Good evening everyone. this uh meeting uh July 10th business matters lawfully exempted from the open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and identified in the motion authorizing the closed meeting were heard, discussed and considered in the closed meeting.
Second. Motion made by Miss Spilman, seconded by Miss Lee. Uh, Miss Thompson, can you call the vote? Mr. Paige is absent this evening. Miss Lee, yes. Dr. Berlin, yes. Miss Osborne, yes. Miss Filman, yes.
Miss Prior, yes. Cherry Cup, yes. Motion passes. Uh, next, um, roll call. Let's identify ourselves so people at home can know which voice attaches. Rosyn Schmidt, chief operating officer.
Judy Lee Ryana District, Allison Spilman, at large representative Kate Akov, Jack Jew district. Rebecca Berlin, Whiteall. Ellen Osborne, Scottsville district. Leslie Pario district. Daffhne Kaiser, assistant superintendent
for school community engagement, sitting in for Dr. Hos, superintendent. Josiah Black, school division council. Christine Thompson, clerk of the school board. Officer, do you want to identify yourself? Ray Liy Campy's party.
Thank you. Next, let's stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisibley
andice for all. We'll now pause for a moment of silence. Now we have uh approval of the agenda. I move we approve the agenda. I second. Motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Miss Dr. Berlin. All in
favor? I opposed. Motion passes. Uh, next item of business, our announcements. First of all, school board and superintendent business. Do we have anything? I don't have anything. I was just playing with my microphone.
Okay. Playing with your microphone, huh? Okay. All right. Dr. Kaiser. Good evening. Uh, Chair Auff, uh, Vice Chair Berlin, and school board members. I'm pleased to provide an update on ACPS summer programming, uh, which continues
to offer a wide range of learning experiences designed to support student growth and engagement across the county. Um, our extended school year and high school uh, courses. Um, our ESY programming for select special education
students is still underway and will continue through next week at Lakeside Middle School. Um, our high school, uh, students have been participating in initial credit courses, um, including health and PE and new additions this
year, uh, English 12 and government 12. our K8 summer program, our largest offering, uh the K8 summer program, uh was redesigned this year to fit the shortened break and delivered over two
weeks with extended daily hours. Approximately 900 students attended for at least one week, consistent with last year's participation. Um, the office of instruction developed structured grade level lesson plans for
all K8 classes, including a new algebra bridge curriculum aligned with the Bellweather recommendations to promote continuity and readiness. Um, lessons were interdisciplinary, incorporating hands-on science, art integration, and
social studies connections. Um, initial te teacher feedback has been positive. with most citing the clarity, relevance, and helpfulness of the provided materials. Um, we are grateful to families, educators, and administrators who supported this
effort, and we look forward to refining the model using feedback and fall performance data. our Star Hill Pathways uh program which is a collaboration with the center uh
for community partnerships um at UVA. Um uh provides college exploration, tutoring, mentoring and other support to our students. Um and these students are rising 7th uh graders through uh 11th.
um and they provide support through high school graduation. Um we had 269 students in grades 7 through 11 that participated in this year's Starill Pathways. Um with 192
from ACPS um 74% of the students are first generation collegebound and 44% multilingual. Um, rising 7th through 9th graders spent two weeks on the UVA campus exploring
career pathways and participating in wellness and college readiness programming. And this was free of cost um with transportation provided by ACPS. Um, our career exploration was led by partners including computers for kids,
UVA data science, Charlottesville Ballet, Morvin Farm, and many more. uh community partners. Uh rising 10th graders are completing paid internships through CAP, which is
the community attention youth internship program, gaining hands-on experience at local businesses. And rising 11th graders are engaged in college prep activities, residential programs, jobs, and campus visits aligned with their
career goals. Uh the MCubed Academy uh MCubed Math Men and Mission Summer Academy took place June 16th through the 27th um at Journey Middle School. Um the program supports
algebra readiness for African-American males and integrates academic, social, and leadership development. And you'll hear more about MCube during tonight's Spotlight on Education. Um, now in its 16th year, the NESBY, uh,
National Society of Black Engineers, uh, NESBY Junior Preol Initiative Summer Academy is a long-standing collaboration between ACPS and UVA. Um, the program engages students of all backgrounds in STEM learning, engineering, and
leadership development over an intensive 8-week summer experience. Um the uh team uh this year I would like to invite the school board members to the culminating student showcase on July 31st um from
10:30 a.m. to 100 p.m. at the UVA uh Rice Hall uh room 130. So, those are all of our instructional um updates. At this time, I'd like to do uh
recognition of our student achievements. Um this evening, I'm honored to recognize several remarkable student achievements that exemplify the excellence, determination, and teamwork we see across Albamar County Public
Schools. Um, first we celebrate Neil Handa, um, who recently completed 8th grade at Henley Middle School. In June, Neil was named the first place winner in the 2025 National Civics B Virginia
State Finals um that was held in Williamsburg. Um, the National Civics Bee challenges middle school students to deepen their knowledge of civics, sharpen their critical thinking, and engage thoughtfully and exploring how they can help improve their communities.
After winning a regional competition, Neil advanced to the state finals where he participated in multiple rounds of civic questions, presented his essay about the effects of excessive screen time on children's brains, and shared
his ideas for helping students understand the risk and make healthier choices. His preparation, poise, and commitment to making a difference earned him Virginia's top honor. um this November he will compete at the national
level in Washington DC. We commend Neil for this impressive accomplishment and for representing Henley and our division with such distinction. Um we also want to recognize that Neil is here tonight
with his parents Samir and Sevita along with his civics teacher Pam Corey. If you would please stand and Miss Corey um encouraged Neil to take part in the civics be and helped ignite his interest in making a positive
impact on his community. And so we thank you all for joining us this evening. Um, also in June, um, two Western Albamar High School teams brought home state championships. Um, on June 11th, the
Western Albamar girls soccer team captured the VHSL class 3 state championship, completing a remarkable playoff run without conceding a single goal. After two consecutive years as state
runnerups, the team was determined to finish on top in the championship game. Goals by Khloe Gates and Sadi Brutin along with a steadfast defensive performance led by goalkeeper uh Casey
Walker. And the Warriors backline secured a 200 victory and the program's first state title in four years. Uh the team was led by head coach Christy Bronston and assistant coach Eric Meyer.
That same day, the Western Albamar girls lacrosse team claimed their third consecutive VHSL class 4 state championship facing a strong Rockbridge team. The Warriors broke open a close
game with a second quarter surge. Goalender Maisie McCarthy anchored the defense while Annie Austin led the offense with five goals. Senior uh GG Hathaway added four goals as Western
earned a 144 win, capping an extraordinary season in which the team lost only one game. The team was led by head coach Peggy Williams and assistant coach Jordan Dudley. Um, four uh, Western Alamar High School
lacrosse players are here tonight. Uh, Gigi Hathaway, Maisie McCarthy, Annne Hson, and Millie Wagger along with their principal, Jen Sublett. If you would please stand. Uh these accomplishments reflect not
only the talent of our students but also their resilience, commitment and sportsmanship. Uh on behalf of the school board and the superintendent cabinet, we extend our heartfelt congratulations to Neil Hannah and the Western Albamar girls soccer and
lacrosse teams and the dedicated coaches, teachers, and families who support them every step of the way. So again, congratulations to all of our students and I think we have one additional announcement. Okay, Dr. AOP from uh Miss Smith.
