Along with personal communication to get in-depth views of certain issues from various people. I believe that if the board and the student body can work together in an organized manner towards the same goals, we'll get to those goals in no time. And similarly to my last two goals, I'd like to ensure that the voices of the students are heard by the board, the in the most convenient ways possible. With a slew of new policies being implemented from last year, from phone policies to social emotional learning, I'd always like to be there for for the board. These policies have the possibility to change things in a variety of ways for the
students, improving things wildly, and I'd like to be there to help that happen. So, overall, I'm excited for the year to come and firmly believe that advising this board will be both educational and productive. I'd love to build upon the progress that has been made across the last year and am committed to understanding the opinions of the student body. Together, I believe that we can make a school system where students feel more connected to the board, more informed about its role, and more empowered to engage in shaping their experience. Thank you for your time, and thank you for allowing me to represent my peers.
I'm looking forward to the rest of this year. Thank you so much. We share many of your goals and look forward to having you serve with us. While we're at this point of the agenda, we did make a little shift on the dais here. We've got our, school board member who serves as the, mentor to our student school board reps. Miss Burns has moved down to be closer to our school board rep, just to be able to help provide a little more clarity of what's happening in these meetings. And we're voting a little bit later here on our revised, student school board, policy,
as we continue to work to really elevate student voice and have, greater participation in our work. So, mister Shortsmahn, thank you, and, again, welcome. Moving on to adoption of our consent agenda. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Alright, Ms. Torres with the motion. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you, Ms. Cooper. All in favor, say aye. Oh, excuse me. I just have a discussion question regarding one items. Excuse me, Chair. Sorry. I did note on 08/2005, there's a rogers exemption for compulsory attendance.
I looked into that, and just a clarifying question is, even though this student, will now be homeschooled, it sounds like do they have to do SOL testing or any other type of testing? Students who are homeschooled and, students who have religious exemptions are not required to take SOL test. So is there any way that we know that these students are learning or being a master Yes. Minimum amount of topics? So, every school year, students who are students who are homeschooled are required to show,
academic progress, at grade level, every every school year. So in order to be homeschooled, they must submit the curriculum that is being used and that, and if you want to resume homeschool instruction, you must show, that the student, you made progress. So a lot of our families, while they are facilitating home instruction, they're using some third party program. And that's giving grades, giving assessment, And that's not all.
You can use a box curriculum. You don't have to do something online. But as a as a part of it, the code does require that, families show, that the student is making, progress at grade level. Okay. But all public school students have to take SOL tests? All public school students who are enrolled in the school, yes, they do have to, take end of the year SOLs. Thank you. As mandated by that whatever that grade level is. Alright. Any other discussion on the consent agenda? Alright. So we have a motion and a second.
All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. We'll move on to our first action item, with Ms. Swift coming back to us for approval of some policy updates that we saw in May. Good evening, madam chair, members of the board, and doctor Gurley. At the June board meeting, we presented the May 2025 VSBA policy updates for your review. But since that meeting, we did identify a formatting issue with the VSBA templates, which affected how the red line edits were displayed. But, however, we have, all content has been thoroughly reviewed and updated, and it is
reflected in this packet. So at this time, we're requesting your approval of the current policies as presented, unless there are any specific policies you would like us to pull out, for further review. And if so, we can put that with the August update for action in September. Alright. So to get us started, is there a motion to approve the policy updates? So moved. And is there a second? Second. Thank you. Any discussion or questions around the policy updates that we are voting to approve this evening? Go ahead, miss Torres.
Hopefully, I've got my policies correct this time. So, looking at and, again, some of this falls into, I think, like, there was a policy and then there was a part of it that would pertain to substitutes. So I know that got pulled Yes. And is up for discussion later. For for review. Correct? Mhmm. But regarding and I'm sorry. I don't know if I have the page, but it's policy GCE or GC. The substitute. Yeah. I'm sorry. GCG.
So this was regarding and I think it per pertain to, the continuing contract portion and what we're requiring, to be completed. I didn't know if there was I know that in some of the work sessions that we've had, prior, with the board specific to some of the safety modules and safety training and completion of those before school started, if that is something that that
could go there or would go there or if that's appropriate, because I felt like there was a majority of board members who were in favor of those types of things being done before school started. So I don't know if this is something we wanna talk more about and pull it to later or how you wanna do that doctor Gurley? I think, and I'm looking to miss Powell and to, miss Swift's because I think our issue here is going to be that there is, it's code now about the,
about the amount of training that can be required. Right. And so only those trainings that are mandated by code will be required yearly. Is that correct, team? Only those only those trainings that are required by code, meaning, and that's every five years, meaning that we will we're going to need to have conversations regarding how we
require such training such as safety trainings because they're not required by code. So I think what I heard you say is last school year, we said by the time school starts, everyone needs to complete their safety trainings. I think where our issue is, like, right now, we're in the midst of doing that for this school year. So principals were doing that today. Their implications beyond this year. Was it by code, was it it was instructional training.
Right? Wasn't that how the code was? It was instructional versus non instructional. There's time limits. Yeah. So noninstructional learning practices You gotta use your cafeteria voice Or or come closer to the mic. Come closer to the mic. Non instructional professional learning opportunities that are not federally or state mandated have to fall within the window of three, three hours throughout three to five hours out of the course of the year. So safety response within a building doesn't fall with is not prioritized?
I know it's not. And there's no federal code outlined. Every she's miss Lewis said year, but that's every five that code is every five years. So you can only require it every five years. And we there is a a state mandate that requires you to review your, what we call, the standard response protocols, and that's what the state refers to them now as well, which are stay put, stay tuned, ignore instruction, those things. But that can be done in a relatively short period of time. When you start to get into ALICE and something relatively new called this, standard reunification
method, which we just rolled out with all of our schools today, it starts to become much longer. Like, I was very thankful. We were granted three hours today with breaks. We gave breaks, but we it was all about safety this morning, and our principals and their their leadership teams did a wonderful job delivering the curriculum we provided, included Alice scenario trainings. But we've been discussing this in ELT, and and it's almost like there's conflicting, code that, you know, it will it's not really conflicting. It is what it is about this time limit, and so it's something that we're
struggling with a bit. Right. So right now so right now, the way we are interpreting this, and correct me if I'm wrong, team, that we would only be able to do those types of reunification. We would only be able to do that once within the five years. Yeah. That's what we said too. Wow. Yeah. And I I mean, I'm sure and I hope that the numbers of people completing that safety training are are more than where we were last year when we had our retreat.
Right? We I mean and I so and it's on people's radars, but we also heard, you know, a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, that people didn't know what to do in emergency situations, didn't know how to protect kids or what you know, I mean, there was a lot of we don't know what to dos. And that's what today's training was at all this and that's what today's training was at all of the schools, was that training that specifically you're talking about, but it has implications over the course of the next five the next four years.
And we are looking to take at least one component that we feel like we can make into a video, but I'm not even sure how something like watch this on your own, how that plays into that time requirement, especially in the current you know, under our CBA. Okay. I guess I don't have a lot. I mean, you hear hear my voice and hear my concerns, so I guess we'll stay tuned as you guys continue to dig into it and see if there's anything else that we can do. Right? Alright. May I just keep going? Policy, IGAG, which I think was again, I think it was more about teaching about
high risk drugs or there was some language that changed. Initially, in the policy, it said that this was gonna be taught in the first two weeks, and I think that was struck through, and now it's just kinda wide open, and it just states that it will be addressed. But it doesn't say when, and I was just curious what the thoughts were behind that. So the previous version had that it it would be Yes.
And and but it's in our curriculum between miss Rasnick and Jess Brantley. They can speak very, specifically to that. I mean, I just didn't know if leaving it like this in the policy leaves us wide open. I mean, I trust that it's being covered, but I I would love to hear how and when. So we have a standard, we have a standard letter that gets sent at the beginning of the school year that includes this information to families. And then we incorporate these these trainings into a number of different scenarios, like, through
health and PE. And so by having it throughout the year allows us so, like, when kids are on different, like, health and PE tracks, with the way our curriculums work, it allows us to get everybody, what they need. Through and I can bring I can bring back, like, an actual like, a schedule for you. I was just curious. I just wanted to make sure. It just seemed like it was very specific initially, and then and then that was changed. So alright. Thank you. But you might wanna stay up. I think this one might be for you. The next one is page 38.
I did write that down. Policy IGBA, and this was specific to the, exceptional ed or special education parent family liaison. And so I just was curious if you could speak a little bit about who that liaison is, and then do we have it on our website? Stephanie Hicks is our liaison. She's with the parent resource center, and it should be on multiple places, including our SEAC page. I will double check, but she is, our designated family liaison.
Okay. Great. Thank you. That was easy, I think that's it for this round. Thank you. How about this round? Any other questions? Miss Richardson, any questions? No. Miss Cooper? No questions. Alright. So we have a motion and a second still. Okay. So all in favor of approval of our 2526 policy updates from the May 2025
VSBA policy update, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Next up, we have miss Chuck, for our 2526 school board meeting schedule approval. Good evening. I actually don't have a formal presentation. I'm just here to answer questions if if anyone has questions about why we made some adjustments to the calendar. Okay. So again, to get us started, if I can have a motion to approve our 2526 school board meeting schedule as presented. So moved. Is there a second? I'll second. Alright. And I will open us up for discussion.
Yeah. Thanks. Colleagues, I see that we're adjusting the schedule for some religious holidays, and my concern is that we're adjusting we're not covering all religious holidays, and that would expose us to potential problems in the future when someone's saying, hey. You made an exception for this religion on this religious holiday, but you did not make an exception on my day that I practice on or my religion and my
religious day, and I wasn't able to come speak and and provide a comment. And or so in my mind, it's like, I don't think we should be giving any religious holidays to, and moving our dates around for anything. It's just when we do it. I don't know if everybody shares my concerns, but, I mean, September 4, for example, is a Muslim or Islamic holiday. But we're not we're gonna at this moment, we're gonna have our meeting. So I just I don't quite understand why we selected these two dates, to move.
I'm I'm happy to speak to that if if, you're willing. Specifically, for the Muslim holidays, we have checked with, leaders within each of these communities, and it's not only religious communities. It might be cultural communities because Lunar New Year affects so many people around the world and has that has such a it had such an impact. So we checked again with our with two representatives and two leaders from the Muslim community, and they both concurred that September 4 is not widely celebrated and that they would not ask us to adjust our schedule for that date.
They were, the one thing I will say, generally speaking, is that, we don't wanna put either our students or our staff in a situation where they're having to choose from kind of a one off or a special event. And this is something we ask our fine arts department to do. We ask our testing coordinators to do. We ask people scheduling any sort of big one off event. Like, why we don't want to make our students choose between their family, their church, their, theater performance, that sort of thing.
