when you um uh uh when you say you're present uh where you are joining us from um and the reason for your virtual attendance or feel free to put that in the chat if that's easier for the meeting minutes. Uh Dr. Johnson >> here.
>> Uh Miss Langford >> here. Uh distance for travel is the reason I'm doing it virtually. >> Uh Mr. Turner. Okay. Dr. Walford
>> here. Uh distance. >> Um Miss Howard is not joining us. Okay. Uh and Dr. Sheriken is also not joining us. >> Dr. Ste also potentially like but virtual.
>> Got it. Dr. Nelson here. Mr. Quinn >> here. Uh Harrisonburg more than 60 miles >> Iari. >> Hi. >> Uh Dr. McCartney
>> here. >> Dr. Patrick >> here. Uh Mr. Mr. Vanderhawk >> here. >> Miss Garri >> here. >> Miss Layman >> here. >> And um Miss Taka, can you please correct
me if I've pronounced it wrong? >> Here. >> Thank you. All right. Um and Mr. Chair, we've got a quorum. >> Okay, great. Thanks, Michael. And it'll be minutes. Approval of minutes is next on the agenda. Did everyone get an opportunity to review our minutes from
our October 16th, 2025 meeting? There is a motion to adopt these minutes. >> So move. >> Thanks, Jennifer. We have a motion. Is there a second? >> I second. >> Two seconds.
Documenting. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. So moved. Okay, public com. >> Um, so we had uh two written public
comments submitted uh for the committee's uh review. Um, if you are here with us in person, those are part of your printed packets. Um, and if you are here virtually, that should have uh those should have been sent to everybody uh by email um I think in the last like
two hours or so. Um, so we received um one uh comment from a parent, Miss Elizabeth Proctor, that uh conveyed uh concern about the level of effort required to enter data for educator profiles in link 5. Um and recommended a
simpler system for data entry. Um also uh recommended that all programs be required to participate in BQB5 uh including those that do not receive uh public funding. Um, and then we had a second comment from a provider, uh, Miss
Jennifer Slack, uh, who expressed concern regarding the sight and sound supervision requirements that are, uh, in the proposed, um, uh, FI or I should say final, uh, child day center regulations. Jeff, correct me if I have
the stage wrong there. >> Sorry, say it again. the the sight and sound recommendations in the final child day center >> the proposed >> proposed child day center regulations. Thank you. I'm getting the board review and the stage of the regulations uh
mixed up. Um uh being the same for all children's ages 0 to nine. Um and the commenter advised that uh there should be differing expectations set based on um age and development. Um so again the full detail of those comments is in your
packets. Um uh and that's just sort of a brief summary of of what was um uh included in those comments. Any questions or uh anything from the committee members? >> One question. The participation or
nonparticipation in DQB5 is that in code or is that something that DOE has? >> The requirement is in code. If you receive public dollars, it is optional. if you do not go to code. >> Great.
>> I have a quick question. Is it is I don't participate in that. Is it that ownorous to input data? >> Yes, there were uh with the VA connect system, it was a new system that we brought together in the fall in the fall and kind of integrated three different
systems. Uh so there were some challenges uh particularly with load time and performance issues and so one of the items later in the presentation we'll talk about some of the enhancements to that uh system. >> All right. Um next um Becca you're going
to give us an update on our committee membership. Great. Um, so, uh, we have a few membership updates, um, including a new member, uh, to the advisory committee. Um, we're thrilled to welcome Katie Plum, who is the director of St.
Mark Lutheran Preschool in Charlottesville. Um, and she is representing licensed exempt early child providers. Would you like to say hello or Hiat, >> thank you for having me. I look forward to it. >> Uh, we're glad to have you here. We appreciate you being here.
Um, we also want to take a moment to acknowledge um a departing member who is is not uh not here today. Um, but uh, Wendy Lipkcom uh, is has rotated off of the committee. She let us know that she was uh, no longer able to serve. Um, we are really grateful for the time and the
commitment that she provided to the committee and um, really wish her the best uh, looking ahead and I'm sure that we'll uh, continue to to work with her uh, in her role um, with the uh, private education uh, organization. Um,
another quick update that uh nominations for positions that um are have terms ending this June uh open today um at some point. Uh there should be a um an update going out uh in the superintendent's uh memo um at some
point this afternoon. Um so please keep an eye out for that information. If your position is one of those that is up for renewal or that is um uh coming to the end of the term, you should have heard from Chelsea already. Um so if you think that might be you and you haven't heard
from Chelsea, uh please let us know and we can clear up. Um of course we have, you know, a handful of uh of these positions that where there are two representatives and so we only ever cycle off one uh representative at a time if there are uh two members
representing the same uh same category. Um, and applications for those positions will close at five o'clock sharp on April 3rd. So, if you are um planning to reapply uh for your position, please make sure that you submit your application by that deadline. Um, and
don't hesitate to reach out to Chelsea or to me if you have any questions. Um, all right. So, um, with, uh, the new governor, we have, uh, new exeicio members that are joining us, um, on the
advisory committee. Um, and so we'd like to, uh, welcome those those new members. Um, some are new, some have been with us for a while, but have um, new uh, agency or uh, or organizational leadership. Um,
so I'm going to um, uh, go through. I don't know that we have uh everybody on um but for those who are present feel free to um uh come off mute and and say hello after I introduce you um so we have uh deput deputy secretary Tony Blue
who is the designate for the secretary of health and human resources. >> She will be late. >> Okay. Uh we've got uh Duke Storin who is uh the commissioner of social services. Uh Jennifer McDonald serving as the design for the commissioner of the
department of health. Um Richard Corbett serving as the design today for the commissioner of the department of behavioral health and developmental services. And I understand we'll have a new designate at future meetings, Kyla Patterson. Richard, would you like to come up and say hello?
>> Buddy, this might be the one and only time I see you. I think somebody in the room I know. Um but anyway, hi. Glad to be here taking notes. Um just trying to do what I was asked to do. >> So I won't be voting and making trouble. >> Thanks for joining.
>> Um Tanma Jeff uh the director of the Head Start uh state collaboration office today. All right. Um Deputy Secretary Annisop who is serving as the designate for the secretary of education. >> Thanks Becca. It's great to be with you
all. Um happy to be here. I've been spending a lot of time with the VOE over the last few days in Southwest Virginia. So, that's partly why I'm here at my desk, just trying to catch up on a few things. And I'm sadly going to have to hop at 2 p.m. to another meeting, but I may join back um when that is done. But really appre appreciate being here.
Thank you >> for joining us. Um and last but not least, our very own Jenna Conway, the now superintendent of public instruction. >> Wonderful. >> Good afternoon. Um, I'd like to cite the same line that Richard did. All right,
I'm just here to take notes if that's okay with everyone. Um, in in all seriousness, uh, it's great to be here. A few things have changed since we last met. Um, but it is a with a great
honor and privilege that I uh agreed to serve uh uh and take on the role of state superintendent of public instruction for our newest governor, Governor Abigail Spanberger. Um uh what I think is exciting about this work
beyond um the obvious uh you know uh shared desire to improve outcomes for all students for all children in the Commonwealth is that um this is you know among a few if not a rare moment when um
someone from the world of early childhood is elevated to serve as the state leader more broadly for education. And so um it really speaks to two things um that have enabled this to happen. One
is the collective work um of all of us to strengthen Virginia's birth to five uh early childhood care and education system over the last few years in partnership with the department of social services with both secretariates
with multiple governors and our general assembly and with members across the field and the extent to which um where you know there is a recognition that although there there was uh less K12
experience on my resume. The relationships built and the work that we've done together um spoke loudly and clearly to this administration as uh demonstration that you know that I I could work with folks to get things done
for kids. And so I just really think that this is a a shared honor. I get to do the lion share of the work. um but that it truly is an an an honor that is is reflective of this work in addition to the person sitting in front of you. I
think the second um exciting piece about this is I think you if if if I've been anything it's a broken record on a through line across administrations right and you've since we pulled it up at one point looking back to some of those early PowerPoint slides from 2018
but this idea that we would have a you know at least a decade long right sort of set of uh initiatives work together to improve school readiness and we just knew it couldn't be done overnight. It couldn't be we wouldn't be we wouldn't
be satisfied if it was just done in some communities or for some kids or for these programs, right? We truly said we wanted to change the system in a comprehensive way for all 131 school divisions, 140 jurisdictions,
uh all of our 3,300 early childhood sites, um and all of the hundreds of thousands of millions of children that would be impacted. And that just takes more than one governor, more than one general assembly, you know, more than one superintendent. And
just this idea that by being in this seed, knock on wood, avoiding scandals for the next four years um allows us to kind of see that through line then across three governors from Governor Northam to Governor Ynan to Governor Spanberger. Um and I just I think that's
really important. some of the hardest some of the sort of the greatest stresses that the field experiences is because things change at the top and there's time lost to sort of adjustment. Things are moved forward, things are moved back. You know, there's uh periods
of unknownness that just make it hard to kind of move forward with a coherent and clear strategy for improving interactions in our infant, toddler, preschool, and mixed age classrooms across every single one of our communities, affecting every single one of our educators and leaders. And
hopefully um by uh being in this spot and as I'll talk in a moment thinking about the continuity of this work that little to no disruption is experienced by the field with this this change and that folks know that they have an advocate for early childhood uh at the
at the very top of the agency. So so excited about this. Um uh I also want to announce although I'm sitting up here today you know is exhibio I will not sort of always take a comfortable chair you know I'll take one of the gray ones
next time and if you come over here too exisio uncomfortable chairs but um in all seriousness uh I'm also really excited to let you know that there will be somebody else sitting at the front supporting Clark in this work and that is our new deputy superintendent of early childhood care and education Aaron
girl. >> So, uh, Aaron rejoins us after parenting leave and she came in hot. Um, but, uh, is stepping into this role. She brings extensive uh, experience and
relationships. She worked closely with me for five years uh five plus years in Louisiana looking at how to transform that system, stand up a version of an early childhood advisory committee there and support the workforce to earn
credentials and uh strengthen their capacity. She moved from Cambridge to Baton Rouge uh on a crazy pursuit to work with me and then agreed to move from Baton Rouge to Richmond to work with all of you to help uh transition
the different aspects of early childhood, build a robust early childhood team here at the Department of Education and support our efforts related to standards to the workforce to VQB5 to VA connects um uh and and more.
and she also uh is an expert relationship building and has built deep relationships with many of the people around this table, our broader team which went from just a few people when she moved here to uh over 150 now. um
and is seriously committed to thoughtful uh uh visionary leadership over the course, you know, ideally next two to three administrations um to kind of keep this word moving forward with a singular focus on on
improving outcomes for our kids, making sure every kid in the Commonwealth comes to uh kindergarten ready. Uh, and then she lives in Breton and is here today because of publicly funded child care um with her two-year-old and her little one
um who attend a publicly funded childcare here in Richmond and Jenna. Um, for anybody who has not had the experience of having Jenna sing your phrases right beside you and it's it's it's
something we've been doing it quite a bit. Um I'm really excited to be here. As Jenna said, um this is 12 years in of working in state government early childhood system. Seven years of watching Virginia's system just totally
transformed due to the work of the people in this room on the Zoom and tuning in today. Um have always had the ECAX uh near and dear to my heart. Uh my very first role 12 years ago starting in
state government was to launch our our early childhood advisory council there. At some point I think Jenn was calling me the ECAT queen. Just one of our many nicknames that we've had in our 12 year uh working relationship here. Uh but I'm really
excited to be um working closer with each and every one of you and working closer uh with all the areas of our early childhood team. Um as Jenna said, this is uh very new news and this is my fourth day back from a four-month
maternity leave. So if I look a little dazed and confused, that's why. Um I promise we'll get there. Uh everything's a work in progress. But um very happy to be here and uh we are talking about some
of my very favorite things uh today and get to see really the culmination of uh some of our biggest projects. Uh and then before turning it back to you Clark, I think the other piece I just want to add is just a huge appreciation for
Becca, Jeff, Tanda. the the the early childhood leadership team is truly being recognized as one of our most stable here at the department um uh leading the way in building relationships across the
Commonwealth. Uh as uh Ann noted, we have been uh on the road uh I can't even count but Salem Rowan Oak uh I was at EO yesterday at the Career Commons and they would not let me go. uh into the
childcare center because they know they would not be able to get me out. Um uh so that I had to spend my time with third graders which are very close second. Um >> I'm into play though. I did see your pictures. >> I did. I did. They're like oh no. They
would every look around like where are the smallest people? And then they find me and we would go to the next stop. But uh in all seriousness, as we've been out across the state, and I know that each of you represents different slices and different perspectives across the system, but the work that Becca, Jeff,
Tandra, Aaron, and all of our of our team members are doing is is, you know, is is really uh being felt in across the Commonwealth. And so it's been it's been such a pleasure to be out there and I know we're just incredibly appreciative
for the collaborative leadership of our our our senior leaders within early childhood and know that folks are are in in good hands. It will be hard for me to let go a little bit but luckily there's a lot happening um on the on the K12
side and I I I sleep well at night knowing that the the entire venture is in great hands. And with that, Mr. Anders, I turn it back to you. >> Thank you, Jenna. And Jenna, Aaron, congratulations on your new roles. Um, different titles, but the goal remains the same. So, the best for the children
in the Commonwealth. I've been fortunate to be a part of ECAT from since inception. And watching, you know, leadership has just been uh I think we all sleep better at night knowing what we do for children every single day.
Okay. Uh, next, uh, Chris Myers has a presentation on the VQB5. Uh, and I believe you're going to be asking for an endorsement. Yes. At the end, right? >> Very good. Thanks, Chris. >> Uh, and to transition from, uh, what we just heard, the exciting news, uh, one
of my first comments when Jenna shared the news about her position was, "Thank goodness I don't have to explain what BQB is." >> She understands what it is. >> Almost too well. Almost too well. Almost
too well. Um I also uh the information there are a lot of slides a huge document to share. This is part of a lot of work across our teams here at the department. So I just quickly want to uh acknowledge uh our access and preschool team members. There's a few here today,
some listening online who help make sure we actually have accurate information about who our publicly funded programs are. uh my VQD5 team that uh I couldn't do without a couple members over here, Lucy and Melissa and Britney's joining us virtually, our early learning team,
Maurice over there, uh who helps uh our curriculum efforts. And now, as you'll see today, a lot of our trying to connect our class and curriculum efforts to child outcomes, BRB. Um and then uh there's a few pieces of data in this presentation numbers and that comes uh
from some amazing work led by Tiara uh and our data team members who I know are listening as well. Uh Tiara does a fabulous job of not just uh having us present a bunch of numbers but presenting them in a way that makes sense and helps us tell the story. So huge thank you to all those team
members. Uh what we're going to try to cover today it is a bit of content. I might move a little quickly through the first part since we covered some of this back in the fall, but want to refresh everybody's memory. Uh we'll talk about our shared vision, some updates on school readiness. Uh we'll look back at
our most recent quality profiles that are the ones currently uh available on the profile website, both the rating and the honoral results, and briefly the change from our first year to second year. We are now in our third year. So we will briefly touch on some of the successes that we've had uh this past
fall and some of the feedback themes that we've heard from the field that have led to the next item which will be our proposed updates to the guidelines. Uh we have kind of two big key updates that we will spend most of our time on today and then we'll cover a few
additional uh updates at the end. We'll walk through next steps and then we'll hopefully have some good Q&A and discussion. So with that, you can go to the next slide. Uh we start with this slide a lot. Our shared vision, we've been using this now for a couple years. Uh I'm
excited to actually say this vision is becoming a reality. And in the information you're going to hear today, uh you will actually see now that we have uh families have more options of highquality uh programs across all of our different site types. You will see
today how programs are using the data from their measurements to support and improve the system. Uh and ultimately you'll uh see how many of our parents now who need that publicly funded programs are able to go to school to and work and meet their famil family's
needs. So it's exciting to see this kind of come to fruition. Still work to do uh but we are making great progress. On the next slide, when we talk about school readiness, this is our north star. And so we just like we review BPB5 every year, we look at our school readiness uh
results. You have a handout that goes into more details. We'll look at a couple slides here together. Uh but this is from the fall of 2025. Uh 43% of kindergarteners are coming in without the skills they need across literacy, math, self-regulation, and social
skills. Uh we actually saw an improvement though in school readiness overall. So if you look at that first column there on the left, 57% of uh kindergarteners came in ready and that was up from 51% the previous year and then the breakdown by the different subs
skills but the overall is all of those skills as they're coming in. On the next slide uh we take a look at uh some of the breakdown uh by content area as well. So we saw uh
rates not only uh improve from 51 to 57% uh but we saw uh increases in literacy quite large. We think that's partly due to some of the increased focus on the vowels and the literacy pieces. And then we also saw some increases in the area of mathematics.