Yeah, I just have a business item and this is not good news compared to all that exciting. I just wanted to give an update on federal funding. Uh as you know um the bulk of our funding is both local and state, but we do have a small uh percentage is that that's federal. You've probably seen the headlines
around um some of the Department of Education cuts. So um unfortunately with the exception of Title One Part A, federal funding for the remaining title programs are being impounded or withheld from states. This funding typically
flows through state agencies to local school divisions such as ours. Uh and the VDOE informed us last month that they were only planning to review and approve the title one part part 8 grants per usual. So they would not be reviewing the remaining title program
allocations. So that's title 1 C for migrant education, title 2 A for uh professional development, and three and four. There's more than that. Um so what that means for us is that um this impacts our budget by about $660,000.
It's about six FTEEs. Uh the programs we typically apply for support migrant education, English learners, and teacher professional development, including some of our instructional coach positions. Um we also transfer some of the money um for um some intervention funding. It's
our goal to maintain these programs, our filled positions. We knew that this was a possibility and so we're enacting our contingency plans which include utilizing some budgeted contingency staffing. we hold back some staffing that we typically release for other
needs. Uh we'll be using that. We'll be increasing our reimbursement requests for title one. Uh and we'll also be increasing the central office as you know we're free increasing the central office freeze pool. So we're freezing positions there. Just um taking advantage of some vacancies uh that we
will not fill at this point because there's such uncertainty in federal funding in general. We are not planning on touching our we have a federal reserve um a federal revenue contingency fund and so that is not touched yet um because there just remains a lot of uncertainty.
So thank you Mishmmet and it it was a downer after Dr. Kaiser's uh accolades for our students. I just want to say on behalf of the entire school board I really congratulate our student scholars and our student athletes. You're the
reason that we do this work. So, bravo. And I think Dr. Kaiser, Dr. Kaiser may have a second career as a sports announcer. I think she did a really good job with that. Um, but with that, thank you. Is there any other school board business?
With that, then we move on to the spotlight on education. All right, I'm up again. Uh good evening again, Chair AOP, Vice Chair Berlin, and members of the school board. Uh it's a privilege to shine tonight's spotlight
on education on a program that exemplifies the power of mentorship, academic rigor, and culturally affirming education. Uh MCubed Academy supported by the 100 black men of Central
Virginia. The mission of the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia is to improve the quality of life in our community by closing the achievement gap for African-American male students through meaningful mentorship and leadership. This summer, their impact has been
powerfully evident through their support of scholars from Albamar County Public Schools participating in the 2025 MCU summer academy. MCUB standing for math men and mission is a bold initiative
designed to increase the number of African-American male students who enroll in and complete algebra while in middle school. The academy offers more than just academic enrichment. It builds social and emotional intelligence, cultivates leadership, and nurtures
confidence all within an engaging, affirming, and intellectually stimulating environment. The MCube Summer Academy is rooted in a core belief. When learning is grounded in real world challenges and culturally relevant content, it becomes meaningful,
transformative, and enduring. Through this lens, MCub fosters not only academic readiness, particularly in algebra, but also cultivates self- advocacy and agency in every scholar. In
addition to its summer component, MCQ's year-round programming continues to provide safe identity for affirming spaces where African-American males um are empowered to strive, excel, and lead.
We are honored to be joined this evening by several individuals who bring this powerful mission to life. Um we have Mr. James Watson, president of 100 Black Men of Central Virginia. We have Dr. Pam
Pamela Venibal, MQ program coordinator and educator at Walton Middle School. And along with several exceptional scholars, Jakori and Amari Keys, Tristan Holland, and Jude Dickerson. Um, at this
time, I would like to invite Mr. Watson, Dr. preventable, our MCube scholars um and special guests to come forward and share more about the transformative experiences and outcomes of the 2025
MCubed summer academy. We'll talk about that. Uh good evening everyone. Um thank you for having us. Um like Dr. excited to say my name is Pamela Venal and I am an educator at Walton Middle School. Uh the presentation that you
have in front of you is just for your your perusal for you to uh read at any any other time. I just wanted to make a general comment and then I want to turn um this session over to uh the young people that participated in the summer
program because they are the reason that we're here, right? Um, with that said, there was one young man. Oh, speaking to the mic. Okay. And there's one young man, uh, Jude Dickerson. He could not be here.
And, uh, he's shared, uh, an email with me to share with you guys. And I've asked, uh, Xavier Watson, another one of our participants, to uh, be a part of the conversation. But, as Dr. Kaiser noted
uh we had an awesome summer program and some of the things that uh the students engaged in uh other than the academics was we had a Junth cookout. We visited Ivy Creek Farm. Uh there were a lot of
handson art and math activities uh as a participation point for that day. um the Kente scarves, the Junth flags, um identifying with their heritage and their culture. Uh we had STEM labs, uh
Mr. Trey Barlo did an awesome job with the STEM labs with our students. Uh as well as we had book talks and again, uh Miss Barnes, Lenica Barnes, I want to say Lena, I know she's a science teacher at Alberall High School, right? Uh she
does the literacy piece for us. uh just amazing uh book selection. We had book talks. We had challenges for both literacy and math. And then we had some amazing presenters uh to present to our scholars. Um Mary Coleman of the Red
Cross came in and shared about uh blood donation and the misconceptions and myths that are tied to uh donating blood and then cickle cell awareness. Michael Carter of Carter Forms. If you've never heard of Carter Farms, you got to check
it out. Um, very unique farming methodology, black farmer. Uh, he shared with our young people. Uh, Mr. Daryl Rose, African drumming sensation. He came and he spent u several hours with us during our Juneenth celebration.
Dr. Shahed Muhammad, uh, out of Chicago, Illinois. He's called the math doctor. Google him. Um it was just an amazing presentation and he clarified and brought home to our young men the fact that math is in everything
life everything that you do that you can find math in it and then we had Dr. Gomez um Jose Gomez a retired structural engineer um that has been coming for years and sharing with our young men.