And so to do this, we consult with people like Jeanne Fouts to make sure we're staying in tune with where our community is and the groups that are represented in our community. And then, Denise and I do our own work to make sure we're just being culturally sensitive to the people who live in our community. And then we reach out to various leaders and representatives from those communities, and we ask them for dates. And, honestly, I think the whole list is maybe ten days long out of the year representing all the various communities that we've reached out to. I would say that, in every case, when we have reached out to the leaders
of these communities, they have expressed such appreciation. They have said they feel so seen. They they said they feel like it's one way that we can support our staff, our students, and the community. And I will say on the occasions we've slipped up, we also hear from members of those communities who are asking us to do better. And so I would encourage you to air on the side of making these slight adjustments. I think it's two days next year, and I would also point out that you're making a third adjustment next year. You're moving from New Year's Day to a week late, and I don't think we
would have any qualm making that adjustment. Any further discussion or questions? I just wanna say I appreciate hearing that because I know that there's a lot of work that goes on behind that with the with the calendar committee, and I don't think I've ever heard Mhmm. That articulated to the extent that you all reach out. So thank you. Mhmm. And I wanna give a big shout out. In particular, it it seems like, Aaron Eichorst has the biggest, most complicated thing because his events truly are kind of one off concerts where we would be asking a child to either go to orchestra or to go to their congregation.
And, he is always so, willing to make these changes. I and his changes often involve multiple schools, multiple directors, multiple, situations. So I just wanna give, him a big shout out for that work work that he does for us. Thank you. Mhmm. Any other board members wishing to provide comment? Alright. So we'll go ahead and vote. The motion is to approve the twenty five twenty six school board meeting schedule as presented. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed?
Opposed. Alright. The, meeting schedule passes as presented. Next up, we'll move on to items for discussion. First up is eleven point one, school resource officer working group update from Ms. Powell. Good evening, madam chair, members of the board, and doctor Gurley. This presentation to this for tonight is, it's just information about the work group and the work that has been done since March to prepare the draft school resource officer MOU that will be available for public review and comment on the CCS website starting
tomorrow. We started as a staff work group actually back on March 12. And then after the board meeting action on March 27, we shifted to become more of a superintendent's advisory with two board members who worked diligently with a very large work group, to help us keep the process moving forward. After settle several meetings, we actually decided we just are gonna call ourselves the work group. And, you can see the the group had broad representation from across the CCS schools and departments who are really the primary stakeholders in these decisions.
In addition to the folks who work for CCS full time and are the board members, we also had miss Vazina Howard, who's one of our wonderful crossing guards and a long time leader in the tenth and page community. And we were also very fortunate to have, at times, miss Waneeka Howard join us, periodically in her capacity as the youth opportunities coordinator for the city. I also wanna take a moment to give a big shout out to lieutenant Greg Greg Wade who is, I believe with us this evening. Yep. Great. Well, lieutenant Greg Wade, he's our CPD liaison under the current model.
He works tires tirelessly with myself, Jody Murphy, and, all of us to solve a lot of problems, but he was also just a great contributor in this process and very grateful that he was in the work with us. I really just wanna take a moment to thank everyone who participated in the group and contributed to this important work. So go to the next slide. I got you, Leslie. Thank you. We'll navigate up here. Oh, thanks. Fancy. Okay. So this slide just here you can see the dates for our work sessions, starting in May and concluding with our fifth and final meeting on July 23, and we
were having meetings, like, every week there at the end to get this across the finish line to get a draft out. We were fortunate in this process to have several group members step forward to help with facilitating various meetings. So I also just wanna give a big thanks to Bianca Johnson, Jody Murphy, and Denise Johnson for each lending their facilitation expertise at different points in the process. Truly grateful for that. We also have been fortunate to have strategies for youth as a partner in the work, providing information, resources, and guidance from their vast experiences working with schools and law enforcement across the country.
In addition to the quality resources that are readily available in their website, strategies for youth has reviewed and provided feedback on all of our MOU drafts, and they will continue to provide input and support as we work through training and implementation plans. So as you can see, I have a small army of my wonderful colleagues here, with us. They're here to just provide information firsthand to you all about their the different perspectives and considerations that really drove the process of developing this MOU. And I'll just ask my colleagues as you step to the podium for the folks
at home, please just state your name and your, position at CCS. So here we go. Good evening, everyone. I'm Denise Johnson, the supervisor of strategic initiatives for Charlottesville City Schools. It's a pleasure to be with you this evening. I'm here to speak a little bit about the focus group and perhaps answer any questions. The slides provide an overview of the focus group, opportunities that we held and the feedback that came from those focus groups. We, from spring and throughout the summer, we conducted four CHS class as focus groups,
covering grades nine through 12 with diverse representation. And with with all those classes combined, there was around 100 students. We also had a focus group with the CHS administrative team and the CCS care and safety assistance at the high school. All of the following slides after this one, I wanna frame the context that overall, as doctor Gurley presented to the focus groups, the initial question was one of the initial questions was, do you agree or disagree, with the return of SROs? And one of the key takeaways that frames all this is that 80% of individuals
who are polled, whether they were students or adults, either somewhat or definitely agreed with returning SROs, back into the schools. And so the next slide has a high level of some of the takeaways that you can review when you're ready. And then the following slide, which I wanna note, are the key concerns and then the key requests that we heard from the focus groups. So the top three concerns that we heard were this most significant one was the presence of firearms in schools. They wanted to make sure that we discussed that and understand that it could be intimidating and unnecessary in a school environment.
They also expressed student discomfort and trauma. They also wanted to make sure we were specific in the overlap and clarification of duties and roles. They asked that we really clear out the admin role, the CSA role, and the SRO role in the safety model. So those were the key concerns. And then, overall, the key request that the focus group wanted us to focus on, again, they wanted clear role definitions. They wanted clarity about firearms to the school, the students, the community members, and everyone involved. They want a student centered trauma informed trauma informed training.
They want authentic relationship building. One of the things that stuck out is that they wanted the the SRO to be introduced as a person first and then an SRO. And then we have conversations about the SRO role to educators and to the students. They wanted transparency and community involvement. They also wanted collaborative hiring and oversight. There was a suggestion that a student be involved in the hiring process and also perhaps a CSA. They wanna continue to respect and support for CSAs. They wanted to create a welcoming presence. They didn't wanna feel like the SRS were patrolling or, anything that was intimidating.
They wanted training for students and staff, and they wanted clarity about location and and the visibility of SROs. So before doctor Johnson steps away, any questions regarding, those focus groups? I don't have a question. I do wanna just make it clear that that a lot of the concerns that doctor Johnson just, shared as far as student concerns, staff concerns, were definitely things that I felt, the group did a a really nice job of slowing down. I had expressed some concerns personally that I felt like we gathered that data, and
we kinda had an agenda and a timeline. And we were able and everybody agreed to slow the process down a little bit so that we could address those and talk about them. And, from my perspective, you know, there's still, the concerns hanging out there and and that we have a due diligence. And and I hope and and I'm sure that we have some type of plan or are gonna continue to work on a plan to address some of those concerns with the students. And and so there was a lot of talk around how we're gonna do that
and definitely, did not want anybody to think that we were glossing over those things or that we were gathering data and that's it. But I just wanted to say thank you to everybody for agreeing and giving us extra time. I know it kind of skewed the timeline a little bit, but I think that was important work and conversations that we had and still have to have with staff and students as as we move forward with this. So I just wanted to highlight that. So thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Lisa. You know?
Sorry. I know we'll talk a little bit more about community engagement and next steps, but just wonder, doctor Johnson maybe, When do we anticipate or how do we anticipate getting some parent feedback? Is that coming Right. Forthcoming? If you might be able to touch on that a little bit. Thank you, miss Burns. And, believe, in the next few slides, there'll be some conversation about next steps. And so our goal was to, just as that the community requested was to get
feedback and be transparent every step step of the way. And so the first set of focus groups was to kinda gauge where the student the school, community was as far as agreeing, how they felt about it, what ideas they had about the MOU, perhaps what nonnegotiables they would like to see. And so as, miss Torres mentioned, we took that information and we evaluated it at every meeting, and then we move forward. And so we'll continue to have focus groups and let those focus groups influence the next set of documents, the MOU, and the SOP.
And so that's where we are now, taking that MOU into the community and getting feedback on that. And then we'll work on the procedures, feedback on that as well. And we'll give him feedback as well as part of that. Yes, ma'am. Good evening, madam chair, members of the board, doctor Gurley. I wanna start with, chief Koch's, quick, quote, down at the bottom where it says the principal is the chief of the school, collaboratively selected and trained officers assigned to schools are are resources for the schools. They work under the daily direction and leadership of school administration, and just, talk about
how, we as principals do look forward to having the consistency of SROs. I could tell you for myself, about three years ago, we had a, swatting call at the middle school, where, I was actually I had just walked into a classroom, to sub because we didn't have a teacher. And so as soon as I walked in, I was radioed to, come out. And it's when I walked out, there were officers moving around the building.
I had no clue what was going on. And at that time, the, interim police chief, sort of filled me in as quickly as he could. But then, when I went down, to the office, to put the the school on lockdown and came out of the office, there were two, weapons, literally pointed at me. And so I really, really think that, had there been an officer in the building who could have received their colleagues, it would have made a difference, in that situation.
And so, I'm grateful that, my current police chief, wanted to, meet with us and talk to us and get our perspective. Thank you, mister Jordan. Hello, madam chair, doctor Gurley, members of the board. My name is Justin Malone. I'm the principal of Charlottesville High School, and I want to affirm the thought and attention and care that was given to the conversations that the stakeholders had and members of our school board had as related to school resource offers return returning into our buildings.
Some of the feedback that I think is significant from the principal perspective is is just how much interaction occurs at the building level between the school resource officer and the building level administrators. Even in our current practices right now, the frequency that we would interact with law enforcement is primarily through building level administrators, and and that will that will certainly continue with the reestablishment school resource officers in the building. We believe that they add that needed value and pragmatism to the work, as our
many of our, many of our expectations already include correspondence with law enforcement officers. So having somebody who was trained, whose work is focused on relationship building within the spaces that they are working, have a strong understanding of of the community in which they're working, having that person there with, with us to support that work is significant, in both supporting the success of this, of this program, but just in the day to day interactions as well. The work group gave considerable thought to very many things, and I do think that
the added value again for school resource officers is gonna be continuing to support the critical situations, emergency situations that arise, Their steady presence currently and their support of our work around threat assessments will continue to be refined and add much needed quality and perspective, from the relationship that they will have with the school to that work, and then to the idea of what we can craft out and continue to to grow
in terms of the work that they'll be doing for lessons and training and other, ed based experiences that they have as it relates to the to the work and the requirements that come with this position. So, as the building level principal, where there is often high need, having, a strong safety program is significant and important to me. And I believe that the this work that that has been given consideration on behalf of school resource officers will add another level of additional value to that safety program.