Next slide. Um we also saw uh meaningful gains across uh different groups of our students uh primarily those uh that are we are seeing kind of those investments pay off with children from low-income households, students with disabilities. So just kind of a snapshot of some of
the different uh percentage point increases that we're seeing that are really positive in the results. slide. Uh, and then I believe we've shared this slide before, but it's always just a good reminder that our data continues to show the importance of early childhood.
Uh, and that especially children from low-income backgrounds are coming to school more ready when they have those early childhood experiences and when their quality experiences, those gains are even uh, more important. So, we continue to see that play out in our depth as well. Um, so please, uh, at
your leisure, if you haven't already, take a closer look at that BRFP snapshot, uh, because there's some additional great information in there as well. Next slide. Uh, so just as a reminder about uh, BQB5, what we were tasked to
do as part of the state law uh, was not only to measure and improve quality, but to do it in a way that actually positively impacts child outcomes. so that children are more ready for school. So, uh way back when we first uh established this system, we really
focused in on the indicators of quality that are most closely related to improving school readiness. So, we primarily focus on the quality and teacher child interactions using the class. We'll talk a lot about that today. Uh and then we also measure the use of approved curriculum that align
with our early learning standards. And again, that's really based on the research. And on the next slide, you'll see that we are starting to look at the impacts and the connections between the quality of pre classrooms and their class scores and how that's linked to
improved literacy. So, this is some emerging data of the data teams hard at work on uh more data like this uh for us. This is looking at preK foury olds um and their vows, their literacy scores. You can see those literacy subscales there at the bottom. This is
primarily right now VPI children. Uh they're the primary uh folks who are using the prek uh version of VKRP, but there are some other prek uh children and that are participating in this as well. Uh what you can see there is kind of different levels of growth between
the fall and the spring. Um, and what it's ultimately showing compared to the class scores on the left is that children that were in classrooms with higher class scores tended to grow more from fall to spring. Um, and the class scores there on the left, that's their
total class score. Those are class scores in the fives. So, you can see even just getting between that 5.3 to a 5.4 is showing a measurable impact. Uh, so sometimes we hear from the field they think they have to get sixes and sevens in everything on class. we see
meaningful gains uh even when you're getting those strong uh scores in the fives as well. So that's literacy. The next slide is similar. Uh it looks at map is that first chunk there on the left and then social skills and self-regulation. And again we are seeing
that children are growing more from fall to spring. Again the four-year-olds in their math, social skills and self-regulation when they're in classrooms with higher class scores. So we are doing more of this work. uh but really important as we start thinking about not only what our quality data is
telling us but how it's helping us understand uh child outcomes. Okay. So let's take a brief look back at our quality profile results. Um you do have another handout as well that also
summarizes uh the state results. The 2425 results as a reminder were based on this current uh scale. So I just want to refresh everybody's memory that we used uh basically the interaction points 700 points are available for interactions.
Uh that primarily comes from local class scores. We take the average from class scores from the fall and from the spring from every classroom at those sites, average them together, and then we multiply it times 100. So if a class score was a 5.3 as the average, that
would be 530 interaction points. Uh, and then with this current rating system, um, programs that are using an approved curriculum in at least one classroom by May 31st get that additional 100 points to their score. It's not required. Uh, but that's how they get those points. We
add the points together and we have the current three-level rating scale that you see there. We'll talk later about a change, but just wanted to kind of refresh everyone's memory where the 2425 results uh, came from and how we got these results.
Uh yeah, that one. Um so there were 3,293 sites that uh received a quality rating from the 2425 year. That was more than the previous year. Uh 99% of sites met or exceeded the state's expectations, which was also an increase from 98% in
year 1. We'll look at some breakdown of that on the next slide. Uh there were fewer sites receiving a need support rating uh from the previous year. it was down from 51 uh to 25 uh this current year. And again, the summary that you have goes into a little bit more detail
by ready region and etc. On the next slide though, we think this is a really important slide and it's going to lead into what we're going to talk about later uh in the presentation. uh when we hear that 99% of sites are meeting or exceeding the state's expectations, it
led to um curiosity from our part and from the field on uh how what does that mean then if so many sites are in that meet expectations range. So uh you see there were the 25 in need support. Those currently are the only sites who are required to participate in DOE site
improvement planning and then there's uh some sites there at the top with that score of 700 to 800. But all the other sites over 3,000 are in that meets expectations. So what we did is we broke it down by 100 point intervals to kind of look at the differences uh across
meets expectations. And the data really has shown us and really for the first two years in a row that the the experiences children are having in sites with a score of 400 to 499 is a lower uh quality of what we would consider meets expectations as opposed to when you look
at the data from sites that are getting a 600 to 699. There's much higher uh level of experiences there. So this data uh when we get to our proposed update uh just keep that in the back of your mind uh has helped inform our work greatly.
slide. We also looked at those 100 point brackets by use of curriculum. Uh so again the higher sites did on their rating. There was more frequently use of approved curriculum. The lower sites uh tended to have less use of approved
curriculum. None of our need support sites used curriculum and the majority of those sites in the 400 also reported not using approved curriculum. Next slide. Uh we also try to keep an eye on the results from across different site types
to make sure that our system is uh fair and equitable across different site types. And so uh we were really proud of these results to show that we have high performing family day homes, child care centers, public schools. That's that number there on the top. Uh those
numbers are almost identical to have quality programs across the state reaching such high levels. We also have needs across all of our site types. So we have lower performing family day homes, lower performing childcare centers, and lower performing public schools. Uh the largest kind of variation is in family day homes, but
across all site types, we see some very high performing sites and some very low performing sites. And so again, we wanted to think through our system and how our rating can better support improvement uh and recognizing those sites at those highest levels as well.
Slide. Um so this uh we're framing as part of a lot of work that we looked at but related to kind of what we're considering an improvement challenge. Um so only about half of the returning sites and most sites were returning for their second year actually showed
improvement in their class scores and that's the interaction points. So, if we took out the curriculum points and just looked at those interaction points, 53% of sites uh showed growth, uh 1% stayed the same and 46% actually defined in
their class scores. So, our goal, although we were glad it was a little over half that showed growth, uh we really want to have a system that better uh promotes growth uh and and shows more improvement. And so we'll want to track this uh and we think
that the changes that we're making will help uh have more sites have that improved interactions. Uh we also keep a close eye a very close eye. Our data team and BPB5 team spend a lot of time uh looking at our trends across our local and our external class
observations. Uh we do a lot of class observations in Virginia. Most of those are local observations. You can see over 22,000 uh observations were done at that local level coordinated by ready regions and then another 8,000 for our statewide external kind of our third party check
uh that go uh and do some of those as well. At a very high level what this slide is showing is a lot of similarity across the class scores between our local and our external. So global scores do tend to trend a little higher than external. That was true uh the year
before as well. Uh but those differences are not hugely different. Uh they are still kind of in that upper mid-range average. And so that's good to see that although we see a slight variation, we're not seeing uh huge differences across those scores. When you look at
the range of scores, we see similar trends as well. So in local observations, we have some very low performing classrooms, some very high performing classrooms. Same with external, we see some very low performing scores and some higher performing scores. The last thing is to
look by age level. So in local observations uh the infant scores tend to be the highest. Same with external. We see the highest uh uh average for infant as well. So we continually kind of track those trends both at our state level. Our ready regions look at their
trends um and then ultimately down to local community level. Uh score replacement has been a hot topic the last couple years. And so one of the things that we have learned from conversations with the field is that it's helpful to talk more about uh the
comparison process and what we're seeing as far as consistency and then also what that means for replacement. So in the guidelines you will actually notice that we did some reframing to call it our score comparison protocol and we try to track and talk about the percent
consistent not just the percent replaced. So from the 2024 2025 year out of those 8,000 or plus uh external observations we were able to pair them. So almost all of them we can pair with a matching local. Uh that's even more
paired observations in the first year. Um and what we saw was more consistency in the second year which is the direction uh we want to be going with uh all of our partners and the work around class. So over half of those paired observations were fully consistent. So
4,333. All domains were within that one point difference. That means that more than half of our external observations aren't even used in our calculation because we only end up using those local scores. When there was an inconsistency uh when
we compared scores, it tended to just be in one domain, not in all of the domains. So what that means is uh when there was a replacement in those additional about 4,000 uh we used some local scores and some external scores in that final rating. And then the third
trend which was also true the first year and we're seeing similar trends so far this year is that score replacement rates and basically consistency tends to vary by domain. So we see a lot more consistency across local and external observations in emotional support, those
behavioral domains and we see less consistency in the more instructional focused domains. The power of having both local and external scores though in that uh area of instructional support is helping us better understand why there's inconsistencies. It's not uh one reason
alone, but the data is really helping us kind of better understand those uh differences in instructional support. Okay, so that's a snapshot of where we were in his second year. But now, as I said, we are in our third year, more than halfway through our third year. Uh,
so we want to just take a quick moment to look back at some successes basically uh occurred after we met with you all, which was also I think in October. Uh, and then kind of summarize the feedback from the field. So when we saw you uh in October, we had
just released our second year of profiles, which was very exciting. Uh at that time, I think we shared with you that we had just hit the 100,000 views mark uh for the profiles. Uh as of about two weeks ago, we were at 186,000 views
since this website launched. I'm thinking we're probably close to 200. Not quite. Yeah, we're 19. >> Oh, 191. So, uh, very soon, maybe by the board meeting, we can say that we're, uh, 200,000. >> Whatever.
>> We'll see a spike. We can see by day what? >> Uh, but just a tremendous amount of positive feedback and use of the website, uh, particularly around, uh, some of the new enhancements related to the honor roles, um, and more
downloadable data files. If you have not recently clicked on that little tab when you go tonight uh to the profile website, click on the download data tab. We have added more data files. We've even added some of our workforce ser um evaluations and research uh to again try
to show how this data is being used and how the public can use it uh to inform the work that's happening across the state. Slide. Uh as a reminder, we that was our first year of honor roles and so I we announced them when we were with you. Uh but we've seen a lot of positive
traction from these honor roles and just a lot of celebration across the field. Uh so we had about 15% of sites that received honor roles in our excellence which is that top rating category of 700 to 800 points honor roles in improvement in interaction. So just again those
class scores the top 10% that improved over almost 300 sites received that honor role and then uh to help recognize infant toddler quality in our family childare and child care we have a top 10% uh quality recognition for those
programs. So a little over 200 received those honorable as well. And on the next slide we uh put together a little bit of a collage that was shared in our January ready B5 recap. Uh and uh really this is just a small portion of what we saw on
social media of sites that were really celebrating their ratings and their honor roles. It was hard to just pick a few photos. Uh but it really was great to see and it's a great strategy for helping promote the work that's happening and celebrate uh the quality
that's around the state. Um we also traveled around the state personally. I traveled to all nine ready regions and members of DOE joined me at different meetings as well. We started in Blige uh actually a couple days before the profiles went live and I
think we ended in your region right Susan uh in November um and ready region southwest and everywhere in between. And so those meetings were great opportunities to not just bring together the ready region staff but stakeholders uh that are participating in B2B5 and
partners together. Uh we did a much longer data slides than what you just saw. Uh there were probably at least 50 additional data slides that folks looked at and talked about. Um and it was just a great opportunity to hear from the field, get feedback and talk about how to use our data. Uh we took that
information and put it into a webinar that we shared in November and that is getting a lot of views as well. Uh so we will continue to do this each fall. We'll go back out. We want to increase participation and go around to all nine uh ready regions again and we'll do a webinar again too to make sure this
information is getting out to the field. So our third year uh we are currently at 3,272 sites. So pretty similar to last year that are currently participating in BQB5. to continue to have BQB5 sites in
every city and county across the state. And that includes child care, family day homes, Head Start, and public school. These are the sites that will get a quality profile in the fall of 2026. The ones that are currently participating now. Uh two fun facts. Uh there are
about just under 200 sites that are participating for the first time in BQB5. So most are returning sites. Uh and then uh related to the public comment earlier, we actually have 185 sites that are voluntarily participating
in BQB5 that are not publicly funded. They're not required, but they are choosing to participate uh in BQB5. Those are not the same groups. The 200 that are new are not also the voluntary ones, but uh look at participation uh around the state. So mostly publicly
funded, mostly returning sites uh but some new and some uh voluntarily participating. Uh another exciting uh uh announcement that again our data team was tracking very closely uh and watching was the celebration of getting to the 100,000
plus class observation mark. And this occurred right at the end of our fall of 2025. Uh so you see we were at 102,000 class observations over the last five years. That's counting our practice years. If you're wondering what those PYs uh stand for, um you know that the
number when you look at the local observations, again, I just want to recognize how much of this work relies on those local observations for getting those insights into what children are experiencing, getting the feedback to every single educator and then uh also having that additional source of
statewide feedback through external. Uh Jenna loves doing the math here, so we'll continue to that trend. Uh 7.6 6 million minutes of insight over the last five years into what our infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are experiencing in Virginia. Uh so that's
huge for helping us understand what's actually happening with our children and how we can improve that. Um and again, just 102,000 opportunities for feedback as well. So huge thank you to our ready regions, a few that are here today. I'm sure others are listening and all the local observers who uh make this happen.