Miss Deja Pascal of We Grow shared her business and then the idea of entrepreneurship as well as a contingency. We had community day and I'm going to let these guys tell you about it. We had community day where they met community leaders that came in and shared their
experiences and who they were with our scholars. Right? So, this is for you guys. Um the other thing that I'm going to share and then I'm going to call them up to share with you uh these young men
um the comments from Jude Dickerson and this is me reading for him. Good evening. My name is Jude Dickerson and I am a rising fifth grader at Mountain View Elementary School. I had a great experience at MCube this summer. We did a lot of things such as math
challenges and literacy practice that I think will help me in my fifth grade year. We also read two books, one called I am every good thing and the hauler of the fireflies. I think I am every good thing is a good confidence booster for
young black boys like me. My teacher this summer was Mrs. Muhammad and she taught us about black mathematicians like Benjamin Banaker and she also taught us about the order of operations in math. Once again, I think that this really help will really help me next
year and in the future. I would like to thank the 100 black men of Central Virginia for having MCube and I am looking forward to participating next year. Uh, next up I'd like to ask uh Jakori Keys and his brother Amari to come. And Jakori is a rising seventh
grader. Right, Jakori? I got it right. Yeah, I got it right. And his younger brother, his first time this year is a rising fifth grader, but Jakori is going to come and share. Good evening everyone. My name is Jakori Keys and I'm a rising seventh grader at Lakeside Middle School. This was my
third year attending the MCubed the MCubed Academy and my experience at it was great. This academy made me feel welcome. And even though you do a lot of math in the academy, you do a lot of fun stuff like building rubber band cars in
STEM. You also get to flip water bottles and solve proportions to see how much milliliters is the best for flipping. Um it helped the academy helped me um they
made me feel welcome and it impacted my education a lot and it also impacted me becoming a better person. It made me feel confident and prepared me for next year. And to this year, my brother Amari Keys got to attend the academy and I'm
glad that he gets to experience the same stuff that I experienced for the last three years. And yeah, that's all I have. And this is Amari. I don't I don't know if you learned to
be poised in and in your time at MCubed or you came with it naturally, but you did a lovely job. Some Yes, he did. Amazing. Right. My first year at MCU, Jakori, it was my first year and his first year we were
together and he was shy kind of like his brother is right now. And so for him to come before you all tonight is like Yeah. Um, that's the impact. And so what I'd like to do is do the order and then just let them flow. So, uh, next up we're going to have,
let's see, Tristan Holland and then following Tristan, we're going to have Xavier Watson. Right. Uh, the two young men. Yes. Yes. Um and then um when the young men uh are no longer participants in the classroom, they age out, but they
come back and they give their time and practice leadership and um previous summers we called them TAs, teachers assistants, but this summer we switched it up and they're coaches. They're instructional coaches. They're coaches. And so they're coaching and modeling for
the young men that are part of the program, right? And so we have two young men with us tonight. uh Dalen and Bradley. Um they've been with the program as a participant and now they're coaches or they were coaches. And I'm going to ask our president to wrap us up
right in that order. Y'all ready? And any of the speakers were not scary. I promise. Hello, my name is Tristan Holland and I'm a rising seventh grader going to Burley Middle School. And I really liked
MQ for my first year because not only did it teach me a lot of math, it taught me how to communicate with all my friends. And really, I learned a lot of things that can really prepare me for seventh grade. And my teachers were great, especially my coaches. They
really uh inspired me to do things when I get older. and I'm ready to participate this camp for next year. Outstanding. Thank you. Xavier, are you all right, sir? Yes. Speak from the heart
on the fly. Speak from the heart. My name is Xavier Watson. Um, I'm a rising sixth grader. I'm going to Walker Upper Elementary School. So, I'm in the Charlottville City Schools. Um, what did you do with Mr. Barnes? Would you wear Mr. Barnes?
I was in Mr. Barnes class this year and we built um stadium out of cardboard and we made like Junth flags for Junth and then we did a field trip to this farm and like we um shared our flags and then
we had like a tour guide and we also learned about PEMDOS and fractions in Mr. Barn's class and foil. I think you know what that stands for? I know you will if you go back next year. Thank
you. My name is Dalon. Um I'm a teacher assistant or a coach at MCubed. I just wrapped up my fifth year there with the program. Um, being a student at MCubed has taught me to uh try my hardest um
academically and I've looked forward to it every single year, especially being a student and uh being a coach has really taught me to, you know, have a voice and it's taught me leadership and to, you know, really look out for my little brothers here at MCU. Uh but yeah,
that's pretty much all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Bradley Smith. Um, I'm also a coach. It's my rising senior year at Alam Marl. Um, I'm going to get a little sad with y'all. Um, when my
parents separated, I was kind of lost. I didn't really know what I was doing. Um, was really angry at the world. Um but kind of what got me back on track um was one of my teachers, Miss Muhammad at
MCubed actually along with um Is he back here? There he is. Mr. Sparks, um they really helped guide me and set me on a better path for my life than where I was going. Amazing. Thank you. Thank you for
sharing. Good evening. How's everybody doing? Great. Doing great. My name is James Watson. I'm the president of the 100 Black Men of Central Virginia. I thank you all so much for being so greatly supportive offering the uh Journey School. Um it's it's been a wonderful building. The
first year we had to figure out the ins and outs. Um we had the lab school which was also offered up by you also. We appreciate that as well. Um I'm the president of the 100 black men, but I'm also a longtime community member. I'm also a parent. Xavier is my son. Uh I've got a daughter that already went to the
schools in the city. Um Dr. Kaiser was her principal many years ago. And um you know, one of the things I love about this opportunity is it actually brings the city and the county together, right? There's not a lot of times around here where um kids get to be in an academic
space, not not on a a a football field or a basketball court, but a time where they all come together. And it's a very diverse mix, right? because you have kids from the rural parts of Albero County, you have kids from the city, you have kids from Cherry Avenue, everybody's in one place for that two
weeks. And it it's kind of like an experiment to some degree because it really forces everybody to kind of figure it out how to get along, how to meet, you know, somebody from a totally different part, you know, totally different background. And the beauty of
that too is we have the we have the uh coaches, right? They've been around. We have some young men that have been part of the program for seven and eight years. We have college students that come back. I mean, it's it's it's really phenomenal. Now, one of the things, so the the neighborhood that we live in is
actually a hybrid neighborhood. So, half of the kids in my neighborhood is called Lachland Hill. They they um go to county schools and the other half go to city schools, right? So your best friend can go to Agnar Hurt and you can go to Greenbryer and you can be 50 yards away
from that other young person. Right now uh one of the things I noticed over the years is people really love Greenbryer in the city of Shaw. They love this school, right? And they love Edgar Herd, too. And we've done a lot of work in both schools, volunteer work over the last few years. And when I look around,
they are wonderful schools, but there's not one black male teacher in either one of those schools. No matter how many awards Greenbryer has won, and it deserves, but there's no black male teacher. So these young men behind me who are all superstars, chances are if
they didn't spend the time in MCU, they would go all the way through 12th grade and never have one male teacher that looks like them. Whereas my son who had the great Mr. Chris Barnes right this summer has already had a couple of black male teachers um and a STEM teacher as
well, Mr. Barlo. So I mean they they're really getting a magnificent experience. Um, I went to the 100 Black Men National Conference a few weeks ago and really there's nobody in this country that's doing what we're doing with this program. So, it's really special. I'm
proud of all these guys. Um, I hope they do well because one day I'm going to need to retire. So, hopefully they look out for me when that time comes. But, they're all incredible. Uh, every day there there's so much to learn and again it's an un it's an unusual um experience. It's not UVA basketball
camp, you know. It's it really is an academy. Um I've compared it to Hogwarts because the the the young men get to go to a place where they see people like them that are interested in the things they're interested in and they can be themselves. And that's not always the case, you know, in the in a traditional
public school setting. So I thank you all for your continued support for many years. This was our 17th uh MCQ, which we're an all volunteer organization for the most part. So, I mean, it it's just amazing and I'm thankful to be a part of it and I thank you again for your support and y'all have a great night.
Thank you. Bye-bye. Thank you. Do we have any Do we have any questions from the school board? Ju just does anyone have any questions or comments? I would just like to ask the youngest student if he just wanted to say hello.