Thank you, doctor Malone. Lamont Trotter, principal, Lugo McGinnis Academy. Our particular campus is, very unique, and so, the discussion that we have was around, that resource officer just roving and stopping in from time to time at our particular campus, as we continue to minimize the type of, infractions that may have escalated in previous years. So just having a familiar face stopped in when we have community days or welcome back opportunities so that that officer is able to be a pillar within our school community.
The ultimate goal at our campus, that we discussed in the working group is to allow our students equally to have a voice as relates to how that resource officer could particularly engage with us through miss Phelps with particular groups or miss Claire through SEL activity. So the work that we continue to do with this group is definitely very strong, and I, definitely believe that, this will be a work that will continue. Thank you. Todd Coogler, coordinator of safety and security for the division. My office is tasked with most of the mandatory interfacing with the Department of Criminal
Justice. Our annual safety functions include our crisis management plans, our safety audit, our safety surveys. All of these things have components where we must work with our law enforcement partners. The annual safety audits, and crisis management plan currently are reviewed by our law enforcement partners after the fact. We're not bringing them in during the construction of because it's just simply we don't have that fidelity of a relationship to bring them in on that part of it. Some of the additional mandated interfaces involve, you know, illicit products that are brought onto
our campuses. We have to report them to the police department. Some of those items are simply reported because we need them to come dispose of them. But there's always a question because this law requires us to report it to them if it reaches a certain quantity. The in general, if it's a felony quantity, then it must be reported to the police department. Problem is we don't have anybody on-site that knows exactly what constitutes a felony depending on what the illicit substance is. So we are all often calling our police partners. We found this.
We need somebody to make a determination. Is this something you have to get involved in, or is this up to our discretion? Restoring the SRO program, having that in house where this eliminates that phone call, it eliminates bringing in somebody that's not familiar with working with youth, and eliminates the possibility of somebody overreacting because this is their first time meeting with our students. There's a safety training program involving seventh and eighth graders that'll little more detail will be coming up in the next slide. But that's also mandated by the state to provide that training to our students.
Having the SROs available and assigned to our school system gives us a familiar face that they can start building that relationship at middle school level in an instructional way rather than just interfacing in a public safety manner. Some of the other key benefits, school safety inspections are required every three years. Our next safety inspection cycle falls at the end of this coming school year. Emergency preparation, will gain increased familiarity with our staff and our facilities.
Currently, we have our police department, they will come and they will do training in our buildings, usually on days when the schools are closed, during Christmas break, things like that. However, if we have the SRO, that increases that familiarity, increases the point of contact with our staff so that we're not having strangers come in our building when there is an emergency. Our daily crisis communications, this is probably one of the biggest things that we lost with the SRO program leaving our schools.
Currently, there's about a handful, five or six people within the school division that have a good communication relationship with our law enforcement partners. How that impacts us is we know that our schools are not an island. What happens in our community transfers into our schools, and what happens in our schools transfers out to our community. If we learn of something, typically, it's because there's a news report, something says, you know, there there was a shooting on Orangetale. Okay? Or was anybody that we know directly impacted by that?
Do we have any students that were involved? So that involves us making phone calls to our law enforcement partners. They have to reach out to whoever's investigating and find out if there's any at this point. It's a very slow process, and it involves only a few people. So if those few people are unaware of what happened, then we lose that fidelity in communications. We have an SRO in the building. They're more involved directly as far as they're getting updates from their department. This happened last night. This is who we believe is involved, and they can carry that into the schools
and say, let our administration know right then. We think this person may have been involved. The mister Jordan spoke to about the swatting incident, One of the other benefits is the SRO in the building will have the ability to be monitoring both the police radio and our in school radios in real time. So that event would not have resulted in what happened, with our staff being presented with officers with the complaint of that. Because the officer in the building could have immediately heard the call go out, gotten
on the radio, and said, this is not going on. I'm on-site. We can downgrade our response, and he can handle the incident without bringing additional officers onto our campuses that are armed and ready to engage in an interview. So the SRO brings more to the building than simply putting a presence in the school. They bring back the communications that we've lost, and they bring in familiar faces so that we're not interacting with strangers on a regular basis. Good evening. My name is Jessica Brantley. I'm the health, PE, and driver education coordinator.
And I really appreciated being a part of this working group and being able to lend my perspective on the instructional side. I do think that there are lots of ways that the SRO could collaborate in facilitation of instruction. There are some things that are required. So by Code of Virginia, any, physical education class offered to students in grade seven and eight must include at least of personal safety training per year, and it should be delivered in partnership with the local law enforcement agency. So direct alignment there, I definitely see a benefit of having the SRO involved in
the facilitation of those lessons moving forward. Also, in driver education, there are multiple SOLs that require an understanding of the driving related laws. So having an officer in the building that can help, you know, clarify some of the things for students and share some of their experiences of what they see on the road and safety matters, I think, would be of great benefit to classroom instruction and driver education as well. We also are required to have a ninety minute parent teen driving presentation, for all
students wanting to receive their license and taking health or taking driver education. Many school districts have the SRO, or collaborate with the SRO and have them do some presentations or part of the presentation when families come in to kinda share out some of those things that the students have learned in class as well and with, families when they come in. So that is another area where we have a requirement to have this presentation, and it could be more robust by having that person in our building help clarify things for our students and our families as they're applicable.
Also, since there's some other opportunities that I see that may not be included in the list that I have on the slides, but some things were done previously, and there are some things I think we could do. So, we're not just focusing on the secondary level. We do have pedestrian and bicycle safety lessons from, like, k 12. So I do see collaboration with the SRO, the teachers, and Safe Routes as a possibility for making those, lessons engaging and of value to our student population. Also, in health and PE, there are health SOLs in every grade level that address
things like safety, injury prevention, violence prevention, substance use prevention, bullying and harassment, Internet safety, and so on. So and, oh, and responding to emergency situations. So I think our natural standards of learning that we have in our health and PE and driver education curriculum would lend themselves to, the support or collaboration of SRO in all grade levels. And then, also, previously, we had an SRO that served as a club sponsor or in multiple clubs, really, but the one that stands out for me from a health
and wellness perspective was, the sponsor of YADAP. So that's a student led club that is their goal is to prevent alcohol and substance use. And so the mentor that was an SRO and, the high school students went to I think it was, like, a week long training at Longwood, to learn how to facilitate things throughout the school year to try to get other students on board with, choosing an alcohol and substance free lifestyle. And so I definitely see that as a potential opportunity, maybe not that specific club,
but things like that. And when I was on the working group, not only did I look at it from an instructional perspective, but a relationship perspective. I think if, they are ingrained in some of the school culture and the, opportunities to share expertise in the things that they, you know, know a lot about and collaboration with their teachers, that it would help build relationships as well. So one of the things that was a feature of our discussion around the MOU was how, school resource officers would impact, students with disabilities specifically. So we know that children, adolescents, and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are at
an increased risk to be victims of violence. They're also at an increased risk in emergency situations. Like, I use the example of house fires, car accidents, and natural disasters due to weaknesses in communication. So the SRO program allows us to have a regular and safe opportunity for students with disabilities to interact with police officers, so they understand what seeking and receiving support from first responders can look like. The other thing that we know is that children, adolescents, and adults with disabilities are
at increased risk when they encounter police officers in the community that do not know, the context of their behaviors. We know that communication differences and unexpected behaviors can lead to serious and fatal outcomes for adults and children with disabilities. That will that will be prevented. And that is because within that school setting, the m r o the MOU has has set us up to have structures in which we share the context of children's behavior with our school resource officers.
So the IEP team, drafts and writes behavior intervention plans that includes information that school administration and school resource officers need to know in order to respond effectively to student behavior, to prevent those misunderstandings of behavior that might occur, with a police officer who doesn't know the student or understand the student. Those individualized plans are where they're gonna keep our students safe from those misunderstandings. And that adds the benefit of our school resource officers building those relationships, understanding student
behavior, in the school building, and being able to then relay that information to their counterparts in CPD, which allows us to support our whole community in a better way. Sorry. Good evening. I'm Jody Murphy. I'm the mental wellness coordinator. I really wanna focus on the threat assessment process. I think the other points around mental wellness have been spoken about the opportunity for positive, safe, connected relationships between the SRO and our students and staff. Over the last couple years when we have not had SROs, we have done the
very best job that we can to make sure that we are meeting code, and it has gone well. But I wanna speak to the fact that we have been depending on individual with CCS and CPD to make the threat assessment process procedure work. And having SRO and SRO programming will move us from individuals to systems, which will have that protocol and process go more smoothly and will really allow us to serve our students and our families and the schools in a much more safe and collaborative
way. Having SROs in our building for threat assessment, I want us to think about not just about, that there will be an SRO who know our students, but also threat assessment is hard even under the best of circumstances. And when you have to go in and talk to a student and make phone calls to a family about a really difficult situation, having to do that with somebody who's walking through the door that does not know you at all, having to talk to a kid about we're having a police officer come in who you have never
met, even if they trust our school staff, it is incredibly difficult. It's even harder when our school staff don't know the police officer that's coming. And so part of the one of the positive things about having an SRO program will be that the SRO will be a known face to our students even while the assessment process will still be hard. I don't want anybody to mistake that I'm saying this is gonna make it be so easy. It is not. It's incredibly difficult for everyone.
So I just wanna remind everybody that while the work will be hard, knowing that we have a trusting relationship between our SRO and the CPD programming in general will really make that clinically be better, and it will be safer or hopefully feel safer for all people involved. I also wanna talk a little bit about we have to have threat assessment trained officers come. PD has done an amazing job of ensuring that any officer who comes is threat assessment trained.
But there's a big difference between being threat assessment trained and being youth trained. And so an SRO would be both. And it's different when you're talking to whether it's an eight year old or a 14 year old, and when you're working with adults. And so from the mental health perspective, knowing that our SROs are trained to work with our students really does make a difference on the mental health side. Good evening, madam chair, members of the board, doctor Gurley. My name is Bianca Johnson. I am the and restorative practices or restorative justice coordinator here at CCS.
To that point, one of the things that we're really big restorative world is we wanna do things with people, right, not to or for them. And so when SROs do return to the school buildings, one of the things that I would be making sure of is that they are aware of what restorative justice is at CCS and how we utilize it. And when I say that, I'm thinking about from our contracted facilitators at CBCJ and even how it's defined in our rights and responsibilities. We'll make sure to provide opportunities for them to, receive training in tier one practices wherever they're comfortable.