Uh, for sure. >> I often I had the first experience of I was walking my dog and end up running into somebody just walk and they were like, "Oh yeah, yeah, I'm a class observer." And I was like, "Oh, cool." But in all seriousness, I mean, this is
just extraordinary work by our ready regions, right? If you just look at sort of just that increase and that consistency over time, right? It was fewer than a thousand in 2018. And so just to build this capacity, to sustain
this capacity, and as Chris noted, to improve in consistency just I mean truly speaks for those who are listening, those who are on the zoom, those who are in the room like it just really speaks to this regional infrastructure that has been built in extraordinarily fast
fashion. So, what a what a what a what a a a tribute to the work of Virginia communities uh and Virginia early childhood leaders across the Commonwealth. Um so, we continue to uh work closely with the field. Uh we host a lot of
different webinars. You can see uh some of those here on the screen. Uh they tend to be very well viewed both live and we share recordings frequently. uh every time we have webinars or events, it's an opportunity to get feedback. We also have different feedback surveys
that are always open for folks. Uh we meet weekly with our ready regions. Our linkb5 team is working closely and helping support the field. And so, uh we just continue to really appreciate the engagement and the feedback. As Jenna says, feedback is a gift. Uh and so, uh
the positive, the negative, and everything in between, we take that to heart. Um, and so we're going to summarize that on the next slide. Uh, which is hard to do when we're getting uh thousands and thousands of uh pieces of feedback, but we really did kind of
see these fall into some buckets related to strengths of our system. And as always, kind of where can we continually try to improve things. So just like our programs, it's a continuous quality improvement cycle, it is for us, too. And that's part of what we work really
hard on before we come uh to share this information with you today. So strengths, the things we consistently hear about are that there's a pretty high satisfaction with the class and the curriculum supports that programs are getting uh and using those to help improve uh their instruction and
experiences for children. We hear lots of positive feedback about how responsive and supportive our ready regions, our link five, our improvement partners are to helping support programs with this work. Uh like we shared lots of positive uh feedback about the honor
role recognition particularly from our centers and family day homes. Uh we are hearing more and more how much people appreciate having publicly accessible data not just the profiles but again access to some data files that folks are really using to uh identify strengths
and areas for improvement. Uh and then you know we don't have as many opportunities to talk directly with families but we hear more and more uh from both family councils around the state in the ready regions and through individual conversations about how much they appreciate having the quality
profile information that kind of builds on the health and safety information that's out there as well. So we do uh get some feedback that uh helps us think about how can we continually strengthen the system. Uh so one of those we alluded to earlier uh we did a big
integration of our link B5 and our valves and BKRP into this VA connect system in the fall which is really important to the work that we're doing related to improving child outcomes. Uh but it was our first launch and there's some room for improving user experience. So we heard that from the field uh and
we take that really seriously as well. uh we continue from time to time to get questions about some of the participation requirements or the purpose like why do we have to do these things uh so that's particularly falls around uh wanting to better understand student child list educator profiles
which also was mentioned um and then questions about the use of both local and external uh observations so we see room for increasing and clarifying those things um we see opportunities and hear from the field and see in action that there's really some uh ways we could
better use our VQB5 quality data in connection with our workforce data and that actually uh connects a lot to the educator profile piece that we're not just using this data for quality. We're trying to better understand the workforce which is why that data is so important. Um and we just see that
there's better ways to use that data and to help sites themselves understand and use their data to support their classrooms and their educators. Um and then the last one which we will talk quite a bit about today uh as we have heard feedback from the field that having a very broad leads expectations
range uh doesn't accurately capture what children are experiencing and so we see an area for improvement by ensuring that our rating levels better reflect uh what children are experiencing and helping make sure that families better understand what those quality profile
levels mean. So that leads us into uh what we're going to share with you today for our proposed updates. Uh we always like to revisit our guiding principles. They are u the details of these are in your large guidelines document. Uh we have not
changed these since practice year one right when we first uh wrote them. So uh we come back to these every year and 3500 sites. >> Clearly >> the 3500 sites. Right. Right. Yeah, >> it did say 10,000 classrooms at one point change,
>> right? So uh but we really do try to think about again what are we doing uh that's bringing us into these principles but again where can we improve to really lean into these uh guiding principles as well. On the next slide up so again you have
the very large 111 uh page document uh that's very detailed uh most of it is pretty similar uh where we have tried to make clarifications. It's either again to try to clarify things that have been u confusing for the field to explain better what the requirement is or what
the purpose is or one of our big changes that we'll talk about today in section six is really the impact of the work that we're doing uh which are some of the updates as well. So there are two basically big uh updates for the upcoming year. Uh so
these fall into two categories and we will spend uh most of our time on the next few slides looking at both of these. The first key proposed update is to change our system from a threelevel rating system to a fivelevel rating system. Uh we think transitioning from a
three to a fivelevel rating system will create a clearer, more actionable system that will support improved experiences for children and it will help have more nuanced distinctions in quality. And that is in section six. So, if you haven't already read section six, uh you'll definitely want to do that. We'll
point out some important information in that section. Uh the second big change, and it's related to changing to the the five levels, is a change to who is required to participate in site improvement planning. And so, we're proposing to change that from 399 points
or lower to 499 points or lower. uh we think that by requiring sites 499 points or lower to take those actionable steps that will help improve experiences for children. Uh we will differentiate that. So we'll talk today about how that looks different depending on the actual
rating. Uh and that information is in section 7.3. So why do we feel like both these changes are needed? Uh so as we looked at previously on the slides, we think our current three-level approach is kind of masking real differences and it's
kind of limiting the support that we can provide to sites uh who need it and that's ultimately making it more challenging to improve experiences for children. Uh so for sites again we hear that the rating only really provides general feedback when over 3,000 are getting feedback that there meets
expectations. Uh that doesn't feel very actionable to a lot of sites. uh limited recognition for those higher performing sites. We've heard from sites getting those 600 points that they don't feel like they're getting the recognition uh that they that they deserve for having a score in that range. A limited
recognition for incremental achievement and progress. So some sites, even sites who got our improvement honor role, they made a lot of improvement, but they stayed in meets expectations. So um so that's something we've heard from the field as well. And then uh limited
support for our lower performing sites, most of which are family day homes and child care. Uh families, again, we've also heard that how much they appreciate the quality profiles, but especially that broad meets expectation makes it hard for them to really understand what that means for what what children are
experiencing. Our ready regions and our improvement partners have more limited data. If we have these three broad rating levels, that kind of limits how they can target their resources and supports. And then really just our whole system with only three rating levels. It kind of limits the way we can target
target interventions, allocate resources or make better policy decisions. Slide. So we are proposing uh shifting from our levels which is what our guidelines say we have to use this year
for the 2025 26th year. So our fall 26 profiles will still be the three rating levels. Uh and then we're proposing starting next year, we would be under the measurement system of these five rating levels with the profiles published in the fall of 2027. Uh the
full definitions are in section six and I actually wrote down the page number for this one, page 65. I would actually recommend that you turn to page 65 uh in the uh guidelines. I think it's helpful to see the definitions both what they were with the three levels and how we
define them across the five levels. So I will give folks a second. Uh that's a very heavy dut page. Hopefully your page number is I was saying mine is a back to back >> printer on our floor didn't want to seem to print anything double-sided.
So we really uh we really went in on the paper. >> I saw how heavy yours were compared to mine that did print doublesided. So >> um so a couple things to point out about the levels. You will notice uh a correlation to that graph that we looked at earlier with the 100 point brackets.
So we are actually not proposing a change to that top and that uh lower level. So need support will remain that 100 to 399 points and our top level will remain 700 to 800 points. There is a shift in what we're proposing that we
call that top level. uh when we really look at those class scores uh and think about those sites being national exemplars uh and having scores that are consistently across local and external observations in that high range that's a that's a really really high level. It's a high level to reach. It's a high level
to maintain and so distinguish feels like a better title uh for that high level. Um then what we've done is we've broken apart meets expectations into the three brackets that you see. So when we look at the scores for 600 to 699 and we'll actually break this down more on
the next couple slides, we see a lot of high performance in these sites as well. And so we think exceeds expectations is a better fit for this level. Uh and so we're proposing that that would be our exceeds expectations range. 500 to 599
would be our meets expectations range. So sites would need at least a 500 to be considered uh meeting expectations. And then that 400 to 499 would be a new category. Um it would be what we're proposing we call approaching expectations. If you look at the
definition uh we tried to define it as they are partially meeting expectations but they're not quite there yet. Uh so they're not as low as those needs support. Uh but we want to work with them and help them meet those expectations as well. On the next slide just want to kind of
look at uh the calculation of these rating levels. So we are actually although we're proposing the change to the brackets >> problems now >> we can't >> question for the term where it says
approaching how do we define that fully for sites >> so the definition here so the site is making progress towards but has not quite met the established uh quality standard and then we would explain to them their performance requires some
targeted targeted improvement to fully meet those quality expectations. We will also, there's a slide in a couple that might help too. We kind of broke down the trends of those 400 to 499 as far as what their class scores look like, their curriculum use, uh, and and the
different levels of experience and I would in that range as well. Is that what you were asking about? >> Yeah, because changing the name from approaching to maybe emerging could could be another term. So we heard some suggestions on some different
categories. Uh overall we also uh heard a lot of positive feedback on approaching some of the comments uh that folks were sharing with us as they thought it felt like it's like a journey you're moving towards uh that meeting expectations. Um but you know we are certainly kind of these are these are
the titles we think are the best fit uh for these categories. uh as well. I think emerging I think we could talk with programs about that but we really want to help them understand they are approaching they're doing some things that are leading expectations and maybe the slide
too where we break down by children's experience might help kind of explain that as well. Yeah, just a quick question. If if we change this um threshold for the requirement for um site improvement planning that that score, you'll
increase the number obviously of the sites that will need it. Are there resources available to do all of that? >> Yes. So, let's look at we have some modeled impact to show who we think that's going to impact and then we'll talk about how we would propose and what resources we would use to help them with
that uh improvement planning. Um just in case you hadn't thought you all of our versions of how we present data. Thank you. And again important to note that the three-digit score actually uh won't change in this way that we calculate it.
So we can still go back and compare from our first year. We'll be able to kind of continually track that even though we're having uh five levels instead of the three by the title and the breakdown of the levels. So this is a modeled impact of change that uh Tiara suggested we look at and it's been kind of
everybody's favorite slide uh so far. So what this is showing uh is that blue line there on the left that's all 3,293 sites that got a rating during the 24 25 year uh under our current threele structure. Then we have the orange bar.
So there was the 101 that exceeded expectations at that top level. the 25 in need support and all the rest over 3,000 were in needs expectations. If we take those scores and we put them into the five level model, uh then you can
see the green shows where those sites what their uh change would be. And so basically what this is showing is that most sites would end up in a higher or an equivalent rating category. Uh so if again it' still be a pretty small number
at the top. uh that 101 would be our estimate around 25 or so again estimating there in need support. So not huge changes there. We see quite a few of the meets expectations would be in that 600 uh to 699 and would move up to
an exceeds expectations rating. A little over a thousand we project in that meets expectations and then about 319 that would be in that approaching expectations category. And that's where based on our impact, we don't have the slide here today, but we have broken it
down by the number of classrooms to kind of get a sense of what the projected numbers would look like so that we're uh prepared to support those programs. On the next slide, we did break it down by size type uh to share with you as well. So this is similar
uh so this not as fancy of a graph, a modeled impact, but still trying to show uh the impact by site type. So the dark blue is the current threele ratings. The lighter blue is the five level ratings. Again taking our 24 25 uh scores and
putting them into these uh categories with across all site types. Most sites we would project would be in that meat or that exceeds category. Uh centers and family day homes do have a higher percentage in that approaching but there are a few public schools we would
project in that category. Um and then public schools have more in that exceeds category. And so again, having these five levels can help us think where our targeted statements are most needed and where they can make uh the biggest impact.
We've also broke and again not in this slide deck, but we've broken it down by head start. We've broken it down by ready regions. So we can kind of project uh what this would look like in different ways for different stakeholder groups. Again, uh we don't have a crystal ball, so we don't know exactly what the scores will be. Uh but this is
the way that we're trying to project what we think it would look like. So, another thing that we really tried to do is uh especially when we think about explaining this to families, explaining to sites what these levels mean is to think about what these ratings tell us about what children are
experiencing. So changing to a five level rating system using those 100 point intervals means now that every rating level represents a shift in the frequency, the quality and the intentionality of the interactions that are impacting children's experience. So
class uses a 1.1 to seven point scale. Each point in class represents a meaningful change in how often teachers are supporting children. Uh one point on class equals our 100 points because we multiply times 100. uh we don't want a
seven scale rating system. Uh so needs support remains at 3.99 and below because in those sites our data tells us with their class scores that children are rarely if ever uh having those uh engaging positive or supportive interactions and then you can kind of
see by each of those 100 points how that shifts as you move within those intervals and the frequency of those interactions as well. Now, our ratings include curriculum for a lot of sites, particularly those higher levels as well. So, remember that the total score
uh for sites not using curriculum, it's just their class scores. If they're using curriculum, they also would have that additional 100 points. Two more slides where we've broken down uh this by children's experiences. Again, to try to really help the field uh if you can go to the next slide uh kind of
understand what this really means for children and again for families as well. Um, so this is just infant toddler classrooms and using language from the class manual. We grouped this into three categories for the low, the mid and the
high range of infant and toddler class uh and then put our five rating levels across the top. So when you read those uh experiences that children are having there on the left, those low range, a little eye contact, rare smiles, teacher disengaged, children rarely comforted,
uh these are almost hard to read when you think about those types of experiences and it is very clear that those sites need very intensive support. As you move into the mid-range, uh there are some really positive uh experiences that children are having and we see in
our class scores that that's helping children learn. If they're solidly in that mid mid-range, that's a means expectations rating. And then there on the right, those high range uh things that are happening across classrooms, again, very high level if that's happening consistently. Uh and that's
that distinguished those two new rating levels that we're proposing approaching and exceeds with those are on the line on purpose because when we look at the data for those approaching expectation sites what we see is they sometimes have lower range interactions and they
sometimes have mid-range interactions and so their score typically is kind of a mix of low and mid-range. So they're they're getting there with their mid-range but we need to get them further along. Same with exceeds. If you look at those exceeds expectations and we break down their class scores, we see
that they are sometimes scoring in the mid-range, but they also have high range scores in their class scores. So, they are also kind of moving into that higher range as well, and that is exceeding uh our expectations. So, that's an infant toddler sorry
experience. The next one is prek as well. So, yes, >> I just have a quick question. Is that in the proposed guidelines for next year? >> Those two slides. So the I think the guidelines just has the shorter version of of that. Um but we certainly can
>> because I think that is very relevant to the field especially if you're a coaching partner and teachers are asking why we're coming in to coach. That's very valuable information. >> Awesome. >> Yeah, >> we're planning on kind of using these two as we create materials for families
uh as well. And for example with this one it's prek instructional support. So this is just one domain of prek. We could also do this for other domains, for other age levels. So, I think we want to build on this. We've heard uh also a lot of positive about how this
helps really kind of put it um to light. When we were at DIY just last week, we uh read the need support things, the uh low-level range of experiences, and the audience literally was like, oh, you know, like it was it kind of brought it
to life uh why those sites need such intensive support as well. Um so again uh one of the reasons we chose today to share this with instructional support as I mentioned uh previously this is where we see the biggest variation across prek programs in instructional support and we
see the least consistency from local and external observations. And so again the more data we have on this the better helping us understand what this looks like and how do we improve instructional support in classrooms slide. Um so for these two new levels in
particular uh we wanted to take even a deeper look to help uh you all and the field better understand the trends across these site types. So this 600 to 699 uh some of the trends that we saw in these sites their total point average was significantly higher than the
average for all sites. So their average was a 639 compared to 592 points uh for the average for all sites. Uh the use of approved curriculum in these sites was much higher. Um like 99% of these sites reporting using an approved curriculum
compared to 80% of all sites. Um almost all of these sites were returning sites. So they probably had some VQB5 and FA experience. 92% of them were returning. There were a few new sites that were in this category, but much more uh more of