He didn't have to do anything else, but we would love to hear his voice. Hello, my name is Amari Keys. I go to Bagelo Elementary School and then when I'm in sixth grade just like my brother
Jakoy, I'll be in the same school he is he is in Lakeside. I'm 10 years old and I like math and stuff and I feel like this academy is very good for me because I learned a lot of new stuff and old
stuff that I might have forgotten and there was a lot of cool stuff I did like make a bold house or create things with Legos or make a rumble band car just like my brother. So overall, I feel thankful
that I was invited to this academy. Outstanding. Thank you. He's not shy at all. Very good. I'm going to have to challenge you on a rubber band car sometime. I won a physics award a million years ago for my rubber band car. So, I'm going to challenge you
guys. Maybe I'll come next summer and you can show me. Did you have any other questions? Just a comment. I don't it seems that your students the members of the academy learn a lot more than math. They do. Um we have circle of brothers
and I shared u it's called a magic movie that one of our u administrative u workers uh put together and it's a series of pictures doc uh I shared it and maybe Dr. Kaiser you could share it with them. It's just um a bunch of a
bunch of pictures or a series of pictures of some of the events or some of the things that uh we did together during our circle of brothers. Um at the end of the day, uh we have a teacher um let's see, Mr. Smith is
Monachello. There we go. Brain freeze. Um he did he led our circle of brothers and the circle of brothers is a time where they come together and they have a conversation about their day. Uh they um learn team building skills. They learn
how to have a conversation and um they share out um but they also have an opportunity to write. Um what I read to you guys from Jude Dickerson is what he wrote. It's not something that we put together. And then um they do literacy
challenges where they're they're required to then this summer they worked in teams. Uh we did a count off and so it was mixed groups and the math challenges were created uh by uh Shantron Simpson. She's a teacher in
Charlottesville city. Multilevel it wasn't just you know something simple. They had to apply the math that they were learning. It was very re realistic real world. You're going on a vacation. You have enough gas
to get to A, B, and C. But oh, wait a minute. Your your gas budget is reduced by 20%. How much money do you have? How much gas can you buy? And of these places, which one can you get to, right? Um and then they had opportunities to
team build. And during our lunch and learn um that's when our speakers would come in and we would have conversations about being a listener and then asking questions and a lot of times they would write their questions before
uh the speaker would come. So again we could have a conversation um and so they had incentives. some of the opportunities they were given incentives for and then other ones it was just a conversation. Um, I thought it was pretty awesome. Uh, during community
day, uh, we had community leaders from all walks of life. Uh, young, more mature, I'm not going to call them old, right? Cuz yet seasoned, right? Um,
people from all um, young men, black men from just different fields. and the young men had an opportunity to sit down and have a meal and have conversations. And it wasn't, you know, after they introduced themselves, they had conversations. So, learning how to speak
and engage in a conversation. And then our closing ceremony is held at the double tree. again. Um, sometimes our young people, and I found this to be true just speaking to um, one of the young people that worked uh, as
an admin as an administrative assistant, a young lady, she had she was 18 years old and she had never been to King's Dominion. She has never traveled outside of the state of Virginia, outside of 50 miles away from home and she's in college now.
But sometimes they don't have opportunities to go out and do fine dining, sit at a table with a tablecloth and it has silverware in a play setting. And so again, uh, our coaches Bradley
and Dalen and all of the other young men who have been through the program, um, they sit with their scholars and they school them, they model for them, they assist them with, you know, here's how you do this. So it's it's important that
social piece uh because a lot of times uh our young people don't get it and if we don't provide it who will right right yeah so yes thank you all so much and thank you for the important work that you do and the partnership you have with
Elmor County Public Schools. It sounds like you're really building a network of people that will go across time. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Right. Thank you. Thank you so much. The next item on our agenda is our public comment. Uh, Miss Osborne.
Yes. We welcome public input at our schoolboard meetings. To sign up to speak during the public comment period. You can do so in several ways. You can do it online. Sign up is available from 9:00 a.m. on the Monday of the meeting week until 2 p.m. on the meeting day. Or
by phone. call the school board clerk's office to sign up until 2 pm on the meeting day or in person. You can sign up at the meeting um that's available from 6:00 p.m. until the public comment period starts. Please note that public comment is not
received at special board meetings unless specified on the agenda. Each speaker will have three minutes to speak. The maximum number of groups or people that may speak at a meeting is 20. In the event there are more than 20, each speaker will be assigned a number
and numbers will be drawn to determine which will have the opportunity to speak. Those who do not have the opportunity may sign up to speak at a subsequent meeting and or may submit written comments for the school board's consideration.
Speakers should state their name, address, or voting district. Address comments to the school board as a whole. limit comments to schoolboard governance or school division operations. Provide written statements and
supporting material to the clerk. Uh the school board will use a timer to track each speaker's time. Once the time is up, um speakers are asked to wrap up their comments. Maintain respect. Please refrain from clapping or other audible forms of support. You may raise your
hand instead. And debate with the school board is not allowed. And the projection system is for staff presentations only. Tonight we just have one speaker, uh, Jennifer Price. Hello, my name is Jennifer Price. My
address is 2549 by Church Road, Palmyra, Virginia. I worked as a long-term substitute at Albamarl High School this spring for more than three months. I've also taught part-time at many colleges and universities in Virginia for more
than 12 years. I'm here today to voice my opinion in opposition of the 50% grading rule in Alamarl County. This rule is harmful to student motivation. Many of my students chose not to participate in some assignments because
they knew that missing several assignments would have a minimal effect on their grades. Some avoided assignments that built specific skills that they disliked. And some avoided learning topics that were not their favorites. Some did well in the first
half of the class and then avoided doing anything at all later in in the later half of the course. Others picked the easiest assignments and avoided doing anything challenging. This rule makes it easy for students to pass a class while only mastering or
even attempting a few of many topics that are covered in the course. It discourages student participation and reduces learning. It is particularly harmful when students take sequential courses that build upon previous coursework.
If a student takes algebra 1 and doesn't learn the concepts from the second half of the class, they're not prepared for the work in algebra 2. Virginia was recently ranked last in the nation for COVID recovery and math scores, meaning that we are further
behind where we were in 2019 than any other state or District of Columbia. In reading, we ranked 41st out of 51 states. There's no doubt in my mind that the implementation of a 50% rule in many
districts and our slowness to influence and enforce cell phone restrictions have played a part in our poor response to the COVID crisis. Students are also coming to college less and less prepared for rigorous academic work and I'm sure that low expectations
in high school have been a contributing factor to this phenomenon. The 50% rule also hurts students who plan to enter the workforce right after high school. If they're not used to meeting the expectations from a teacher,
they may not be disciplined enough to complete all important tasks on the job. Employers are now often hesitant to hire young people due to consistent declines in motivation and job performance in the younger generations.
Teacher turnover is high and morale has been low since the pandemic. The number one complaint I heard from other teachers at Albamarl was regarding this rule and its effect on motivation. I'm taking a high school teaching position next year in a in a district
that does not use this rule. Let's do our teachers and students a favor and raise our standards by eliminating this damaging practice. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public comment. Thank you, Miss Osborne. Um,
next on the agenda is approval of the consent agenda. I move we approve the consent agenda. Um, I would actually like to pull uh 6.3 for further discussion outside of this meeting. Um, I'm I have concerns over
spending close to $6 million over nine years. Um, but also it's committing to our center model for the next nine years and I would like to further discuss that before we finalize this. Okay. Um, what Miss Schmidt, what is the
timetable for the lease? Uh, the lease is set to expire July 31st of this month. So, you don't have another meeting before that lease expires. Now the lease itself, I'll just remind the the school is a small portion
of it. It's our entire um technology department and child nutrition and EDP offices as well. Okay. So, we're committed to we're going to keep all of that there for the next nine years by signing this lease.
You're committed to leasing that space? Leasing that space for $6 million for the next nine years. Okay. Well, I mean, I'm still opposed to it, but I mean, I don't know if if it's worth pulling it, but it's a lot of money
and seems to it would uh when we're trying to do all these capital improvement projects just I don't know anyone else any other comments. I mean, we need we need the space. We need some space. I mean, the issue is
for me, I mean, is it possible to write a shorter term lease or these best terms we get because we're willing to sign the length of this lease? If you look at the square footage, I did the calculation. I've totally forgotten it, but you know,
the per square foot cost is pretty low. Uh, I mean, it's about $13 a foot. Um, I don't know that number off the top of my head. Well, 500 600,000 divided by 400. We initially um signed the lease back in
2016 2018 20 in we did a property search and it uh was the best option at the time both location and and financial. Um so I can't speak to the square footage cost relation. Um the length of the the lease also
matches the length of the lease we have for the building services um location in the same building. Um, yes, we have a lot of capital needs. I would say our perpetual year 10 capital project has always been a additional administration office. It's hard to rank that above
school needs. And so, but we do have a functional need for office spaces. So, there's not an alternative for a lot those people at this point, which is why we're in a I agree with you. I'd love a building and capital and not and be in lease space, but that's our reality. We
did we look at other options now to see if this was the best space and the best like the most cost effective. We did not. The space right now is working for us. We put a lot of investment in it. Um we just moved building services to it.