Right? And so while they wouldn't facilitate a full restorative conversation, if they wanted to participate in something like a community building circle or maybe be a participant in a restorative conference. If that makes sense and all of the parties are okay with it, we would make a way, for that to happen. And then on the other side, in the family engagement world, we did do some summer outreach that happened. And what you see to the right is a a word cloud of some of the things that we collected anecdotally when we were out in the community. So we went to rock the block that happened at Tonsler Park.
We stopped by at one of the Tonsler Park games. We did the one stop shop that happens at Carver Rec. Last weekend, we were at West Haven Day. This Sunday, we have our Better Together block party bash, and then, there's this event that we're doing in collaboration, the can I talk to you event that you'll hear about in just a little bit? What I gathered anecdotally, right, and I don't wanna speak on behalf of all families, but the families that I connected with when they heard the idea that SROs were returning to the buildings, they were okay with it.
Right? There were some that were relieved, some that were wanting to hear more, but didn't necessarily disagree with the idea. I think what I gathered from, more than anything, whether it was a student or just a community member that maybe didn't have kids at CCS or a parent, when they think about an SRO, what does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it feel like? They just wanna make sure that they're connected to the community. One of the preference that I heard is that they're homegrown. Right? They're a product of this, Charlottesville community, so they understand it. They want somebody that's attentive. They want somebody that's alert.
They want somebody that is wanting to make assumptions verse that doesn't make assumptions. Excuse me. Somebody that is that knows the the community, that knows the neighborhood, that's connected. An officer that isn't scared to come up to somebody and have a conversation in a positive way, right, not not when when there's an incident happening, and somebody that's able to deescalate versus maybe Later escalate somebody. Thank you. Mic switch. I'm really the I think that's you've heard from the people who did the work, and that that is how we got to the point where we are right now.
But we we wanna hear from the community. We wanna make the MOU even better, even more reflective school values and our community values. So these next steps are how how people can engage, how people can learn more. Tomorrow, I will be posting this draft MOU to the website. We'll be providing some extra information, just some big picture ideas for people who may not wanna read every word of the MOU, but may have some hot button questions that are top of mind for them. Even today, when Amanda and I sent out that, kind of back to school newsletter, it told people about the, can I talk to you Seaville event moderated by Charles
Lewis on August 26? I think the flyer might have had a little typo in it, so, we will continue to push that out, to make sure people are aware. But, again, we're just looking to answer questions, get feedback. We want collectively I love that phrase. Bianca said that we wanna do things with people. So let's let's continue to get feedback. We think we've made a good start with this MOU, but it can get better. And so that's the point of this process. And then in September 4, maybe some of these same people will be back to share how they what they've heard and what adjustments they may recommend, in light of
what they've heard. So so that's the work group. If you have any questions, I don't know how they're they're still hanging in here. I think we still got them all. So happy to answer questions. But thank again, huge thank you to everyone who was part of the work to get us to this point. Thank you. To our students rep, do you have any questions, miss Burns? Mister Meyer? First, I wanna thank, very impressive group that put a lot of time in over the summer. Thank you all. Not necessarily the way you wanna spend your summer, but appreciate all the effort you all put in there.
It was very give us a lot of information there. I have reviewed the draft, and I this is where I wanted us to land, and so I'm very happy where we're at at this moment. I heard some feedback around, you know, wanting these SROs to be part of the community. You know, I think these are community officers that are helping keep our youth safe, not only in our school buildings, but outside in their community too. I was happy to hear from mister Kugler that, again, this is gonna be a
source of information coming into our buildings also from what's happening, Alan, helping, you know, increase that, travel information, you might say. So I'm happy with that. I did wanna clarify in here, and I because I heard a lot of concerns about this, and it wasn't talked about in this quite yet or wasn't detailed in the presentations. But I think it's in the MOU that the city will be the CPD will be taking this to the city for budget purposes, and this will not be part
of, CCS's budget. Is that where we're at at the moment? That is the unanimous recommendation of the work group that the, program be funded within CPD. There are lots of reasons for that, and Richmond City does it that way. So there is precedence. It's important that every grant that comes out that supports these type of programs, they're the recipient is law enforcement. Even for school security officers like our CSAs, it has to run through law enforcement. It's the the payroll, they are, you know, sworn law enforcement officers year round, so they're on city payroll. So to not do it that way is in a part of it, putting my
old finance director hat on, there's just so much unnecessary back and forth with the funds. And so that's a piece of why it makes a ton of sense to just do it that way. But it also speaks to your point about these are youth, especially youth trained officers that are really part of the value is serving the community twenty four seven, three sixty with that expertise. Great. And and final, I just wanted to highlight and appreciate principal Jordan's observation about his experience and the need for coordination and and reading that.
I appreciate from CPD's perspective, at least, and the chief of CPD saying, you know, the principals are the chiefs of the school and will be, again, the chiefs of those officers when they're on their campus. So I appreciate that. Thank you. I also do wanna echo, and just thanks for all the hard work. I know a lot of work went into this, and just kinda reading over the MOU and being able to provide that feedback to my colleagues. I'm too, is happy with some of the, language that's in the MOU. I do also wanna talk about, like, today's climate political climate and making sure that
we are, putting language in our MOU about accountability and transparency around, you know, the power that has been given to the police in our current political climate, so that our children are being protected. If I may, when you when you look at the MOU tomorrow, and this was in, I believe, a draft, an early draft that was circulated with the board. There's a, in the preamble, there is the ability to just it speaks to the fact that if circumstances beyond local control start to drive things in a direction where
things are happening that don't align with with the with our values, that the MOU can be terminated at any time. We certainly hope that would never be the case, but that is, I I believe that may be touching on part of what you're speaking about. So thank you. Thank you, Appreciate it. Miss Richardson? I would like to say, it sounds like we have a long way to go, and a lot of work has been put into this. I appreciate all of the hard work and the feedback you guys have presented today. I personally I'm curious to hear back from the community and the parents and, to
hear their feedback as we move forward. And, of course, I think we do need a stronger safety plan, and I'm just here to see how everything will pan out. Miss Rose? So I just wanted to comment a little bit to miss Cooper's point. And, again, this was a conversation or a topic that came up during one of our work sessions, as far as expressing concerns, under the current political climate, specifically related to ice. And I don't I don't know if lieutenant Wade wants to come up because he
spoke to that as far as the stance that the chief has taken, publicly. And I had even kinda pushed gently or asked that maybe there could be a statement from the chief on our website as far as, his position for Charlottesville Police Department. Good after or excuse me. Good evening. Lieutenant Greg Wade, Charlottesville Police Department. I work with the department's community services bureau, and I've had the honor of working with this work group and coming up with the draft MOU that you have, in
front of you now, in reference to those concerns specifically. In order for a local jurisdiction to interface and use, federal jurisdiction's powers or to work for a federal jurisdiction, you have to enter into an agreement with that federal, entity. The chief's been very clear on that. We have absolutely no plans to do that. That would need to take place prior to any, federal assistance being given by CPD.
And just for the public's sake, I mean, we're talking specifically about ICE pushing in or any any just the ISE. Anything like that. So I do wanna make sure that that was clear. Yes. And we did have a conversation about that. So thank you. And I have approached him since, on on several of the recent community events, and and we've had a very clear conversation about that and his stance and his understanding of where Charlottesville as a community stands, you know, as far as, him making that
statement publicly, but that he he there is no doubt in my mind that the community would support and definitely would draw the line, a hard line there Absolutely. If that was crossed. And I can I can tell you that when I, think of the language that, miss Powell referenced in the MOU about being able to withdraw at any point if it becomes untenable from a local perspective, that's exactly what that's speaking to? Thank you. Also, if you if you don't mind, madam chair, just for the sake of kind
of this process, and and starting at the summer as far as how this transformed, and and thank you, doctor Gurley, for allowing allowing miss Burns and I to be part of this work group. I think it was important for both of us to be, be there and to provide sometimes different points of view and and coming from different perspectives. So I I do appreciate that. But I just would love if if one or both of you could kind of paint a picture of of what this was about and how, you know, it it
came to I want the public to know that this is work towards the MOU draft, what the draft the MOU and how that difference differs from the SOP, and then also, that this is not something that is coming back to the board for a vote, that this is, something that will be sent to the superintendent, and he will bring it forward. But, again, this was work, and then I'll let you explain Sure. Just the difference between the two. Okay. So when the board took action in on March 27, as I believe you earlier,
we shifted gears from the idea of having a staff work group that was gonna be developing an MOU that would then be brought forward in conjunction with board action since the board action has already been taken. It's not coming back to the board for action in such a short period of time anyway. But, what we are doing is continuing to you know, we do want public feedback on the MOU. That's the period we're entering into starting tomorrow. So the MOU is not considered final yet. There will likely if the board, desires, I think we'll probably come back in September
just to say it's final. Doctor Gurley may wanna round out the presentation at that point because at that point, after we receive the community feedback and report back on what that's like and any subsequent, modifications to the MOU, the chief of police and the superintendent of the schools, that's who signs the MOU. But the work's not done there. And if people wonder why we're doing all this in advance and why this timing, it'll need to get this all had to be done ahead of a budget cycle so that it can get into the city's budget. As we as we stated earlier, the hope is that it is in this police
budget, not in the school's budget for multiple reasons. And then, it this the work is just there's a lot of work to be done in identifying the candidates, the selection, you know, selection the final selection process. There's lots of training that we have to line up, not just for the SROs, but also for our own staff and our students. You know, this is gonna be a reintroduction, and we wanna do it right. And we wanna make sure everyone understands clearly the roles and responsibilities, expectations, all those things. So the SOP is something that goes into a greater level of detail than the
MOU regarding all the things. It's really anything that's not in the MOU that we really want to have clarity about how this thing works. It could be something, like, more detail about training because let's face it. Training practices are constantly evolving as to what should be on the menu. Right? We see that as professionals just in education. So we wanna be able things that we wanna update more frequently than perhaps an MOU, we could we can do detail those in the SOP. There's there's lots of pieces, just procedurally things that we may want to spell out
further. And so like the FAQ, frequently asked questions that miss Chuck spoke about for the folks who just look at an m o MOU, and they're like, I don't wanna read all that, but I just wanna know about this thing. And they can jump to it in an FAQ. The SOP is sort of the same way. It's it's more of a living document than an MOU. Although this MOU is set on a pretty short cycle for review, I think it's it's annual or every two years. It's not the three years or whatever. I think it's every year. Whatever it is, it's it's going to be something that's it's not static.
I talk about safety all the time as a process of continuous improvement. In this case, we really need to get it right out of the gate. But as we move along together, I'm sure there are things we'll wanna refine and better define to keep everybody's lanes clear and just make sure that this is really leveling up our safety the way we want it to. Can you speak to what types of, ways that the community can give feedback that might either be imparted towards the MOU or SOPs.
