School Board Meeting   12/5/2024

Good afternoon, everybody.

Today is Thursday, December 5, and we are here at Charlottesville's school board meeting in the media center.

So I want to welcome you all.

If you will, please join me in a moment of silence.

Thank you so much.

Yes, Madam Chair.

Ms.

Ms.

Cooper?

Ms.

Dooley?

Here.

Mr. Morse?

Ms.

Richardson?

Here.

And Ms.

And our student rep, Ms.

Hudak?

Second.

Second by Mr. Myers.

Thank you.

Any questions or discussion?

Yes.

Any opposed?

All right.

Thank you.

The next item on our agenda is 6.0 and this is our first opportunity for comments from members of the community and 6.1 specifically is for any students who might be here and present who would like to come to the podium to make public comments.

All right.

And then we do have an opportunity, like I said, our first opportunity, and we have another opportunity towards the end of the meeting for comments from members of the community.

So, um, we do have, looks like I have three people who have preregistered.

Um, so I'll call your name, please step up to the podium, state your name, your address.

You have three minutes for your comments.

Good evening school board members and Superintendent Dr. Gurley.

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

I'm here this evening to talk about safety and a need for change for the way things have been done in the past.

Ten days ago, on the morning of November 25th, a vehicle fire at Jackson Vi destroyed one parent's car and three employees' vehicles.

On December 3, the Charlottesville Fire Department determined in their report that the radiant heat from the exhaust system ignited the dry leaves starting the fire.

They responded that the amount of leaves in the staff parking lot was so abundant the drain wasn't able to be found, causing gas and water to puddle up and give off hazardous fumes.

The CFD also reported that the leaves on the lot led to the spread of the fire.

Enormous amounts of leaves at Jackson Viya isn't uncommon.

In my 21st fall season working at Jackson Viya, as the leaves fall, the winds blow the leaves along the fence line to collect.

The safety concern I have

is those leaves in the parking lot do not get collected until winter break, while the other leaves on the grounds get collected during the school day when staff are parked in their designated lot.

Also, the vegetation that caught fire was in large part because it doesn't get cut back on the Jackson Vi side of the fence.

I'm asking for a change where the parking lot leaves get picked up multiple times throughout the fall and the vegetation by the fence get cut at least once, so if a fire were to occur again, it would not spread so quickly.

This fall the leaves could have easily been picked on October 14th, November 4th, November 27th, and November 29th while the staff lots were virtually empty.

Only the Environmental Corporation, HEPACO, came on November 27th to pick up the gas-soaked leaves south of the fire.

The north side of the lot is still covered by leaves.

CFD issued a reminder to not park on leaves, but if the majority of the staff parking spots are covered with leaves, how are we to do this?

There are 80 staff members total at Jackson Fire currently, with only 63 spots.

Of those, five to seven are always taken by the rental units across the street who use the lot as their personal overflow parking spaces, even with the towing force sign if parked during school hours.

I'm asking for the board, Dr. Gurley and Ms.

Powell, to help.

Please see that facilities maintenance picks up the parking lot leaves multiple times each fall.

If the lot can be cleared for snow, surely it can be cleared for leaves multiple times and done correctly so the leaves are not just blown against the fence.

with lots of leaves still being parked on currently in the staff lot.

Please look into this as soon as possible.

Also, please have the city police department support the towing and force lot during the school day.

I want to leave you with a quote from Kyle Irwin.

He's the public safety information officer for the city of Charlottesville.

He states, the city and CCS remain committed to the safety and wellbeing of the community.

Let's make this a reality for Jackson Viya by proactively changing the way leaf removal has been done in the past and keep this from ever happening again.

Thank you, Mr. Hartline.

Good afternoon.

My name is David McCormick, 950 Glenwood Station Lane number 202.

It's my pleasure to speak to you once again.

I hope you remember me from last time.

As a reminder, I am a product of the Charlottesville City Schools fifth grade orchestra program, which I understand is on the chopping block today.

I am also a graduate of Charlottesville High School.

I'm currently a professional violinist and the executive director of Early Music America.

I'm here to be a Mythbuster today.

I think there are three myths that you are operating under that I want to help bust.

Myth number one is that offering fifth grade general music is equivalent to offering fifth grade band and orchestra.

I've heard this said.

And I want to say, just because you're spending the same amount of money doesn't mean that these things are equivalent.

So I want to ask you, do you think that learning to dribble a basketball in gym class is the same thing as joining the JV or varsity basketball team?

Not the same thing, right?

We're talking about the same difference here.

So in orchestra class, you learn teamwork, working towards a goal, hard work, pride, self-worth.

These are things that you're going to learn in much greater quantity in a group team setting like band or orchestra than you are in a general music class.

And I want to really emphasize from my own experience, and I think this experience is really shared by a lot of folks, the spark for music is lit in these teamwork environments.

For me, it was not lit in fourth grade general music class.

I loved my fourth grade general music teacher, but the spark was lit when I was in orchestra class.

Myth number two is that cutting fifth grade band and orchestra isn't an equity issue.

I've heard that said, and I'm really concerned about that.

I first want to just offer up some thoughts on this from my perspective running a national arts organization.

I think that there's a perception of classical music of what it was 100 years ago, a thing for old dead white guys, right?

That has changed a lot in the last 20 years.

Every arts organization in the country is working for representation both on stage and in the audience.

And that's no different here in the Charlottesville City Schools.

If you look at the numbers, I've seen the numbers, your band and orchestra classes are very diverse, right?

They're providing an opportunity for free or low-cost instruction that otherwise costs thousands of dollars.

Just ask my mom.

Violins cost a lot of money.

Signing up for the Youth Orchestra costs a lot of money.

These are things that are offered free and low-cost for the 5th grade Band and Orchestra program.

I also want to say that your at-risk students, they often come to school because of programs like band and orchestra or art class or their sports teams.

The success that they have there, the confidence they build in those environments bleed over into their academic work.

There's a lot of studies that show this.

Myth number three is that this isn't logistically possible.

Thank you.

Or 20 seconds even.

I was an itinerant fifth grade strings teacher in the Prince William County Schools for three years.

I went to four schools every day.

It was not that logistically difficult to figure out and you have current recently retired teachers who can help you figure out the logistics.

I'm willing to help free of charge if you'd like my assistance in figuring out how this works.

I realize that it's a challenge, but I hope that you won't make your legacy that you found an easy way out, but that you found a way that is really excellent and recognizes the excellence of this program.

Hello, people.

I no longer live in Charlottesville.

My address is 1102 West Gray Street, apartment 4 in Richmond.

Anyway,

My name is Harley Saxon.

I am a musician, activist, and music educator originally from here in Charlottesville, although like I said, I currently reside in Richmond and traveled specifically here today for this purpose.

It has come to my attention that Charlottesville City Schools as an organization has been toying with the idea of cutting funding to the fifth grade level band and orchestra programs.

As a Charlottesville City Schools Orchestra alum who initially joined in the fifth grade in 2009 and stayed enrolled in the orchestra until 2017 when I graduated, I can say with a great deal of passion and a vivid, not so distant memory of my entire time spent in the program, do not cut the funding.

I was one of the many kids in my grade who were not only anticipating and looking forward to the novelty and excitement, childhood wonder of playing a stringed instrument as part of a credited class in school, but I had already made up my mind years prior that I was specifically going to play the viola.

I still play the viola to this day among a plethora of other instruments and I love the viola and the experience that it brought me so much that I have an alto clef tattooed on my left forearm.

Joining the orchestra in the fifth grade under the direction of Dr. Polly Seibert, who has since retired, was so profound and impactful to the trajectory of my life that I felt it essential enough to commemorate not only with permanent ink, but by swearing to myself that I would become not only a musician, but a music instructor as well.

For very many children in my same age group who were born into more put together families with more put together lives, perhaps they had already been introduced to formal music training.

I, however, had not.

Aside from a month or two period of weekly guitar lessons that my maternal grandfather was able to spring for when I was six years old.

But through the orchestra program in the fifth grade specifically, I not only received that formal music training in a class environment, I also was able to participate in private tutoring with local music instructors through the Boyd Tinsley Foundation.

My family was poor.

We faced constant food insecurity, evictions, family partnership planning through child services, eventual foster care placements.

We didn't have regular transportation.

We rode the city bus for a good majority of my childhood.

Me, my mom, my dad, my little sister, and our various crises which being poor contributed to.

You must understand how groundbreaking and imperative an opportunity for quality early childhood music education was for me.

Through all the lack of security in my life, I was gifted something beautiful to fight for, to occupy my attention, to challenge me, to enhance the quality of my existence, grant me a measurable joy, a deep understanding of what I wanted to do with my future.

Life skills, social skills, amazing friends who I still share mutual love and support with to this very day, but most importantly, to make my days worthwhile and give me hope.

Through my years spent as a student in the Charlottesville City Schools Orchestra, I was blessed with three amazing conductor directors, Ms.

Thomas, Mr. Brew Baker, and the aforementioned Dr. Seibert.

Though all of us have since moved on, these are people who made it possible for me to have access to playable instruments, waiving rental fees, allowing summer use, even hosting a separate summer orchestra program for kids who were really committed in the school auditoriums on their own time.

This was at Walker.

These people taught me valuable lessons that I still carry with me today.

Wrapping up.

Thank you.

Hear me out.

With my high school rental viola, which was awarded to me as part of a scholarship that I was nominated for by Mrs. Thomas herself, I have played countless shows from classical to hip-hop to rock and metal.

I have recorded and tracked one-person string ensembles for individual artists to producers to getting my own composed pieces approved and licensed for independent film scores.

Is there anyone else here in the auditorium before we look to online?

Again, state your name.

You got three minutes.

My name is Sydney Rasmussen.

91%.

That is the percentage of students who qualify for reduced price or free lunch in San Antonio, Texas.

In the David Douglas School System in Portland, Oregon, this percentage is 75.

In Charlottesville, this percentage is 74.

You might be asking yourself, why am I bringing up San Antonio and Portland?

In all of these schools, band and orchestra start in fifth grade.

In the David Douglas school system, diversity plays a major role.

The racial breakdown of the students is as follows.

35% white, 25% Hispanic, 19% Asian, and 12% black.

26% of these are ESL students.

This diversity is almost perfectly represented in the music program.

What makes this even more shocking are the quotes from these students, many of which describe these vastly diverse music groups as a family.

Going further, let's look at Los Angeles.

Specifically, let's look at the Harmony Project.

This project, founded in 2001 in Hollywood, California, currently provides free music education to 4,103 students from low-income families in the Los Angeles area.

97% of seniors in this group

got into colleges.

79% of these were first-generation college students.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national average of seniors admitted to colleges is 61.8%.

That's a big difference.

In David Douglas, a similar situation regarding GPA occurred.

The average GPA of those not in the music program was around 2.82.

For those in music, this GPA average was much higher, around 3.35.

A study done by the Rotman Research Institute helps to shine a light on the reasons behind this phenomenon.

The study consisted of 32 eight-year-olds

half of which were given free music education, the other half art.

None of the students had had any previous experience and they were randomly assigned to these groups.

The music group showed vast increases in reading skills, connecting written words to their spoken sound, and listening abilities.

These children were better able to pick out nuances in speech, a skill vital to understanding emotion.

These results applied to 90% of the students.

For comparison, the typical study has a success rate of 60 to 70%.

There are too many benefits to list in just over three minutes.

However, I have tried to list some of them.

To conclude this speech, I ask you to remember that music is vital to our community's future.

Don't take away the strong roots of our amazing, unique, strong music program.

Hi, thank you.

I didn't know if you would have time for me.

Sondra Yvette Avalos.

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

Thank you so much for having us here today.

I wanted to address a few key issues.

First, I want to briefly touch on the rezoning process.

As many of you know, this effort is a result of the school reconfiguration process.

Sorry, I didn't realize I wasn't that close.

As many of you know, there is a huge urge for city residents to fill out the feedback survey.

It's extremely important that parents and community members share what works best for their families and children.

We know that a lot of times district lines don't always make sense and hearing from people directly affected by these decisions cannot make this process fair, effective, and efficient.