the returning sites as well. Uh teacher retention. when we looked at our educator profile information, uh, from fall to spring and retention rates were higher, which probably means less new teachers, although there's certainly still some, uh, turnover in these sites as well, compared to 77%
uh, across all our sites. And then for these next two bullets, we looked at a couple different fields in our educator profiles about uh, the experience in early childhood. There's a couple different questions that we ask. uh and when we looked on average at the experience of site administrators and
the experience of educators uh we saw these sites had more experience in early childhood than when compared particularly to other centers and family day homes. So by giving these sites uh this identity and exceeds expectations. We think that's really important because
these sites as you can see are implementing approaches that serve as models for their peers. um we really want to use these sites to help contribute to advancing uh these effective practices to other sites across the state as well. So one of our goals would be to do a better job at
kind of recognizing and learning from these sites in addition to those that get to that distinguished level. So we did the same thing for the 400 to 499. So this again uh is the approaching excitation sites and some of the signs that we saw. So in these sites uh their
average was significantly lower. So their average was a 466 compared to 592 for all sites. Uh use of approved curriculum was much lower. So only 23% of sites in this category reported using an approved curriculum
that 80% in all sites. Uh most of these sites were returning. So these were not brand new first time in BQB5. These were sites who have been in BQB5. They've had class observations before but they are still uh scoring in this 400 to 499 range. There were a few more new sites
in this category but again most of them were returning. Uh teacher retention was lower uh in these sites. So there are probably more new teachers at these sites when could you compare them to all sites and then same with the experience when we looked in a couple different categories. the site administrators and
the educators had less experience overall in early childhood particularly again when we looked at that compared to other centers and family day homes. And then this last stat is one that really hit home for us. Uh we did a we tried really hard with our ready region and
our coaching partners to reach out to these sites in the fall. Uh we let them know that they were being prioritized for free state coaching. We strongly encouraged them to participate even though they weren't required. Um, and as of December, only 14% of those sites voluntarily chose to participate in our
state coaching, which means uh you can see there's some needs here in these programs and we aren't able to support them and improve children's experiences. >> Why do you think it was so low? >> Um, one thing we heard was sometimes, well, I'm already meeting expectations. Okay. >> Um, and then sometimes people don't
understand what coaching is and they're busy. Uh, but we did uh to some it it was like, well, I'm meeting expectations. So why do I need to improve? The other thing that sometimes we heard not just from the 400 sites uh but also from some other sites and meets expectations is well I'm never going to
get to 700 points. So like why even try to improve? Um and so again by having more incremental levels we also think there's more motivation uh for improvement that can be recognized versus just moving up uh a few points. >> You look at teacher retention. Are you
looking at teacher retention from fall to spring? from one observation to the other. I >> think this was fall to spring, right? >> Yeah. So within even a year within a classroom, a child's experience, they were having a different teacher more often in least from fall to spring. This is would be a whole another data set,
but is there any way to look at why some places have better retention like compare retention to pay or >> Yes, >> it's on did a full workforce um data deep dive. >> Well, well
that um so we have kind of two ways that we look at it. So we did look at pay. We um for the first time started to look at benefits. So like health insurance, paid leave, overtime, things like that. Um and then with the new module that launches on first, April 1, um in link
B5, we'll be asking site administrators for the first time to to look at the list of educators tied to their site. Um and then say yes, this person's still here, no, they're not. And if they say no, they're not with the site anymore, then we'll have a drop-own menu for them to let us know why that person is no
longer there. Um, so that will let us track like who's leaving to go to K12, um, who's leaving to do something completely unrelated to child care, um, who's gone on to another early childhood site, and then the way VA connects to set up, we'll be able to see if they move to a publicly funded site. So,
we'll have a lot more information for you. We also we're laughing because we I literally just messaged Tiara like 15 minutes ago and I was like I bet ECAC would really like those workforce deep dives slides >> if you want to stay an extra couple hours
>> when we have a less packed >> agenda tech that would be great. I appreciate you guys doing that. So, and just I think the other piece that I would just note um upon reflection on the to the question around why not I mean I I I I also think think
about these sites there's a lot going on. I think you all you know who are familiar with them know that there's a sort of a general higher level of of stress and I I ultimately think and I think about this in light of work of Jeff and their team too. I mean the you
know in that context you you respond to the sort of thing that's most on fire and most required right and so I I you know there's like a part of it that I think is conscious in terms of you know if I don't need to why do it but then I think there's a whole piece of it that's unconscious and what I think our reason
for doing this is less about why folks are not doing it more around when we have made this stricter we have seen a change in behavior that like leads us to think that it wasn't an opposition to this per say it was just there were so many other things going on and if we're clear that this is expected and then
required that um that that that we're able to see ultimately machine over time a change in what folks get. So I just I think that's kind of important to not it's both of those things. Some of it is conscious but I think some of it is also unconscious prioritization. I you know I
often use the example of like many of us rely on our public schools and on our roads and on our traffic lights. I don't know if you know the IRS wouldn't it wasn't coming that you would actually pay your tax until 15th right I mean you would intend to but like the extent to which that that that little requirement
helps us it all all do it too >> I was going to say like I heard pay and benefits you know are you guys also looking at you know the cultures of those centers like if you're looking at a public school system you know if let's say there's a public school system site where you know
there's a lot of turnup in that building like are partnering with, you know, maybe like fat schools like human resources or employee relations to see, okay, what is it that is making these people want to stay or, you know, causing them to, you know, go elsewhere?
Because a lot of times, you know, paying benefits, that's definitely one thing, but a lot of times educators really don't leave children. A lot of times they leave situations that cause them depress whether that is you know poor culture and climate you know a lack of support or even you know heavy
micromanaging where they feel they can't express themselves professionally. When I was out at some of the data deep dives, I went and visited some sites uh and um and they tended to be more of the ones in the 600 to 699, but one of the things I noticed was their leader was so
supportive of the work that they were doing and their attitude about class observations. And this work uh was was just very inspiring and they felt very supported and they were saying they had less turnover and they were sharing some of the things that they think are the
reasons why it wasn't really pay. uh that it was really about the culture that they've created and how the teams even partnered and worked together. So I think we we can learn even more about that by studying those 600 and above sites uh and learning more about what's
working and then better understanding what's happening in these and how can we better learn from those practices. Is there anything else from the data piece? I know those are harder things to capture like in our profile data, but >> yeah, it's a tricky thing to capture. One thing that we um plan on looking at this summer as well is turnover of site
administrators because we haven't um typically systematically done that but to your point you know there could be some stress associated with a constant um revolving toward your leadership. Um so we'll make sure that we that in some future slides as well >> and then I think our reading regions
some of them also again they they're closer connected to some of these programs too and are doing kind of different analysis and kind of looking uh I don't know if there's anything from Susan. No, it's exactly what I would have said is just that I think that some of that work about the culture of programs can happen at the ready region
level because we are much more familiar with um different types of programs. So, I don't know what the data collection on that might look like, but then think about how would we rank a site, you know, culture or um or how you would
gather information about how satisfied somebody is with their site culture. >> Okay. Uh so I think that brings us to the second part of this uh proposed change which is Oh, somebody. >> Yes, thank you. Thank you. Um, I just I
wanted to add as as I am aging out of this work totally the the thing that I believe has that keeps quality teachers in in in all of our preschool programs is the actual investment that we are
able to make into that program. We have since 2012 provided a coach for every preschool teacher that we have in our program. Now, that's expensive, but we have the we have longevity. We
don't have a lot of turnover. We generally score really high on our on our class scores. And most of my staff have English as a second language. And so I I I think what we have to as I
age out of this think about what does it actually cost to have quality preschool education and how do we get that funded in in the real world? How do we get that funded? If we're looking for this child to be really ready when they enter our
public schools, what are the investments that we need to make prior to that? And so I just that's just a question. And I'm not looking for an answer, but as I have done this work for more than 20 years now, that is the thing that I have
lived with coming from Head Start and early Head Start and way back in the 70s. At the end of the day, the only nothing has changed other than the investments that we're actually able to make into our programs to secure readiness for our children and
compensation for our staff. So, >> absolutely. Yeah, Melinda, I really appreciate that comment and uh not directly related but important to say. I mean, one of the things that
we've all collectively worked on is by aligning our expectations, our health, our safety, our learning or our quality expectations for all of our publicly funded programs, it then positions us to say these are the expectations that are
across the board uh and allows us to measure that and tell that story. It also enables us to calculate kind of what does it cost, right? When it talks about a very specific example of an investment in um in educators, whether
that's their direct investments in them like you know such as competitive compensation, whether it's indirect uh investments in them, whether that's their their benefits, whether that's the coaching, whether that's you know
planning time you our uh and under the work led led by Becca, the idea is that we are you know doing a better better jobs still work to be done, but a better better job of quantifying that investment, right? And that investment per kid or that, you know, proposed
investment per child looks different for infants and toddlers, looks different in Northern Virginia than it does in in Tidewater in Southwest Virginia, looks different for programs that are open on the school year basis, uh, such as Daryl's and and and preschool
initiative. It does for the full year, full day, such as a mixed delivery. And we then present that information you to the governor and to the general assembly and they then decide on you know how
many slots and at what rate per slot and and with the notable exception being and start as we don't have the ability to uh uh to set those those rates or those numbers but that is really important. These things have to go part and parcel.
Um, BQB5 shows our elected officials, here's where your dollars go. Here's the impact on the quality of the experience. As Chris showed in those early slide, here's the impact not only on the VKRP in terms of the broad measure, but even those specific subsets in terms of early
literacy. Um, and then it becomes up to our general assembly because again, BPI is entirely state funded. Childcare sub mixed delivery is entirely state funded. uh chalk your subsidy is now twothirds if not three4s state funded and um I think Linda just makes a really
important point uh as a note there uh we don't know yet uh what that is for next year uh um we have as we have every uh one over the last few years worked very closely with the commission on early
childhood care and education in response to uh legislation initially uh patron by Senator Lockach and Delegate Boliva patron this year by uh Delegate Su and Senator Lock around making sure that information what that demand looks like,
what the true cost of quality looks like, what rebenchmarking looks like was all provided to the general assembly um uh prior to session. That where we currently are is that they uh came out of the 2026 session without a final
budget. they are reconvening uh in in uh in May and we will um you know then know uh what we have but I just I want to reiterate that all of this work is made possible but um and and is is is very
importantly shaped on the ground by that rate per child based on uh with these kind of these these health safety and quality expectations and the state's willingness to fund uh the need you know the sort of the demand from all of the
eligible families and children. Um okay so the second part uh and they're very closely related uh but is the proposed change to the required site improvement planning. So we have required site improvement planning for need support sites uh for the past
couple years. We are seeing that providing very intensive uh coaching and uh kind of targeted uh support from our quality consultants. We are seeing our need support sites moved out of need support. So even though saw those 25,
those were 25 for the first time. All 51 at first year moved out of need support sites. So no change is proposed to the needs support piece and that is described in a lot of detail in section 70.3. they will continue to be required to have those very intensive supports.
The new part is for these approaching expectation sites. And keep in mind that although this guidelines start as of next year, there wouldn't actually be approaching expectation sites until the fall of 2027. So this requirement would start that fall. And so we've got a
little time to work through some of the details that we, you know, based on what we've learned from this need support work. But what we're proposing is since they are making progress towards and they are having some of those mid-range uh uh quality um interactions that we
would provide a more targeted a little bit more flexible requirement for them to help them fully meet those expectations. So on the next couple slides we'll explain that a little bit more. Um and then uh further into section 7.3 there's also a sheet.
So on the next slide, this is kind of our big kind of highlevel summary of what we are proposing. And again, starting in the fall of 2027, uh we would have required improvement pathways for approaching expectation sites who get a rating of that 400 to
499. Uh basically, they'd have two options. Uh the first option would be that they could participate in one of our free state coaching supports. That is currently our BEC, Virginia Early Childhood Consultation. Our infant toddler network, our stream uh
curriculum has coaching and our TACs also provide support. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean they have options. They have all four of those options because there's obviously some uh eligibility requirements related to like TTAC, infant, toddler can't support a pre-K classroom, etc. But if they worked with
one of those state coaching partners, those coaching partners uh have their own coaching requirements. They'd help them with quality improvement plans and they would work with them throughout the year and that would meet the expectation. Uh the other option would be they could opt out of the state
funded coaching and instead submit a very detailed needs assessment and quality improvement plan. This would not be something they could just create on their own. We will have a template. We don't have that yet, but we are working on having a template uh for the needs assessment and the quality improvement
plan that would be pretty detailed uh and involved and they would submit that to us by a specific date and we would have a committee that would review that and if we approved it, they basically could manage and monitor their own quality improvement. We'd have a few check-ins, but there would be uh they
they'd be responsible for that. Again, we'd be looking, we'd have some pretty strong criteria on what would need to be in an improvement plan in order for us to allow um that option. Um and then as far as non-compliance, again, our goal would be to work with sites and have
them uh choose these options. Uh if someone really refused to participate, we would have to move forward with non-compliance. But again, we'd work with the public funded programs and our leaders and our different publicly funded uh programs to make sure that the resources were there and that everybody
was working towards getting them to participate um in these coaching supports and in these improvement supports. On the next slide, we did kind of a side byside comparison to help kind of uh show the difference between kind of the level of intensity for need support
sites versus a bit of a more flexible approach for these approaching expectations. Uh so again, we're not proposing any change to need support sites. Uh the really the only change for them is that instead of just trying to get to 400 points, they now would be working towards getting to 500 points to
fully be out uh or to be meeting expectations. But the first goal is just to help them move out of need support, right? We want to help them start moving towards those better quality experiences. Uh they do not have a choice. They would have to still work with the ECC. We're seeing a lot of
great progress there. It's a very intense model that is working for these sites. Uh everybody at these sites, the site leaders, every classroom, new teachers participate in coaching and coaching happens quite often. It happens about every two weeks and there's a minimum of 10 sessions, but they
actually most of them do more than 10 uh sessions as well. So on the flip side then for approaching expectations, their goal would be to get to that 500 points to meet expectations or higher. They'd have those two pathways. Again, I think we would strongly encourage folks to use
our state coaching partners uh to the extent possible, but there would be that option for them to identify kind of another qualified coach or improvement partner through their own QIP. Uh their site leaders and new teachers at these sites would need to have coaching, but
we'd look at the actual classroom class scores to determine if every classroom needed to have coaching or just the ones with the lowest class scores. because you could imagine a center that maybe has 10 classrooms and maybe a couple of them actually had higher class scores. So, it wouldn't be required for every
classroom at the site. We'd actually look at the bus floor needs. Uh and then the coaching uh frequency would not be as intensive. So, again, this is approximate and this would vary a little based on the coaching partner they're working with, but something around like every month with probably a minimum of
something like five coaching uh sessions during the year. I guess I will repeat my question like if if there's 25 sites in in this intensive group at like 320 in this needs improve approaching expectation. Um I'm wondering do we have
the resources to do all that additional coaching? >> So we're looking at the capacity. We we think for the most part we do. We've broken out how many are actually infant classrooms, toddler classrooms, pre-K classrooms, how many are family day homes and then looking at the capacity of our coaching partners. We will
continue to kind of work on that in the upcoming year to see where there's opportunities to tweak that capacity and shift uh scopes of work so that uh we have the capacity there as well. Um, and then we also just in looking at those class scores, uh, if ultimately there
wasn't full capacity, we could also prioritize based on those class scores in those approaching expectation sites to make sure that the classrooms at those sites with the lowest class scores got priority. And then we could have some different types of improvement supports that could also uh be allocated
as well. >> I have I have two questions. one obviously I think there would have to be a blend of coaching partners to get all age groups at every site. So is there a plan for how we would approach that?
So ITSN can only serve infant toddler classrooms. So if there's infant toddler and prek at any given site, we're going to need a partner that also could serve prek. >> Yeah. So I think we would again we'd look at the class scores. So at that center, if there were low class scores in the infant, the toddler, and the
prek, we would want some kind of coaching support for those prek as well. It might be that the pre-k scores were okay, and it really is the infant toddler classroom. So we'd look at those individual needs there as well. >> I did. >> And then there was something else that you just said, and it scooped my mind.