I'm assuming are we gonna open up? I guess that's a question. Are we gonna open up feedback, or is that another work committee? When it's posted on the website, there's gonna be a mechanism to give feedback through the website. The events that are the can I talk to you event, I think everybody's looking forward to that? So those are some significant ways that we're, you know, wanting to get feedback at this juncture. But through the website, we can always receive feedback. But we also are looking at from the, I believe miss Burns brought this to us at North Poudre School District in Colorado. They had some, an interesting thing you could do with a QR code, which, you
know, I know with our often a way, we can think about the best way to do this, but you could quit. It was like just promoting if if someone has an interaction with an SRO, and they want to provide comment on that, and it could be positive or negative. You know? It could or or, you know, something to grow from. Right? We wanna make we're we're gonna need to put some kind of mechanism like that in place. Like I said, I keep getting reminded that that the old days of a QR code and a phone are not necessarily the best way to handle that in a school environment now, but we need to do something similar, and we can promote that there's always a way to give a glow or a grow, right, regarding an interaction
with an SRO as especially as we're, you know, bringing the program back and it's new. So that's one way. And that could also if it's on the website, of course, it's available to our families to provide those kind of feedback points as well. I appreciate that. I was just curious. How many SROs are we thinking about? There was a let me go back. So we're looking at two based at CHS. One based out of CMS, but that one will be one of the floaters and then a supervisor because there's a desire for the unit to have a sergeant, and
that individual will also be a floater. And so again, thank you. Repeating what my colleagues have said. This has been a really, like, positive, rosy overview of the potential of SROs coming back into the buildings. I think as we move forward, and I think this will come out probably in the SOP work, is just the hypotheticals and the discussion about, like, what happens when it doesn't look as pretty as a picture that you guys presented today. So if there is an overstep by the SRO encroaching upon a principal's role as
the chief of that school, what is the recourse? What is the conversation? That is, you know, that's something that's really important to me as this work moves forward. Thank you all. And to your crew standing behind you awkwardly between the stacks, thank you. Alright. We will move on to item eleven two, doctor Eiseley, with our professional learning update. Really wanted to have some music playing that you had to dance out to, but Alright. Madam chair, doctor Gurley, members of the board, I'm excited to share with you about our professional learning for the 2526 school year and to give you a recap of
some of our, efforts from last year as well. So, tonight, I'll sort of outline the alignment to our strategic plan, our priorities for 2526. I'll give you a recap of some of what we've already done this year, this summer, and over pre week, and then our plan, moving into 2526. So here you'll just see the alignment with the strategic plan staff support goal two, is where you're gonna see, a lot revolving around, professional learning with regard to it being meaningful, relevant, timely, and personalized.
We do have, some specific specifics and strategy for and then a target goal of, increasing the percentage of staff who report that professional learning is effective or highly effective. These are some of on the little green sticky note there, you'll see some of the specific mentions and highlights that of our professional learning work that do align, or are visible in the strategic plan. We are continuing this work from from last year. So you'll some of those may be familiar.
One thing I wanna spend a little bit of time highlighting, and you heard about this in, miss Reidall's update BLA update at the end of last school year, but, it really did, really was a big undertaking of our twenty four, twenty five school year. So I just wanted to to acknowledge that. As part of the Virginia Literacy Act, we had about 300 staff members complete the following, VLP courses and literacy so, that you can see the numbers there. And, again, you you've seen this in a pre presentation before from, miss Readall, but
these teachers were in grades k to eight and also included, not just classroom teachers, but specialists and administrators. And so it was just that was a significant undertaking undertaking. So I just wanted to highlight how many of our staff members completed that training last year. This year, we've had a really robust, professional learning opportunities that we offered for staff this summer. So I just wanna take a minute to acknowledge those. We offered two DIBELS, trainings for literacy, on screening students using DIBELS, using that data
to plan next steps instructionally instructionally and to monitor students' progress. So we had 20, teachers, attendees come to that. There were two one day trainings. Virginia studies will be moving from fifth grade to fourth grade, and so we offered a a boot camp that we called it a two day training this summer, for instructional coaches at the elementary level and also fourth grade teachers to really learn that content. That continued at our professional learning day, yesterday as well and will throughout the year.
Mentor training, we are working with doctor Christian Zankov and doctor Audra Parker from George Mason. They've done a lot of work with Mentor VA and have worked with us for a few years. They offered a two day training for, teacher leaders and staff who are becoming a mentor, for a novice teacher this school year. We were able to partner, with Almora County Public Schools, for a newcomer training, so supporting newcomer, English learners in our school presented by the center, of for applied linguistics.
Actually, we had the same presenter that we did for that trained all of the instructional coaches in SIOP a couple years ago. So that was exciting. But we had 14, staff members that went to that three day training on supporting newcomers. We had 15, staff members go to responsive classroom. It's a four day course, for elementary teachers. We had, as miss Horn mentioned earlier, Bianca Johnson, held two two day trainings on restorative justice this summer, with a total of 33 attendees for that.
PBIS training and attendance forum, you can see those there as well. So we were really pleased with, what all we were able to offer this summer already and also the participation from staff, which was really impressive. Last week, we held a three day, new educator orientation for new licensed staff. We had about 75, new educators attend. Day one really focused on getting to know CCS and with we had a tour around the city, where they got to see all of our schools and the city
and then a CCS fair. Day two involved, sessions on building classroom community and routines, structures, MTSS and how that works in the city, inclusive practices and PowerSchool. We also had content specific sessions and curriculum instruction focus or job specific, focus on day three. Each day, staff had time in their classrooms, as well in their school, working with coaches and administrators and, getting acclimated to their school as well.
So it was a nice blend of about a half day or a little more than a half day with the division and then the rest of the time, in schools. We did try to catch our new staff up on SIOP, which I will talk about, as well in just a moment, But we were really excited. And this year, we actually offered differentiated p PL as well. Some of the sessions, we we were able to group our first and second year teachers and then have our more experienced teachers just so that we were able to tailor the sessions a little more, to their experience level. So that was, really well received, I think, as well.
Yesterday was our PLpalooza, so it was great to have you all join us for part of that. It's just such a wonderful kickoff for the school year. I we had a over a 100 unique sessions that we offered. Many of those were offered multiple times, but there were over a 100 unique ones. Today, staff engaged in their safety, PL in their schools. We have two more days, one in November and one in February, so they're nicely sort of paced throughout this, school year. And, again, you're gonna see those same sort of, topics there that are in our strategic plan and that we've have been a focus of our work, over the la
like, since last year. This year, we're continuing our SCIOP work. So that's the sheltered, instructional observation and protocol. It is all about supporting English learners through making grade level content accessible and, kind of combining content objectives with language objectives or or having those, those objectives work together. We started this work in 2324, so this is all in our strategic plan. Our instructional coaches were trained that year.
Last year, everyone all teachers got a a intro in their school, which was really about the English learners and their school, their school specific population, and sort of building some of the background knowledge, on language objectives with with teachers. And then everyone had SIOP one, which was really on lesson preparation and background knowledge. And then some of our staff got SIOP two. Because of the VLA, we had to shift gears a little bit, later in last
year. So those who did not get it last year either had it at the Palooza or will have it before the November day. And that SIOP two is all about comprehensible input, making things, comprehensible to all. And then November, everyone will have SIOP three, which, really gets into strategies, practice, and application. And then, in February, everyone will get SIOP four. So by the end of this year, everyone should be totally caught up and have received, all of that that training.
This year, this is a sampling. We have quite a few PL series going on, or ongoing professional learning. We know that ongoing professional learning that we keep coming back to is, effective. And so we have quite a few, series or sort of ongoing efforts this year. I just wanted this is just a sampling of them. I wanted to highlight a few things. The first is at CHS. We're partnering with doctor Jade Wexler and her research team, to strengthen our tier one instructional strategies, that are focused on students' decoding and comprehension skills.
Actually, on August 12, all CHS teachers are gonna have an initial training on this, and then the intensive will be with the English language arts team, and specialists like ESL teachers and, special educators throughout the year. So that will go on, throughout the year. Also at Walker, there the ELA staff there will be engaged in a year long professional learning series led by doctor Tammy Williams from William and Mary. The primary goal of that professional learning is leveraging writing to support reading comprehension.
So there's, a protocol for planning and scaffolding, for for all learners and using assessment to drive, the instructional goals. So, integrating evidence based practices and certain literacy routines, will be a focus of that work. Doctor Christy Dube from, JMU is working with our gifted resource teachers this year on teaching up, which is practical classroom strategies for differentiated instruction. So it's the idea we we set the bar really high and then and then
support and scaffold all learners up to that rigorous level. So we you know, our GRTs do a lot of collaboration with classroom teachers and and sharing strategies and support with differentiation, so we wanna make sure their toolbox is full also. So the GR team GRT team last year actually read doctor Dube's, one of her books. And this year, she's working with the team throughout the year. So that includes professional learning days, but also, peer observations and feedback with doctor Dube
in the, gifted resource lessons. Doctor Allison Brown, our social studies coordinator, has an ongoing series, with history and social studies teachers in grades six to 12. That's that's sort of a local, series that she's designed to support the, standards based grading work in social studies. So that's happening in PLCs, also professional learning days. So it's all sort of coordinated throughout the year. Our staff at CMS at the middle school will continue early this year.
Their work, with SREB, which focuses on content knowledge and pedagogy and literacy and math. So these are just a sampling. There's more than this, but, you know, we we do have a lot of efforts to have these these ongoing series that the work where we keep we we're coming back to it, and it's not just sort of a one in one and done session. And then these are our sort of embedded supports that we have, that are are certainly professional learning resources in our building. So we do have instructional coaches, and you can see their work outline there.
Novice teacher mentors. So our first year teachers and our first second year teachers who are new to us, have a mentor in their school working with them, in addition to the instructional coach. Our schools offer school based professional learning sessions, aligning with their individual school goals. And then, of course, we have our professional learning communities, grade level and department, teams that are working together as well. So those are, embedded supports that we have that are, of course, ongoing.
And that's all I have. Do you have any questions? Alright. Thank you. We'll open up for any questions on this side. Alright. Thank you, doctor Eisley. Alright. And now miss Fresnik, our multi tiered system of supports overview. Good evening, madam chair, doctor Gurley, members of the board. So, same template, but new information. I'm not gonna go deep into the overview. I'm gonna mainly focus on updates for tonight. So as you know, we use the multi tier system of supports framework to support
our strategic plan globally. We also always want to acknowledge that a 100% of our Charlottesville City School staff is part of this MTSS framework. No matter your role, you contribute to building relationships, fostering that joy of learning, creating growth for our students, and establishing and contributing to the well-being of our students and our staff. So last year, I gave you an update on how many interventions we had in place, so those tier two and tier three.