If I may interject two brief comments. One, I was not involved in the negotiation of the lease, but it is generally true that there's a trade-off between cost and length of term. a landlord gives you more favorable terms the longer you're willing to commit.
Uh when I reviewed a draft of the lease, I uh noticed that it did not have very broad subleasasing rights for the school division. So, one change that we negotiated is to give us more flexibility. If it turned out the school board decided we wanted to go a
different direction and didn't need quite as much space, we do have uh flexibility to subleasase all or part of that space. Okay. All right. I guess we can not pull it then.
What What are the l lease termination provisions if we sign this 9-year lease? Is there a way out? If we decide to go a different direction other than subleasasing it, no. I mean, if the landlord is in reach, of course, we have Right. Right.
certain rights. I agree. It's not ideal space. Um, but we've not been able, as Miss Schmidt noted, we've not been able to get the financing to build another structure or expand spaces for these other functions. Um,
and the space is pretty heavily utilized beyond uh the center, the student part as well. So, Miss Schmidt, do you know what what percentage of the space covered by this lease is occupied by center one versus
used for other purposes? I don't I don't know off the top of my head. I when I said a small portion, I was combining the building services, which is a separate lease from this. Um I don't know either because I mean it's in here as extending the lease for center for the ACE Academy, right? So,
yeah, we refer to that whole complex that way. Um, but it's our entire technology department, our PD spaces, those two large meeting rooms. And then on the second, I'm in the first floor, it's child nutrition and EDP as well. I don't I don't know the square footage. The total square footage is Yeah.
42,000. Yeah. And what is the whole part? I just And I would say if we if for whatever reason we don't use it for a school, I think there's other needs of space, too. So we could get rid of we could get rid of a lot of trailers
perhaps uh that we use for other functions. So Miss Spilman, do you withdraw your begrudgingly? Yes. Noted. Uh all those in favor then of approval
of the consent agenda. Dr. Akov, pardon. We need a second. Need a second. We had a motion by Miss Lee. We need a second. We do need a second. Second. Thank you, Miss Thompson. Uh, motion made by Miss Lee, seconded by Miss
Osborne. Do we need a roll call for this? I think a voice would be fine. Pardon? I'm sorry. Voice void. All those in favor, even reluctantly. All those opposed? No.
Motion passes. Thank you. Thank you for raising the issue. Um, the next item of business, we have a break on the agenda. Do we want to take a 10-minute break or shall we charge ahead and get out early? I'd like to go I like that second thing. Pardon?
I'm for going forward, but that's fine. Let's go forward. Let's charge ahead. Uh, then the next item on our school uh on our agenda is an update from uh Miss Jamie Gelner about our transportation department.
get situated. Good evening. How's everybody doing? Good, thank you. I'm Jamie Gelner, the director of transportation. Here's our agenda for tonight. We'll talk a little bit about our connection to the strategic plan, where we're at, give a hiring update, and take your
questions. Our employees, thank you, Josh. Our employees connect strongly to the mission of ACPs, particularly to know every student. You can see us primarily in goal three, equitable transformative resources,
ensuring transportation for students who require bus service to attend school. One of the strategies under goal three is to remove transportation as a barrier to any division programs. We support our guaranteed field trips, our expansion of the studios, and we have supported our
TSI schools with almost everything that they asked for this year, including additional vans, removing stacked routes, and adding buses for after school or weekend clubs or tutoring. We had four major department areas of focus this school year. I'm not going to
read you my whole department plan, but um I did spend six the last six years in strategic planning and we spent a lot of time on it. Um we looked at retention, our Gallup goal, which focused on creating a positive culture, a goal around our special needs students, and a goal
around student management. Um we met and far exceeded all of our goals thanks to a strong and dedicated team. I want to highlight our retention and Gallup goals. Um, this school year we hired for almost 70 positions, including 22 just in the building. This department was
severely understaffed before I arrived and you heard a lot about the driver shortage, but we didn't have the staff to run the operations. I'm really proud of the team that we put together this year and we focused a lot of energy in retaining our new driving staff. In the
2324 school year, the department had a 40% retention rate. um probably because the rest of the building was short staffed and they didn't receive support um and because bus drivers have a really hard job. In the 2425 school year, we hoped to retain 80% 80% of our new hires and we
ended up retaining about 85% of our new school bus drivers. Our second goal was around improving our team culture specifically to increase engagement as measured by the Gallup survey. We were the worst department.
um in the division last year with a ratio of engaged employees to non-engaged employees of 1.8 to1 and the school division itself as a whole currently has a rate of 3.82 to1 and my department sits at 7.4 to1 uh which is
almost double the division ratio and I'm very proud of that. I wanted to publicly recognize our employees of the year. Um, our administrative staff nominates the employees for the awards and the department votes on the MVP award. Lisa Mentor won for being the staff member
who hired all of these folks I just told you about. She handles the onboarding, physicals, drug testing, interviewing, and all of the other paperwork associated with getting people started. Um, and we kept her really busy. Uh Mark Van Pettton is our staff member of the year and handles all of our field trips
in the department which has expanded greatly over the years with all of our guaranteed field trips. Um Dieter Keys is a lead driver at Greer Elementary and is consistently positive engaged in our department. um of note this school year
she contacted me one evening about a middle school student who had left a suicide note on the bus and we were able to work with Miles Nelson and his team to locate that student and make sure that she was safe um that evening and she just goes above and beyond.
Stephven B uh Badler is our bus driver of the year and he won for his consistency driving record and attendance. He's on our Agnner team. Diane Kryer has served for over 33 years in the division um as ATS bus driver um
and she retired as a van driver and she was our van driver of the year. Tanya Tyrie is our assistant of the year and works tirelessly to ensure her kids are taken care of and she's on our Holly me team. Bill Morris, you met him earlier this year. He was already recognized as the
division's classified employee of the year. And second to the left there is Eric Turner. He's our lead bus driver at Murray Elementary and he won second in the state at the state rodeo competition. And they'll be giving his award out this evening at the Virginia
People Transportation Conference in Richmond. So up there we have our two trainers. That's Don Oiler and then that's Eric Turner, Jennifer Green, and then Kevin Anstein. Um and Kevin Anstein took me out this month driving around on the bus. I do have my CDL, but I haven't
driven in a while. So, if you see something weird next year, it's probably me. Um, we I'm going to highlight a couple of initiative. We did a lot this year. There's a few things on here that we did this year and there's a few things that are coming that I just wanted to brief
you about. One of the first things that I heard from drivers is that student management is a challenge, particularly the afternoon supervision requirement. This school year, we started using a numbered system to match up families with their elementary students in the afternoon. And that helped a lot with
language barriers and with getting students unloaded more quickly in the afternoon. So, we are going to continue that this year. I also want to highlight that we started a partnership with Post High and had three students work at transportation during the middle of the day once a week. We're proud to support
our students with their learning um as well as taking them to school and it was really great to have them in the building with us. One student worked in the office. She was just lovely. Mia, one worked in the maintenance shop and one helped as an additional assistant on
a school bus. This summer we up we're going to um update our routing software. We're running two databases to open school. It's been a lot of work, but eventually down the line, um, when we have full imple implementation, we will
pilot a new feature, which is a parent app. And hopefully in the 2526 school year, parents will be able to track the bus to see where their children are, just like if you're riding in an Uber. We consolidated all of the fleet vehicles across the division under our
budget, and we're going to take on the repair and maintenance cost. we decided it's probably not not a good idea to not still include the schools and departments on how we utilize those things. So, we started um a fleet advisory team that consists of administrators, department staff, and
transportation staff to advise on the use of the resources that we have based on utilization data and to recommend proposals for purchasing vehicles. One thing that I wanted you to be aware of, you'll hear from the local government, but the local government is
expanding their speed zone cameras to the Brownsville, Henley, and Western campuses starting this school year, and we welcome any additional support that keeps our students safe to and from school, and we thank them for their partnership. We are also partnering with local
government and Ultimate to add 10 stop arm cameras to our buses which will allow us to ticket any driver who passes a stop school bus on on those buses. Anyway, and finally, um my fleet manager Dan and
our whole staff, we want to say thank you for supporting us via the CIP. We were able to order 27 buses with the money you allocated. um and they'll be arriving over the next 12 to 18 months. So, thank you. So, current recruitment efforts, this is
where we were last year. We have much better news. We had a job fair today. Um and we will be making three offers to assistants and two bus drivers um that came to the county office building. So, that was really great turnout because we really needed um some
assistance. It's hard to talk about staffing um without getting into the weeds on our operations. So, I'm not going to do that. But I wanted to highlight that in a in 2019 before CO, the department did
have about 229 employees in total in the department. And with all the hiring that we've done in the past 12 months and counting everybody we currently have in training, we have about 214 employees. So, we're getting closer to being back to where we once were.