Now I want to focus on a significant concern.

Many people are here speaking about this today.

And this is the fifth grade orchestra being removed during the reconfiguration process.

Many families have started to share how much they value the program and will eliminate a lot of options for our students.

We should aim to preserve as many opportunities as possible.

for our students, especially in the arts.

Even if some view orchestra as a predominantly white program, we need to try and avoid taking away programs that enrich students and in their education while working to expand and diversify these opportunities.

This brings me to a larger point, and this is that we are consistently hearing from parents in our communities, particularly black and brown parents,

that programs intended to serve BIPOC students often lack meaningful follow-through.

Presentations about these programs are great, but without genuine effort to ensure that these are impactful and accessible, they really fall short.

One issue directly tied to this is the persistent language barriers that prevent many parents from engaging fully with the school system.

We cannot simply express a desire for greater involvement from our marginalized parents.

We must actively create the spaces and remove the barriers that keep them from participating.

Resources and information must be available in the languages that our families speak.

The top three that we've been hearing right now is Spanish, Dari, and Pashto.

Those are the top three.

Many families want to engage but feel left out or unwelcome because they lack access to the tools that they need.

In an ideal world, we would have more teachers that reflect the diversity of our students, but we can start now by ensuring that books, programs, and classroom materials represent and affirm our students' identities.

And then lastly, I just wanna thank the school board for your efforts.

This feedback is not a criticism of anybody's work, but it's just to amplify the voices of the community and continue to build a school system where all students and families feel included and valued.

Thank you.

Anyone else here in the media center currently?

All right, and if not, Mr. Como, is there anybody signed up indicating that they would like to make comment now?

If so, please raise your hand there or use the raise hand icon.

I do see one, Mrs., excuse me, Ms.

Karen Myers.

Go ahead and you can start.

Hi.

I really think I can't speak any more eloquently than the students that you've just heard.

But I would like to express my strong support for the music program as well.

In fifth grade, I think that everyone recognizes that Charlottesville schools have something very unique.

And this would be cutting off a very important beginning part of this wonderful program.

And I just want to express my support.

Thank you.

We're checking to see if anybody else would like to make public comment now online.

And as a reminder, we will have another opportunity towards the end of the meeting for public comment.

So thank you, everybody who took time out of your day and made the journey here for your comment.

We appreciate that.

All right.

Again, I do want to, and I apologize that I didn't do this earlier, but we do have a new student rep joining us here at the board.

So we have Ms.

Anya Hudock.

Is that correct?

Hudock.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

Anyway, we want to welcome you.

We're grateful that you're here.

Appreciate you being a representative of the students here with Charlottesville City Schools.

Good evening.

Thank you for this opportunity.

It is an honor and a privilege to represent CHS's student body.

I would like to start by saying thank you for addressing the water filter issue that was pointed out at one of the first school board meetings this year.

Students, including myself, appreciated this quick fix.

Please continue to monitor the filters as students need to have the ability to fill water bottles and stay hydrated throughout the day.

Many peers have requested longer BKTs for next year.

As the year progresses, they still find the 45 minutes to not be ample time to visit teachers, which occurs only once per week.

After the break, students voiced their concerns about the parent collection of phones.

Concerns such as certain parents working later than the phone pickup time, which is 4.30, and some parents not having the accessibility to reach the school.

Students fear that if their parent doesn't pick up their phone in time, they may need it after school to navigate to an appointment or for safety reasons if there's an accident.

It's understood that this is to help prevent students from having their phones out in the first place, but they feel this may be an unnecessary precaution.

A suggestion for you to consider may be a happy medium where students get their phone confiscated once and their parents are then notified.

And if the issue is to reoccur, then parents are to be involved with phone pickup.

Many students were also wondering if personal computers and AirPods would be confiscated going forward like phones.

For upperclassmen who drive and park in the student parking lot, they request that we have CSAs conduct traffic as they did earlier in the year.

The system of conducting traffic seems to work efficiently and allow students to feel more safe.

Students feel the curriculum in ninth and 10th grade doesn't best accommodate all of the different levels of students that are placed in those classes.

Those who feel under-challenged in freshman and sophomore English classes don't want to wait until an AP level to feel accurately challenged, and feel the underclassmen curriculum needs to adjust to suit all levels.

Lastly, students are very appreciative that there are two lunch periods this year instead of three.

Thank you again for your time, consideration, and the opportunity to speak on behalf of my peers.

Yeah, nice report.

I would if it's okay, I don't know.

So I'm hoping that some of those things you and your your peers are reaching out to Dr. Malone about and especially curriculum based and we happen to be bringing the program of studies up tonight.

So that was timely in that you bring that but but I would hope that you're being directed or being able to meet with him.

Anything else that anybody wants to say?

No?

All right.

Thank you for that.

Just I mean, because we love to hear the responses, but I want to make sure that he's in touch with you.

Yeah, if I'm base.

If I may say something, we do have like a lunch talk where a few students get to meet.

And I unfortunately, I got to miss one of them because I was sick.

That happened last week.

No, and I think that's great feedback.

I mean, especially if it's coming from students.

And I think that's exactly what we want to hear.

But that's exactly what

What he needs to hear as he's working with his team and looking at that and then working with Dr. Odey and Dr. Gurley as far as big picture things.

So thank you for that.

Also, if I may, again, I wanted to thank everybody who made public comment, but I also wanted to just double check.

Dr. Gurley, is there somebody and Ms.

Avales, I don't know if you have regular check-ins or if there was something specific that you could, you know, or please touch base with Ms.

Chuck or somebody if you wanted to direct her about groups of people that she felt might need a little extra touch.

So I'll let you think on that and then if you can follow up.

I was going to, I had made a little note to address that at the end, but most certainly if there, if there's a group of students, I mean, a group of families or a particular community that we're not reaching, I know we've been sending some direct messages.

And even when we did our community engagement on Tuesday night, on Tuesday night, we,

We also made sure for the families there that they're using the Parent Square app, and that that's another good communication tool to get information in there, that language, but most certainly, if there's another group that we need to reach, please let me know.

And we can do a, I can do a follow up with you.

Yeah, and we have an interpreter.

No, I think and that's again, somebody from the community who might be getting feedback.

So we appreciate that, you know, and just making sure that you feel like you have a direct line, not just here at the at the board meetings, but we do appreciate receiving that.

But I think at this point, hopefully, you've got, you know, a good connection with Dr. Gurley and his staff and being able to feed that type of

those concerns to us so that we can make sure they're addressed.

So thank you.

I see you.

You can you can see me up here.

OK.

All right.

Just want to make sure you heard.

Thank you.

All right.

I move that we adopt the consent agenda.

Great, thank you.

Any questions, concerns, discussion?

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Any opposition?

Say no.

All right.

Thank you so much.

Our next item is an action item.

Good evening, members of the board.

On last month, we brought before you information as it relates to the salary action for school board members.

At that time, we did update the presentation, which was done for you all at the school board work session with the line item that was requested.

Tonight, you all will need to take action.

Before I turn it back over to you all, I didn't know if there were any other questions that we could clarify.

So just from my memory, when we were at the work session, we asked for those updated numbers, which are what we're looking at right now.

Go down.

Right.

Go back up.

Oh, no.

I'm sorry.

You're right.

Keep going down.

It's this slide right here.

So the increase of the budget would be $28,700 if you all went with the row that you asked us to insert.

But most certainly, I know during that conversation, the discussion ranged from doing the increase of 89% all the way up to the increase of 100%.

So I know you all

I'll move to increase the school board members' salaries to $8,500 and the chair to $10,000.

All right, so let's offer up the opportunity for any discussion or comments at this point.

Ms.

I just want to clarify that this will not be in effect until 2026, correct?

Correct.

Yeah, thank you.

Ms.

Dooley, any comments?

Mr. Myers.

As I've stated before, board members, I'll just say philosophically, I'm against public officials giving themselves raises.

I do firmly believe that this should be a ballot measure for the public to decide.

And that is not just the school board.

I understand that we are working in the code of Virginia.

And that's the way that it's written right now.

But I do think that is something that should be changed.

Thank you.

And as I've said to you personally, privately, I appreciate that and I respect that perspective.

And I do respect and appreciate the comments and the discussion that we had at our work session with the understanding and realization for me personally, I will just speak to just the value of the time that we do as board members put into this and the value of my time.

had never really looked at it that way.

So just wanted to acknowledge again and thank other board members for their discussion and their input around this.

I personally am supportive of an increase.

I'm not really comfortable with the 89% and felt more comfortable with, I think a previous, where is that slide?

Sorry.

probably more aligned to the 50% increase or something like that.

But I don't know at this point that I'll make a friendly amendment to it, but I just wanted to publicly state that.

So if there's no further discussion, we have a motion and a second.

All in favor.

And again, the motion is to increase board members to the 89%, which was recommended here, which was written up.

Yes.

Any opposed?

Please say no.

No.

So it passes.

Thank you.

All right.

And I'll just, since you're sitting down.

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

I come to you this evening to talk about the calendar drafts that we presented in November last month.

We presented drafts for the 25-26 school year as well as the 26-27 school year.

As you know, we also

shared those drafts with the community to review and receive input on.

Do we have to?

No.

Is there any discussion, questions, comments at this point?

Mr. Meyers is hiding down there.

All right.

All in favor, please say yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Any opposed?

No.

Mr. Myers with the no.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Odey.

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

I'm pleased to meet with you tonight to talk about our plans to sustain excellence in our band and orchestra programs after the opening of Charlottesville Middle School and the return of fifth graders to our elementary schools.

There's been a lot of discussion about the impact of reconfiguration in our beginning band and orchestra programs.

My goal with this presentation is to provide you an overview of the current proposal and the factors that led to this point.

I will also outline our next steps as we move forward with our planning for post-reconfiguration.

As you can tell, our music and fine arts programs are connected to a number of areas in our strategic plan.

The statement that most guides the work that I do for our division can be summed up by these few sentences, and they are so important that I'm going to read them aloud.

Charlottesville City Schools views the arts as essential for the complete education of every child.

In Charlottesville, the arts have never been viewed as frills, but as an indispensable part of our culture and history, a heritage to be shared by all.

This philosophy is embraced by the school board,

our administration and the community at large.

Throughout the years our division has made intentional choices that have led to CCS becoming a model for the region.

We've not always been perfect and over the past several years we have worked diligently at removing barriers and obstacles such as access to instruments, waiving participation fees, and eliminating course scheduling conflicts for our programs.

Our commitment to these programs is evident and can be easily observed and experienced.

Each year, the Virginia Music Educators Association awards the Blue Ribbon to schools whose top band, choir, and orchestra all earn superior ratings at district assessments.

Charlottesville City Schools has earned the VMEA's Blue Ribbon 13 times, performing grade six musical literature, which is the most difficult category.

CHS ensembles regularly earn top ratings in domestic music festivals and have been invited to perform internationally at locations such as Rome, Florence, Bissençon, Paris, Vienna, London, and Dublin, to name a few.

And as you have heard at our most recent school board meetings even tonight, the larger Charlottesville community has come to cherish our fine arts programs.

And as you know, we have received a number of messages of concern, both at our school board meetings as well as in emails.

And because of the unique configuration of Walker School, we have been able to offer beginning band and orchestra to fifth and sixth grade students, following the model of a middle school rather than an elementary.

Students meet multiple times a week during the school day to receive specialized instruction in their chosen elective.

This model has allowed for instrumental programs to thrive and has set us apart from other schools and divisions.

We know our fine arts programs are special and that they have impacted families over multiple generations.

So as we have been developing plans to reconfigure our schools, it is not surprising that community members have begun sharing their concerns about the band and orchestra programs.

This list is a summary of the concerns that have come to our attention and it is my hope that you will see how these are addressed as I describe our current situation and plans for the future.

The concerns expressed include potential loss of instrumental music instruction, the impact on students' social and emotional development, and the positive academic benefits of music education.

Specifically, concerns were raised about the loss of fifth-grade music instruction, which can be a crucial time for students to develop their musical skills and form lasting connections with their peers.