Um, >> we also, you know, would uh think about sort of with the ECC and stream some of the ways that they support programs. right now I think we're looking at on how to adjust some of their scopes of work and people who they actually could
participate uh work with as well. So like right now BCC pretty much only works with the need support sites and a few additional sites uh but we're trying to think through how some of that could be expanded as well. Um and then there's also we're taking some look at both uh
different approaches to coaching. So not all coaching has to be in person. We're seeing a lot of success with the hybrid approach that BECC uses. Uh there's virtual coaching and so how do we use sort of a combination of best practices of coaching to make sure that we're meeting those needs as well.
>> I have another concern around every month coaching only every month. That doesn't seem to me to be very effective. If you're only giving intensive coaching one time per month, then you go away and then you come back another month. that's
not about that's not uh conducive to relationship building which is really required for coaching. >> Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think we would work with the coaches and what typically if they aren't going as often right now there there are touch points in between. So it may not be a full coaching session but there are
things that are happening in between and really based on what I know about these coaching partners that that would be the bare minimum as far as meeting the compliance part of the requirement. most would have more coaching hours in their coaching plan and would work uh towards that as well.
>> I just want to make sure that that wasn't where the corner we were going to cut to make this, >> you know, she's asking about like the logistics behind, you know, can we do this? But >> cutting it to less effective ways of approaching it doesn't mean we're going to move forward.
>> Exactly. Exactly. When we were first designing the ECC service from the compliance standpoint, it felt really important that we had a minimum number of sessions because in that first year in particular like folks would be like we're meeting with our coach but maybe it was like they were calling them back
quarterly and so for the coaching partner as well as for the site having a clear understanding of what is kind of minimum engagement look like and but we are seeing that like majority of sites even at this point in the year have already met with their VC code BCC coach
almost double that out of 10 sessions. >> I just wanted to make sure that that wasn't >> separating what is like practice based coaching and kind of the relationship piece and meeting the unique needs of each site and classroom and leader versus having a minimum expectation for compliance and really tease those two
things out. >> Okay, great. Thank you. >> And Susan, we can really build that in too as we work with our coaching partners more on what because this will be a shift right now. they're mostly working with people who are volunteering to work with them even though it's based on class scores. Um, but we we can make
sure to kind of address that that five is truly a very minimum that is not just the expectation for coaching. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Now, how would um how would these coaches integrate with like existing coaching that's already gone? So, what I
mean like for example, you know, I teach like in a VPI, you know, inclusive classroom. So a lot of times we also get support from TAC especially helping our students with disabilities. So like how will they work in conjunction with that and then also in a lot of school systems
EVI and even head start programs too you know have head start coaches that are already working those classes. So you know I definitely like the fact that state is you know having that coaching piece there. I just wouldn't want us, you know, like a classroom to be so inundated with so many different
approaches, you know, that it doesn't become effective because they're not even really, you know, receiving, you know, the message that you all are trying to get. >> So, if we go back one slide, I think some of those examples that you're describing would actually this option too would be probably a good fit for
them. If you have existing coaching staff within your school division or your head start, uh you could make that part of your quality improvement plan. That's the type of thing we would look for that you have uh well-trained, competent coaches who are already there. Uh and so that would be probably a good
fit for a BPR Head Start. I know that when we were talking some with Head Start, some of them were saying sometimes our coaches have tried everything and they're still low and we actually would like to have them work with somebody different. So we wouldn't require that, but I don't think we'd want to see double co, you know, double coaching. We kind of decide what's the
best fit here. Um but they absolutely if they have a strong plan in place that could be part of that uh option too. Our guess is this option too is probably the a best fit for like public schools and head starts who have some of that infrastructure um in place but u you
know we'll continue to kind of develop that on what exactly that would look like. I do connect to that idea that sometimes we want to bring an additional person in to provide some coaching. And one of the questions that comes up for me is around is there capacity for
>> and this is all by site and some of the public school sites might have 10 or 12 classrooms and some might just have one. So if you're a teacher that needs coaching in a site that has a lot of classrooms, sometimes it gets averaged out and you know it's it doesn't show up in the site
thing and sometimes works the other way around. So is there any capacity for classroom based coaching still versus just based? Yeah. So I think um but I think I agree with saying correct me if I'm wrong. So
it could be possible still that a site's in NE expectations in that 500 range and they may have a classroom that is scoring 3.99 or lower and we do still define that that's sort of a priority for classroom coaching. The other category and this is in section seven
don't remember the section. Uh but we also prioritize new teachers and so our coaching partners are able to coach a new teacher even if they don't have a low class score yet. there's kind of some adapted adaptations they've allowed to coach new teachers. So, our priority
will be getting to the classrooms in these uh sites that are $4.99 or below, but we will still look at classroom scores and new teachers as far as additional priorities as well. >> I think just as a point of clarification, we call it site improvement planning even if it doesn't
necessarily impact every classroom because you you're just not going to get have to make sure that the leaders bought in, right? So even even if we're only working with one classroom, we just we we just never want to call it or set up the model so that the relationship is only between the state and the classroom
because then you have the leader come right behind and if they're the leader is the classroom educator's boss. And so if there's not, you know, you know, a a an alignment there, it, you know, but there's certainly no effect. So it can be classroom focused, but still going to
be polite and group planning. uh so that we're making sure like as a system we're looking at both both levers to the very point that Daryl made earlier right that sometimes the most influential uh contributor to to to site culture is is the is the leadership
>> and will the classroom level um improvement number move to 4.99 instead of 3.99 to reflect this new >> no that is actually staying at 3.99 and I think there's a table we added in the of the guidelines lines that actually
says that we will continue 3.99 or lower at the classroom level being a priority. But >> hi, I have a question from kind of like the private sector side. Um could you explain to me and new um could you explain to me the kind of what are the
requirements? What's the eligibility for getting the 100 curriculum points? >> So there's a list of approved curriculum. Uh it's a how many on site? There's over 70 on the list right now for birth define uh and >> you just have to show that you have that
curriculum present in every room. >> In link B5, there's a question that's asked are you using an approved curriculum? If it's yes, do you choose the curriculum from a drop-own list of the ones that have gone through a pretty intensive approval process? Uh and so we base that 100 points right now on just
the if you have uh if you're using approved curriculum in at least one classroom. That does shift for folks who remember last year we got approved uh in the guidelines last year starting next year they would have to use approved curriculum in every classroom. I think
from a private perspective if I know that I'm going to fall into this approaching expectations and only 28% of those have curriculums. I'm quickly buying a curriculum to stick in that room. So my concern is that you're going to jump out of that
category and not qualify for coaching simply based on the fact that you put a box in some books and some rooms and said put this on your lesson plan instead of following up with are they doing the required PD are we having evaluations based on how this curriculum is being implemented
>> see actually some of that now even too so some of the sites that are 400 who said they're using approved curriculum when we look at their class scores uh they probably aren't using that curriculum effectively And so even though the coaching and the improvement supports that these sites are getting uh is based on class scores,
there's a lot of overlap with also encouraging the use of approved curriculum with the BEC sites because it's a tool that can help with class scores. So I think there's some of that Marie, I don't know if you want to touch on that as well, what we're hearing about sites. >> Um so right now 80% of the sites in our
system are using curriculum in all classrooms or reporting curriculum use in all classrooms. Right now we're seeing roughly 2% are using curriculum in one corridor but not encompassing every classroom within their site. Okay. >> There's approximately 80% of sites that are using
>> curriculum uh in no classrooms. And so >> uh when we were thinking about building the list over the past several years, we really wanted to make sure that it was representative of the curricula that students used in Virginia. So uh in order to get to the list um and then uh
for we have five free or lowcost options one of them being streaming three um and that one comes with state sponsored professional development coaching technical assistance um and other supports. um our approach to um
supporting sites to understand the value of curriculum is really by um as they are exploring curriculum looking at their class scores looking at um what they're using really see an improvement in lens. So if a site has adopted a
curriculum and they have lower scores, part of what happens in coaching or part of part of what the ready regions talk to them about is um how are you using your curriculum as a tool for improvement as well as a tool for learning. >> Yeah, I absolutely appreciate that. I'm
just saying those 244 schools could just buy a curriculum and move into the next. >> That's what I'm saying. So I'm just I I just want to like control >> you're absolutely correct but I think we we haven't necessarily seen that happen right even with the 50 and some portion of the 50. So all the 50 moved up
another 24 dropped some of the 50 moved up uh some closed some use curriculum some actually moved the interactions up. So that's so we had seen everybody just bought curriculum to get out of the different >> that's what I was wondering. Yeah. The second thing I want you to remember is that, you know, we have the ability to
adjust over time who we require and what that requirement looks like. So, you could also see a place where I think we're probably going to keep the ratings the same just to keep I mean, until we get up to the maximum uh percentage of folks using curriculum,
we still want to kind of have just the goal. This is this is not a precise incentive, right? Or lever rather. is just a sort of a general how do we broadly get you to sort of open your mind to using curriculum beginning to using curriculum right I mean I would imagine from a if you if you were to go
in see the variation on how people use some curriculum is very broad right saying like ultimately that's really really hard and expensive to measure at statewide scale so we're just going to what we really care about is what are you sort of at least trying or we're encouraging you to try to use curriculum
first it was one classroom now it's all classrooms and our ultimate measure of if if that's happening is going to be in those interaction scores. But if we were to see Katie that um that was happening, we could also keep the levels the same but shift the criteria or like
improvement planning or priorities, right? You could say we maybe we'll leave it the same but we're going to prioritize folks if you weren't using curriculum that you had this type of class score. So I think because they're we can look at both numbers um that we can we can we can adjust for that over time if that happens. >> Absolutely. just something to flag
because I think you know in that 400 to 499 it's majority family day homes and childcare centers and >> coming from that world um >> if someone's looking for an easy way out that doesn't require coaching and and all these things you know hoops to jump through it might be the easiest way
>> probably also going to catch them at the classroom level with state improvement part partners right so like ITSN coaching we're gonna they're probably going to have some classrooms that fall and below 3.99 even if they have curriculum
>> and then you're still going to get a coach in the door more than likely. >> Absolutely. So the other interesting thing I think that's come up and this is important for Marie's noting about stream that like in a way that would not necessarily be intuitive more broadly to the sector but a lot of our improvement
planning is actually around curriculum right and and that's part of why it was so important that we have an option that's not proprietary that's affordable for folks because you end up you when you think about uh uh coaching in the sort of in in places that need the most support and early childhood first
there's like you know that that level of, you know, do folks want to be there, how do you work on the warm and responsive interactions like just to be right for those of you who've been in lower performing classrooms like that that's the like that's the sort of you know Marty are you even following health and safety regulations that sort of general and then once you get there and
the warmth and responsiveness is there and you know then the next one is you know what we just and we heard this initially in Louisiana which led to our curriculum work is then folks are like now what right I have a a general expectation on what warm and responsive
interactions look like with infants or born toddlers or preschoolers but the daytoday what do I do all day right because the relationship between how the teacher you know creates the day then has a direct relationship on behavior um you know learning outcomes and all of
that and if you don't have a curriculum like I mean there's an occasional extraordinary educator do that but that's so it ends up being um you know we we we bring a lot more curriculum into that um with the hope that we're not just uh you're not just checking the
box, but you're understanding the why that how this curriculum can actually help you improve those scores and kind of more permanently get out of uh of that kind of level um of of interaction. That's it. But but absolutely some of that's happening in in in that area.
We're also starting to explore what um what we're seeing in terms of like during class observations like what types of activities are happening and we're seeing you know more math activities for example in classrooms that use curriculum. So I think um over
time as we continue to look at all of the intersection of BKRP and VLS and our class data and our curriculum use information, we'll be able to glean more insights into um all of the pieces of the puzzle in all of these.
>> Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. >> Yes, go ahead. We're going to >> I just have a I just have a clarification question. Earlier slides you mentioned that 14% opted to participate in coaching. Was that site coaching or classroom
coaching? Because that might be relevant. >> Oh, this side. Yeah. >> Sorry. Uh Lisa for your question. Um it's if if even just one classroom was participating, they said the site was participating.
>> Yes. So just your question about capacity and as a coach I ask myself that question all the time but the reality is 14% are participating in coaching. So until that increases yeah >> hard to say but if we require all 100%
of them to do that they're in that 100 you know it it'll if it's required then we'll say there's going to be 300 sites that will newly need it. Do we have enough coaches? We're also interested next year when we look at the votes timeline, we will
again send letters in the fall to the sites that will still technically be meeting expectations 400 to 499. Uh, you know, and our letter last year said, although you're meeting expectations, we strongly encourage you to participate. Now, our letter can be a little firmer,
right, to say if you have these scores next year, you would be required to do this. and we're hoping that that it's not going to get them all to sign up, but um that could be more motivating too for sites. Um so again, it's hard to know exactly how many will be in that
approaching expectation, but we'll be watching that for later. >> So let's talk some about the transition timeline. Uh and then we'll talk about just a few other additional updates for next year. So um again, we will take this uh from you all those to the board.
Um, and as soon as uh after that board meeting in June, we start working on data verification, that's where sites go in and they get to preview their rating. That will officially still be the three rating level again because of uh our current guidelines, but when they sign
in to see that, we will also give them a preview of what their rating would look like based on the five level system. So, we want everybody to start to be aware of the transition. Uh then next fall again we would publish the profiles under the threele scales but we would do
another notification to all sites letting them know that this five level uh change is coming and what that potentially would mean for their rating. Um we would start posting resources for families in the field. Again kind of already thinking through some one pagers and how do we start explaining this
upcoming transition. um we would only require that improvement plan need support sites but as I just mentioned we will targeting those uh 400 to 499 sites to make sure they also have that opportunity. Uh on the next slide then we move into the winter and spring I
imagine will be doing lots of communication with emails and newsletters to keep everybody informed of this upcoming transition. Next summer 2027 is when sites would go in and for the first time see their action five level rating scale and the
fall of 2027 is when we would publish uh the new ratings under that five level scale. We will have some transition information on the website to help explain why some of the the levels and things have changed. Um and then that is also when uh it could start to be a
requirement for both need support sites and poaching expectations. So this kind of is the uh opposite to a slide we shared earlier. Uh we think there aren't any benefits uh to the field. Ultimately uh all of them relate back to helping support improved
experiences for children. Uh I won't read all of these to you but uh we see a lot of benefits for sites uh both related to recognition and support. We think this will be uh clearer for families and we'll use again some of that those child level examples that we
looked at on the slides to develop some of those resources for families. We think our reading regions and our improvement partners will uh better be able to target their resources for improvement supports. Uh and then just the larger system again having these five levels we think will better inform
our decision- making and our policies uh as well as we continue to drive improvement. So let me touch base on a couple other additional updates. Uh if you can go to the next slide. So this is coming back uh feels now like a while ago but what
we talked about earlier uh we recognize uh after our initial launch of VA connects uh which was a lot of work to get launched and we uh know it's a really important piece in getting all data systems connected. Uh we recognize and have gotten feedback from the field that there are some enhancements needed
and so we are already engaged and working on that. uh they kind of fall into four big buckets. So one is around the systems performance. And so some of the issues and I think I even noticed that in the public comment were not so much about the profile questions but people logging in and getting kicked out
because of performance time issues and them having to keep trying and trying again. And so we are working on those uh improving those processing times, the load management and the overall uh performance so that the user experience is uh is a better one.