What we know is that all of our students receive that tier one core instruction, and then some students also receive tier two and tier three interventions across a number of domains. So in this is data from last year. We had 1,117 students receive literacy intervention. We had 536 students receive math intervention. Between behavior and mental wellness, we had almost 500 students receiving intervention. Those often overlap. And then we had a 140 stew two students receiving that tiered targeted engagement intervention.
As we think about our students who are receiving interventions and supports, we know that our tier one is delivered predominantly by our classroom teachers, our classroom is instructional assistants, and it whether it's working or not is measured by summative assessments. Formative assessments guide our instruction, and we have unit tests, SOLs to tell us, is that working? When we, through screening data, see that it's a student has additional needs, then it might bump up into tier two. That's delivered by it can be a classroom teacher or instructional assistant as well.
It could be a specialist or interventionist, a school counselor, and we're regularly progress monitoring those tier two interventions as well. The most intensive level of intervention is, prioritized to be delivered by our most highly trained and skilled staff, so our, instructional specialists and our school mental health providers. And the pro their rate of progress monitoring is more frequent at that intensity of intervention. This time, I gave you a few student examples. This is not real student data, but it is pretty representative of what we might
see, when we're in one of those student success meetings. So we know that students don't students aren't in a tier. Students receive tiered support. And so this this first student we're gonna look at, they have some strengths, and they have some areas of growth. I think one of the things that we always wanna remember is those teams come together to make collaborative decisions so that they can prioritize and work towards that student progress collectively. So this student, for example, they're, receiving a number of targeted interventions for attendance, but
those interventions are gonna address the root causes of the attendance. We've got a student who has a weak grade in reading, and a moderately strong MAP score. So that's gonna require a different type of intervention than in math where they have a weak grade and a weak MAP score, which shows they probably are missing some of those foundational skills. The student is typical in our social emotional screening, so they're not going to receive targeted intervention, but they're getting that social emotional learning within the classroom.
And they don't have any office discipline referrals. So they're they're responding to that tier one positive school culture in order to meet classroom expectations. A few more students, and I apologize. It's small. I was trying to do fewer slides, but it ended up being very, very small, so I apologize. It's testing me up here too. So our next student, we can see that they have, a large number of excused absences, and some of those are homebound. So they're gonna get a different type of attendance intervention because we know that there is something going on with that student from a medical standpoint.
We might be suppressing some of our, automated attendance letters, and we're gonna be focused on making sure that they get the supports that they need when they return to school. The reason for that homebound, we might be a significant mental health need. And so when they're in school, they're getting that intensive mental health support. But the students' grades are fine. This is a smart kid. And so when we if we don't have screening measures to look at other things, a student like this might fall through the cracks. But we do have screening measures. We have multiple different ways of screening students, and so we were able to identify
them as needing intervention because we have the decimine, because we look in the aggregate at how many threat assessments we're doing. And there's no office discipline referrals, but the student has a lot of repetitive small classroom behaviors. By collecting all of this data, we're able to tailor the plan to the student so that they can make progress. Any questions so far? Okay. When are these when are the success meetings happening? Like, what and at what part of it Yeah. Teachers day or professionals day is this occurring? They happen, I'm gonna say because we have, you know, 10 different schools, they happen
at all different times during the day. We are coordinating the teacher schedules, parents schedules, and the provider schedules. So some are happening during the school day. Some meetings happen after school. We offer them in a variety of formats. If the parent can attend by phone, we'll do it by phone. So we prioritize getting getting staff and families together to have the conversations. And then what does the, like, continuum look like? I guess, I worry about students who are identified through a screening process. They move into tier two or even tier three.
They get interventions, and they respond well to them. And so then we take them away and put them back in, you know, tier one, for example, and then they struggle again. And so, like, how how are we keeping kind of that whiplash from happening to students? So if I take my MTSS hat on and put my special education director hat on, if students are making substantial progress while they're in intervention, and when those interventions are removed, their progress slows or stops, that might be indication that a student has
a disability. And so teams monitor that because we have screening measures. Right? So you might be doing great on your progress monitoring. I'm gonna use Vowels, for example. Your your DIBELS is making progress. Your rate of reading is improving, and then you stop getting as much intensity of structured literacy, and now your progress has slowed, that's gonna show up at that next screening, at that winter screening, and that team is gonna come back together and talk about why that might be. And a sign of it being related to a disability is that you can make
progress when you're re receiving that intensive instruction, but you are not making progress if you don't. There's a few more examples. I think the main things that they highlight are that we use a collective of data to make decisions. So, our third example, our student needs instruction, in social emotional in their social emotional skills as shown by the decimini. But when we looked at the whole class, the whole class needed some instruction. So we're not gonna provide 25 individualized interventions.
We're gonna supplement what's happening in the classroom. That's our goal is always to make sure that we're not doing something for an individual when the when the need is a collective need because we can meet more students' needs by presenting it and supplementing it at that tier one. And then the last student, just highlights that we do we've increased our capacity to offer a variety of supports. And I'm excited about some new things that doctor Johnson and doctor Trotter are gonna be working on as well. And so, our last examples talk about, how we can refer students to brief challenges,
which is a, short response, to addiction. That's fair to say. You can come talk a little bit more about that. But it also shows that sometimes, like, teacher data and student data are different. And so we have to dive into, like, why does the teacher have the perception that the student is struggling and the student has the perception that they're not. We do that with a team. And, you know, this is a high school student, so, they're coming to school, but they're not going to class. Why is that? How is the school counselor involved? How is the school mental health professional, that's intervening using brief challenges involved?
I'll speak just for a minute about brief challenges, which we are really excited to bring both to the middle school and the high school, and it's called an SBIRT. So it is a screening, brief intervention, refer to treatment if necessary. So like miss Rasnick shared, it is meant to be a brief intervention for students who might be struggling with substance use struggles. And we're really excited. 15 school mental health professionals were trained in the spring, and we're excited to be able to offer that if it's needed, and we will be able to accept referrals
starting when school opens. And that would be looking at data or referrals that come to us from administrators or school mental health professionals, from either I know vaping was talked a lot about last year as a concern, and so looking at the data that we have and then serving students who are needing that particular intervention. And then we also have a student that highlights how sometimes, we have to think about the ways that we extend the students' learning. And so, it's not always how we're intervening, but also how we're enriching to motivate
and keep students engaged. So collaborating with the GRT might be part of how we plan for student success. And then when we're thinking about students who have, a high level of need in both their social emotional development, and they're exhibiting those external behaviors, it's really essential for our teachers to implement proactive strategies in the classroom, having check-in, check out, you know, intentionally grouping students, to to prevent behaviors occurring, for our school mental health professionals to
be intervening in a unified and supportive way, and then for our administrators to be utilizing restorative justice and be very thoughtful about discipline practices. So a few things, that are new this year, new or updated. We heard a lot of feedback about the self assessment, that we were using for students being too long. It wasn't giving it as the good data because after so many questions, the students just kind of started clicking through. Well, the important thing is that we have the right information, and so we've made
an adjustment to what we're doing for self report. We're gonna use the decimini, which is part of, it's from the same company that we do our teacher reading. And that also provides our teachers with a number of strategies that they could implement quickly in the classroom to address some of those classroom related needs. For our multilevel prevention in mental wellness, we're implementing a new social emotional learning curriculum in our elementary schools. We're implementing the same one across all six schools, which is really exciting.
Our school counselors, at the elementary level, huge shout out to them. They they they took a great curriculum, and they adapted it. So it was perfect for Charlottesville City Schools. It fits our principals have made time in the schedule. We've purchased the things that are needed, and we've built in opportunities for teachers to give feedback as they give the lessons so that we can make adjustments as the year goes on. And then some adjustments to our DBT steps a implementation. Again, we had, classroom teachers, school mental health professionals, and administrators working over the summer
together to really tailor some of that work to our students, making the examples that students, are encountering in the classroom during those lessons more relevant for them, and then working generally on implementation, making sure that teachers are equipped with what they need in order to implement the lessons, and then doing much more co teaching and co facilitating of those lessons, throughout the beginning of the school year. We still are are really utilizing our positive behavior intervention and supports, responsive classroom and
restorative justice to build positive school culture. Charlottesville Middle School and Charlottesville High School both sent comprehensive teams to a two two day workshop with, really the national expert on secondary PBIS. And so they've they've drafted an action plan that they're gonna implement throughout the year. And then at that tier two and tier three level, we're just continuing to make sure that we're providing small group interventions, brief individualized counseling for, individual student needs.
Our team is working with Jody this year on a comprehensive training around solution focused counseling to make that time as meaningful as possible. We have mentoring opportunities. And then at that tier three, we're really also looking at school based and community based and wraparound services for students. Any questions? Okay. Another area of the multi tiered system of supports is academic instruction. And so we're adding some layers this year that we're excited about. We're going to be using academic tiered fidelity inventory, which is a way to measure
whether we're implementing the evidence based practices that we know to support academic achievement of students. Ours we have some specific focuses, at the instructional leadership level. We'll be focusing on making sure that team composition and alignment and operating procedures are there. So doctor Gurley led us, in a session in June and in August on developing, that aligned those aligned systems. And then within the school support plan, we've also we're requiring schools to have a
focus on formative assessment and instructional adjustment, Because while I just spend a lot of time talking about intervention, the most impactful part of a student's learning in their in their day is that first tier one instruction that they receive. And so, we wanna make sure that we're considering how our instruction is working and that, we're making adjustments at that tier one level when it when we have information that says that it's not. And lastly, we're gonna continue to focus on our chronic absenteeism.
