Okay. Test? No. Oh my god. Okay. Alright. The 02/19/2026 meeting of the Charlottesville City School Board will come to order. It is now 5PM. We have a request for remote participation from board chair Lisa Torres. Is there a motion to approve this participation? It's So moved. For total call. Second. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Alright. Motion passes. And before we go into our moment of silence, I do wanna take a moment to honor the memory of Marvin Townsend senior. Mister Townsend was a member of the Charlottesville twelve.
The courageous group of students who integrated our public schools in 1959, helping to open the doors of opportunity in the face of resistance and uncertainty. As one of the first Alright. Mister Townsend was a member of the Charlottesville twelve, the courageous group of students who integrated our public schools in 1959, helping to open the doors of opportunity in the
face of resistance and uncertainty. As one of the first black students to attend previously all white schools in Charlottesville City Schools, he demonstrated extraordinary strength, dignity, and perseverance. His bravery helped shape a more just and equitable path for generations of students who followed. We are forever indebted to his courage and his sacrifices made by him and his family. Please join us in honoring his life, legacy, and lasting impact of mister Marvin Townsend
senior. And now we will observe a moment of silence. Thank you. Please rise for the pledge of allegiance. Okay. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States government and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice call. I got an all snow. I will now ask the clerk to call the roll. Madam clerk? You're Brian? Present. Burr? Present. Here. Miss Dooley? Here. Mister Meyer. Miss Richardson?
Here. And miss Torres? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. A quorum is present. I will now entertain a motion to approve the proposed agenda as presented. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Miss Cooper? Is there any discussion? All in favor? Yes. Any opposed? Alright. The agenda is approved. We will now move to comments from members of the community if there are any. Any online? Okay. Alright. Thank you. We will now move to on to our discussion item, 7.1, contract update for miss Lewis.
Do we need to go through each comment? Sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. I don't know. For the record, we just need to acknowledge going through each of the separate items. Okay. My apologies. So no members from comments from the community. Any comments from students? Anyone online? Alright. None there. And any public comment on the proposed twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven proposed budget? Any online? Alright. Seeing none. Now we will move on. Thank you, miss Julie. 7.1. Miss Lewis, the floor is yours. And your cafeteria voice.
Okay. It caught up because it was turned on. He purposefully tried to help me. Good afternoon, board chair, members of the board, doctor Gurley. This evening, I'm presenting the school support professional collective bargaining agreement. And this document reflects months of collaboration between Charlottesville City Schools and CEA. The agreement includes a 10 per 10.5% salary increase, educational credit supplements, paid breaks, and duty free lunch, among other things.
The complete document is provided for your review. And at the March 5 meeting, this agreement will be presented for a vote. We received notification on last evening. The agreement was ratified by the collective bargaining unit. I'll be happy to take any questions that you may have. Thank you, miss Lewis. Now discussion. We'll start with miss Bryant. I just wanted to say thank you, to your team for your work and also to the CEA, for doing that work to get the contract ratified.
I'm really excited to be able to see that our support staff will, be getting some support and getting the things that they need. And so I'm really excited about this. It was a long journey to get here, of course, but, I hope that moving forward, we can continue to work with the CEA to meet the needs of all staff. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, miss Bryant. Miss Cooper? Yeah. I would like to thank, miss Lewis and her team for all and doctor Gurley for all of the work that went into, working with the c CEA to, you
know, get to the point where the contract is now ratified. And I'm happy to say that, you know, we as a collective been able to support our support staff. And so, this is a new process, and a lot of us are learning, all about collective bargaining. And so while, you know, some areas of the learning process has been challenging, but I just appreciate that we all all could come together for the common good. Thank you. Thank you, miss Richardson. Miss Julie. Sure. So, tonight I'm grateful that we're here and we're going to be able to approve
a budget that includes a 10 and a half percent raise for each of the next three years for our support professionals. Through the length of this contract, support staff salaries are going to increase by more than 31%. I'm glad that CEA ultimately brought this tentative agreement to its membership and that it passed. That is the right outcome, and our support staff deserve every bit of it. I have a personal stake in this. Miss Torres and I were part of the team that sat at the table for hours alongside CEA and BEA to draft Charlottesville's initial collective bargaining resolution, which was one
of the first in the Commonwealth. That work mattered to me then, and it matters to me now. We built that framework because we believe in collective bargaining, in giving workers a genuine voice in their pay, their benefits, and their working conditions. To indicate otherwise is not a representation of the facts, and what happened this cycle is a betrayal of that purpose. Both parties reached a tentative agreement on October 20. The terms were fair. The process worked exactly as it was designed to. What should have followed was was straightforward. The union should have brought the agreement to its members. They vote.