In the fall of 2023, band and orchestra directors met to begin discussions around reconfiguration and to envision what a post-reconfiguration would look like for band and orchestra.

This team identified and listed best practices for beginning instrumental programs and used several research studies looking at the influence of beginning instructional grade on enrollment, retention, and music performance to inform our process.

And you can see on this slide is a list of the best practices they identified.

These best practices are our most important consideration in making the final recommendation.

As secondary music teachers and I began to work to develop a proposal, we initially focused on starting specialized instrumental education in the sixth grade.

However, we later decide to propose what we most wanted, instrumental education beginning in the fourth grade.

And you can see this proposal here on the left.

However, as you can see that even under this proposal, we could only attain three of the recommended best practices.

And if we scaled the elementary instrumental program back to the fifth grade, we only attained two of those recommended best practices.

On top of that, a number of major hurdles also became clear.

Chiefly, this model requires the entire school day to be extended 30 minutes, an idea that the fifth grade advisory committee had initially explored but ultimately set aside because of costs and complications.

Also, this plan requires that students lose library time that would need to be made up elsewhere.

It requires space that many of our schools do not have and cannot build.

and it requires budgeting for additional full-time staff.

Finally, we realized that the elementary instrumental music program would become the driver of our elementary school's overall schedules due to staffing availability.

It just wasn't tenable.

Since the original plan couldn't work, we considered other options.

We entertained the idea of developing a special afterschool band and orchestra program, but this raised serious concerns about equity and accessibility.

This plan could potentially be limiting to students who receive tutoring or are involved in seasonal activities.

Additionally, there were concerns regarding hiring qualified staffing who could work during these afterschool hours.

We investigated how other divisions introduce elementary instruments and found that sometimes these programs relied on pull-out models and while others acknowledged that the logistics and coordination of their programs place strain on the school schedules.

Looking back, I realize that the fourth and fifth grade proposal was a bit of a stretch, but I also know that it was important that we fully explored the option.

We all agree that we would love for our students to begin learning their chosen instrument in fourth grade.

but our band and orchestra directors agree that if we cannot recreate the excellence of our current program under the elementary model, then it is essential that our focus should be on high quality program at the sixth grade level.

With this in mind, our secondary music teachers and I turned our attention back to our original idea, beginning specialized instrumental music instruction at sixth grade.

It's hard to say goodbye to what we had at Walker, but we have a great plan for sixth and fifth grade music, and I want everyone to know that this is not a cut in staffing or in funding.

This current sixth grade plan includes students meeting regularly at least three times a week for a full year, not by semester.

We are going to assign our current Walker band and orchestra staffing to the middle school level to provide small group instruction for beginners in like instrumentation.

We will ensure dedicated time during the school day for students to play as a whole ensemble, as well as ensure dedicated time for after school rehearsals with transportation provided for those who need it.

It is also recommended that the sixth grade students are provided with two elective options so as not to detract from initial band and orchestra enrollment.

All music teachers' feedback has contributed to this model, even if some of them would still advocate for elementary and instrumental instruction.

Some of our teachers are here tonight.

Continuous collaboration with band and orchestra teachers will be essential as we continue this process, and band and orchestra teachers will be part of the master schedule development process at Charlottesville Middle School to ensure that the best practices can be met.

When we compare this plan to our list of best practices, you can see here that we are hitting them all except for the early start.

This plan also includes adjusting our fifth grade general music program.

We will be enhancing our elementary general music curriculum in collaboration with band and orchestra directors to ensure that by the end of fifth grade, the students will be prepared to enter our band and orchestra programs at Charlottesville Middle School, paying special attention to music literacy and notation,

as well as experience and exposure to instruments.

We will be refining the introduction of musical instruments such as recorders, ukuleles, and orf instruments in the elementary program.

We will arrange field trips featuring instrumental music for students such as the annual Charlottesville Symphony Orchestra program, children's concerts sponsored by the Tuesday Evening Concert Series, as well as the youth performance by the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival.

We will arrange special in-school visits by instrumentalists using community partners such as the Pralage Program, which brings local professionals to music classrooms to demonstrate instruments.

We will ensure that we have face-to-face meetings with the rising sixth graders and band and orchestra directors during the elective selection process.

And we will also schedule Charlottesville Middle School and Charlottesville High School ensembles to perform for both fourth and fifth grade students.

It is important to note that this fifth grade music program will reach all students and not just those who elected.

I hope you can tell that my colleagues and I have put both time and heart into this recommendation.

Under the new model, all fifth grade students will be exposed to instrumental music through the general music class.

Our sixth grade beginners will be supported by a very robust staff to get them off to a strong start.

And there are no funding cuts, no funding or staff cuts in this model.

We also know that other divisions that start teaching instruments in sixth grade have also been able to achieve excellence.

As we continue to refine this new model, we are committed to continuous collaboration with the band and orchestra teachers.

and I am confident that we have identified the best way forward with a strong plan to support these programs that we all love.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Eichhorn.

This is a great presentation.

I'm very impressed with

The thoughtful, I think, process and criteria and analysis you have all done in order to come to this.

I, again, note that, and I've heard this in the public a lot, that we'll be cutting things or cutting teachers.

And this is, I think, different, but not cutting.

And I think that came and came to me very clearly in this presentation.

My child has been participating in a fifth and sixth grade band recently, and I've seen the benefits from it.

I also, I think, appreciate that now fifth graders will get a deeper experience.

All the fifth graders will get a deeper experience and be able then to select into a, I think, it looks like it sounds like a little more robust sixth grade experience if that's what they want to do.

So I appreciate this and thank you for your time and I know it probably wasn't

What you were hoping to have to do, but when considering reconfiguration overall and that benefit to all of the students in this community, I think this is a good path forward.

Thank you.

I echo my colleagues sentiments and also want to appreciate, I think, the collaborative approach that you took along with Dr. Gurley and really working with the existing staff.

to hear from them, hear their concerns and really take them to heart and to do the work of how do we cultivate and care for every student, not just one sector of students and not wavering from a massive change in scheduling and

really taking a whole approach to this.

And so I appreciate that.

Appreciate that we're not cutting funding.

The board is not cutting funding to any particular program or to any particular group.

I am looking forward to this new revitalized, maybe even programming and hope that everyone who has taken the time to come out and to speak will remain engaged and will

be a part of these opportunities that Mr. Eichhorst has talked about, bringing in professionals into the schools and offering students the opportunity to learn from so many of you who have reached out and talked about your incredible experience, I hope,

You'll remain engaged and offer to lend your expertise in a new way, in a meaningful way to a group of students that might look a little bit different, but will be welcome.

And so I encourage folks to continue to engage in that way.

I'll echo my sentiments of thanks.

I am impressed by this.

I like the programming.

I am not a fan of hyper specialization too early in a student's education.

And so I appreciate that this is keeping options open for students to have the experience of exploring a vast

range of curricula as they matriculate through our system to what their ultimate goals are going to be.

Miss Richardson.

Thank you.

Now I just want to thank you for your presentation and your time.

Do you have anything?

No?

Okay.

Thank you, sir.

Hi, I just wanted to say as someone who is graduating from the String Ensemble program, and obviously like went through the fifth grade program, I think that this sounds like a good plan.

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

I am not going to review this slide, but I think the big picture of this slide is that we've been at this work for a while, since 2020 in particular, and we have made a lot of progress in that time.

If you consider Trailblazer, if you consider Summit and the good work that those schools have done to establish new culture.

We've also made the change to KTEC.

to make that Charlottesville area.

And we've also renamed Charlottesville Middle School.

So not all of that falls under the scope of this exact renaming charge, but it's just a history of the work we've done in this area.

I do want to add a few things because in the weeks that we have been getting feedback this fall, we've heard a couple of

questions about people saying, well, weren't you going to change every single school name?

That kind of thinking.

So I just want to explain that a little bit.

That was actually never, the schools never stated that we were going to change all the school names and the task from both Dr. Atkins and Dr. Gurley had been to evaluate

the school names, whether they are in keeping with our values today.

In fact, the very first question on every single survey, we used the same survey effectively over and over and over again, was do you think, effectively, I'm paraphrasing, but it was do you think the school name should change or do you think it should stay the same?

So the other thing I think these various committees and the board can be proud of is that up to this point for that question of change the name or not change the name, in every case the committee and so far the board has been in sync with the community feedback on that.

All right, if you don't mind advancing to the next

A little bit of history because we kind of came to this point this fall at an unusual spot.

We had four schools left to finish up the process, four, but two of them, Burnley, Moran, and Johnson, we had begun this process a year or so ago and then we paused.

At that point, the decision had been made to change the name of the schools, but we had not successfully found the new names of the schools.

So just as a reminder, the bottom line for the committee that recommended this name change to the board, which again, it was a slightly different board then, but was that regardless of the accomplishment or merit of those individuals, those school names commemorate an era of segregated education that no longer reflects the division's values.

and I think another way of thinking about this is we would like names for our schools that at a school-wide morning meeting, the school principal and the school staff could literally help the students celebrate and feel pride in their school name and they wouldn't have any ambiguous feelings about the name or be remembering a history that doesn't represent all of our students.

So that is just another approach to why we have really engaged in this process overall.

I looked at this slide a few minutes ago.

I don't think the date is quite right, but it is right in the sense that we've kind of gone back and forth on this policy because there was a little technical error, but I believe it was last November that the board really did some work, perhaps with Dr. Odey and Dr. Johnson, to

Okay, so maybe the timing is right.

I'm not positive.

But in any case, the board over these years revisited the policy and really declared a preference for names.

If we are changing a name from individuals, we're not going to pick new names for individuals.

and the preferences for names that really are centered around a sense of purpose and place.

I remember Ms.

Powell was the one who came up with this idea for us, and it was very effective.

And so after the policy was updated, the leadership team developed a seven-step process, which you see, to guide the review of a school's name as outlined.

This process involves forming an advisory committee, attempting to notify relevant stakeholders, and holding committee meetings where data is reviewed and thoughtful discussions take place.

Step one through three, which are detailed in the slide,

have led to the committees making the formal recommendations to the superintendent.

And so that's step one, step two, and step three.

And as a result, the superintendent is prepared to make a recommendation to you all this evening, which is step four.

During this process, four schools were reviewed.

Burle Moran and Johnson's committees started with the task of selecting a new name for the school, as the decision to change their name was made in 2023, as Beth discussed.

Greenbrier and Jackson-Vallier began by reviewing their current school names, and we will now go over the recommendations for each school, starting with Burle Moran.

Each of our slides outlines the process followed by the 2024 committee, as well as key data points and sources they considered.

The Burl and Moran committee reviewed all name suggestions made since 2020 and carefully considered excluding all area landmarks or street names that were not in close proximity to the school.

This led to the elimination of names like Riverview and River Vista.

While the river is nearby, it is not within the school sight lines, so the committee decided to focus on features that are directly visible from the school instead.

After much discussion, the Burlameran Committee gave their final recommendation to Dr. Gurley of Sunrise Elementary School.

This name gives a nod to the school being the easternmost school in our city with lovely sunrise views.

Committee members like the way that sunrise conveys a sense of hope, warmth, and new beginnings, as well as the power of students rising through the years in our school.

One committee member noted, sunrise evokes all the positives of a fresh new beginning and or new day.

Every student receives that new perspective and chance to grow each day as part of today's BME community.

Also, if you have ever attended a BME school-wide morning meeting, you know that sunrise and the sunrise is prevalent and physically interconnected with the school's processes.

Moving on to Greenbrier, the process was pretty straightforward.

The committee concluded that the school name is already named after the neighborhood where it's located, which aligns with the purpose and place criteria outlined in the current policy.

Additionally, there was a strong community support for keeping the current name.

Moving on to Jackson-Vaya.

The committee took their time with this recommendation since we know that naming schools for individuals can be a little bit more complicated.

Part of their work included reviewing the biographies of these women, reviewing accounts of these women from the people who were trailblazers when Johnson School was desegregated and VIA was their principal.

And they also actually went to, one member went to Special Collections and did a deep dive of VIA's own writings to really be able to answer the questions of the various committee members.