Um, but with each additional hire, we can provide better service to our students by cutting down route time, alleviating extremely full buses, um, not having to do those stacked routes and things like that. So, we still have work to do to continuously improve, um,
particularly with our on-time arrivals, but we are looking pretty good with drivers. We're still seeing a lot a lot of openings for assistance on our special needs buses and we've seen increases in transportation needs for special services in the past few years not only
for students with special needs but for students in special circumstances um like foster care or who are unhoused um and they can be placed all over the county while their school might not be close by. Um similarly, many specialty schools have weight lists
who are taking students farther and farther away to attend schools and we're we're driving farther and farther away to support those students. So, it's just something for the board to be aware of. Um we anticipate having about three to five assistant positions open. It really
depends how everything shakes out. We'll be able to cover that with our building staff. Um, we will be able to unstack all of the routes across the division that we had to start last school year and we will be able to add some buses to
schools who are at capacity on their current buses. So, what I mean by that is like Woodbrook for example, we anticipate adding another bus there so that there's not so many kids on each bus. It helps with student management and it helps bus drivers want to stay here and keep working here.
Um, it also gives a little bit shorter ride for them. So, um, I'm going to work closely with Rosalyn to monitor our budget as we grow. You gave me 219 FTE this year and I'm currently at 214. So, we'll keep a
watch on it. Um, I thank you for the time this evening. I'm excited to share the news of our department and I really did want to publicly thank my deputy director, William Shifflet. I asked him to come with me tonight. um he's been with the department through all of the COVID
times, the driver shortage, and I just think that, you know, I thought a lot about accepting the job when I was offered it because it's a hard job. Um, but I think that he and I make a really great team and he makes really big
things happen each day to keep us running. So, I'm happy to report that we're in a much better place to start the school year and I thank everybody on our hardworking and dedicated staff and I thank the school board for making the compensation increases a priority two
years ago so that we can get here. I think it's really amazing what you've done since you've started and where we were and where we are now. So, first of all, job well done. It's really impressive. Um I have a question about our um scholars scholar studios um and
how these improvements um there have been two complaints kind of floating around the last few years. One getting those students back to their base schools in time for after school and extracurricular activities and um that parents had to provide transportation to
the base schools in the mornings in order for them to get to the scholar studios. Um, have either of those issues been resolved with these improvements? We meet with Kina and Megan pretty regularly. Um, and there's there's things that we could do. We haven't implemented those changes yet. One of
the things that we're adding next year is um we're adding a couple of satellite stops that parents wanted. So, there'll be more options for them to take. and we're adding a midday route um and some earlier routes that we can do so kids can get back
for appointments or for other things earlier instead of being late. Um but it is it is difficult the way that we do it now to get kids back for sports. The way that it's been managed mostly is with on the athletics team to make sure they start practices a little
bit later and things like that. But we'll we'll keep working with them as we keep getting more drivers. We can keep improving. And the other thing that'll change is a year from now when center 2 opens that will operate on a different schedule like center one operates on. So students are able to ride their bus to
their base school and then then shuttle to center. So that and I mean that's what I've been encouraging on the instructional side from a logistics perspective. Um but how it is now continue to be difficult. Yeah. And I think that's been a
deterrent for kids wanting to sign up for some of these is that fear of not being able to participate or being late or um and so if we can somehow in the next year figure that out, I think we may see an increase in the number of students that participate in our scholar studios. Um and then I just wanted to
give a shout out to a bus driver since you're here. Um we uh I run a summer camp um and for uh kids with special needs and we contracted with ACPS. I had nothing to do with it. I stayed out of it. But um Katherine Gonzalez was
the hope initiative. Absolutely amazing and the love and compassion she showed our kids. So if you could just pass that along from me, I would really appreciate it. She was amazing. So thank you. I just want to say I think the job that you have done in in
collaboration with William Shifflet and and is transformative to the department and and uh kudos to you and your hard work and all the drivers and everybody. But um this has been transformed from an
annual headache waiting for the the news of how many kids weren't going to get bus transportation to something that we could be extraordinarily proud of and I thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bravo.
Next on the next on the agenda is a presentation about communities in schools which is a joint project as you know between community and schools of Northern Virginia ACPS and the Albam Marl Foundation for Education just
finished the first year in place and we have Patrick sorry Brennan and two of the site coordinators uh here tonight to give us an update. They presented to the foundation last month and it was
extraordinarily impressive. So, I look forward to it tonight. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um I'm Patrick Brennan. Um I lead communities and schools in Virginia. Um grateful for the opportunity to share the work we've done for the past year, our first year
in partnership with ACPS. Uh I'll just give a little bit of a background just to give everyone up to speed of who we are and what we're doing and then I'll hand it over to uh my my colleagues who I'm very uh grateful for them to come in in July and share a little bit of their perspective from the schools that they work directly and the schools the
students they work directly with. Um we are you know uh we are an affiliate that's part of a larger national network of communities and schools. Um we have a sort of a standardized model. has been heavily evaluated about how to integrate student
uh support services into into schools. Basically, the the secret sauce to this are the the two people standing behind me. It is a full-time site coordinator in our partner schools. Uh what that looks like here is there's four schools that we partner with. Uh the three
schools on the Lambs Lane campus, uh Greer, Journey, and Almarl, and then Red Hill um is the other fourth one. So we have full-time staff in in those four schools. Uh the process is about uh the needs assessment working with the
school-based leadership to uh sort of map out a plan an annualized plan and then my staff works with the staff there and with students and families to uh to achieve a certain amount of goals around set goals that they have. Uh this are
many of the faces of the of the people that are part of the communities and schools. Um, we hire locally. Um, so the people here are people a lot of them we were just walking into the into the building. Um, and so there's there's just a lot of familiarity with uh not
only the schools that they're working in, but also the community here that they live in. Um I have as a structure I have a board of directors uh that work with me to sort of make sure that we go out and uh not only promote the work that's happening in the schools and the school
system but also to generate uh stakeholders in the communities in which we serve. So we have a board of directors, we have a trustee council. These are people that are dedicated to our mission which is surrounding students uh with the with the resources they need to be successful.