And if passed, we finalized the budget. Instead, months passed. In January, CA attempted to reopen terms that had already been agreed upon. By February 6, we learned that it was not the intent to submit the agreement for ratification in time for tonight's budget vote. Collective bargaining only works when both parties honor the process. Tonight's outcome is the right one, but the path here was unnecessarily painful for our support staff and for this community. Going forward, I know that the board will pursue explicit timelines, and process in our collective bargaining resolution so that we don't find ourselves in this position again.
And I know that the board will continue to hold itself accountable for the process, but we hope that all sides will also do the same, so that we can honor the process that we all worked so hard to achieve. And so I want to conclude by just saying congratulations, to all parties. I know that my colleagues on the board are very eager, to continue our advocacy to make sure that now we can get all of this funded. Thank you, miss Julie. Miss Torres? Yeah. I wanna just echo, I guess, what everybody has said as far as the board. Thank you, miss Dooley, for your comments and just recap of the entire process from
the time that you and I sat together, working, to get everybody to this point. And, ultimately, I am grateful that, we are, as a school board and a school division sitting where we are tonight so that we can, move forward with the superintendent's recommended budget. So thank you to everybody for all of their work. Thank you. Thank you, miss Torres. The board has not wavered in its commitment to collective bargaining process, and I think that's what you've heard from my colleagues tonight. And, we believe in it. We voted to authorize it.
And, we remain committed to making it work here in Charlottesville. At the same time, supporting collective bargaining also means we honor the full process. It means upholding fiscal oversight and fulfilling our responsibility as elected stewards of public funds. As one of the first divisions in the Commonwealth to move forward in this space, we're learning together and that learning comes with growth. We will not get every step right every time. But each decision we make is grounded in the same shared goal, serving our students
while maintaining the fiscal health of our school division. Now that the contract has been ratified by its members, we are prepared to move forward in alignment with both the process and our responsibility. We do remain committed to transparency, fairness, and doing this work thoughtfully and responsibly, always in service of our students and staff. Thank you, Ms. Lewis and your collective bargaining team. Thank you, Doctor. Gurley, for your work behind the scenes. And, thank you to the CEA. We appreciate the feedback. We appreciate, the thoughtful consideration of their staff.
We appreciate, the ways that they do engage and hope that they'll continue to remain engaged in this process, not just through collective bargaining, but as the division continues to need advocacy efforts. And so, we hope that they'll continue to show up in those spaces as well. And thank you. Thank you. Doctor. Gurley, we'll now move on to item 8.1, approval of the twenty twenty six, twenty seven operating budget. You have the floor. Good evening, madam chair, members of the board, and those assembled in the audience.
I am presenting the, superintendent's proposed budget, and this is for, this is for action. Just want to remind you all that we did set goals and priorities. We did stakeholder engagement, and we aligned those priorities to our strategic plan. We've displayed this a couple of times, but just a reminder of what those, budget priorities, were throughout this process. Since the presentation of this slide, on February 9, which was the joint work session
with the city council, miss Hoover did, double check the numbers. We went through a reconciliation process. We felt that because this is the first time, you know, really going through well, the first time going through this process with our support staff that we wanted to make sure that we double check our numbers, validate all our data. And as a result, there was a reduction of about $316,000, due to the termination
of contracts, retirements, transitions, and and, promotions. So, therefore, the total increase of the personnel cost is $1,600,000, which you see reflected, which you see reflected there. And the, those stars indicated, in the collective bargaining row is where we did the reconciliation. Same thing since the presentation of the slide on the ninth, that work session. Miss, Hamill, who works for the city, she did, verify the, contract for the city,
and the transportation cost also went down, a $107,000. So, these reconciliation processes are very important, as miss Burns referenced, in her comments about us being good stewards of the public's money. So that also, helped us here to bring down that cost. This just keep continues to reflect the collaborative effort between the schools and the city to thoroughly review and validate our figures and sure assure ensuring that the most accurate
budget estimates and, identify any possible reductions. So the total, city increases there are $362,000 $362,847 this slide we've not in our reconciliation process. This slide, has not been impacted since the last time we met. It remains the same. The summary of all the changes for the f y twenty seven budget, because of the reduced, reduction in the personnel and contracts, the request for the from the city
is less 430 $423,808. And this is a change since the last time we met with the city on the ninth. In order to balance the budget, the school is requesting two point, $2,569,071 from the city and local appropriation in order to support education here in Charlottesville City. And, this is the overall proposed, FY '27 budget change, here.
The changes since the since last year is a result of, the overall proposed budget is, $129,000,000. And the increase, over the last year's budget is, a little bit over $4,000,000 And the budget calendar, the after this meeting, if you all approve this budget, the next meeting will then be March 2 where we will have the city council, we will
present to city council. And that is all, unless you have some questions. Alright. I will now entertain a motion to adopt the superintendent's twenty twenty six twenty seven operating budget this evening. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Miss Bryant. And any discussion, miss Julie? I just wanted to flag, some consideration just for the board's knowledge following, the prep meeting that I attended with doctor Gurley and miss Rasnick yesterday. So the Piedmont Regional Education Program, which consists of prep. Please be ready to correct some of the things I'm going to say here. So, provide services for students, that we don't provide within the division.
