Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Budget Work Session, Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Date: Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 4h 10m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2tBm9uIIDg
Official School Board page (FCPS): https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/leadership/school-board

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-11-04. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:20] me to death. Apparently it can cause permanent kidney damage. Mine are fine, but yeah. Ridiculous. It's a little bit after 11, so let's go ahead and get started. Mr. Frisch, Ms. Derenak-Koufax, and Ms. Amache have submitted written requests to virtually attend today's

[00:00:53] meeting due to personal conflicts. I will call for a vote from those board members who are in person today all those in favor of approving these requests. Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Seismar-Heiser, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Keese-Gamara, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Bukarski, Ms. Marin, Dr. Anderson, and Laura-Jane Cohen. Thank you. That motion passes. I would also like to note that we have

[00:01:27] an honorable guest with us today, the Honorable Ilwong Moon is in the audience to hear about our FY24 budget. Thank you for being here. I would like to remind board members that we have two hours this morning to work on the FY24 budget information and then we'll have a lunch break and then we have additional time in the afternoon before we have our calendar discussion. I want to also remind board members that this work session we are primarily focusing on the required adjustments to the budget that would

[00:02:07] include the enrollment information, multi-year investments, and identified investments. We will have another work session on the 24th of January where we will focus on compensation. We've set that one aside since there's a lot of information around that. So questions today should concentrate on those other three areas i want to thank our budget staff who are here today and dr reed for the work that they have done to put this proposed budget together as we discussed at our board meeting um they did a

[00:02:42] pretty good job of matching our requests from the october work session and from the motion that we presented to the board in november so with that let me turn it over to our budget staff for a

[00:02:55] presentation. Megan, do you have a question? I do. Dr. Reid, frequently when we get, especially our budget presentations, there is a lot of information. It goes extremely fast. We end up either being speed dictation experts and it's difficult for the board and the public to get the actual details down. And we then frequently ask during questions if we can please get the talking points. So in advance

[00:03:28] of me preparing for what may be another speed riding can we please get the the talking points document so that we can follow along and have that for reference yes ma'am thank you yes thank you and both the seismor heiser and and I had emails with dr. Reed this weekend discussing that so thank you miss McLaughlin with that I will turn it over to our budget staff good morning

[00:04:04] everyone. And before I turn things over to Ms. Burden and the budget team, I know that the board had an opportunity to thank a lot of folks at Thursday's presentation, but I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Toland and Ms. Pekarski for their partnership and collaboration and working with the budget team with Dr. Reed's budget. And I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Lee Burden and then our executive director for budget, Alice Wigington, and our assistant budget director, Matthew Norton for their work with the budget. Accolades were going around the table the other night and I had to sit quietly, but I have the microphone now and I get to say thank you

[00:04:43] for all the work that you've done to pull this budget together and to then thank Dr. Reed publicly as well for coming into an organization and after six months being able to engage with the community, engage with our stakeholders, get a very large and high sense of also engaging with our school board and getting a sense of where we need to go with our current budget and then setting aside dollars to be very forward-thinking.

[00:05:15] And so this is my opportunity. I took advantage of it. And with that, I'm going to turn things over to Ms. Burton. Thank you, Marty. We thought at first we would just do a little brief overview of where the superintendent's proposed budget puts us. You know, you all know on the first chart that the code requirement is that the superintendent, with the approval of the school board, prepare a budget based on the needs for the upcoming school year. Basically, we are asking for the county for $159.6 million. Recall that at the

[00:05:55] fiscal forecast our request was about 178 million so we're just talking about the increase yeah it's the increase um and so now that that request is at 159.6 also at the fiscal forecast which is typically the lowest number of revenue that the county assumes um at that point their revenue

[00:06:32] projections were showing that we would receive about 139 million so that number should come up It may not. It could go down. Only time will tell. But for now, there's about a $20 million gap from the recent conveyance from the county as far as what our funding levels would be.