I mention all this because I really think it's a window into how hard and how carefully these committees worked.

It wasn't just sitting around and kind of like looking at survey data and then saying this is what we're going to do.

They actually took time to do research and do some deep and thoughtful consideration.

Once they reviewed these accounts from the trailblazers, who were very strongly in favor of keeping Bia's name, by the way, and the research of the person who went to Special Collections, that committee, like almost all of these committees, came to a unanimous recommendation to keep the school's name.

One committee member wrote, in a time and society that is deeply divided, let us draw from the examples set by Nanny Cox Jackson and Bette Davis-Vaya.

Let us embrace unity, determination, love of learning, community service, and an upstander spirit.

In doing so, Jackson-Vaya continued to produce civic-minded citizens committed to making the world a better place.

As you can tell, this unanimous recommendation for Dr. Gurley was to keep the name, as is, Jackson-Vaya Elementary School.

And one final point that was important to the committee was that in 1969, these two women were specifically chosen as fitting examples for Charlottesville's first desegregated school, and the committee believes that they are still fitting examples of that work today.

Finally, we'll move on to Johnson Elementary School.

This is another one that, like Burnley Moran, has been years in the making.

When the previous committee made their, when the 22-23 committee made this recommendation, it was to the board for Cherry Avenue Elementary School, but that name was paused.

The 2024 committee decided to revisit that name a little bit, but as they, because there were write-in people who had requested reconsidering Cherry Avenue.

However, alongside those write-ins for Cherry Avenue, the committee felt like they were hearing people saying, I don't care for Cherry Avenue.

It doesn't have a deeper, more inspirational meaning, and it speaks to one very specific street in our city instead of the whole school community.

So the committee sort of, they set that aside.

And I'm gonna give a few other examples of some of these top recommendations to give you kind of their thinking, because again, I think it really shows the level of detail that our committees took up.

For Forest Grove, that was actually the top vote getter on the kind of conversation starter survey we did this fall.

That one got the highest votes, but they also heard from people saying Forest Grove sounds a little generic,

And it's also very repetitive.

One person even wrote in to say it sounds a little bit like ocean water.

The committee took all this feedback into account and set that name aside for Rock Creek, which was also a fairly high vote getter.

People liked that name in many ways, but the committee, like some of these other committees that you've heard from, was very sensitive to the fact that Rock Creek and Rock Creek Road are not actually adjacent to the school, and they did not want to pick a name that might cause confusion for people who are thinking, oh, it must be on Rock Creek Road or really close to Rock.

It is close, but not exactly adjacent.

That's the kind of thinking that has been really prevalent in these committees.

and then Tall Oaks was the next highest vote getter.

And that one, the more the committee worked with it, the more they really did like it.

And so I'm gonna, that in fact was the recommendation of the committee and that I will speak in the words of the committee for why they chose this one.

Tall, it evokes the beautiful trees that dot our campus, including a historic giant oak tree near our playground.

Families, students, and staff often comment that our outdoor spaces truly make our campus one of a kind.

As a parent noted when they nominated this name, there is an ancient saying, from little acorns come mighty oaks.

We felt this saying captures the growth and empowerment that occurs among all of our students who walk our halls.

It's also worth noting that Tall Oaks Elementary School still fits with the school's traditional song, which was actually another request of the staff.

So thank you all for giving us the opportunity to present this information to you this evening.

Members of the board, before I get started, I do want to thank our committee members, both past and present, for doing this work.

Specifically, I want to thank Dr. Baptist.

I saw her today and I tell her often that her legacy still lives on.

She did this work for quite some time.

She, along with Dr. Johnson,

I also want to acknowledge Dr. Odie because I know she did some work on the policy alongside Dr. Johnson and also Ms.

Chuck, who has been a great supporter and great communicator of ours.

I did meet with each one of the committees and I will tell you that I think I had a moment each time that I met with them because many of the words that you heard them say just really resonated with me and I think I was profoundly moved as I heard each one of the recommendations.

So it is with enthusiasm that I do present these names to you all.

When we come back in the month of January, I plan to ask you to accept the names that have been presented to you, and I hope that you all accept them without reservation because a lot of hard work did go into arriving at this moment this evening.

of finally completing our school naming process.

So again, I'm in support of all the names presented without recommendations and will bring them back to you without reservation and will bring them back to you in January.

Do we have any questions?

The fall of 25 is what we would think.

OK.

Thank you for revisiting this process.

I think I was somewhat cynical in the beginning, and some of my board colleagues current and past

I was suggesting that we go the way of New York City and just do public school one, two, three, four, and just avoid all of this completely.

I had a change of heart attending the ribbon cutting ceremonies, specifically the one at Summit.

When the students were able to read their interpretations and definitions of the school, that was really impactful.

And I really appreciate that so many of these names hold that deeper meaning for students.

So I guess Greenbrier is the one that I still kind of question a little bit.

I don't know what the deeper meaning of Greenbrier is, I guess, besides the neighborhood, but certainly

will be in support of this, I believe, in January.

And then just a note to some of the public that has had some reservations about some of the names.

Renaming doesn't mean that the mascot has to change.

And so I know that there's still a lot of commitment to some of the various school spirit animals and whatnot.

And so we'll look forward to how some of those evolve or stay the same.

I'd like to speak to that mascot thing.

I'll just keep it very simple.

I'm very pleased with the process and the outcome.

It's so much different than the last time.

And it feels a lot easier just to hear.

And I feel like just the stories behind the names, that alone, I think, changes what we did previously.

And I was not here previously, but watched online and from home.

this feels very different and so again I think we are seeing the continuation of a more collaborative approach and how we as a school division do things and that Dr. Gurley, Dr. Johnson, Ms.

Chuck really taking community feedback into consideration and elevating voices and

Really working with everyone to come up with what fits the time and honoring the work that's happening in there.

So thank you for that.

And thank you to everyone who joined in the process.

And like Miss Julie, those ribbon cutting ceremonies were pretty great.

I was with Miss Torres at one as well over at Trailblazer and I think just a renewed sense of community and excitement and t-shirts.

Who doesn't love a free t-shirt?

And I love being out in the community and seeing the little eagles with their new t-shirts.

So that's pretty great.

Just say I look forward to supporting these recommendations.

Miss Hudock, do you have any comments?

I just want to say thank you to everybody as well.

I mean, I was on the board through this prior process as some of us were.

I was not on the committee.

This time I was on the committee, so I was able to join maybe all but one of the meetings and just wanted to express gratitude for the work that was done.

I think it was very collaborative and as has been said by both Ms.

Chuck and Dr. Johnson.

Just the conversation and the back and forth and the thought process and the work that some committee members initiated by themselves.

You know, just the time spent.

I was just very impressed and it was really good work.

Up next, we have 10.3.

Ms.

Powell's not here, but I will stand in for her.

Hi, everybody.

I'm Kim Powell.

Just kidding.

I'm here once again to give you the yearly or sometimes more or less than yearly update on capital projects.

Can everybody hear me all right?

All right.

We go through a few items here.

Projects underway and completed.

That's what we're doing right now.

Upcoming work in the next fiscal cycle.

The priority improvement program discussion.

And some general discussion about our way forward from here.

I think we're both doing it.

Sure, that would be great.

We can just skip right past this one.

This is the agenda of projects we're working on and go straight into our first project.

This is probably the most exciting one, the middle school reconfiguration.

This is, as most of you know, a $91 million reconfiguration project out at what was once known or is currently known as Buford Middle School, soon to be Charlottesville Middle School.

This is a multi-year reconfiguration project.

I think most people know the scope of it, but just a quick overview.

We're moving this to a three-grade school, sixth, seventh, and eighth.

Fifth grade will go back to the elementary schools.

Then a future project will move pre-K into a pre-K center.

Go ahead and advance.

So this is a view, a rendering from our design process of what the project should approximately look like when it's complete.

We're about a year into our construction process now, a little bit more.

Go ahead and advance.

Here's another view, another rendering of what the project will look like.

This one's a little more interesting because if you'll advance one more, we have the current condition.

So on the right hand side of that image, you'll see the existing

kind of cafeteria side of Buford where we all stood and cut that or shoveled some dirt a year ago.

And you can see in the distance and to the left already grown up a couple of new building volumes.

So we're well on our way on this project.

Go ahead.

Another of our renderings from the design process and one more.

This is where we were a year ago when I came and spoke to you.

And one more.

And this is where we are today from that vantage.

So the angles are a little different because I'm standing on a massive pile of soil that's out there right now, soon to be moved away.

But you can see that we're making very significant progress on this project.

I'm happy to report that as of right now, we're on time and on budget.

I have no concerns for this project getting completed as planned.

Of course, anything can happen, so I'll knock on wood there.

But everything is full speed ahead presently.

Go ahead.

Another project we have been working on is the Johnson modernization.

I'll apologize in advance.

I do not have all the new names necessarily in my head.

This one's still underway, but some of them have already taken place.

But you'll see some old names in here because these projects were named before the renamings took place.

This is a learning terrace, and this is part of our priority improvement program, otherwise known in the past as the school modernization program.

And a little background for those who don't know, that's a $1.25 million yearly investment from the city to modernize parts and pieces of our schools.

That's not enough money to do a whole lot, but it is about what you can get done in a summer, which is important.

And it's been especially tight this past summer because we're a little bit shorter than usual.

Go ahead.

This project is complete now, so you can see here a view of what it looks like.

Our plantings on the left-hand side are still taking, but this is a project that's intended to give the students an opportunity to maintain the planted areas and also to give them some outdoor teaching space and gathering space.

What you're seeing was just the black rooftop of the

School's gymnasium, so it was basically unusable space and it was actually originally intended to be built out in a similar way to what we've done here and I don't know why it wasn't ever built out as an occupiable space but I think it probably had to do with funding and budgetary concerns at the time.

So we were happy to be able to come in and bring that up to where it was originally intended to be.

And I think it's a really nice space.

It's a little hard to see in this slide, but it does give a really nice overview of the play fields and the tall oaks that the school is soon to be named for.

Here's a very glamorous project that we're working on.

This is the CHS electrical switchgear project.

This is our third year working on this project, so phase three.

We've gotten through the first two phases.

Phase three is just about complete as well, so you'll be happy to know that the electricity that runs into this building is running through all new switchgear, and I'm sure you all noticed.

But it was a safety concern, so we're happy to have had it addressed even if nobody really noticed.

Very visible project the CHS roof replacement also in its third phase So we have finished two phases of the roof of this building And we're moving into phase three which will be completed next summer And then we're hoping to roll in with a solar project shortly thereafter So this project is going pretty smoothly there have been some hiccups here and there as there usually are with big roofing replacement projects, but

It's a $6 million three-year investment into keeping the water out of the school.

Again, it's not the sort of thing that people love to spend money on, but it's the sort of thing that you hate when it fails.

It's another view of that beautiful new roof.

All right, and this one is one I am a little more excited about for functional reasons.

This is also here at CHS.

This was a bathroom or restroom renovation project.

This one came to us pretty late in the game and so we scrambled to get a design team together.

and to get this out to bid and built over the past summer.

The intent of this project was to create more restroom space that gave both better privacy to students and also was a little easier for staff to monitor.

So we heard reports that things were happening in the restrooms that weren't the best.

And also, I think this kind of responds to some of the concerns that folks have about gender and who uses what restroom and blah blah blah.

I think this basically makes it so that everybody uses whatever restroom they want and nobody has to worry about gender, which I think is a very good thing.

We worked with Wiley Wilson Architects to do a pretty complicated little design here.

But it actually turned out pretty nicely, I think.

Martin Horn worked with us on the construction and we got it done just in the nick of time.

Go ahead one more.

another view of that central area.

So there's a sort of a public hand washing station.

If you want a better view of this, you can just hit it on your way out.

It's right across the hall there.

And so we're pretty happy about this.

Vaping and smoking sensors are inside the little restrooms and they're sized appropriately so that you really can't do much more than one person go to the bathroom in those stalls.

And that was on purpose.

Another nice thing about this is that it is similar in design to what we're doing at the middle school, so it kind of gave us a chance to try that out in real time.

So far mostly positive reports, I think, on that.