uh we've had LinkB5 resources available, but they've been on a separate website. And so they are working on building those resources within the system so that it's easier for programs to find the resources they need while they're in and completing those profiles and different pieces of information. We'll
still have the outofsystem resource page, but this will make it easier uh to target resources and for the field to find the resources they need. Uh we are reviewing all the registration profile questions uh to make sure that the questions that are required are based uh
on our priorities and align with best practices. Uh not every question is required. So we also think about which questions to keep in there but that are optional uh again and so we are reviewing those uh and we'll make some tweaks to those again wanting to make sure we are capturing uh information at
the site classroom and educator level that we need to support our state law work. Um, and then I don't know how many of you have heard, if you have a site, you've probably noticed, uh, we had link five IDs. Uh, there were VA Connects IDs. When they all came together, it got a little confusing with two different
sets of IDs. Uh, we tried to use both this year, but we will be moving fully into just using the VA Connects IDs. Moving forward, uh, we'll keep crosswalks of the old IDs if we ever need to reference that. that everybody moving forward starting in the fall, uh,
we will consistently use the VA Connects ID instead of the legacy ID. >> Yes. I know you're talking about system performance, but I wonder if there's anything any upgrades to like navigation in the system such as filters, page numbers, things like that that just
eliminate a lot of like clicking and scrolling and clicking and scrolling and clicking. >> I'm looking. Yeah, since we've optimized um the search fun button so that you can directly search on the dashboard. Um
we've also expanded how many records show up per page. Part of that was like solved through some of our performance um issues that we were experiencing too. And then we have also changed some of the sorting. So we wanted to sort um by different variables that are at the top
and you can do that as well. somebody you've heard a lot about application implemented that um and then the next slide these are sections of the guidelines that uh are basically uh smaller clarifications based on either uh things that have not
been as clear to the field that we wanted to clarify either what the requirement was when a deadline was um or why we're doing it. Um and then also just aligning with some of our current procedures that just haven't been uh fully into the guidelines document. So
student child list really not much changing here with student child list but um the guidelines last year had talked about public schools doing that through the fall student record collection but now with VA connects it's actually linked to how they enter student child list with VKRP. So that's
been updated to align with how that uh currently works. Uh we've also clarified expectations about updating student child list in the spring. So when there are changes, uh it's best practice to gather those updates on uh student child list. So we'll uh begin talking with the
field about that as well. And that's in the guidelines. Educator profiles. Uh so we heard a lot about this as well. Um so we had reference educator profiles have always been required, but we really didn't have a section that explained why they were required or defined an
educator. So we now have an actual section uh in section three that clarifies the educator definitions who is required who is not required to complete an educator profile. We also because of what we heard from the field they used to be required by October 1st.
We have moved that deadline now to December 22nd to give educators more time. They can still do them early on when registration opens on August 15th, but they wouldn't be out of compliance until with that December 22nd. So a much larger window for completing those
educator profiles. Our ready regions are also working to make sure that they have more direct support for educator profile completion as well. Um and then we've clarified uh what you heard uh Tiara talk about a new verification process in the spring for site administrators that
we will actually be launching this year. We've just added more details about the purpose of that educator verification uh into the guidelines as well. Uh the class tools used again no change here but um the when we first of last
year talked about the second edition of class there was only a prek version. Uh now there is an infant toddler. It's a combined tool. Um we are not ready in Virginia to move to either of those tools. Uh we're still exploring them. We're still looking for data about the
impact. Uh so we want the field to be really clear that we are continuing to stick with the original versions of class. uh there is some connection. The pre-K1 is not that different but the infant toddler is a completely different tool. It is not interchangeable. Uh so
the the information is basically the same just updated with infant toddler but we will continue to use the original versions of class local observer supports. This is um it's a new section in the guidelines, but we've always had a lot of information for ready regions
and local observers in our local observer guide book, which is like an addendum toolkit that talked about the role of ready regions and how to support local observers. One of the things that we've noticed though is uh that we are at a point in our system where we need more frequent monitoring of local
observation scores and using those scores to help better target and get to observers who need support quicker. Uh so we've uh added in information about the local observer support activities that ready regions do and we've also clarified uh their use of the data on a
regular basis not just the end of the fall or the end of the spring uh but to monitor those local cost scores particularly if there's any unusual trends uh to look at those score sheets uh figure out what's going on with the the note takingaking. Are there great things happening that they can reinforce
with local observers or is there additional support needed as well? The curriculum recognition change is explained. This is not really new. Uh this was approved last year uh in the guidelines, but we do have a section on it since that will go into effect
starting next year. Uh honor roles are also not new, but we didn't have an actual section that explained the purpose uh and categories of honor roles. So that is now in uh section six. The one slight shift is that um the the category for excellence will stay the
700 to 800 points for that excellence honor role. Obviously the title of that level shifts. So there's a slight shift in just uh the title of who would get that honor role, but it's still awarded to the top rating of 700 to 800. The other categories uh do not change as
well. And it also explains how ready regions work to help promote and recognize uh sites in addition to what we have on our profile. >> I'm glad you're just taking Sarah if you have any ideas for no
>> actually. A few next steps. >> Oh, next steps for Bacon V5. Uh so we've touched on this. will complete the uh review today with you all. Um and then we have a webinar planned for Monday uh
for the field where we will walk through this uh information for the field and we'll share that reporting broadly. Um in April uh we are already in the process of scheduling additional stakeholder presentations talk about the change get more feedback from the field
answer questions about that. So that'll be like with our head starts and our VPIs our specialed classrooms u probably BCCA will schedule. So we're doing lots of follow-up sessions. We go to the board in April. Uh May is when we wrap up our current year of work. So our
spring observation window ends. Sites uh complete that educator verification and update curriculum use if they need to all by May 31st. Next slide. June then uh we will complete that second review with the board of the guidelines and then uh the data team
especially and our team start working right away take the results from the current year to calculate those site ratings in July that's when sites can go in during data verification see what their uh profile is if there's any changes needed uh that's the time for
them to request those changes so we can finalize those before the fall and we're back to August is when we launch registration on August August 15th. Uh, and that's also the launch of the fall class observation window. And next fall, we'll release our next round of profiles
and walls. Now, you can say few. I think I'm thinking I know we've had some good questions and discussion. I'm also watching time, Becca. So, um, but why not? >> Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I think as everyone knows, we the next step here is that
we'll be asking for endorsement, but want to open the floor to any other questions. I was taking notes as folks were asking questions and and making comments. Um, and we'll continue to do so if there's anything else folks would like to share. I'll just say I really appreciate all
the detailed questions in the improvement um section specifically about the partners and how this looks and what our capacity is as a state. Um this work, the improvement work, the coaching
partners is really the crux of what we're trying to do here. is the point of um all of this work that we do to provide feedback and make sure that we're identifying the classrooms that need it the most. So, really appreciate um the questions that really show that
you guys are are looking under the hood and and asking the things that make sense that discussion >> and while you're thinking about um those uh those questions and any last point just wanted to share an anecdote with
with with you all. Um, so I had the opportunity to sp speak for the end of last year, beginning of this year. It's all blur honestly right now. Um, uh, and reflect on um, many years across two
states of supporting uh, classroom level interactions. And as I was preparing to do this, I thought to myself, well, well, let me look back at what has happened in in Louisiana and let me see what kind of in the long run this might
look like. And I said, I imagine that Louisiana, unfortunately, has some of the most low-income communities in in in in the United States. And so, I can't remember if it was Google or AI, but I asked somebody, you know, what some of the poorest counties and and in
Louisiana parishes were. And number 10 on that list was East Carol Parish, which is a teeny tiny parish in the very north uh northeast corner of of of Louisiana. So basically where Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi meet. And I
cannot this is a rarity for me. I cannot remember the exact statistics, but it was basically East Carol Parish has about 78,000 folks. Um 50% poverty rate. Most folks are unemployed. boast probably three4s of adults do not
have a bachelor's degree. Um a community that faces many many challenges. It used to be an entirely agricultural community and then when agric got mechanized most folks can no longer find employment. And I look back it actually took looking into my files because it wasn't online
uh and finding how they scored in 2015 2016 they were approaching proficient uh fairly fairly low scores overall. There were uh three sites, three early childhood sites and their average, their overall average across those three sites
was approaching proficient. I nervously clicked on the most recent results from Louisiana that came out this fall. They have eight sites. So they nearly tripled the number of access and a very small community, right? Very small, very low income community. And their network
average, their average across that sort of three times as many sites was a 6.02, 02 which in Louis in Virginia that would be uh a a distinguished a distinguished average meaning that across all those sites they were providing nationleading
uh teacher child interactions in a very lowincome less educated very historically underresourced community and so I share that as it mean still to this day it gives me goosebumps when I describe it but the work you're doing here today the work that you all talked
about in terms of uh the improvement partners not only can you know not only do we need to get it right for the reasons that Aaron just described but if we can do that and do that as a system then you can truly change you can truly
change what very young children in very underresourced communities are are are receiving and so uh I just I thought that would be helpful to hear I I shared it actually with with some of the authors of of of of the class Bob Pian and Briden Hre just at times Sometimes
it feels like things don't move or it feels like things only move when people have resources or are connected. And for a whole lot of different leaders, different governors, different state superintendents, different leaders of early childhood in Louisiana, all that has moved, all that has changed. And
yet, um, year-over-year in East Carol Parish, the early childhood educators, the community around them systematically improved and kids are benefiting. Mic dropped. Mic turn.
>> And with that, we will ask um vote down >> to make a motion to these changes. >> I do immediately. Um as we're looking at defining the definition of quality in each of these levels, I think language
is important >> when we're conveying that with teachers. Um for the one that says need support, is there any discussion around changing to foundational support? Um in all these areas, they do need support. Everybody
wants to strive again for greater. But instead of saying need support, it could be foundational support. That's just as far as partying go because language is important. So that's just one one. >> Yeah. No, I appreciate that. I think in
our very first uh that term I don't think we've discussed that term before. Initially it was remember Clark something that was like not satisfactory or something not like uh and there was a lot of talk about using the term we need support uh
at that time. um is why we've kind of gone with that that term. I appreciate kind of that, you know, and even as we think about explaining what that means in that foundational support, I think that that can be really >> Yeah, I think it's I part of what and
I'm reflecting on because we're grappling with some of the the names as well for the for the K12 system. Um, one of the the feedback we get is, you know, want it to both be um, you don't want it
to kind of bring people down, right? And so trying to sort of find the right language. It also needs to be uh, it can't be so vague, which is often a a critique of kind of education folks where you're like, what does this mean? Right? And if you were, and I think the only question I would ask back to the
group, you're going to go ask 10 people on the street, what does need support mean? what does versus what is foundational support. I think foundational support might create a little bit of confusion on what that actually means versus uh most people would understand what need
support means. So I I don't I think we I'd be open to kind of to continue to think of ideas, but I think that the criteria is most people when you think of all the folks that come to the website and and the parents and the educators understand what that means. And I worry the
foundational support is a little more vague in that regard. >> Well, awesomeness too. The bottom will distinguish those with the other four. They're verbs. You know, they're like what we what you're doing kind of I think makes it a little clearer too. >> Yeah. >> But we I mean I think we'll be opening
through April as you think about just trying to that's the balancing act. You know, I think we want to focus on being supportive rather than punitive. I think we've tried to be clear. Um uh I will say um we used so they just described
use of kind of proficiency in in Louisiana that was not as like by Virginia makes sense like most people will use that word common parl answer right like um but again there's just keep thinking on that ruminating um as we as we we think about community right
>> I think means the court's like a call to action though you know what I mean I think you got to have that sense of call to action behind it that says You need support. >> Yeah, >> we're here to support you. So, it's all how you phrase it. I mean, I think that call to action is necessary at that level because if not, you're going to have a health and safety instance and
you're going to end with a bunch of Jenna on the cover of the whatever papers talking about kid that >> I made the same argument for approaching versus emerging. >> So, approaching says you're almost there, but you need to keep pushing. You
need going, right? Emerging is like, "Oh, it's just gonna happen." >> Oh, yeah. It just emerged from the ground. >> That's beautiful when you're talking about development, but it's not beautiful when you're talking about you're not you're not doing what you need to be doing.
I think taking it back to the chart that's on page 24 in the slide deck slide 47 really like when you put those words right above uh indicators of what you're going to see in those typical experiences in those classrooms because
well you have to take it back to the kids right >> if you are a teacher and you are doing experiences in that first box you do need support I think that's yeah that's clear >> it's helpful. I think we do we really want to build on that that uh child
experience piece using that in our >> chart. Who thought of child experience >> yes um I just want to say something that is going on my mind.
I want to thank you every staff member teachers that are doing the the job in the classrooms to make this interaction better. On the other end, I'm thinking a lot I say how can we retain teachers and what I see now is a lot of need of
mental health support. The ratios doesn't mean anything. We can have nine kids with one teacher but if we have two kids that are in special needs makes very difficult for the staff and sometimes this can lead to them to
say I cannot do this anymore. So I think it's our job to find the means to get um mental support for the especially for the private centers because schools they do have head start they do have help but the private sector
and maybe family homes they don't have any and it's very expensive to bring people even if you want to bring people it's hard to find it. I just want to say that and see if we can do something about it.
>> Yeah, thank you S. I mean I and I think about that both in light of even places where people are giving it all in terms of high quality interactions, but you know, how can we as a system better support the mental health and well-being needs of those
educators? Um, and it is hard and and you know in the private settings folks often are less likely to have healthcare insurance that you could you know you could you could secure that sort of separately and there's there just not enough resources in that area. But I I
really appreciate that continues to be a huge gap as we think about um our educators and our caregivers. >> Great. Well, we will again. Um, and appreciate all of the the discussion here. This has been really rich as as
Erin um uh was describing. Um, and like I said, I've jotted notes down as folks were asking questions and we'll go back and flush them out from the recording. Um, but are hoping that we can uh get a motion for endorsement um
uh from the the body. >> Yeah, absolutely. For real this time, I motion I would like to make a motion that we endorse the guidelines, the changes to the guidelines as presented. >> Motion made. Is there a second?
>> Second. >> Second. >> Any further discussion? All those in favor to endorse draft proposals 2627 for BQB5 proposed guidelines, please say I. I. Any opposed?
Okay. So moved. Chris, thank you. Thank you everybody. Hour and a half presentation. Thank you uh everyone. >> Yeah. And a big thank you to your team for you and Chris and your team because it's pretty appreciate
>> Jeff. So we're still in the marathon. So >> you got to go pop out the hallway. >> Need to stand up. uh underside. No worries uh with that either. Just a quick little side. >> Everybody wash your hand. >> Wait, I got this. >> So Aaron shared what she shared when Jenna talked to her about
superintendent. I said I'm not sure if I should congratulate you or give you condolences for for what's coming up. Um and but we're just excited about the future just with Aaron's leadership coming in and Jenna's continued leadership. Um, so we're going to also ask for an
endorsement for the guidance for preventing the spread of disease. So I'm going to go through this kind of quickly. Um, and part of the reason is we're really excited about this because we've got a lot of input um, you know, from members of ECAC. U Dr. Nelson,
we've got members of the VDH, we've got um, the VDE school health coordinator has put into words what we've had in practice for about 20 years. So part of the regulations for child day center
standards is 490C which requires parents to be notified when a child is exposed to a communicable disease. Uh and there's a communicable disease chart uh that they reference um either by a staff person with who has been diagnosed with
a communicable disease or a child. So part of this guidance provides clarity again to what we've been having in practice for the last 20 years. And so the guidance document itself references additional guidance, the communicable
disease chart from VDH, reportable disease list from VDH, code sections, uh regulations and outbreak reporting requirements from facilities and programs. So this is a wellressearched document and the whole goal is to get
rid of any ambiguity and bring more clarity to when a program needs to report to parents when a child in care has been exposed. Next, please. So providers must notify parents of exposure to any communicable disease
within 24 hours or the next business day and report any outbreaks or unusual occurrence to the appropriate health department. So that's the requirement. So what needed to be clarified is the term exposure and exposure is based on notification to the center that a child
or staff person in the center was diagnosed with, exposed to or has shown symptoms. But where it gets kind of muddy is when exactly did this person become infected and when it does it become communicable. And so the next
couple of bullets talk about when persons in charge of child centers must notify immediately and then child a day centers should consult with the health department when there's any kind of questions. Next, please. So I want to talk about example because I think an
example is probably the best way to explain and show what the guidance is supposed to do. We're going to use conjunctive items, our famous paint guide, right? >> Exactly. So here's where Yeah. For those who were on the CDC,
like you know, after we talk about some of this stuff, you're just like, "Oh my goodness." >> So, the infectious upon contact with eye discharge or contaminated articles with an incubation period of 3 days. So, I show symptoms on Friday. I was
contagious prior to that. So the real clarification comes in is parents of all children that may have been exposed within the last three days must receive notification. That's the crux of what this guidance document is trying to operationalize.