These are the highlights for the four schools in which we worked in this year. Again, this is our first year. Um we served a little over 3,300 students uh with some resources that we brought in the schools and we case manage a little over 200 students across the four
schools. Uh the case management means that they have an individ uh that they work with whether whatever their deficiency or whatever their challenges are. It could be academic, it could be behavioral, uh it could be social emotional, but they set plans with our site coordinators and the site
is there every day working with these students. Um we have garnered a variety of resources. I'm very proud of how many resources we were able to sort of coordinate. This is very similar and and there there's a lot of resources here in Elmore County. And so for us to be able
to sort of work with people that are already doing the very good work to make sure that they're reaching the students uh that need it when they need it. um English language winners uh learners and 73 73% of them are free and reduced lunch students that we serve.
Um I'm going to introduce you to Savannah who's sitt behind me. She's with Red Hill and she'll give you a little bit of a snapshot of what this really looks like uh within Red Hill. Savannah. Hi. Thank you all so much for letting us present to you. Um I think I can speak
on behalf of the whole communities in school staff here that we are incredibly proud of the work that we've been able to do in this first year. Um so I am the site coordinator at Red Hill Elementary. Uh there are a couple things that I wanted to share with you all that kind
of can uh fill you in a little bit on the scope of this the work that we do. Um so the first thing that I want to share that I'm really proud of um is the drama club that I did. Um, I did a drama club that was served almost 50 students.
We met weekly. Uh, and we did an end of the year performance that was, uh, fairy tales, fables, and folklore. So, it was just, uh, a series of a few simple folktales that you would probably recognize. Um, but the kids had an
amazing time and I am incredibly proud of the hard work that they put in. The families and the staff at Red Hill were immensely supportive and I really couldn't have done that without their help. Um we had parents volunteering to build sets and make costumes. It really
made things a lot easier for me. Um so again I had 50 stu or almost 50 students in the club itself. Uh, but we had the highest turnout of any of the family events this year with over a 100red people coming to the performance, which
for a school of 200 kids is huge. Um, so I'm really thrilled about drama club and I'm looking forward to doing that again this upcoming year. Um, the other story that I want to share with you is about this student here in my student spotlight. Um, I got permission from her
mother to use her name. Uh, but this is my good friend Greer and she this past year was in second grade and I started working with Greer back in October. She was referred to me due to just needing
some general emotional support. She's had severe struggles with anxiety, especially as it came to being in the classroom. um she had a lot of um a lot of other students who had kind of high levels of support needs in her classroom
and that was really stressful for her and very overwhelming. Um so when I started working with her, she was spending probably a third of the school day just doing her work in the hallway. Um that was kind of the deal that she and her teacher had where when she was overwhelmed by the classroom, she would
be able to go out and work in the hallway. Um, and we didn't set a specific goal at the beginning of our time together that she would integrate back into the classroom. So, we started just meeting once in the mornings at the beginning of the day when she would come
in and then right before dismissal and just kind of have a check-in at the beginning and the end of the day when she'd come in in the mornings. Sometimes she would have breakfast. We would talk about what she wanted to accomplish that day, what her goals were, how she was feeling. Um, and then at the end of the
day, we kind of check in how things went, you know, what things we want to do differently tomorrow. Um, we developed a really sweet relationship. Um, and I've come to care for her so much as I as I do for all of my
students, but I I'm very proud of the relationship that we have. Um, and I'm also very proud to say that Greer by the end of the school year, without it even being an intentional goal of ours, was able to entirely reintegrate into her classroom. And so by the end of the school year, she was not spending any
time in the hallway. Um we had been working on specific ways to manage her stress. Um we had worked closely with her teacher on areas within the classroom that she would go if she was feeling a little bit escalated. Um and she was able to put all of those
practices to use. Uh and I'm I'm so proud of the work that we did um and the work that she did because she you know she she did it. But um but those two things I think kind of give you an idea for the whole school things that we do such as things like drama club but also
the the effect that we have on individual students. Um and with CIS relationships are really um the point of what we do and we believe that that communal change comes from individual change and by taking care of those those
one-on-one relationships that we have with our students. Thank you. Oh, Greer. This is Greer Elementary. Uh, this is Gabby. I know Gabby's a couple Gabby students are now going up to Journey and I can let Sonia talk about
that. Um, please. Good evening everybody. How are y'all doing today? Thank you. My name is Sonia Montalvo. Um, I am from Charlottesville, born and raised. I'm very passionate about serving the communities that I grew up in. Um, somebody else shared the Dr. Kaiser with
their principal. She was also mine. Um, so it's really awesome to see her here. Um, I work at Journey as a site coordinator, which I always tell people is just really cool. Uh, language for saying I get to hang with some awesome kids and help them achieve their goals. Um, so I'll share a little bit with you today about some of the things we've
been able to accomplish. Oh, can you hear me now? Better. Thank you. All right. All right. All right. But this is better. Okay. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. Um, so I have 45 case managed students um this year. Uh 9% of those students are English language learners and 73% of those students um qualify for free and
reduced lunch. I'm really really excited that we've all gotten to work together this year and accomplish some really cool goals. Um some of those personal for them, but some of those schoolwide as well. Um so the impact that we've had this year. I'm sorry I'm a little nervous. Y'all are a little intimidating, but y'all all look really
nice. So, um, 84% of my case managed students actually increased their SEAL assessment scores by five points this year. Um, that's something that we worked really hard on this year. Um, social emotional learning, um, as far as conflict resolution, leadership skills, and
things of that nature. Um, have been heavily implemented in a lot of our programming both in school and after school. Um, we've had 39 volunteers this year um, to help with our tier one and tier 2 events as well as with tutoring. And then we've had six active community partnerships. And so I can share a
little bit more about that as I go to my next slide. Awesome. Um so Bright Success um is actually one of our programs and I'll talk to you guys a little bit about all of these um but tie that other stuff back in for you in a minute. Um so Bright Success is our academic mentorship group. Um you
actually see two of our students um both start both their names start with a Z. So we'll say Z and Z. They um actually were fundraising to raise money for um their end of year field trip. Um, and so they did that by running some of the concessions this year for Alamar County's um, special needs Olympic
teams. I hope I'm saying that correctly. Um, but we got to do that this year and the boys found that that really exciting. Um, they raised those funds and we actually got to go to Funland this year. Um, so it's really exciting. Some kids have never been before. Lots of laser tag and bouncy balls. It was a
really good time. Um, we also have Girl Code, which is our weekly program for young girls. Um it was really awesome that my entire group this year was sixth grade. So we started together. Um I always tell them, you know, we're going to grow and we're going to learn in this position together. So they got to build
bonds together. Um create moments for sisterhood, but then also learn more about each other so that they could have each other's backs in school. Hence girl code. You never let your friend or your girl slip, right? Um and so those are one of the things that we walked through the school year with. Um as well as Pin
It Up. Um Pin It Up was our flagship program this year. Um, so we've had writers, photographers, singers, songwriters. Um, they all come together once a week. This, um, program was actually done in partnership with New Flick. Um, Dante Woodfolk, who is a B-based teacher at Journey Middle
School. And so we did that together this year where our students came together, created weekly uh, projects. Um, so for instance, one of our last projects was splash photography. Um we had one of our students, I don't know if you can see her in the back, but she actually um opened up for our Black History Month
event um which is our picture down at the bottom. So all of our students in pin it up. Also, the students are part of the drama team um at Journey Middle School and some other students got to do their student performances um where we had over 100 people in attendance, but Pin It Up um was the group to actually
spearhead those efforts where they um took pictures that would mock other black photographers or famous black photographers to show around the school. Um I'm really really excited that we've been able to engage over 300 families in Tier One events this year. That's just been really awesome. So, um, below you
actually see that picture from our Black History Month. Um, but we also had, I don't know if you can see these pictures here on your screens. Um, but this is from our so celebration block party. Um, so to get students excited about SOS this year, um, we called out several different um, partnerships. Um, and had
families come out, get to have a good time. We partnered with Nick Feans from the Boys and Girls Club, Central Virginia Violence Interruptors, YMCA, um, and the Music Resource Center. and they all came out to be able to share about their programs just to allow families to see what we have to offer.