Our softball field access project.

This one has been a little bit of a rough ride, but it's a $425,000 project that is intended to increase access to the softball viewing areas, especially for people with disabilities.

Some of the old retaining walls out there had degraded over time.

a little prematurely I would argue but so it goes.

We replaced those retaining elements with concrete so they should hold up a little better and we're also working on a batting cage over there for the softball players to use for their training and that should be done pretty shortly.

That's another view of one of the ramps down to the viewing areas.

As you can see, that's smoother than the old paths that were there that were pretty degraded.

Go ahead.

Another small project.

There's a focus in the schools as with the city with access lately.

So we're picking up a lot of projects that have to do with making it easier for people to get around.

This one, it is quite small, $30,000, but I'm very proud of it.

because recently our division, facilities development, sort of gobbled up the project management team who does sidewalks and streets and VDOT projects for the city.

And so this was our first collaborative effort between those two groups of people who we had brought together under our office and we suddenly had the ability to do things that we hadn't been able to do in the past and that was very advantageous.

So Johnson had some settlement in the sidewalks leading up to the school, kind of just past that tall tallest oak, the tallest of the tall oaks.

And it was making it so that when things were rainy, people had to walk through mud to get to school.

There was some back and forth in the city about whose responsibility that really is and finally we kind of settled with us and we were happy to take care of it.

So a very small project but I've gotten more positive feedback from this than I think anything else we've done.

So $30,000 well spent I would argue.

Go ahead.

Another view of that and some of our oak trees in the playground.

That's an overview of the bigger things we're working on.

Of course, we're always working on a hundred little things that you might not notice.

For the upcoming work cycle, we've got a few more projects coming up.

First of which, the Venable, which is not Venable anymore, but it is the modernization for that school.

We're still settling on exactly what that project is, so we're scoping right now.

We do have an architect on board, so we're moving through that process pretty quickly.

That one is slated for construction not this coming, but the following summer.

Walker Pre-K adjustments.

This is not the big Pre-K center project, but rather a short-term, make it work kind of project, where we'll go in and so if you're following the move of Pre-K from the various elementary schools to the center,

There's going to be a period of time when the fifth grade has already gone down to the elementary level and the pre-K has been displaced.

In the interim, they're going to be displaced to Walker as it currently stands, and the pre-K won't be constructed yet.

In that interim, we intend to go in and make some adjustments to the school just to make it fit a little better.

Some play and learning spaces, some access projects so that the playgrounds are easier to get to, that kind of thing.

So that's coming up in the following summer.

CHS track lighting, there's been some significant interest in fundraising from various groups and the schools to get the track lit up and those have been successful.

We're working on that right now and I've got a project manager

getting a contract together for putting that track lighting in.

So the CHS track will be lit very shortly.

We have lighting in the PAC here at CHS coming up.

So there are issues if you use that space with the reliability and the quality of the lighting in the PAC.

So we intend to change out those lights, both the house lights and the stage lights.

and hopefully put an easier to use control panel in as well because the one that's there is not easiest to use.

And there's also an energy efficiency component to that project that we're happy about.

So we should be able to save some energy while making the quality of the light better in that space.

There is the Summit Window Replacement Project, so this one I did get the name right on.

Some windows started to degrade a little more quickly than they should have over at Summit, so we had to roll in in kind of an emergency fashion and sort of

make some repairs so that those windows would be structurally sound, it wouldn't fall.

And now that that's done, we need to start replacing those windows.

So if you've ever looked at that school, you can imagine that's quite a lot of windows, windows aren't cheap.

So that's been

It's a significant undertaking when you have to kind of shoehorn a project like that into your budget when you're not ready for it.

But we've got some demonstration windows in place now, and I think they're looking pretty good.

So we're going to roll in with a full replacement in phases.

Because, again, you can't do all the windows in a school in one summer.

The Burnley Moran roof replacement, that's scheduled for fiscal year 27.

We think that's going to cost about a million and a half dollars.

It's a pretty straightforward project.

It's the replacement of the roof at Burnley Moran, which will be scheduled for completion that year.

and then I'll jump ahead to the Jackson By roof replacement because it similarly is just the next roof to be replaced.

They're all kind of go in sequence and so we're planning on getting all of the elementary schools taken care of as quickly as we can so that we can have fresh roofs everywhere.

It's worth noting that all the roofs that we put on are going to be solar ready.

That's the city's standard now going forward with roof replacements.

And we're working with our friends in sustainability at the city to put together a funding model where we can put solar panels on any of the roofs that make sense to do that on, meaning they have good exposure, et cetera.

I'll jump back to the Pre-K Center at Walker Campus.

So this is in the city's CIP presently.

We have, it says 25 to 30, I think it's basically 30 that we have scheduled, and that's in FY 27.

So the intent here is to roll straight into the design and construction of the new Pre-K Center, which we have already got a schematic design for.

We did that schematic design at the same time as we did the Buford project schematic design Because we wanted to present a package that the city could look at and understand So When we get the funding for that we'll roll into full design get those designs finished out and we'll go to bid and build that project So it should be a pretty seamless flow so that our construction team can move from the Buford project straight into that Walker project

And then we also have CHS generator upgrades, which are coming.

And that's simply a project to make the generators at this school more reliable and increase their capacity a little bit.

So that's the overview for what we've got coming up.

So I mentioned earlier the priority improvement program.

And I think some people have a pretty good understanding of it, who've been around for a while, but not everybody does.

So it's worth noting, as I said, $1.25 million per year.

We dedicate that to school improvements.

You can see the stuff that's in black is kind of set in stone or is completed already.

So we started at Clark, went to Jackson Viya, Burnley Moran, Greenbrier, and Johnson.

Those are all complete.

CHS restrooms we completed this past summer.

Venable we're working on.

We have to use the fiscal year 25 funds for Walker's temporary condition.

I mentioned that earlier.

And that was a little bit of horse trading that went down when we needed to fund the Buford project because it was a tight squeeze to get that into the CIP.

That leaves us with the fiscal year 26 funding coming up next.

These are in red because they aren't fully decided.

I think there's some question about what we should do there.

The CHS turf field is in need of replacement.

Just the top surface, not the entire field.

But that's a significant project because of the size of it and just the cost of turf fields.

So it's possible that we could use the 26 funds to do that field replacement.

If we don't do that, we have to come up with some other strategy, and I don't know what that strategy would be presently.

And then in 27, the suggestion has been that we do some interior ceilings or maybe a second phase of that restroom project here at CHS.

This is something that will be open to suggestion from school board on.

I think these are all open questions.

We take whatever the school board, Dr. Gurley, give us his advice on what they would like to see.

We generally take that advice and run with it.

Unless there's some good reason why that's not going to work, we tend not to push back.

That's something for you all to consider.

And if you have some ideas that we haven't thought of, it's worth talking through those.

And that's what I have to present for tonight.

I'm going to start down here with Miss Richardson.

Miss Richardson, since I assume that your list is going to be long.

No.

Ms.

Dooley, you're OK right now.

Just a quick question.

I've heard some conversation in the past about Wi-Fi access over at the field, at the football field.

So the short answer is it's been on a list that's been on a list that's been on a list.

We have some temporary workarounds.

But yes, that's a project that keeps coming up with Kim Powell and myself.

We've done some exploratory about getting the permits to run necessary fiber encabling underneath the railroad, which takes several months.

Mr. Como, I'm sorry.

Can you speak more to what so what's lacking over there?

There's no Internet that connects from our current Internet connection to the field.

So we would just it would be a matter of running fiber from the high school point at the high school to the field and then setting up the necessary infrastructure to to broadcast Internet there.

and so and that's impacting students doing homework there or what what other no it's essentially would be a space that could be used for recording of games in the event of that space being used in an emergent situation

There would be Wi-Fi there.

We do have some portable 5G router hotspots that can accommodate some of that need that's temporary in an emergency.

Thank you.

Mr. Gertner, I appreciate this presentation.

I mean, I saw this as part of the

joint committee we have with the city of their day and I really appreciate it.

And for my colleagues, just a little bit of a report out and I think some things I want to highlight for you all.

One, I think we're very lucky to have Mr. Goodard.

He's been promoted and I think more importantly now has a team so that there is more capacity within the city to execute on the projects.

Whereas I think in the past, unfortunately there hasn't been much capacity.

So that's I think a welcome change and is not necessarily

Operational budget that's coming of our budget is operational city budget, but we are a majority of their, I think, as you all realize, of their square footage for their buildings and facilities.

Another thing I want to point out is I saw this, there was a joint meeting between, similar to what we will have between the Albemarle County Public Schools and the Board of Supervisors for Albemarle County, talking about their CIP.

And for the county schools,

Their CIP equivalent just for the schools is $560 million for five years, $560 million.

Ours at this moment in time, 53.

And while Albemarle County Public Schools has three times as many students as we have, they're getting 10 times as much budget allocation.

Now, I don't know exactly that's all gonna pan out, but to give you an idea of the difference in how some of our

our neighboring districts, you might say, are funding their facilities.

And we think we all know that despite, and again, an excellent team by Mr. Goodard, he only can work, do so much with the money that he's provided.

So we have a political challenge, I think, and for all the people in this room here to understand that we have a whole of

of a deficit of infrastructure improvements to our facilities and for our buildings that we need to desperately dig out of and we are not putting enough money towards that.

What I hope and what I saw and heard at our meeting is that this 1.25 million we're getting for these performance improvement projects, which are, I don't want to call them band-aids, but slight improvements for some of the building of our facilities,

It hasn't been increased for inflation since 2020 and we bumped it up from 1 million to 1.25.

I'm hoping we get it bumped up to 1.35.

Now $100,000 is nice, but it still only keeps us, it can, equal to what we were getting about four or five years ago.

I also want to note, and I think very importantly, and Mr. Gurd, you mentioned this, that we are on track, though, to see, and I don't think have a delay in getting Walker pre-Walker built and remodeled.

So that is, I think, solidly in there, and I think we can count on that not having a lot of political questions and being delayed, kind of what we saw with the Charlottesville Middle School.

I also

I want to note there are energy performance contracts, which I think is jointly held between Mr. Goodard and the climate team, which can see some more projects built not on our dime, but under somebody else's dime.

And I'm hoping we've asked to see what those projects might be.

And I don't think any of those, unfortunately, were included in here.

but those could cover some of these HVACs and other lighting and other things that we desperately need in some of our buildings too.

I think we'll keep on pressuring to see city colleagues to bring those forward to us.

We were joined by a planning commissioner.

I think it was the first time in many meetings, if I understood correctly, that a planning commissioner has joined us at our joint meeting the other day.

And he mentioned the ability to develop a master plan.

which would map out better 10, 15, 20 years potentially what the facilities and our buildings and remodels, et cetera, should look like.

And I do hope we will, with our Planning Commission colleagues, be able to see that built out which would, I think, help us solve some of the underfunding in our CIP and bring more attention to the needs that we have for our buildings.

And finally, I sat in at the Planning Commission meeting the other day with Mr. Gooder and a bunch of others when they were presenting the CIP and I do think we should think about, I'm sorry for going on about this, but I do think we should think about pushing having one of us sit on the Planning Commission.

Because at the moment, when I looked at it, I think there was two people maybe who have kids in school and or have kids go through the school system and there's just not

as part of the planning commission, which gives a lot of advice to the city council on how they spend their money necessarily.

So I think my point being in here, there's a lot of politically, I think we need to do, I think we're blessed now though, Mr. Goddard and his team to actually execute though, but we need to go get the money.

Anybody else?

Nope.

Thank you again.

Up next, we have 10.4.

And we have a lot of people who will be coming to the podium.

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

Over the past several months, I've worked closely with this dedicated team plus others to bring to you

the program of studies draft that I'll be talking about tonight.

Our team included principals and coordinators just really thinking about what is best and right for our students.

I want to thank this team, the entire team.

Again, all of them aren't here tonight, but many are for their collaborative efforts in streamlining and clarifying different parts of our document.

Every year we think we've cleaned it up and made it perfect and don't have much more work to do and then every year we say oh there's work to do.