[00:06:53] Again, compensation, we're going to go over on January 24th, the work session topic. There will be salaries and benefits. But just as a refresher, the state included a 5% salary increase in the fiscal 24 budget as well.

[00:07:08] And we are meeting that requirement with a 3% MSA, which, remember, MSA is applied to the scales, and STEPS, which average 2.22%, and that is movement on the scale. So you really don't see that. In addition to that, the state included a 1% retention bonus, which is for employees that were with us in fiscal 23 and continue with us in fiscal 24.

[00:07:36] That's a retention bonus. We've also included a step extension for all scales at the top of the scale. Recall that we did that in this current year's budget as well. Our scales are very short relative to other divisions, and so we've included that.

[00:07:55] Teacher leadership stipends at the elementary school, that will provide funding for teacher leadership stipends similar to how they're allocated at middle school and high schools. We've extended the contract of high school counselors from 204 to 219 days.

[00:08:13] We're including a full-time family liaison at Title I schools. Notice that there's no dollar amount there, so you may recall that we doubled the family liaison funding in fiscal 22 with ESSER funds and then built that into the base in fiscal 23, the current year.

[00:08:33] And that $6.6 million is believed to be able to cover this first section of schools that will have a full-time family liaison instead of just hourly money. There are some benefit rate changes.

[00:08:50] Of course, you know that we moved to Cigna on January 1. In addition to that, the ERFC rate went down, contribution rate for the employers went down. The FCERS, or the county, went up slightly, and VRS stayed the same.

[00:09:09] So we actually see a net negative $0.2 million for that. And then, of course, we have base savings. And it's important to keep mentioning that the special education teacher extended day will be funded for a third year out of ESSER, and that repurposing of funds in ESSER will come to you all at a later date.

[00:09:31] As far as required adjustments, enrollment growth, we are going to go over in great detail in just a minute. The contractual are things like utilities, you know, major IT projects, licenses, software licenses, facilities that has some cost escalation, and then some inflation.

[00:09:55] Recurring baseline adjustments are IDEA, Perkins, and ESSER adjustments, and those are largely grant funds that we have to get into the budget. So we have the revenue from the grant, and we also have to have the expenditure item. So that's an increase, but we have revenue to offset it.

[00:10:12] And then transfer to other funds, which is the construction equipment transfer, which is reliant on the CIP, and then a small increase to adult ed or ACE. The multi-year investments, you should be all familiar with.

[00:10:28] The JET initiative is in its year two, and the $3.2 million will cover five positions and stipends, and $1.7 million of that is the local share of future electric buses.

[00:10:46] So that's the majority of that. The HR Infrastructure Technology Project is also in year two. There are additional costs for that, but they're one time, and we'll include that at year end. The HR system is at its end of life. It was initiated in 1999, especially at compensatory services fund Recall that at mid-year we established that fund with 1.6 million in additional revenue received This will add 2 million more to that fund to be able to address compensatory services

[00:11:22] Advanced academics year 3 this is the final year of that and it totals 1.6 million it provides 14.5 positions 10 and a half at the elementary school which will is 21 elementary schools and then four positions at the middle school which will support eight middle schools a half position at each and then the innovation project at lewis high school which provides funding for specialized programming that the last year of that is also included at a half a million as far as the identified investments there's the equitable access to literacy plan that will

[00:11:59] support the science of reading with basal resources for students we do have a textbook fund and other basal resources and this is in addition to that achievement gap closing strategies this is funding to support closing the achievement gap for all students we have a little bit of funds for cyber security to continue that work early childhood expansion which is resources to accommodate 10 additional preschool classrooms or 180 students employee background checks and that's another initiative that you all are are well aware of middle school athletics which will