I shared, you know, good news, but not good enough for us yet. So we did have some attendance forums over the summer, in which schools were able to come, and we did some professional learning. And then they had work time to work on what the responsibilities of each person in the school was. And they because we had such a focus on chronic absenteeism this year, they were we were able to disaggregate a lot of data. So each school really had some unique barriers. One school, the majority of students who were chronically absent, then at a school where
the majority of students who were chronically absent were, English language learners. Right? So each school was able to tailor some of their responses to who in their school is actually chronically absent. And it included not just what are we gonna do once students are chronically absent, but what are the expectations? Like, what are we doing from day one? And that included teachers are gonna be making phone calls once a student has missed three days of school, and principals thinking about how to make that how to make
that manageable and efficient, was also part of that time. We're gonna leverage some of our systems even better. So one way to help, teachers make some of those phone calls is just to send be able to send them a quick automated message of who they have to call. Right? They don't even have to go look for the information. We are also gonna add we're able to contact parents about, conferences regarding attendance automatically. And then we're working with Beth Chuck to have some frequent automated positive messages and
just some database messages. We know that we often underestimate how often our kids have missed school. Like, we're like, oh, it's been, like, four or five days, and it's eight or nine. I do that. Y'all probably do it too. And so we wanna make sure we're getting that information just out to parents in a warm but firm way. And then the school teams of those forms were also able to say, hey. These are things we think y'all could be doing that we don't have to do. And so we did identify some of those things that the division team would do
more universally. So all schools are gonna have some of the same messaging at the beginning of the year. We include a lot of information in our division wide communications, but what we're trying to do is create the communications and then, allow the schools to send it out because that gets the most people. But we wanna take the lift off creating what that communication looks like. I mentioned a little bit earlier that, we're really thinking about what do alternatives to suspension look like. We do have students who are chronically absent, and the majority of their days chronically
absent are suspensions. So we've gotta tackle positive behavior, positive school culture, as well as we're thinking about chronic absenteeism. And then, thankfully, with that increased position, former CHS grad, we're really excited to have her. She's gonna be working on that really intensive tier three, student population predominantly at Charlottesville High School where we have the most intensive tier three needs. And we're gonna be leveraging our multidisciplinary team, to consider what the what family what
families might need, in the community to support them as well. And you'll continue to get a written report monthly. Yes. Thank you. I think I kept thinking of doctor Gurley's words yesterday yesterday about what we face, we can change, and I think we know, and we've been putting pressure on you, sir, that improving literacy and decreasing absenteeism are huge foci of us this year. So I appreciate this presentation.
Any other discussion or questions from the board? Miss Burns? Yes. This last slide was the one I was most interested in. A lot of good information in the ones before that. Glad to hear that we're doing different things, it looks like, and trying different things. Again, the rates were way too high in too many of our schools, and I think we all recognize that, and we need to improve that, which is good. I see a lot of positive carrots here. Are there any new sticks that we're gonna be using, you might say?
So there's there's really only one stick. When we think about what, like, are you talking about referral to court services? I mean, I don't know if there's anything do you take away privileges, though, to different activities in the school? Like, you can't play an after school activity or you can't go to the dance or I I don't know. Are there other sticks there that we've thought about that, again, that are, you might say, a privilege, in our system that not aren't necessarily basically providing the basic opportunity
if you're not attending school? I think we leave those decisions up to the positive school culture teams at individual schools. I know doctor Malone leverages a number of activities, to encourage students to come to school. I think that who that reaches, are not necessarily our students who are chronically absent. Right. The the, for lack of a better word, the threat of not being able to come to Bacon is not gonna reach our students who don't have a connection or
an engagement with school. And so we want to have positive things, have some ex high expectations and limitations for students who aren't upholding their agreement by coming to school, but we've gotta get really to the root cause of why why kids aren't coming to school. Right. And then and I completely agree that we should be using a lot more carrots, you know, but each context is different with each student that you were just explaining all the examples. And Mhmm. I wanna challenge, because we're challenged by doctor Gurley on this to say, do we
need some more sticks in our toolbox? Maybe, you might say, and then, you know, what might those be, again, on a con you've been be use those on a contextual basis. Thank you. And a quick question, way back, when you began to talk about just our, different tiers and and the interventions. I was just curious from a budgetary perspective as we are gonna be entering that soon. When we're talking about our tier three kids and and the supports and staff, Do
we feel like we are staffed well enough to meet those needs? Is there any area that you can think of, like, at a tier three level that that we need to beef up or increase to support our kids better? I don't always think that more is better, if the more is not really high quality and well trained. I think we still have a lot of opportunities to leverage what we do have. We have a large like, we can't you know, being able to do 1,117 literacy interventions, like, we have a large number of staff in order to do that.
And so we've made requests where we saw that those in need we needed an attendance officer, a social worker with that really specific focus, focused on those most high intensity needs. And I can assure you, I will bring to doctor Gurley, and he'll bring boards when we identify that the gap is that we don't have enough staff. But we're still seeing where some of our gaps are is that we've we've gotta implement, and do things with fidelity.
Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. And I I know you that you do bring those those requests to us, so we receive those readily. But if, you know, if there's ever anything we can do to better support, how things are implemented, I mean, we're here for that as well. Yeah. I think continuing to support our teachers and and continuing to convey that this is all of our responsibilities. One of the challenges sometimes of having more staff is that it becomes who's gonna do it, not how are we gonna do it.
And so just supporting us as we continue to develop that, that mindset of it takes a team for every kid. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're good. Next step, eleven four, human resources update from miss Lewis. So good evening, chair Dooley, members of the board, doctor Gurley. I'm here to provide an update on the highlights of what we have as vacancies for now for the school division. All of the work that we do in human resources is aligned to strategic plan
priority goal number three, and I pulled out two goals within that strategic plan priority that focus on recruitment and retention. So first, I'll speak about the elementary openings. When we look at the elementary openings when this report was generated, there were nine elementary openings. One special ed teacher, one part time reading specialist, and two ESL teachers, and a gifted specialist were our classroom related positions. And then we had three support staff positions.
When you compare this to August 2024, we had five elementary classroom openings, which included a special ed teacher at Walker Upper Elementary, a first and a fourth grade teacher, a part time reading specialist, and a gifted specialist. So our numbers were very similar. The difference is we didn't have any this year, we don't have any homeroom classroom teacher openings. All the instructional teacher openings have some flexibility in their schedule and can be supported
by the staff. And since the time that I built this report, we've hired an ESL teacher, a reading a part time reading specialist, and a part time nurse. So now, as of today, we have six openings or seven employees because we have two part time people serving in one position. You wanted to call out the assistant principal hire as well? Correct. We did hire assistant principal. I'm so excited. We are all filled with our administrative staff, and she will be joining Sunrise Elementary
on Monday. Secondary openings. When I compile this report, there are 12 openings, which included three special education teachers, two math teachers, three e and sound teachers, and a technology teacher. So there's quite a conglomerate of classroom support there. In August 2024, the same number, nine classroom openings. Two were special education, three science teachers, one math teacher, one world language teacher, and one technology teacher.
We have hired this week a math teacher, a special education teacher, and a ESL teacher in the secondary level. And we've also done some recalculation with the technology and engineering classes here at the high school, so we will be holding that technology position. So as of date, we only have eight secondary openings. Anybody have questions on that? So this provides a visual of the comparison of last year to this year. You can see in most of the areas, we've been largely successful.
Elementary, there's a difference in that last year, there were eight openings. And when I started this report, there were nine. But since we've filled some of those positions since then, we're still ahead of where we were last year. And this is in a climate where we had 11 resignations. In the month of July, we had 11 resignations. So which included a world language teacher, a psychologist, five instructional assistants, and then two of our math teachers were elevated to either an instructional coach or a math specialist.
So we've had some transition resulting in these changes. Recruitment this year looks different. So we had 77 openings, and some were questioning whether they were all new teachers. 35 of them are new or about 45% of them are zero to two years. 38% of them are three to eighteen years, and then 17% have twenty years of experience or more. One of the new things that we have added as an additional alternative pathway to
licensure is we, during the course of last year, became a partner with iTeach. And iTeach is an alternative pathway to get someone licensed and endorsed to teach, and they'll help them from their BA until they're fully licensed. So you'll see it's like three tiers, and they'll start out. They'll enroll in the program. They have to show a level of success showing their official transcripts and acknowledgment and doing an introductory course.
Once they complete that, iTeach will enroll them in their program. After that, a requirement, the bar is set high for them to pass their practice exam first. Generally, when you go through licensure, you have to pass your practice at the end. But ITG is asking you to pass your practice first and then take some other courses, apply for provisional license, and then the last tier is they complete all the coursework. Work. We are bringing three associate teachers on board.
These people have passed their practice, have a BA, are enrolled in iTeach, and will be applying for provisional license this month. And those individuals will spend a year getting the foundational courses through iTeach Complete. Initially, it'll go through a two semester process, but you can go as quickly or as slow as you like. One semester is the foundational courses of understanding the learning environment and student centered learning, and then the second semester is understanding your scope.
So if you're a biology teacher focusing in on biology, if you're a history teacher, his questions about this program? So the work in HR is continuous. We will continue to go to college and career fairs and marketing. Just so you know, all of our postings are posted on Indeed. We do raise some of them to a higher level of a posting, paying for a more visible presentation, but know there's a partnership with Indeed to post our job
postings. And we're exploring other social media avenues to post openings. We are integrating some incentives into the title two grant to support teachers with licensure and to secure additional candidates as well. We're gonna expand that iTeach program, and we're gonna support our new hires with licensure. And, you know, we started the thirty, sixty, ninety, Doctor Hastings and Stephanie Coleman, the new member of the HR team, will be working collaboratively to get in classrooms more
often to see our new teachers and what they need. So I'm just here if you have any additional questions. Any questions for miss Lewis? Thank you, miss Lewis. Really happy to see the improvements year over year, and I think that's a credit to, I think, a lot of the programming systems you put into place and good administration we're seeing. And, one question, love to see all the we had a issue with substitute teachers last year and not having enough of those. I guess I'm sorry. I didn't preview this with you earlier, but where are we at with substitute teachers?
I have to tell you, they were anxious to have the substitute posting on our job board. I received a good 20 emails before we posted the position. We posted the position. It's set to go posting at 12:01, August 1, and we already have 32 applicants for substitute teaching, and it's only been posted four days. Alright. Sure. And I also want to remind mister, Meyer that we made many strides last school
year with, with our substitutes, particularly at the secondary level where we were having, our our hiccups. And so we increased the compensation, and so we do anticipate that that will attract people back because, I mean, that's one of our higher wage jobs in the community, particularly for someone with a high school diploma or a few college credits. It's $30 an hour at the secondary level. So he's correct. During the second semester, after posting the $30 an hour, we didn't have any openings
for subs at Buford or the high school. The openings were at the elementary school where we had $20 an hour, which is still great pay. Thank you very much. Mhmm. Alright. Thank you, miss Lewis. We appreciate you. And last but not least, we have another annual policy review with miss Swift. Alright. Hello again. So we have prepared the rest of the May VSBA policy updates along with there were a few July, VSBA policy updates for the board's review. And as you know, the updated policies, they're provided in a red line format in
which the new language is indicated by underlining, and then deleted language is shown with a strikethrough. And so since the last meeting in June, the following policies have been added to the packet due to board discussion and then the additional July updates. So the substitute teachers GCE, that was based on board discussion, and that is in the packet for you to review and take action in September. And then DJF purchasing procedures, JFC student conduct, and then KBA request for public records.