Next, please. >> And and and Jeeoff, just to to sort of to make this point clear, like that's the rule, right? It's not whether you have contact with the discharge on day two. It's not whether you you only started to have discharge a day ago. The idea is you know that that from the the
moment you know you go always go back to the maximum time. >> Right. Right. Exactly. So again this is the ultimate baseline of protecting children is parents understand what's going on. I mean that's kind of the whole purpose of all this. So you've got a copy of the guidance document. It's
been well researched. It's got lots of background on it. So you know based on any feedback from today assuming there's none. If so we let's definitely talk about it. uh we will be presenting it to the board on March 26. So guidance documents are very very official. It's
much more than oh Jeff said or Amy said or my inspector said. This is official guidance that has a lot of weight. Therefore it is subject to the review process set up by the governor. So pursuant to the code of Virginia once approved by the board there will be a
30-day public comment period where we will receive public comment. something substantial, we'll definitely address it assuming that we're in a good spot. Uh we will move forward, but there is we will notify the providers via readiness
connections that the public comment is open. I'm going to be transparent about this. We want people to give us feedback because we want a really really good document uh to to go out. Next, please.
So, actually that's the crux of this with this. It's >> if you have questions, absolutely. We're open to them. You have suggestions, we're open to them. Um, you know, I had lots of suggestions and staff are like,
well, Jeeoff BDH and Dr. Nelson said this is good. And I'm like, okay, they they are experts. >> Well, right. >> Yeah. Resources in there. Um, so do you have anything? >> I mean, I I certainly don't want to be a singular voice here. I just think that
um the reason we're here is to operationalize and provide clarity. As you said, I think that it's important to be consistent with BDH and with reportable disease lists and you know what we know about all these diseases,
but then create and that's the your your group here, this group is about operationalizing it in early education. And so I think I am a health person, not a early childhood teacher. So I don't know what the daily burden is in terms of reporting all these things. I
certainly am seeing it on the other end, you know, when people come with conjunctivitis and want a doctor's note, but um yeah, I think it's important to be aligned with all of our systems in terms of what we're requiring. >> Uh Dr. Nelson, could you help us with
the why? So I think one of the sources of issue came up on uh interpretation on well this is when we first saw this or maybe you know these are some of these ranges are quite quite wide right so Jeff the team are in a tough place where
if it's 10 to 10 days they're like why do we have to go back to 10 right like because that feels like you know that's a really long period and maybe that maybe the person you know you know that they were no asymptomatic at that time and so if you could help us understand why it's sort of general why there's
kind of so much variation in these eight bases why it's safer to take the the sort of the the max end of that range >> I think it is coming from a risk averse place and going with the safest possible um range but I I think just in the
reporting of it it's like it's not saying that somebody should be excluded because they've been exposed or something like that I think an asymptomatic person should not be excluded but I think that it's like up to parents and and their providers to be look on the lookout for these symptoms. So, it's like this is everybody's
different, every germ is a little different and so it's really hard to have perfect estimates, but it's just good to be aware so that we can be watching for that. Does that make sense? And >> yeah, and I think that's a really important point to note. This is about awareness, not exclusion. So again to
really distinguishing between we're saying you can't go back which every parent here has a you know different center with different number of hours >> not throw up get that fever down but this is not about that this is about just awareness and and really
notification so that parents are aware >> right yeah it's about giving parents the the option to understand I'm like I might wait to go put the child with grandma until I see if this child is you know shows up with symptoms and things like And part of it is it's not just about the diagnosis. People like, "Oh,
I've been sneezing for three days and then I go to the doctor and only on day four I'm diagnosed with something." Well, we need to kind of go back um and just again the goal here is to bring clarity and we think just the the team's done a great job.
>> Yes. >> Okay. The for me the language of show symptoms of a communic disease and how many symptoms of communicable diseases overlap. >> Yeah. Right. >> Like how are we we're not physicians like you know oh wow you had a rash.
Well I was allergic to something. I mean you know for us it gets kind of like for my staff I'm just go oh my god. >> Yeah. >> And then they're all going to call out every time anybody has anything and staffing. But that's different. But that's just the reality of the world. But the show symptoms of a communicable disease for me is kind of vague when I
start looking at that chart of communicable diseases and start looking where symptoms overlap like >> right. Are you referring to the slide or you refer to >> it says on the slide on slide 65 where >> yeah I think the document go >> did a little more detail because I was going oh my god that's >> yeah yeah
>> okay just make it short I would like >> yeah but please look at that and I have any suggestions you know we still got a little bit of wiggle room here any major suggestions that come out of this we probably want to bring it back to you um and this is something also we can change you know I I I don't like saying that
out loud because we want to do it right the first time. Um, but a guidance document does how does have some fluidity to it as new charts come out. That's why we reference the chart putting it in here. Um, so again, part of the >> the standard is the standard.
>> I know it's simple, right? That one's the easy part. Notice it says diagnosed with exposed to or symptoms of then you're like, okay, well, now we got vague. We were really clear and then we got kind of vague over document. We'll get out. >> Yeah, hold up. I got you. Thank you.
>> Within a notification to the families within 24 hours, are they required to also report contact tracing within the same 24 hours? >> So, and part of that is, you know, if they start to notice an outbreak, then there are requirements and the guidance document will talk about that where to
get guidance about outbreaks because outbreaks is something BDH will hopefully come in depending on the situation and help with that. Okay. But from our standpoint, we're just about notifying parents based on the criteria in the standards.
Anything else on that? >> No, that's right. And and sadly, I think um this is important as we're starting to see a reemergence of some infections like measles, you know, super infectious and severe possibilities. So >> Jeeoff, I didn't realize that this was
not in code yet. I think centers I know I am are already using this. Correct. from a licensing standpoint that this is our guiding document today >> on the VBH document. >> Yeah, we referenced the VBH document. So, it's it's part of it's not code part
of it VDH regulations and and guidance >> and then second when it becomes code and I think it will um and maybe our Department of Health rep may speak to this will a poster come out because the
14 pages taped on the kitchen walls ain't gonna touch that. >> McDonald um but >> anyway, could you could you put in that request >> endorsed with recommendation? >> I would buy one. >> Yeah.
>> But I spent some time on this. Yeah, it's a very exciting things out of this. I think we've established a much better relationship with the health department. I'm excited about building that out. So, uh definitely >> very well put together.
>> Absolutely. >> All right. Any other questions or comments about this guidance document? Again, we will be asking for an endorsement. Thanks. We have a motion to endorse the new
municipal disease reference chart for school and child care facility personnel. Dr. Nelson, >> I move to endorse. >> We have a motion. Is there a second? >> I second that motion. >> Any further discussion?
All those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Second. Thank you so much for Thank you so much for your help. You're correct. Don, take it away. >> All right. Hello everyone. Um, I am Don.
I don't know how some of you I'm the early childhood special education coordinator here at the department of education and I'm going to be talking today about so what we are including in the department of education to create an add-on endorsement for early childhood
special education so this isformational I do not need an endorsement at the end it is it is >> I like to use the words I discharge I can. That's okay. >> Um, all right. So, an add-on endorsement
in early childhood special education. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of about 14,000 children ages 2 through five who this will impact. And I'm going to start with the why. So the first line that we have, looks like we're already there, is looking at the why because of
our teacher shortages in issue that we have both nationally and also statewide. Nationally, special education as well as elementary education are always found to be in the critical shortage areas. That
pattern also continues statewide. You can actually see on your slide that in the last five years, those two areas have been our highest shortage areas. And so kind of end up with this little perfect storm of special education plus elementary and it equals a big issue in
early childhood special education for these 14,000 children. The data that you have on your slide, you're going to look at those days and say, "Wow, John, this is really old." And it is. And there's a reason for that. The reason for that is because in our collections that we have
for teacher licenses and looking at this information, we used to be able to pull out the ECSE data. We no longer do that. The ECSE data is now clumped into the broader special education data. But what this does do is it does show a pattern
of about a 7 to 9% absence vacancy of early childhood special education teachers. And we believe that that pattern has continued on beyond the years that you see reported here through various mechanisms that we have. So again, just the critical shortage area
and what we're seeing specifically here across our school divisions. I will just anecdotally say this is my number one TA call that I get is physicians asking for help. Go on to the next slide. So the other reason why we want an
add-on endorsement is because our current routes to get a lensure an endorsement in early childhood special education are quite cumbersome. They are lengthy and they are expensive. And in this era of teacher shortages, uh we also talked about pay rates. I sp a few
uh minutes ago or man that many felt like hours ago. But um >> in a good way. In a good way. >> Yes, absolutely. Uh but we talked about the money these teachers have. But basically, it takes at least 27 semester hours in order to get this ECSE
endorsement. And did I mention we're talking 14,000 children? We're not talking 170. A million. 14,000 children and we've made it incredibly difficult in order to get this endorsement. So 27 semester hours a major in early
childhood special education for completing an approved program. All those are at least 27 hours of length. So if we go on to the next slide, what this endorsement will do is it would allow for individuals who have certain endorsements to add this on
through uh a little bit of coursework or meeting certain competencies and that's to be determined and I'm going to talk about how we'll be determining that in a few slides. Uh, but you can see here listed that if you have an endorsement in preK through three or preK through
six, this add-on endorsement will have a pathway so that you can add that on to your lensure. By the way, that really helps with our inclusive efforts as well because we want more dually endorsed teachers that have both the preK3 or preK6 endorsement
special. So, it really helps with that as well as an aside. And then we have special education general curriculum or special education adaptive curriculum. If you have either one of those, we will also create a pathway to add on this endorsement. To me, it's always seemed a
little unusual that we can have a special ed teacher, but yet there's not an easy pathway for them to now teach children who are birth through age five, our two through 5 year olds that are in our school divisions. This add-on endorsement will align with
many endorsements that we already have at the Department of Education. We have had for many years an add-on endorsement in early childhood. So, if I'm a specialed teacher, if I'm an ACSSE specialed endorsed teacher, I can add on an endorsement to be an early childhood
teacher, but I don't have the other pathway. So, it'll create that parody. We also have add-on endorsements in special education as well. And so, this will create that parody as well. Next slide. So we have a number of steps that have
already been completed. So starting in the fall of 2025, we took this to the advisory board on teacher education and lensure also called ABTEL and they uh had a full endorsement to move this on
to the board of education. And so then that led us to the board of education and in December we got the approval from the board of education to create a notice of intended regulatory action for the NORA and you will see that in your packet if you want to read that entire
NORA that is in your packet so you can take a look at that. Uh we did have public comment open it closed March 11th so it's no longer open but now that that is closed we'll move on to the next steps with the next slide.
But what we will be doing now is we are going to be convening a work group. So we are working at the DOE. So early childhood is working with lensure. This is a joint effort to create a work group that's going to be made up of a number
of different stakeholders. So we have um child care represented family day homes of course higher ed. you are a higher ed program that has an ECSE program. You will be invited to be part of this workg group. We want a teacher. We would like
a school administrator. Early intervention because this Richard, if you're listening still and taking notes, this does impact early intervention. Um, and Kyla knows that. I've spoken certainly with Kyla, the director of early intervention, a number of times about this. But we are putting
this work group together. Richard's listening. Nice work. I'll report back to Kyla. Um, uh, so we're going to have a group that's going to be created. So, we actually have an application out right
now for anyone interested in joining this workg room. So, we have that application, but we also are looking for a member of join the group as well. So, if you are interested in being that member from this group, if you'll let
I can't see her, but I think I see the hand way down there. If you'll let Chelsea know, Chelsea's email is here if you want to email her, but we do need someone here from this room as well. Um, what we'll be doing as part of the stakeholder group, we're planning on our first meeting being in May. Plan on
wrapping up the work uh by the end of the summer. And what we will be doing is looking at what will those pathways look like for these add-on endorsements. So we'll have to look again at that prek through three and prek through six pathway and we will also have to look at
that special education pathway right because the competencies will be a little bit different as far as what is needed to add on this endorsement. Uh the other thing that's happening is that we have been working with ETSs which is the educational testing services to look at how can we use the practice with this
as well. So that's something else we'll be looking at in this work room. Can we use the practice? Does it align with our competencies and how does that create a pathway to break down some barriers? So that's where we are right now. Um if all goes well, we'll complete this work this summer and we'll take this back to Abtel
and hopefully get their endorsement and then we'll move it back to the board of educ. >> I could just add something that that Don named here. So the the reason that this is an update for for ECAC um is because it is formally going through the sort of
review and approval process with Abtel um and uh as a a lure um initiative and AB Abtel is our advisory board on teaching and lure
>> and teacher education and lensure >> teacher. We will check on that and on here. >> That's what happens when you exclusively speak in acronyms. Um, so it is formally going through the APTEL review process. We're bringing it to you all as an
update for your awareness and uh to you know hopefully get um uh a participant from ECAK to join this workg group. We'll keep you all updated on this and certainly if you have feedback or you know are interested we're we're happy to take that um back to you know the the
workg group efforts. Um but the formal sort of endorsement pathway is is through APTEL before it goes to the board. >> I just wanted to say I think this is really good. You know speaking as someone who is you know elementary and special education general curriculum
endorsed and it definitely helps being in an inclusion classroom. However, you know, we have so many children, you know, now coming in with, you know, so many unique needs. And at my building right now, there are two ECS teachers. And, you know,
you know, depending on their disability category, they could only have, you know, maybe six, you know, let's say if they had an autism diagnosis for that student or eight, you know, if we're looking at developmental delay. So, you know, the more you know, the more ECSE teachers we can get because like I tell
my colleagues each and every day, every classroom is an inclusive classroom. You know, there's no such thing as, you know, this is a gened classroom where you might have some students in there that has got the diagnosis yet. >> So, making this available, I think, will definitely alleviate that sh. Now we're
trying to figure out how can we serve service service all these students you know with only you know maybe two teachers in my building and then having itinerates that have to come in you know to service those other students because those teachers case load is >> in full >> and that's a common issue it's common
issue as as I mentioned my number one TA phone call is from administrators saying I need more ECSE teachers how do I do this my case loads are full this time of year it's it's crisis level right if you're >> this is a program that grows throughout the course of the school year grows by
about 30% your students increased by about 30% and you can't find teachers what do you do and I couldn't agree more this fantastic thing for everything that he said also I think these numbers are less than I think they're more now >> post pandemic
>> agrees um and just with the higher level students being identified um and I think this work is critical for inclusion especially because we're getting when we're opening more and more inclusion classrooms, we're getting teachers who are interested in supporting inclusion
in early childhood, but they don't have the endorsement yet and they don't want to go back and do 27 36 hours. >> They don't do, right? Find out they've already been positioned that they, you know, now they're out of they're out of the endorsement area. So, this pathway
is critical. >> Yeah, thank you for that. I think that's important, too. and they may actually already have a demonstrated track record of scoring high EQ5, right? So, you have a teacher who you know can provide high quality interactions. Of course, we want to as a system make sure that they're prepared to teach students um with
developmental delays or other needs, but it's just it's it's it's so frustrating to the only answer is to go you have to go back spend all this time and all this money even though we know you have the capacity to be very successful in early childhood. Thank you. >> Thank you very much.