So we have spent hours and hours to get this document ready for you.

Our collaborative effort has focused on maintaining consistent and clear language while eliminating unnecessary repetition throughout the document.

I do want to also thank our teachers and students who shared their insights on what the program of studies should include.

We provided surveys to get their input, to get teachers' input and students' input, and so we do thank them for the time that they took to share.

We had many internal discussions during this preparation phase.

And again, we just wanted to make our document more streamlined and easier for everyone involved.

So I want to talk about the strategic plan.

As you can see here, we have placed a strong emphasis on priority one, which focuses on increasing academic achievement, highlighted the specific targets and strategies that directly support this priority.

Next slide, please.

So this evening we're going to be providing a brief overview of the program of studies.

We will share general updates, show you the CCS secondary courses document that we introduced last year as a new tool, and we will highlight specific school changes for your information.

And then lastly we will outline the next steps.

Next slide please.

Our program of studies serves as a comprehensive resource providing a catalog of academic, career and technical and elective courses available in secondary education.

It also includes a detailed list of electives that may be offered depending on student interest and staffing availability.

Again, may be offered.

Next slide.

Our team made several general updates to the program of studies, including revisions to course descriptions, course names, prerequisites.

We also introduced clear guidelines for adding and dropping classes last year, so we made sure that we included that process again this year, and we clarified policies for repeating courses.

Additionally, we streamlined the document by consolidating certain courses to create a more user-friendly resource for students and families as I mentioned before.

Next slide please.

On this slide, we've included the link.

Again, just fine tuning that document if you're able to click on that link, Ms.

Thacker.

This document, thank you Dr. Gurley for sharing from his previous division this wonderful resource.

It provides a clear overview of available courses and helps illustrate potential pathways.

Students can follow.

So at your leisure, please take a look at that and just see how students can peruse and look to see where they can go with specific coursework.

We do have that embedded in our program of studies.

I've added it to the first page, which says simply something like, another look, another way to look at it.

I can't remember the language that I used.

At this time, we will have our principals come up to share their school-specific changes

We do have Dr. Thompson here from Walker, and I think she will say there are no changes for Walker, but we're going to let her come up.

We have Mr. Jordan here for Buford.

You will notice in our presentation that it is called Charlottesville Middle School because we are talking about 2526, and it will be called Charlottesville Middle School.

We have Dr. Malone here to present for the high school.

Dr. Trotter is here for LMA.

I think he will likely say there are no changes for LMA.

Good evening, everyone.

It's lovely to see all of you.

Thank you for having me tonight.

As Dr. Odey said, there will be no changes for Walker in the program of studies for this coming school year.

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

For Charlottesville Middle School for the 25-26 school year, there will only be one change right now in the program of studies.

It does say that students who would like to take a world language class must have a C or higher in their previous year's English course.

We are removing that, so there will not be

any prerequisites for level one courses in world languages and that will allow us to be consistent with the high school and also we offer urban farming and marketing and we also offer engineering one and there are no prerequisites at the middle school for those courses.

Also, there's VDOE language that suggests a level one is an entry point for all students.

And so they're beginning to develop language skills.

And so we want to remove the prerequisite and just focus on giving them an opportunity to take the level one courses for world languages.

Are there any questions?

Thank you, Madam Chair, Members of the Board, and Dr. Gurley.

As Dr. Odey said, our work with the program of study has been largely with the themes of refinement and clarity and economy of the language of our program of studies.

Similar to what Mr. Jordan shared about our world languages changes, the world languages prerequisite is removed for all level one courses for that alignment with VDOE guidelines, part of best equitable practices, and to acknowledge the entry point for level one for all students who are developing language in their selected skill and creating that access to those cultural elements for people who speak that language.

Also removed, or being added rather, is a level change to our honors for Bio II Anatomy and Physiology.

This change is to align with the rigor in which the course was intended and created and was as put forth by its current teacher, Miss Caitlin Ray.

Any questions as I go through one at a time?

There's a recommendation to add health and physical education for grades 9 and 10 each as a one credit option.

So this will remain as half credit options in the short term.

But ultimately, the reason for this change is to reduce the number of students that need that half credit for health or PE in their senior year specifically.

either due to students not having passed previously or there being scheduling issues dependent upon their transition or some other factor related to their schedule.

I think more importantly this will also allow us to average health and PE grades together which will be helpful for students being able to pass those courses respectively and maybe most specifically our English learners.

So there's a recommendation to update these following courses, renaming Intro to Theater to Theater 1, renaming Seville Players to Acting Performance, and combining Seville Players 2 and 3 Honors into one course called Seville Players Honors.

The renaming of Intro to Theater to Theater 1 will help distinguish this course from the Buford Beginning Theater course currently in place.

Changing the name of Charlottesville Players I to Acting Performance better describes the focus of the course and helps distinguish it from Charlottesville Players Honors course objectives.

And then finally, combining Charlottesville Players II and III Honors are focused on advanced theater leadership skills such as stage directing, playwriting, and film directing will help distinguish this course from the Acting Performance course.

The following recommendations to remove are, again, in line with that theme of refinement and economy of the program of studies language.

So you'll see there are a significant number of these courses that have not been requested or taken for several years, including as far back as 2013.

These courses are recommended for removal from the program of study due to that reason, the timeline since the course was last requested, but perhaps more effectively to prioritize the value of each course that we are asking for, putting forth in our program of study, and helping secure that students have scheduling options that are most current and most relevant to them.

and it includes removal of many of our manager and assistant positions to help prioritize students focusing on graduation requirements and to refine our current teaching assistant positions that are currently available.

Dr. Malone, real quick, can you differentiate or what's the difference between personal living and finance and what's offered upstairs or with Ms.

So personal living and finance is solely for students with disabilities.

and we have found that our students with disabilities are able to access and pass econ personal finance with their general ed peers and so also that course would require students to have special credit accommodations and that is not a guarantee so

Our students that access the general ed setting have been successful in econ personal finance.

I know when to walk away.

So the recommendation to add the following courses English Language Development 3 and Reading Foundation is an extension of our Reading Foundations 1 and is a course for our English learners who continue to build on their foundational literacy skills.

Later on in the presentation, we'll talk more about technology foundations and technology robotic design as part of our engineering extension pathways.

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

The proposed updates to the engineering program align course offerings with student interest and workforce needs.

These changes introduce additional entry points to technology and engineering pathways, ensuring accessibility for students at all levels.

The program emphasizes skill development in engineering, robotics, and other STEM-related fields.

A structured progression has been developed with advanced courses like Electronic Systems I and II planned for future years to prepare students for higher education and career opportunities.

The program introduces two new entry-level courses designed to complement the existing Engineering I course, each focusing on foundational skills.

Technology foundations provide a broad overview of technology concepts.

Students will use engineering design tools to build and control objects and systems.

Technology robotics design offers specialized knowledge in robotics, both focusing on hands-on design and construction.

Together with Engineering 1, these courses expand the range of entry points to the program, allowing students to explore foundational skills in technology, robotics, and engineering concepts.

These offerings provide a comprehensive introduction to STEM fields, preparing students for advanced studies like PVC-CDE engineering courses and electronic systems 1 and 2.

These changes require no FTCs.

By offering these courses, students can choose a pathway that aligns with their interests and career goals, whether they prefer a general technology education, a focus on robotics, or a comprehensive introduction to engineering principles.

Next slide.

This past fall, we surveyed our sixth through 12th grade students.

We had 1,092 responses.

Of those responses, these are our top interest for the career fields they were most interested in.

You can see that STEM was 25.7%, which is 280 responses of that.

This data underscores the need to enhance STEM-related offerings such as engineering and robotics pathways to cater to the 25.7% of the students interested in those careers.

Next slide.

Students were asked about their interest in career and technical education pathways.

Engineering and Robotics received interest from 28.4% of students with 210 responses, ranked third after Business and Marketing and Arts and Communication.

This reinforces the importance of offering diverse, accessible entry points into engineering and robotics.

Students can complete various sequences starting with technology foundations or robotics, leading to advanced courses like Engineering 2 and 3 or PVCC-DE Engineering or Electronics 2.

Pathways provide flexibilities to match student interest and career goals in engineering and technology.

Currently, our concentration sequence is just engineering one and two.

With this plan, you can see now students have multiple up to six chances of completing those CTE completers.

Next slide.

Staffing, oops, there it is, sorry.

Staffing and course coverage.

Three Tech Ed endorsed teachers are allocated to ensure all courses are offered and accessible.

You can see based on the second chart, teacher one, two, and three is how we are predicting the number of course enrollments for each of those.

The structured pathway and staffing plans ensure that students receive consistent opportunities to progress through foundational and advanced levels in technology and engineering, preparing them for post-secondary success.

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

This evening, I will be presenting an expanded pathway for health and medical sciences.

Health and Medical Sciences courses are not only of interest to students, but increasing the course offerings in this pathway both at CHS and KTEC will also help address our local workforce needs by connecting interests to relevant coursework and preparing students for their next steps, whether that be studying medicine in college or entering the fields upon graduation.

Currently in Charlottesville City Schools, there is only one option for students who are interested in health and or medical sciences, and that's the nurse assistant program at KTEC.

Presented here, I am proposing a new course, Introduction to Health and Medical Sciences, which exposes students to a variety of healthcare careers and helps to develop basic skills required in all health and medical sciences, including the healthcare system, basic terminology, and anatomy and physiology, to name a few.

If approved, this course will be offered starting next school year at CHS and would require a half FTE for this next school year.

The other recommendation is to add the practical nursing program to start in the 2026-2027 school year at KTEC.

This addition of the program expands opportunities for our students to be able to enter the workforce with multiple credentials as successful completion would allow students the opportunity to become not only a certified nurse aide as well as a licensed practical nurse.

This edition gives students the option starting in 10th grade to follow a pathway in nursing.

And additionally, students who complete the practical nursing program and work in the industry for one year would be able to get the RN program prerequisites waived at the community college level, thus reducing the amount of time to become an RN if that is their career pathway.

Again, the recommendation is for the 26-27 school year.

However, I would like to seek approval now as starting a new program such as nursing requires us to obtain approval not only from the Virginia Department of Education, but we also must work through the Virginia Board of Nursing and all that takes time.

If we delayed this till next January, the fear would be that we wouldn't just have enough time to get all the approvals and things that we need in place to

So these are the proposals for new courses and programs.

Are there any questions before I move to the next slide?

So this slide is unrelated to new courses or programs, but is related to required course credit changes that we need to make at KTEC.

So historically, KTEC and other regional centers have awarded credits based on the number of hours that students were physically in the classroom or lab space, as many regional centers across the state pull students from multiple divisions.

And so they need to make sure that they're

making that time worthwhile when students are there.

So the state has made everyone aware in recent years that those schools were incorrectly awarding credits and that there needs to be alignment between what is referenced in the career and technical education reporting system and the actual number of credits.

or awarded, rather.

With KTEC aligning with these state requirements, students would earn slightly fewer credits, but it's pretty negligible.

However, we recognize that the value of our programs and the time that students spend honing their skills.

As such, every KTEC student will also concurrently be enrolled in a career strategies course, which will capture their ongoing work with career and workforce development, which not only helps offset that negligible loss of credits, but also really give them credit for the work that they're doing, as those components are embedded into every program at KTEC.

And also we find that students' barriers to graduation are not typically due to a single credit, but rather due to maybe not having a CTE sequence or meeting one of the other graduation requirements such as the verified credit.

In addition, this is really a requirement that we just need to come in a line with so that we're meeting the requirements for the Department of Education.

Dr. Helts, I actually have a question back, I'm sorry, with the introduction to health and medical sciences, that part.

So the idea, and if you see there under health and medical science, there's the medical terminology, which is a CTE sequence completer.

No, it would just be based.

We don't feel that we could offer

five sections of health and medical sciences in year one.

One, one since I'm going to stay positive because I'm excited about this pathway.

and both of those would happen here at the high school.

And it's also that is an option and it like intro to health and medical science is a recommended prerequisite for nursing.

It is not a required prerequisite.

So really students aren't prevented from just hopping right into nursing if they want.