There were some minor, updates based from the SBA in July. So we've added we pulled those from the last packet and have now added it to this packet for your review. And the table the attached table provides a brief description of all these changes. And so we ask that the board, take action on these policies at the September board meeting. Alright. Thank you. Any questions for miss Swift before we all engage in some light reading between now and September? Go ahead. I'm ahead of the game. I always. So I and again, I apologize, but I will send you, I promise, because I've
got, like, four pages of just typos or things that Yes. Looked didn't read real smoothly. So I will I will email or I will come in and sit because it might be easier to sit with you and show you so that I don't have to take up time here tonight. Yeah. Please feel free to email me. And I know, miss Dooley sent us she saw gave us some feedback, and so we have since revised, and those are in the packet. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We have, some board response to written reports included, and then now another opportunity for
comments from members of the community. Is there anybody in the media sent? Yes. Sorry. So there was a written report on energy and water performance. I don't know if my colleagues read that or not Mhmm. But wanted to point out that we made a slight improvement. But this was for fiscal year twenty four. So, again, this was a year ago. Mhmm. Miss Powell, I know this is not under your remit, but if we could get something a little bit more timely from our city colleagues on this, it'd be appreciative.
I know we were gonna be looking at this for the CIP. We have our CIP committing, miss Torres and I, with the city here in September, and it'd be nice to, potentially have the '25 data to be able to reference as we think about that might be a little bit too soon, but, as we think about, again, RCMP plans, etcetera. Thank you. Alright. Now we'll move on to comments from members of the community, if there's anybody in the media center. Alright. Anybody hanging with us on Zoom who would like to speak?
If you would like to give comment, raise your hand. Alright. We'll move on to comments from, board members. We can start with our student rep. Any comments? Alright, Ms. Burns? Mister Meyer? Yes. Attended the Palooza event and and wanna thank the staff for putting on a a great, event there. And wanted to again, if you haven't seen doctor Gurley's, I think, presentation there, I was it was very impactful and and one of the better I think the best
presentation I've seen you give. So we wanna congratulate you on that, recognize on that. I the theme of it, though, and and and, you know, was facing change and brought me back to one of my things I've been trying to change, with us colleagues. And maybe look at it again, is our schedule appropriate one, and could our school schedule be changed to better, address the achievement gap for some of our students? So, I'm gonna put that out there. Second, we had a good meeting with our city council colleagues on Monday, and and,
miss Torres and I also met earlier with our city council colleagues talking to CIP. But we're looking at and I think a needed significant increase in support to update our facilities. And it was great to see that the work that had been done about that, but it was a $100,000,000 just the floor to again, I think is what we all saw, to replace our floors in one of our buildings, the ceiling tiles, etcetera. And we talked about the FEI Building, the unfortunate incident that happened there with UVA
moving that. And, I mean, that's just, again, tens of millions of dollars that is going to be impacting, UVA's decision to disregard, our school board and city's request not to, apply for that building, and they just took ownership of it on August 1. And, I mean, I haven't seen any communication from them about how they're gonna help us out in any way. And so it's just something that I'm gonna be thinking about when we come on
budget season. And I colleagues, I encourage in while we need to be looking forward, but I I really do think we need to reset our relations with UBA and think about their decisions while they do a lot of great things for us, but they do make decisions that really do impact us and our students and our ability to deliver to them a good education. Finally, not found yeah. Finally, mister Hartline, you're heard. You know I walk by that elementary school frequently almost every day with you. Keep on reminding us.
Please, I think you're seeing that we're making some improvements there, and we will continue to discuss with our city colleagues who deliver those services, how we can better deliver those services and keep our facilities, in the state of repair that they should be, and that we don't have accidents like we did last year, and that, again, they're adequate to meet the educational needs and and driving the environments that our children deserve. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Cooper? I'd also too want to thank doctor Gurley for his amazing amazing speech at the,
the Palooza. It was very compelling. It brought tears to my eyes. And I also would like to, you know, to the parents and to the students, to welcome them back, next week, as they're in enter into our buildings, and that, you know, every one of our children, have a successful school year, and that, you know, the teachers and the parents are working together, to make sure that our children
are getting what they need. And so I look forward to spending some time popping in different schools. I feel like I touched a lot of schools last year, but my goal is to kind of touch some of the schools that I didn't get to, pop into. Just to kind of, like, you know, see all of the amazing work. I was really impressed when we did the school visits, last year just to kinda see all of the work that's happening in the classroom. And so I challenged my colleagues to do the same, to see how much work
that the teachers are pouring into our children and how excited, that our children are about, learning, and how we, as a board, kind of, like, being able to see some of that and see why the work that we do, is so important. Thank you. Miss Richardson? I would say challenge accepted. I just wanna welcome everyone back. I'm excited, to be back in this building, to be back at this table. We have a lot of new things happening, a lot of changes, and I'm just happy to be at a table where my voice could be heard.
So I just wanted to give a couple quick updates. There are a couple of things today that came across my mind. So driving here to the meeting, on the bypass happened to, be slowed in traffic, but looked over towards what was Burnley Moran and the new signs for Sunrise Elementary were being put up. So that was kind of a a neat a neat thing to see. As I was heading here, wanted to update colleagues that haven't had a chance.
Doctor Gurley, got an invitation from Rodney Jordan from VSBA for, both miss Burns and I sit on different tasks force task forces, with the VSBA. But there was an invitation kind of last minute to join a Zoom, to give feedback, to to a JLARC rep. It was a focus group on the state accountability framework. So they had a few school board members and the superintendent rep.
I don't remember her name, but, I was able to, keep my camera off and get ready for this meeting, but participate in that. And there are some great questions, so able to just give some feedback on the framework. You know, do we like it? Do we not like it? What do we think about it? So we all had a lot to say, and so it was a nice opportunity to to jump onto that. And then also, had the opportunity to, I was provided a resource on teacher workforce
housing, kind of a sheet of a reef of resources here for the state of Virginia, other localities that are doing something with, workforce housing, and then some of the, our adjacent states. So this was a resource that I shared with, board members, doctor Gurley, and then I also did send it, to Sam Sanders, our mayor and and council. And I got a nice response from mister Sanders today saying he was very interested,
and he was gonna go down that rabbit hole and look at it. So, I mean, I think it was it was a nice little, tip sheet that I had asked for, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to share it. And I think this is timely in the sense that, we've got a council and a and a city manager who are, you know, interested in just looking at those options to support our staff and and other people in the city, again, with more affordable housing but workforce related. So just those were that. Thank you, everybody.
Appreciate you. Appreciate your staff, and I'm looking forward and and grateful to be here. Thank you. I wanted to take a couple minutes just to, again, focus on Monday's meeting with city council. I think it came as no surprise to us and those in this room, what the report said. I think this is what decades of deferred maintenance looks like. Our students deserve to go to school in spaces that are not neglected. You know, one of my fears that I have right now watching the middle school, this beautiful space be built, is that we're gonna just wipe our hands of it.
You know, we've made this major investment in schools, so we're done. And fifty years from now, it's gonna be looking the same way Buford did two years ago. And so I think as a board and as a community, we have to keep the pressure on our partners in city council to ensure that we keep investing in these spaces because we know that it matters. I know that there's still some work to do to convince, some other policy makers that the condition of spaces matter, but we have to keep beating that drum.
You know, seeing the presentation on the possibilities that can happen on the Walker site were, I mean, exceptional. It is so exciting. It was, you know, all of the just depression that we had following the FBI being taken from us, you know, did kind of reinspire me that, you know, we the work continues. Right? We're still gonna be doing these things, and there is an opportunity here. So, I think, you know, no doubt that you all are with me in continuing to push for this, but I think we're also gonna need to have some opportunities
to bring the community along with us. Also, I guess, in conclusion, just wanna thank teachers and staff who choose to work in Charlottesville City Schools. Feel a little bit like a flight attendant saying, we recognize you have a choice. But we really do appreciate that you choose CCS. And I think it's our job as the board to continue to work to, support doctor Gurley and his team in making this a place where teachers, and professionals choose, to work. So thank you. So I you sparked a memory. And I wasn't sure exactly what we were going to be hearing at that joint
meeting with counsel. And I just didn't know, doctor Gurley, if you've had an opportunity to kinda go through that punch list with Sam Sanders or if at some point we can get an update on that. Yep. Miss Taylor's working on it, and she'll be able to provide you, she'll be able to send out what's that what the work looks like. Thank you. We've already talked about it. Mhmm. Alright. I'm gonna send it over to you, doctor Gurley. Alright. I just want to, start by saying to mister Hartline that, it's on the list. We are buying all new furniture, for the LEAP program as a part of the
reconfiguration process. So we're going to give attention to some of our learners who need us the most. And also when we go through that reconfiguration process, you know, I think one thing we learned with the, middle school project is that we don't have to hoard everything. You know, I know it's nice to hold on to things in case we need it. But we will work with people to what's essential to our roles and then we can, you know, we can pass on some things that we just really don't need and we don't have to pay storage fees.
And so, so everything is gonna be everything will work out, but it's on the list. But, Leep, you're getting new furniture. You heard it here first. And I just want to, you know, one thing that I took away from the conversations today is that, you know, so often people say, I know you all had a great summer, you know, you know, you had the summer off and we are busy during the summertime. We are busy. And and when I say we, I'm gonna defer to my colleagues that I mean,
they really have been working, this summer and, you know, I've jumped in on a lot of those meetings, but a lot of things have been happening this summer, as as it relates to advisory groups and teachers engaging in professional learning to develop themselves. So we're very appreciative. And then miss Dooley and I were thinking the exact same thing. You know, it is not cliche that smart and talented people can work anywhere and that we do not take for granted that people choose to work here in Charlottesville
City Schools for multiple reasons. But it is never lost on us that people choose us yearly and and to hear, and to witness at the new teacher orientation, how many teachers are coming to us with over twenty years of experience, and they whispered their why. And, you know, and we knew that that would be their why. And and so we are just excited that people are coming to us and bringing talent with them, because that will translate to success for our students as well.
So just thank you for every, for all that, you know, you all do, the school board, and, school starts back Wednesday, and we'll be out and about and just looking forward to receiving our learners. Thank you. Alright. Miss Swift, anything on our work session wrap up? No. No. Okay. So finally, some upcoming meetings. We have our board advance at KTEC here towards the end of the month on August 23, and then quickly thereafter on Tuesday, the twenty sixth, the can I talk to you c bill SRO MOU event that's been referenced several times tonight?
And then we will be back here on Thursday, September 4 for our September school board meeting. And with that, we are oh, Mary Magdalene. Is the, if it comes off the table or can I talk to you? To you. Will that be, cash trip via Zoom? Or is there a remote participation, or is it all in person? I don't think it was built in, but, I mean, if you want us to record it Yeah. Okay. I think I was just wondering because I will be up now. So I was just wondering.
I think probably recording is more feasible than a hybrid. Pat said he can do whatever we Yes. It is it. It is that Trailblazer. Yes. Interest, but, you know, I'll get the update on me. That's it. He can do whatever he wants. Okay. Perfect. Alright. So with that, we are adjourned.