So vision, adaptive PE, some of those services. And then also, the Ivy Creek School, which is a separate public school, that we have 12 slots, currently. Prep has undergone a lot of, change over the past several years. So, two years ago, Albemarle County, pulled out of the Ivy Creek portion of, PrEP, which, resulted in the loss of 25 seats, to the program. And so the cost of those 25 seats was, you know, then shared by the
remaining divisions, as well as being subsidized from the fund balance with PREP. Subsequently, we had to vacate the space, that PREP was using, also within Albemarle County. And so there's been a transition this year into a new space, at a high you know, a much, higher lease, than what was being paid before. And so I bring this all up because we received the first read of the PREP budget yesterday, which has the which has the cost to CCS, increasing almost $250,000
which, is a lot, and, is going to result in conversations. I know doctor Gurley, maybe you can fill us in on conversations that you've had or maybe it's not we're not ready to do that, but just Do you I mean, I think at the highest level, we've shared our concerns, with the prep director, that it's not a cost that we budgeted. It does have significant implications. And while some of the other localities didn't see as much of an increase, I
mean, proportionally, even for some of the smaller school divisions, a $25,000 increase is significant to them. And so we just have expressed our concerns, on behalf of Charlottesville City Schools that, we just are uncertain on what that means as we move forward. We want we want to continue to be good partners, to the prep and Ivy Creek programs, but not at that cost. That's significant, and we should have really had that conversation a long time ago if
they were planning to increase by that much. Thank you, miss Richardson. Miss Cooper? Miss Bryant? No comments. Miss Torres? I don't. I may have some follow-up questions about prep later on, but not now. Thank you. And thank you to doctor Gurley for your work on getting us to this budget. Thank you. Alright. We'll now take a vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Alright. The motion carries. The agenda is approved. Thank you, doctor Gurley. We'll now move to the second period of public comment. This is from members of the community.
Any online? Alright. Seeing none, we'll move on to 10.1, member comments from the board. Miss Bryant, we'll start with you. Yeah. Well, thank you, doctor Gurley, for all of your work on this budget. I'm excited that we were able to approve it this evening. As far as the comments at the beginning of the meeting, thank you, miss Burns, for that recognition, of Marvin Townsend senior, who is my uncle. And I am grateful for the legacy that he left, and I hope that students at Trailblazer and beyond all elementary schools are learning about that important, history because it
is a really big part of our story as a division. And, I hope that we continue to move forward as an equitable school division that honors the, legacy, the history, and the full beings of all of our students and families who are part of this community. So thank you so much. Thank you. Miss Cooper? No comment. Miss Richardson? Miss Julie? My final comment is just, a reminder to folks to read the Parent Square alert, the newsletter that went out. It was great to see the continued evolution of the support for families with the,
take home meal option for students who are observing Ramadan. So, there are lots of links there to register, so please, make use of that and kudos to our family services team for continuing to expand the services that we provide to our students. Thank you, miss Julie. I want to also, recognize miss Bryant when you speak about the legacy and what we're the history that we're teaching our students. Recognizing the Trailblazer students who walked over to the rotunda and were able to see,
you know, the Declaration of Independence. That was really wonderful to be able to see them, go over there and and experience that. That's something that is Charlottesville rich and not every kid gets to do that everywhere. And so really appreciate that. Also just wanting to keep folks engaged, continue to watch Parent Square. There are so many wonderful things happening in our division and that's really the source of information for all these really great experiences that our children are experiencing and just
our students and staff, throughout the division. So, thank you for that work. Alright. Doctor Gurley. I don't have anything other than to say Lisa, sorry. Miss Torres. I think I picked up I'm good. I'm good. Thank you so much. Thank you. Alright. I don't have anything other than to say that, I am, one, thankful to the board for, the passing of the the budget, and then two, just my appreciation for all of our staff. Every single person in this school division matters.
The work that every person does in this school division matters, and it's just, you know, it just it's so exciting to be a part of the Charlottesville City Schools community because we just continue to evolve and just we're we continue to provide more and more for our, students and families and our staff. And so and be on the lookout because the royal recognition is coming next week. Alright. Thank you, doctor Gurley. Alright. Our next scheduled meeting is on Thursday, 03/05/2026, right here in the Media Center at
Charlottesville High School, and that meeting will start at 6PM. If there's no further business to come before the board, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second? Second. Miss Bryant. All in favor? Yes. Aye. Yes. Alright.