But it is an opportunity for students to maybe explore the health and medical science field and

and see what their options are.

Because we know here, our workforce, we have tons of options in health and medical sciences.

Great, thank you.

Yeah.

Any other questions, anybody, for her?

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

I thought of a question before Dr. Malone and Dr. Coffey get too far.

Regarding the engineering modifications and I guess technology, this new pathway, are we needing new FTEs?

Because I know we've been having challenges trying to fill some of the existing engineering positions.

The two, the courses that are being recommended to be added do not require additional FTEs.

And the changes to some of them though, would that make it easier or

Okay, that's kind of why we're doing it also is to make it easier to staff them?

Another good question.

Okay, are there any additional questions for this wonderful team of experts?

I know that you had the opportunity to ask.

And if there are not any additional questions you see before you, our next steps, the board to review our program of studies over the next month.

We certainly hope, certainly tonight is just an informational document and we hope that we would be able to have you take action in January so that our high school can get busy

with the next step for getting ready for next year.

So I'll come back to you in January to ask for your approval.

Thank you and thank you everybody for showing up.

All right, good evening.

I am going to go over our 25, 26 budget priorities.

You can go to the first slide.

So this evening I will go over the themes that arose from our conversations related to budget development, what those priorities are, how those priorities are aligned to our strategic plan, and I will conclude by giving you some dates as they relate to our budget development process.

Here is a word cloud in the shape of a graduation cap.

And these, the bolded statements here, bolded words here are things that when we did a dump of all the qualitative feedback, these are the things that came to the top.

Solar on top of CHS.

modernize our facilities, attract quality educators, math and reading achievement, chronic absenteeism, compensation and paying our staff and among other things.

And so you'll see these things reflected as I go through the remainder of this presentation.

Next slide.

So here listed are some things that just emerged as priorities.

I will not go into a lot of depth on this particular slide because on the next slide what we did was we took the things that emerged and before I move on I want to say that these budget priorities came about through

meetings with the PTOs from each school.

It came with two-on-two sessions with school board members.

It came from qualitative feedback as we met with various stakeholder groups.

And so these are the things that emerged.

What we did on the next slide

is we took those themes that emerged from those conversations, from those listening sessions, and we aligned them with our strategic plan.

And so here are the things that we will prioritize as we develop the budget for the 25-26 school year.

We will look at improving our outcomes,

for our students through targeted supports and resources, ensuring small class sizes, and sustaining fine arts funding.

I know we've had a lot of conversation about that this evening as we talked about band and orchestra at the fifth grade level, and I think that we will continue to prioritize those things as we develop our budget for the upcoming school year.

Moving on to our next strategic plan priority, we then aligned it to the new budget priority of enhancing our student achievement and equity among

and equity and then also focusing on our student attendance.

I think we've done a very good job this school year of really being laser focused on student attendance and I know that Ms.

Raznick and the building level teams have done a lot of work in that area.

But we will continue to prioritize that because we don't want to become complacent.

We know that when students are present, they are learning, and so we will continue to put monies and our focus in that area as well as our student achievement.

all things that we do should be centered around students and student achievement and you see that here and I know that that kind of teeters between both of those priority areas.

Supporting our staff, that competitive compensation in terms of pay and benefits is very important to us and we want to continue to prioritize those things

and attracting and retaining high quality teachers and staff.

And I know that Ms.

Chuck sent out an email today about some of our teachers who will be going to the comedy show.

And so what we've solicited from our staff, just tell us those things that we can do that are just-in-time things as they relate to keeping staff morale high,

and acknowledging the hard work that you do.

And I think that we also see that reflected in the school calendar where our school board said for the upcoming school year, where are those moments in our school calendar where we can just have those mental wellness days where our staff can focus on themselves and not have to think about planning for classes and creating subplans and all of those other things.

And lastly, the effective operations of our school.

We want to continue to modernize our school, including safety, to include safety and those safety recommendations.

And one thing that we've been talking about for many, many years, those sustainability efforts and energy efficiencies, we want to ensure that we advance those things forward in our budget.

Next slide.

So as they relate to key dates with our budget, we do have a joint session on Thursday, December the 19th, 2024, where we will be meeting with our city council.

And one thing that was asked of our city manager and the city council is to start giving them some rough estimates.

so they can begin to prioritize us.

I want to give a shout out to Sam Sanders.

We have a regular check-in and I just have this appreciation for the work that Sam is doing in terms of working with our city council to continue to prioritize the schools.

I mean, one thing that they acknowledge is that

We are a big part, the schools are a big part of the city's budget and so in that meeting on the 19th, one thing we will do, we won't give them our complete ask, but we will start to rough out some numbers for them that this is what it will look like when we ask to implement the following things.

and then we have a regular school board meeting.

The first week we return back to school after the winter break on Thursday the 9th and then we have a budget work session on January the 30th.

And just, you see our mission there is just to, that we're interconnected, equity focused, school community focused on providing skills and knowledge needed for lifelong learners, engaged citizens and personal fulfillment.

Are there any questions this evening about our budget priorities?

Is there something that you thought you would see there that you don't see?

And maybe I can provide an explanation as to why you don't see it.

But I think hopefully we've tried to, we did some hand theming.

We tried to come up with some hand themes as well as to use some AI tools to go through a lot of data to come up with our themes here.

Thank you, Dr. Gurley.

I do think this reflects the feedback at least I provided and I'm looking forward to seeing more details on that.

I'm not quite sure.

We may.

I know that we've had just a little bit of a lull as it relates to getting the final contract back with them because there's some language that we need to rough out.

But most certainly, I think that there are some high-level items that we will be able to pull out just so that they don't have any surprises from us because we do want and hope

Yeah I mentioned that because I know they're also going through with you getting collective bargaining negotiations with some of their staff also and just regarding

the collecting bargaining unit for us.

Have they signaled that they'll be participating in any of the budget meetings that we have?

I mean, not necessarily as obviously members on the dais of the school board, but

Well one thing I do not I don't want to speak personally for them but I do know that throughout this process one thing that they have done in good faith and I've appreciated the work that they've done along with our team to help us get to this moment is one thing that they're very good at is being advocates and I'm almost confident that

They know that we are going to advocate in good faith.

As you heard me say a few moments ago, before you even asked the question, that I hope that they would fully fund the ask as it relates to our collective bargaining contract.

And I would hope that our CEA colleagues, I know that they will do that alongside us.

Will we see any high level information before that joint work session?

Oh, the presentation that we will use for that?

It'll just be an ESP.

Now, it might be closer to the 19th because we have a lot of number crunching.

So, you know, we normally try to do it a week in advance, but there will be a lot of number crunching leading up to the 19th.

But you'll have it before the day of.

Ms.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, the process is I mean, one thing that since I feel like since I've been here, our process has been very fluid.

Absolutely.

And we've tried to make sure that every group that every group and our students are represented in our ask and our staff are represented and our families are very clear on how we spend our money.

Yeah, and I just want to shout out to, I mean, we did have a great group advocating last year throughout those meetings with us and showing up and this will be for everybody's, you know, the first time that we are going through this process with a collective bargaining contract parallel to working through the rest of the budget.

It's going to be kind of new and different.

And we as a board have not seen that yet.

So we don't know what that looks like.

But I look forward to your team's support and the board's advocacy and then advocacy from staff and community members.

And I know I've had a couple of opportunities to just remind people in committee meetings that

to show up with their concerns and their asks and to follow along with city council as far as their budget meetings and their schedules as they work through their different parts of their budget.

And I will say that before I sit, I mean, I think it's been a very engaging process with collective bargaining.

And one thing that I think will be apparent for all is that, I mean,

Now, a lot of folks benefit from the hard work both that the staff and CEA did together, and they'll have a lasting impact for our community and those around us.

All right, thank you.

Hi, good evening, everybody.

Madam Chair, Dr. Early, members of the board.

So I'm going to go through our preliminary December 1 child count.

There's two sources of data for this.

One is our current local determination, which is really lagging data.

So we receive that in October of about every year.

And that's for fiscal year 2022.

So what I've included is that data, last year's data and this year's data, just to be able to show some trends.

I do want to acknowledge that whenever we look at students with disabilities in this way, my team and our teachers think about students with their name, their strength, and their need.

But this is a way for us to plan and prepare for our students and in another important way.

Okay, so this first chart just details the number of students that receive services at greater than 50% of their instructional day and those that receive services less than 50% of their instructional day.

We can really think about that as students in intensive special education programs and students who receive resource level support.

As you can see, our students in our intensive support programs has remained stable.

We are serving fewer students in the resource level of support at this time than we did in 2022.

This outlines the breakdown of our students by their special education designation.

As we know, there are 13 designations, some with significantly lower incidence in a population than others.

Over the past three years, we have seen a noticeable increase in the identification of students with autism and multiple disabilities.

To have multiple disabilities, you have to have two or more of the designations that require a comprehensive program that supports both of those disabilities and could not be met through a program that just supported one.

Students with multiple disabilities are in our most intensive support programs at this time.

We have seen a noticeable decline in the incidence of specific learning disabilities in our schools, which

We attribute in some ways to an availability of structured literacy interventions in general education for many, many students.

Whereas previously to receive that level of support, you often had to be found eligible for special education.

So that's been a trend we've seen over the past five years, actually.

The next slide is placement code.

So this is important because some of our special education indicators reflect how we're making improvements in least restrictive environment.

So you know public day school is students K-12 who attend one of our schools.

That includes students who are at Parkside who are up through age 22.

It doesn't include any preschool students.

Public separate school are students that are enrolled at our public separate school, which is Ivy Creek.

Private day school encompasses any private separate school that students are enrolled in.

Examples would be like Keyes Academy, Lafayette, Elk Hill, Charlottesville, Goochland.

Over time, so I looked through some files from about eight years ago, and we had over 60 students enrolled in private separate schools.

So we've seen a significant decrease.

This is due to an increase in programming in our public schools, and it's something that we're very proud of.

We are now below the state average for use of public separate settings.

The next slide talks a little bit more deeply about least restrictive environment.

As you can see in our current local determination, we did not meet our targets.

You can see that our students were included in regular classrooms, 80% or more of the day.

We didn't meet that target or our students who spend the majority of their day in the special education setting.

However, when we look at our current data,

We've made significant gains in the use of special education being provided in the regular classroom setting for students and that's something that we've been focused on as well as in students being served in separate public settings.

What's interesting here is the target for separate public settings is as you can see about 4% but we know from our work with the state and we received notification from them that we are below the state average.

Thank you so much.

The next is preschool.

And this is one of those, this really stands out to us.

So having 29 students served in the regular early childhood setting and 43 this year, that's a significantly larger number of early childhood special education students.

We are just about at our caseload maximums for our early childhood special education teachers.

However, what's exceptional about this slide is that these students are being served in our preschool programs, in local public preschools, and so we continue to focus on that and only use separate special education classes when it's absolutely necessary for students.

The other thing about that number that will play into as we're talking about next school year is over 50% of them are four-year-olds.

So that means our kindergarten special education enrollment will be higher next year and will require us to think about our resources there.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Do you have so back to the regular early childhood numbers?

Yep.

Yes.

So we serve, so for students have the placement code of regular early childhood program, that means that they attend a regular early childhood program.

It can be a preschool of the family's choosing, it can be VPI, it could be Head Start.

And so some of those students attend a preschool that we go to to serve them.

Some of them attend

Those aren't included in the K through 12.

No, we've actually seen so like developmental delay seen about the same identification.

That slide with designations does include preschool.

So we are seeing an increase in students with autism and developmental delay.

You can only have that designation until age seven.

So really it's an opportunity for us to provide some early intense intervention with a goal that you would not require special education after age seven.

Right now.

Right now we're doing okay.

We have some excellent itinerant teachers who are able to support students in a number of different schools in those regular early childhood programs.

As we start really crunching these numbers and looking at next year, we will have to look really closely at kindergarten.

For example, I know one of our elementary schools is going to have five identified students at least.

And when we think about caseloads, it's not a full caseload, but it is a substantial number of students.

And so how we support those students will be important.

The good news is they've been in regular early childhood programs.

