deal with over the next few years.

This is taught math education, Albemarle, and I got this nasty gram, which I'm sure maybe y'all have had the privilege of getting one of these.

This is taught math education, Albemarle, and I got this nasty gram, which I'm sure maybe y'all have had the privilege of getting one of these, where it was like this math calculation this guy had done.

He's like, okay, so they want to go electric.

On that note, like those are kind of macro approaches to sustainable energy for the Commonwealth.

Charlottesville doesn't have land to put on a solar farm.

We don't have high winds to capture energy through wind at a micro level.

OK, OK.

Virginia, and they don't pay taxes.

And so I'm wondering where you fall in payment in lieu of taxes and what that would look like to strategically put money into public housing and public schools, affordable housing and public schools and what that might look like.

I have an idea, but I think you might have a constitutional problem with it.

And we're basically having the same discussion right now around VCU.