Um, in that program we had over 100 families attend. Um, and so it's just an awesome experience. Um, I actually don't have a specific student spotlight, but I have a short video where my students kind of share what their favorite thing about CIS was this year. Um, please bear with them as they are brutally honest
and sound quality is not the greatest. Um, hopefully you can see that. Do I Oh, it's not going to Is it going to play? I hope
maybe not. But if you all would like to watch it, I have an abbreviated version on that PowerPoint slide for you all. Um, but then I also have um my Instagram available for you as well. So, the full video is there along with some other things. You get to see some of the cool things my students did this year. So,
thank you guys so much for letting me share. Thank you. Um, Almar High School, uh, this is the the fourth high school and the fourth school that we're involved in this year in ACPS. Uh, we actually have two site coordinators there because obviously the size of it, which is very typical for
our partnerships with high schools. Uh, Mashia and Liz are great and they they really sort of attract and and complement each other in terms of the students that they bring in. Uh I know one of the highlights that they wanted to make sure I I shared with you was having u a student uh who came in the middle of the year. You know I think a
lot of people don't realize how many students actually come in the middle of a school year and to really integrate them into a school is can be very difficult. Um and so they were sort of tasked to make sure that this gentleman I think he might they might be in here. Yeah, here he is. Taylor was uh made sure that he was, you know, not only
sort of oriented to the building, but also to find out what his needs and his likes are to be able to get him into, I think it was an allmale support group. U and he's thriving. Uh and he's looking forward to next year. So, um they have done a really good job of complenting
each other and creating uh a wide range of SEAL and um career college uh panels and workshops um for the students FA all sorts of different ways for them to make sure that they're they're thinking about the next stage uh beyond high school.
And these are a variety of our partners that we've been working with. Again, a lot of these partners have already been and are a part of your school and a part of your community. I'm sure you recognize a lot of them. We're not here to reinvent the wheel. We're here to make sure that those resources reach the kids that need it the most and in a
timely way. Um, and so we're really excited about year two coming in. Uh, I did get confirmation that both Sonia and Savannah are coming back. They're very excited about coming back. Um, and so I only anticipate uh us being able to reach more students and engage uh with
more families uh next year. Any questions? Outstanding. I was I was just going to say thank you for all the work um the CIS's you and all of them have been doing. I think you know everything is impressive but
particularly the parent um uh connections. I mean, particularly in middle school. I mean, you kind of parent engagement, you know, it goes up in in elementary school and dips in in in middle school and for some families does actually go back up in high school, but I mean, having 300 family members
coming to to something is just a huge thing with everything parents have on their plate. Um, and I also love um the drama. We know, you know, oftentimes students don't have the opportunity to do drama until high school. Um, and the fact that you've gotten them started
early, I think really is important and allowing them to see those outlets that like we are that we are not able to provide in a kind of traditional school structure um because the resources aren't there even though we would all love to have much more arts um in
elementary school, but um the funding hasn't been there. So for you to be able to bring those. So appreciate all that work. Um I'm curious where we are on the fundraising for CIS. Do we have an update on I don't know if that's from you guys or from
Well, we are hiring a an executive director that should be in place by certainly by September. The when we say we the oh just what foundation the foundation the marau foundation right I'm sorry is very so so
under the model we are partnering with ACPS the foundation and ACPS are partnering to provide half of the funding we have a matching grant from CIS NOVA for these first three years um and
I feel confident we can the foundation can do its So um and I think the more success we see the easier it will be. I mean the real from my perspective the strength of CIS and the fact that it's
evidence-based and you see improvements in achievement in attendance and a whole range of metrics will help uh help us enormously in our fundraising efforts. Rebecca Dr. Dr. Berlin and I are both on the foundation board. So,
uh, we've been busy working to strengthen that, but having this partnership, I think, will benefit the whole project. There's also an opportunity for us to apply for a grant through the Virginia
Community Schools Grant application. Um so we will be applying for that and a possibility of upwards of 250,000 um if we receive the grant. Um we're we will be aggressively
fundraising this fall um with the new executive director coming on board. That is uh the top priority right um to secure the funding. We've done some preliminary talks with funders and understand there is interest
in communities and schools and expanding the programming um the model for the division. Um so once we get our ED on board um we'll really go to work and focus in on fundraising. We we will we
will secure the funding for the model. So the expansion into other schools is contingent upon that fundraising. We don't have a plan for expansion into any of our other schools until Right. I mean, I I I think because we're interested in the results from this
pilot that that will be the foundation for a decision to expand, but there's certainly other schools that would benefit from this. Yeah, it's been my experience working with school systems. Um the Dr. Kaiser, you mentioned the sort of the community um this community schools fund that was
established with through VDOE. The the metrics and the model which they're basing those awards on is the CIS model. I mean they literally have language in there about community schools model. So having one year in and having like showing an investment of of ACPS in it
was also it's able to go after not only more public dollars but also to go after other grants and other private dollars. So it's a it's a it will start to my experience is it it really does pick up and I'm I'm confident also. And Dr. Kaiser, I also want to thank you
for the um frequent updates and reports that we get. I'm sure they come from all of you. So, thank you, too. It It really helps us keep an eye on what's going on and all the progress that's been made. So, thank you very much for those. I'd like to echo that. I mean, not only is it evidence-based, but you have
wonderful, wonderful information about the whole program, the qualitative and the quantitative impact that you're having. I want to thank both of our coordinators. I know you're really off for the summer, but thank you very much for coming tonight. Do we have any other comments or questions?
Thank you and keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Is there any other business? I actually have a report um from one of my committees that I'm on. Um I'm on the TJ ACE advisory board. I got a message
today from the director. Uh this also is kind of depressing because it involves the federal funds. Um, but they are 70% funded by the feds and we are in danger of losing services for 900 adult
learners in our region due to the empoundment of fedor funds. So we're we're nearing crisis level here. So and these are these are parents of our students. Yeah, some of these are parents of our students. So
anyway, just an update on the TJ ACE advisory board. What is that in dollars, Ellen? What is that in dollars? I'm sorry you said that. I was I'm not sure. Um I actually have a question that's tangential to that that I should have asked earlier on the funding. Um how do
these Medicaid cuts affect um our schools? because I um imagine that we get a lot of money from Medicaid for students and SNAP benefits and those are being Medicaid um to be determined. I think it's um I'll get you some information
about how much reimbursements we do receive. I think the impact of that is still hard to articulate. SNAP, you know, that's worrisome to our families. Um that doesn't directly connect to us. What that what those cuts and programs will impact is our school meals program
eventually. A lot of times uh the reason we uh qualify for our C models is the number of directly certified families and so as that number reduces that will have an effect over time but not immediate. Yeah. I would be interested if you could
pass that along as soon as some of that information because I would imagine the Medicaid cuts are going to severely impact our budget as well. I I I hope not, but I I suspect you're right. Any other business tonight?
There being no further business, this meeting is adjourned.