They've received that general education instruction.

And so though some of those foundational skills have been built already, which is really exciting.

The next slide is our preschool least restrictive environment.

This has been an area of focus for us and we're reaping the benefits, as I would like to say.

We significantly exceeded our targets and our local determinations and we participate in every opportunity to further inclusion in preschool that we can.

We just found out that we'll participate in an opportunity with TTAC to learn how to use the inclusive classroom profile, which helps teachers create more inclusive general education classrooms through the use of observations and feedback.

And then my last slide.

So this is about our students with intensive support needs application.

So each year I look at all students who are served 85% or more of their instructional day, who have the designations, autism, emotional disability, deafblind, hearing impairment, multiple disabilities, or traumatic brain injury.

For those students, we can, because we are part of a regional program, we can submit the students with intensive support needs application where we actually turn into the state the actual cost of educating those students.

And then we are reimbursed for some of that.

Our local composite index is applied to be able to offset some of those significant costs.

This year we have 44 students that we submitted in the application.

I think one of the things that we are advocating for when we can at the state level, like through our council for special ed administrators, is we have a number of students who are in intensive support programs whose designation is not included in the list.

and that's somewhat confusing.

For example, intellectual disability makes up a number of students who require intensive support needs, but we cannot include them in the application.

And so we are not able to receive that reimbursement for them.

There are some students that don't get included because the reimbursement would be less than what we would get through ADM.

So we do that calculation as well.

And then my last slide, just an update on where our caseloads stand.

Some celebrations tonight.

We're gonna have our last vacancies, teacher vacancies filled.

We filled our speech language pathologist vacancy, a teacher at Charlottesville High School and a teacher at Walker, which is really exciting.

We did just post for two instructional assistants and there are some outstanding instructional assistant positions.

But I just wanted to give you an idea of where our caseloads stand.

For special education teachers, we are well below what the maximum is.

For intensive special education teachers, so that's like LEAP and structured teaching are two intensive support programs.

We're at about one student less than where we can be for them.

And then early childhood special education, when I include my evaluators,

We're at six.

And then our SLPs, OTs, and PT are also reflected here.

Any questions, anybody?

So with the preschool numbers, are we getting better at identifying students earlier?

Do you think that's related to the uptick in that number of students identified?

Yes, we are identifying significantly more students this year who attend our BPI program.

Referrals are coming from our teachers as opposed to coming from early intervention.

The majority of preschool referrals come from parents and early intervention.

They don't come from teachers because we don't serve all preschoolers in our schools.

What I think we are also rebounding from is there was a dip in identification post-COVID because of where we get our referrals from.

Students weren't necessarily getting the attention of their pediatrician in the same way.

But this has also happened before where we've had one year that was just like a blip.

When we added the seventh ECSE teacher, it was a year where we

No.

Thank you.

Thank you to all the presenters.

Again, the next item on the agenda is board response to written reports.

Again, that's a summary of just committee work and work that board members have been doing in the last month.

And now we are at 12.0, which is our next opportunity for comments from members of the community.

So if anybody in the media center would like to approach the podium again, this is an opportunity to make a statement.

Hello, my name is Jacob Beckham.

I'm a resident of Charlottesville, a parent and a teacher here at CHS.

I have an extremely diverse professional background that does not mimic the traditional teacher pathways.

Even my degree is not in teaching, but in educational innovation.

which spans teaching methods, accessibility, policy, buildings, programs, equity, et cetera.

Although this is only my first year with my own classroom, I have been a substitute teacher, youth mentorship coordinator and club advisor in various districts across the country from grades six through 12 for almost a decade.

I'm here to encourage you to think outside the box in addressing the issues that various stakeholders have brought to you tonight.

As this pertains to the Reconfiguration Project,

A hired consultant will do exactly what you ask them to do.

If you ask for lines to be drawn in a certain way, they will draw very pleasant looking lines.

But if you want to improve the equity of access of residents to schools, then continuing the traditional method that was founded on the principle of segregating populations is counterproductive and continues practices that have damaged our community since the founding of quote unquote public schools in the area.

Eliminating school zoning would allow families to do what's best for them, whether it be choosing a school that is more proximal to their residence or more convenient to their daily routine by choosing a school that's on the route to work, perhaps for blended families, one that better accommodates those family structures.

A common concern with such practices is overcrowding of one school as it becomes more desirable than another.

School districts that have eliminated school zones address this by implementing a lottery system for their schools.

Some have even found that every family gets their first choice of school.

This leads me to iterate my previous proposal, albeit completely separate, of swapping to have one central elementary school and multiple high schools.

This would again switch five to 10 year old students walking to school to 13 to 20 year old students doing so.

The fifth grade orchestra issue would be moot as Charlottesville students would attend school with all of their peers until they reach high school.

The point in life that they start to decide what they want to do and who they want to be.

Having various focused high schools that could focus on languages, arts, STEM, career and technical,

some that support students' journeys to colleges and others that support trades or skills or any other focus area we decide would better nurture our students' aspirations.

Having multiple high schools would allow diverse schedules that better accommodate our working students or students and families that observe different religious holidays.

It could increase the number of athletic programs that would include intra-city competition.

The possibilities are endless.

One of the concepts I teach to my students is the sunk cost bias.

If you are not familiar with this, it is the idea that the more you invest into an idea or business or project, the harder it is to change direction, even if it's clear that the path you're on leads to failure.

Please don't allow previous efforts and expended resources, which I assume were done in good faith, lead us to the disasters of our past.

None of these are new ideas, nor are they exhaustive of what could be done.

If you want to change something for the better, you often have to do something you've never done, go somewhere you've never been, or talk to people who seem to have nothing in common.

It might hurt and it won't be easy, but maintaining the status quo is condemning the future to the mistakes of the past.

Thank you.

Anyone else here in the Media Center?

All right, anybody online?

Mr. Como.

If there's anybody online, please use the raise your hand icon and we can set you up to speak.

Thank you for listening and attending.

We will move on, and we are at the point where we are with comments or at comments from the board, excuse me.

Ms.

Hudock, do you have any comments?

Thank you.

Yeah, I want to engage with Mr. Hartline's observations about the fire.

at Jackson via the car fires.

I was present that morning and disturbed by what I saw.

Ironically, I watched a city facilities leaf blower collector block traffic in the middle of the emergency to go collect the leaves in the front of the school area.

So I do think I would like to see and hear some responses more than

from the city because they're responsible for maintaining, I think, that area.

You know, how we can ensure that doesn't happen again and we don't see those leaves build up, etc.

We talked a little bit about the budget tonight, about the CIP, and again, we heard about the priorities and I just want to reiterate for the public that

While we control our line items, we don't control the top line of the budget.

So I then ask for the community members who really care about our public school system and our budget to also show up to the city council meetings, et cetera, and advocate there.

Finally, I have heard there's been changes in the cell phone policy, the implementation of the cell phone policy, new rules, and I am, I think maybe different than the students.

but happy to hear a little bit more about an enforcement happening and I think better results in the actual implementation.

Thank you, Mr. Burns.

Mr. Morse, Ms.

Dooley, Ms.

I want to say thank you to everyone who presented tonight and for the feedback and updates, especially in regards to the fine arts program.

I'm definitely happy to hear about the committee come into an agreement with the name change.

That is exciting to kind of have that be done with.

I am also in agreement with the pay increase for the future board members in 2025.

And then, oh yeah, sorry, 2026.

And then I would like to send out my love and support for fellow Black Knight alumni for the class of 2008.

He lost his daughter, so I'm sending my love and support to the Glover family.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for everybody, all your comments, all the hard work.

Appreciate that.

I want to just wish everybody happy holidays as we're getting closer to break for some of you all.

And we will now move it to Superintendent Dr. Gurley.

Sure.

I want to first acknowledge Mr. Hartline.

Thank you for your continued advocacy and, like Mr. Meyer, I want to acknowledge your concerns this evening and I

Continue to have conversations with Mr. Sanders.

And I too was taken back a little bit by the communication about the parking on the leads because it does feel like one of the things that, you know, we can't control.

But just in my conversations with the city, I think your recommendations are well taken that we have to be a little bit more proactive because we have to park our cars.

For those of us that do drive cars, we have to park our cars in order to educate our children.

and the next thing I just want to for me just speak on the, I want to speak on the orchestra because it's weighed on me.

I get a lot of emails and a lot of phone calls and so I think that I just want to make sure that people understand where I stand on the matter because often I know that the board's voice is elevated and

The presentation is blessed by me and I work very closely with our team.

But I think it's just I just want to leave this here for the public record.

And so as a child, I was taught that you always work from a place of good.

You see the best in people.

You have the best intentions.

And and I walk that walk as an adult.

I always see the best in people and I always believe that people are working with very good intentions.

And so over the last few months, I've learned a great deal about people and their perspectives.

and recently I've read countless emails.

I've had conversations with families and community members and they value band and orchestra.

And I think I want to be very unequivocal in my statement here that as your superintendent, I value the exact same things and Charlottesville City Schools values our fine and performing arts programs.

That said, we do must also recognize the reality of our broader goals.

Our community fought hard for reconfiguration to create a new middle school.

And throughout the planning process, we were diligent to preserve all the things that are great about Charlottesville.

We've been very transparent every step of the way.

and in fact, our band and orchestra teachers have been right there with us and they have been clear.

You heard that this evening in Mr. Eichor's presentation, that if we cannot replicate it in its entirety, then we need to prioritize what happens in the sixth grade.

And we have expressed, we have shown that we will build a strong sixth grade program.

and out of respect for their expertise, we are designing a sixth grade program for the band and orchestra that will be robust, that will continue the excellence that you all, that we continue to build for years to come.

But I also want to address this issue about equity and comments suggesting that this will change what happens to black and brown students disproportionately.

And let me be clear.

that I rarely see black students represented in our orchestra programs.

And in fact, I pulled today our fifth grade orchestra numbers to see who's enrolled in it.

And there are six black students.

Again, if our concern are about our marginalized students, then let's do outreach in West Haven.

Let's do outreach in Prospect.

Let's do outreach in Kindlewood.

That may change the trajectory of what we're talking about, because tonight, I want to acknowledge Miss Aveles Poe.

Tonight is the first time that I've heard someone say that orchestra is about white students.

She's the first to say that aloud.

and so the emails that I get suggest that your black superintendent is neglecting black students and that is not my intent and it is very harmful to suggest that that is what I am doing.

If you are going to continue to rely on Facebook for your information, please understand that you're going to get one side of this story.

Again, tonight, Mr. Icorse gave you, along with others, how we have made this decision and what

And so I'm going to leave that at that.

But finally, I'm going to discuss the fundamental issue, which is instructional time.

Some in our community advocate and continue to advocate for reducing instructional time for the gain of other programs.

but I will tell you that this will directly impact students becoming fluent readers and fluent mathematicians.

That is the real disservice to our students.

I've had opportunities over and over again to talk with elementary teachers.

Consistently they share that there simply is not enough time in the day to meet all the needs of our students.

Who

is listening to the voices of our elementary teachers.

I will tell you who I am.

Thank you sir.

We have, I think, a wrap up.

I don't think there was anything on the list.

Nice to see you, Ms.

Whipp.

Thank you.

And then upcoming meetings, we have this Saturday, December 7th, the Charlottesville City School Board has an advance.

And on that agenda, which I think we didn't talk a whole lot about it tonight, was the rezoning.

So this is an opportunity that we've asked to kind of sit down and make sure that the school board just has an opportunity to ask questions and understand the metrics and the process that's being used and just to evaluate and to think about those things.

So no decisions being made.

This is not what this is about, but again, an opportunity for us to sit and talk about it.

And everybody's welcome.

That's a public open meeting.

So again, that's this Saturday.

starts at 8.30, and again, it's at KTEC.

Then we do have Thursday, December 19th, which is the first opportunity we will meet with city council.

Again, that's a budget work session, 5 p.m., Walker Upper Elementary.

And then our next regularly scheduled board meeting will be Thursday, January 9th here in the Media Center at 5 p.m.

And with that, I'm going to call this meeting adjourned.

Good night, everybody.