>> Jeff, are we back to you? >> Yes, sir. 12 minutes. 12 minutes a topic. I think uh we're good. I want to introduce uh Amy Wrathman. Um since our last meeting, we have hired and are onboarding Amy. She is a quick study. Usually new staff would say it's going
to take you at least 12 months to feel comfortable. Um Amy's feeling comfortable now. thrown her in the deep end and she's swimming uh just wonderfully. So, I just wanted to introduce Amy. You'll see her uh more and more uh kind of coming in.
Just a really great addition to the team. So, we're going to go through these quickly because they're going to be updates. Uh if you have any questions, absolutely please feel free to stop me uh as we go on. So, just a reminder that we've been working on the pre-ervice training. So, this is for new
staff uh in child day centers and in uh subsidy programs, some family day homes have to take 10 hours of pre-ervice. The that's what's currently there. After much talk with uh JARK and provider surveys, we in our own assessment, we
knew we needed to update this. So, we're really really doing very well with updating this and we're breaking it out and making it more content specific to the type of care that you're offering in terms of are you center-based? Are you homebased? If you're center-based, do
you mostly do uh young children, you know, birth to five, or are you doing school aids? Because we really hear, and we've talked about this a lot, especially in summer programs, hiring college kids and uh, you know, for summer camp or high schoolers. And so we've really wanted to make sure our
training is geared for that. Next please. So we're excited to say that the core competency that's something that we have to cover because of federal requirements has been done and we had the school age centerbased
pre-ervice is up and running. And so we're really excited. We want to make sure we got that. It was the smallest lift with the biggest bang for our buck because we wanted to make sure we had this before people start hiring for summer camps. So, we're excited about that. The course that's going to be
available on the first is going to be the child day center birth to five and the homebased program. So, both of those uh we're planning to release those on May the 1. So until that time,
individuals who are homebased or individuals who are center birth to five will still take the current 10-hour course. So that's an upbeat question on that. >> Question. So the 10-hour course from our
understanding will go away three hours. >> No. So So basically the three-hour is the update. So what's going to happen is if you were to take the core centerbased birth to five centerbased school age and homebased that's going to be about a
10-hour program. You can take all those. But if you are just working in the center and school age you're just going to take the core competency and the school age and that's going to be closer to probably six hours. If you take the core
and the birth to five, well, that's a little bit more of a lift. That might be a seven hours total competency that you have to do with that. Okay, great. Thank you all for your support on that one. So, let's talk about some more kind of health related
things and that's stock at the network. We've talked a lot about the code section that went into effect in 2023 requiring and that was tweaked to require license and subsidy centers must implement policies for the possession and administration of appropriate weight
based epinephrine to be administered to any child believed to be having antifalactic reaction. that centers and subsidized licensed and subsidized centers and for family day homes licensed subsidy family day homes have to have training available for the for
the administration you don't have to have it but you got to be able to you got to be able to administer it if you are to get it right so that's kind of where we landed after OA a consultation and back and forth
next slide please so we actually wrote wrote off this, you know, we had the NORA, we started implementing this and part of the pro or we put this into the regulatory process and so we had a public comment uh for the four proposed
amendments that ended on December 17th. Part of the fasttrack is in the public comment if you receive enough comments against it, we have to stop the fasttrack process. So basically on
number two, we received a sufficient number of objections for all four regulatory actions to halt the fasttrack process. So the commenters urged reconsideration of both the process as well as the impact of the proposed
regulations. most specifically cited a lack of specialized training to administer medication as well as an increased financial and liability burden to in the absence of sufficient supports. So in summary, this is going to cost a
lot of money. There's not a lot of support for this and we actually heard of insurance companies saying if you administer this, we're not going to cover it. So we got a lot of feedback. So where we are now is the next steps. The department will withdraw the
fasttrack at the April board meeting after you endorse us moving forward with this process. Got a little bit of an endorsement here. Just kind of a blessing. I mean, technically this is we have to go through with this, but we just want to kind of make sure y'all are on board with this. Then we will pursue
the standard threephase regulatory process. So, we'll do a new Nora and that process will provide greater input into what we do, how we do it and then the information will be shared via legislative update webinars, seminars
and readiness connection that we have stopped the process for the fasttracks and we're moving forward with a new one. So that's a lot. What questions might you have? Would would the new um
think nasal spray would that change that? Would that change this possibly? So there's no longer an injection, but >> yeah, what I I'm I'm leerary to say yes or no. Partly because a lot of this is just code driven. >> Um and so that's kind of where we kept
running into the difficulties. We heard all of these the whole the whole you know the whole process we're hearing this is hard this is money this is liability the process is the is that we were forced to do it because of the the code section honestly we're we were
expecting possibly some changes that were going to be introduced this general assembly looking back this kind of came to a head kind of at the end or right before the general assembly and so there was everybody's docket was
Um it would be surprising if we don't see some more but again going back to this is so coddriven we don't have a lot of pro processes to use except for going through the full nora process um gives us the ability to hopefully come up with
something even better than what we appro proposed in the fasttrack. It's a good question though because I think the nasal spray just for anybody is easier to administer than an injection, but it is more expensive and less likely to be covered by insurance. And so that's the cost issue.
>> Does it have the same shelf life? >> I don't know. That's a good qu. I think probably similar, but I don't know. >> How does it work in terms of the twoe classifications for babies versus foury olds? Would you still have to have that three weight >> threeeight classifications? >> Yeah, I think it's similar as well. like
it's yeah there there's different doses for but they're like weight classifications that are pretty broad. So >> so just one point of clarification undesated is not going to be covered by insurance. That's where the real cost of this is
kind of going to be seen by providers. Um, so they're going to say, "I have the ability to give this. There is no insurance." Then you're going to pay whatever, you know, the higher rate, uh, is part of the concern with the cost because in some instances, it's going to be $1,000 you're going to have to shovel
out every single year because you're going to have to throw those three away because the shelf life is gone and get three. just to Jeff said this but I just want to emphasize the point that being move forward on fast track public
comment was this is really difficult to do this is really expensive which would lead one to believe that folks were unaware that this had been a law passed by our general assembly. So,
so, so like to be very clear the the the the we are not able to change the underlying requirement and the requirement is if you look at the current language is that um that every center for every age for every moment
needs to have you know stock epinephrine that's not covered by anybody's insurance available there and I think that the only thing that this uh the reason We wanted to update everyone that is, you know, if some of the the concern included in that public comment, we
wanted you to be aware of that because that would suggest concern with the underlying law. Um, which we will, you know, we will move forward on trying to kind of come up with the best possible way to interpret and implement that law. But I, you know, as as you're s you're
thinking about impact, I don't want anybody to walk away being like, oh, like you know, we can you can can can significantly reduce that requirement. We do not no superintendent, no assistant superintendent, no deputy superintendent can overwrite code,
right? Code code trumps regulation. >> And it's worth noting that there's procedures in place currently for centers to stock epinephrine. It's called a prescription. Parents get a prescri I have EpiPens at my schools all
the time, but they're child specific um based on a prescription that the parent provides to me a lot of times. And I think do you still when you get a they still come double in that? >> One for home, one for school. Pretty standard. >> So, >> or one for a second dose. You have to
have two boxes. You have to have one box for home, one for school, and then but each box has two doses because you can repeat it after 15 minutes if they're still having symptoms. Yeah. >> So, no, EpiPens is not new to us. It's just
the idea of a generic EpiPen sitting in our first aid kits for the what if that scares insurance companies as well as me. So, one quick little thing just um if there are some child care providers that actually can have it because they might
be associated with the school or something along those things, we can do an allowable variance in those situations. So, we have a way to make sure that the regulations handle those situations. The nuance to this is the requirement to have it and then you know
requirements because the training to administer an epipen is entirely different in how to administer an undesated epinephrine because you have to do a diagnosis and that's where the insurance companies are like whoa we have people making these diagnosis for antifactic shock
that's just and the last thing you want to do is give an especially infant an injection when they're not wrap out some some of the concerns there endorse the change. >> We we don't really need it. >> Yeah, I think I would say does anyone have concerns with the team moving
forward with withdrawing the fasttrack regulation from the from the board? Okay, >> great. Perfect. >> We'll call that. >> Yeah, sounds good. Thank you. >> Great. Um, so real quick, if you were on the CDC work group or worked on the CDC proposed regs in any way, please raise
your hand. So we will all say, "Thank you, God. We are almost there." >> Started that. >> No, we started that in 2021. >> We started 21. All right. So where are we? So public comment ended on January
30th. >> We received 135 comments, many of those. and we're going to be setting up a meeting amongst my team to review those. Um, you know, hopefully the and Jessica not there really isn't any surprises.
No. And part of that was because of the great work we did as part of the NOR to get it up front. We got public comment. You know, we've been working on those. So, what we will do as a uh DE team is kind of work through that. We're going to, you know, review them. We'll do any
recommended changes. Uh, and then we will bring this to you in May. That's how close we are. We're going to bring it to you in May. Uh, once you endorse it, and we're going to be positive that you don't want any changes. Once you endorse it, then we're going to be taking it to the board in June for a
first review. Most likely the board will want to see it a second time. July is June. August August. >> Assuming they like it and they better or we're like going to pick it ourselves outside and do our own public vomit. Um
then it'll go on for the governor to review approved and so you know Lord willing in the creek don't rise maybe sometime first of the year I hate to say that out loud but I'm going to confess it you know June I mean January we might
have some new rents. So there's lots of there's lots of variables in that. I don't want to belittle it. There's lots of variables but we're going to talk positively about it. Um any questions? Any questions about that? So be ready at the next meeting because
if you thought the VQB5 session was heavy, we're gonna Yeah, we're going to really get into it. We have preemptively extended that meeting and in case anybody noticed it was it's from 12 to 4. >> So an update on just so folks know uh we
have four new board members who were formerly announced publicly announced yesterday. So we have Beth Reinhardt who is the chamber the head of the chamber of commerce in Bristol uh uh very involved in Southwest Virginia was on the board of the early childhood
foundation. We have Kim Bridges who is a professor at VCU uh here in Richmond. We have Bill Robinson who is out of DBA and supporting school improvement. And we have Jamal Wilson who was probably on the board when we brought these first. So it's, you know, by the time we get
back, she'll maybe remember when we brought these uh many many moons ago. Um but they will uh they will they were they'll they just were sworn in. Um uh some will be able to attend uh next week, but everybody will be there by April.
>> So unofficial motion when the CDC regs go through that EAC will request the board throw us a party. >> Second. Great. Uh any questions, concerns on the post use? Next, please.
So, this is the next albatross uh replacing our dolphin licensing system. Uh we are excited about the fact that we are we are seeing movement. So what will happen in the next couple of weeks is uh a team of DOE staff from our IT and
business uh we will be reviewing proposals uh and demonstrations probably midappril. After that we do hope that we will go into what we're considering a negotiation process uh for potentially two vendors. Um so this will replace the
20-year-old system. Um we are you know once it's selected we will share a time frame and an expected launch date. Um what I really want to emphasize about this is this isn't just a system to help BOE. We are really hoping to design a
system that helps providers. A system that makes it easier for us to get documentation. A system that will give providers reminders when things are about to expire. We don't want you as a director spending all your time administering the program. We want you
working with your staff. We want you working with children. So, anything we can do to help you do that one saves time. We want to be preventative when it comes to violations. How do we do that? You get a reminder that your health inspection is due because you forgot
that you did it in July, not in January. Um, so we're really really pushing that. you know, we're doing um a system that we can look at those documents offsite instead of coming on site and asking you to show us this documentation when you come up for renewal and not re-entering
all your information for a 10th time because you've renewed 10 times, but it's like you verifying every nothing has changed, what has changed and just paying a renewal fee versus spending three hours just finding all the documentation. So, we're really excited about where this goes uh in the future.
So, um, we'll just keep you updated as we go along. Um, and probably we'll solicit some of your help when it comes time to do some reviewing the training because we want to train providers and how to use this system better. So, we'll probably be using some of your expertise to do that.
>> And I imagine similar to what we did with attendance tracking that we'll bring back to this body some of those screenshots kind of give you a sense of this. Um, uh, so again, just kind of updates along the way. Uh, I think this is a nice opportunity just to to take a
pause as as as Jeff talks about. I mean, this will ultimately I think make things much better for for us for providers. I think it will enable us to keep kids safer and enable us to really think through how do we uh minimize the
regulations that are not keeping kids safe, right? And really focus on the things that put kids most in harm's way. Um, and and and and be able to be more transparent with that data for everybody. So that again, our goal is partnership with providers to keep all
of our kids healthy and safe. I do want to though humbly acknowledge and I'm looking at uh I see Cheryl's name Cecilia for all of the providers in the room uh to the public comment at the beginning about the challenges around VA connects like big tech rollouts are just
really hard and so you know and I know that um you we have we have systematically you know through lots of sweat and tears kind of modernized many of our systems. I know that those are hard on the field
whe that's the role the sort of the the implementation year-over-year of link5 the sort of upgrade to VA connects the implementation of task in December I think as a team we have really worked to get better at kind of managing those
uh implementations supporting you as I look at Jessica and Alex and Becca and everybody supported around Cass you know but it's hard it's just hard right and we're talking about uh 5 to 6,000 users. Um and uh when we talk about I mean you
know via connects is 80,000 users right it was just you know and we know it was really bumpy I know tier work very closely with uh Aaron and the Chris and the team around that painoint that I know already regions were on the front line of and so I want you to know that
um you know separate from some of the the the the jokes in this meeting that we do take seriously our goal to kind of get technology implemented on time in a way that makes things better. I also just want to acknowledge that we it's just hard, right? And it and this will this will be
hard, right? This will be a big shift. Um but I think if we can get through it and get through it together, um that it ultimately will mean less time, more efficient visits, less repetition, less sort of busy work around the lensure and
more transparency on the data. But I I I know if if some of you are a little skeptical, that's completely understandable because from, you know, August to December, we're like, and here's our new technology, and you just watch the circle spin and spin and spin and spin or this actually just the
navigation. So, uh, you know, we I I just I I would never get in front of you and say, I promise you a smooth implementation. And I've been working at the state government too darn long to know that. But just know that we do take very seriously our responsiveness of getting it better week by week. And I
think if you look at VA Connects and you look at past, there's at least a track record there. And I think we're trying to take lessons learned from VA Connects and past. And I know that Beck and Jeff talk frequently about how do we make it just a little bit better recognizing just the broad broad scope that the licensing system will will have and the
impact We are nine minutes over. Thank you everybody for your patience. Um I believe we need a formal >> Is there a motion to ignore today's meeting? >> Second. >> In favor, please say I.
>> Thank you everyone for the participation. Thank you everybody. They're giant. >> You were like We can align.