[00:12:37] provide funding to support cross-country and track at middle schools fcps lighthouse schools pilot which will provide leadership coaching teacher pd those sorts of things for the effective use of technology we'll start out with somewhere between three to five schools as our pilot and then safety and security is five positions at the elementary schools the enrollment request is a pretty big request at 65 million and so we thought we would unpack

[00:13:09] that a bit for you here today going over general education ESOL's projections for for students special ed the impact of free and reduced students on classroom teachers and just unpack that a bit for you all and I'm going to turn it over to Matthew Norton who pretty much lives and breathes staffing and enrollment and has done so for over a decade now so he is he is the best person to provide this enrollment information for you all so I'm going to turn it over to Matthew all right thank you so much Lee and good morning school

[00:13:46] board members we did think it was very important to provide some context around enrollment and student need growth and so we wanted to take that time today to do that before I dive into the details I do want to thank rich polio from instructional services and Brian Schuster from facilities and planning for their help in getting us prepared to provide you all with this information okay so we wanted to start off with the big picture first as you can see from the line chart here enrollment trends we were hovering around 190,000 students

[00:14:26] or just under in the years leading up to the pandemic you can see that when the pandemic hit in FY 21 or shortly before FY 21 our student enrollment dropped off quite a bit that's the red X is lower on the chart it's important to remember remember that we held harmless school staffing by keeping projected enrollment high for the first two years of the pandemic. And so we kept that blue line along the top higher than actual student enrollment was as a hold harmless of staffing. In FY23, we sort of came to the

[00:15:02] realization that this was going to be a prolonged retraction of enrollment and reduced enrollment to a projection of 177,570 students. As you can see, that was a bit of an overcorrection because current enrollment is hovering a little bit around 180,000.

[00:15:18] So it is important to remember going into FY24 that we did take a pretty large reduction in enrollment, which is also a reduction in staffing and costs in the budget, okay? But it was a slight overcorrection. We do have a projected increase going into FY24 and that cost of 65.2 million is what we're going to be kind of delving into today.

[00:15:40] What we wanted to do was kind of provide the last two years of enrollment changes to kind of talk about some differences between the two things because they might be surprising if you don't actually unpack them. One thing I want to point out is that these two years are the largest changes in the cost of enrollment and student need adjustments, certainly in the last 20 years, and I think probably in the history of FCPS.

[00:16:06] However, the change is different in each of the years for very different reasons. In FY23, we had a savings of $88 million, and 75% of that savings, or $68 million, was due to the raw student number change, the decrease of 11,229 students.

[00:16:26] The other 25% was student need-based. Now, if you compare that to FY24, we have a $65 million increase in the budget, But 75% of that increase is related to student needs, while only 25% of the increase is related to the projected 2,400 additional students.

[00:16:46] And so you can see there's kind of a, you know, a very big difference in why these costs were changing in each of these two years. So what we wanted to take some time to do today is go through each of those areas of student need and talk about what is happening and why there's a difference in the two years and where we're headed in FY24.

[00:17:06] So I'll start off with needs-based staffing or what we use, free and reduced price meals eligibility rates to determine additional staffing for schools. And as you can see from the chart, we did not have any impact as a result of FRM changes in FY23.

[00:17:26] As you may know, USDA had suspended reporting of FRM rates. And so as a result, we weren't actually making any technical FRM rates to school needs-based staffing. And so they had been held level for a number of years throughout the pandemic.

[00:17:45] Well, USDA has since stopped that, restarted that practice of reporting rates by school. And so we are really picking up three years' worth of rate changes in FY24 that would have otherwise been more gradual over the last three years. And that's at a cost of $9.8 million.

[00:18:02] There are some interesting facts here on the screen. that I'll actually delve a little bit deeper into when we get to one of the future slides, but I will highlight that our average FRM rate increased 3.3 percentage points, and you'll see that on the next slide. So we're going to revisit this enrollment line chart kind of throughout the presentation a few times.

[00:18:22] On this particular slide, we are juxtaposing overall enrollment, which is the blue line with a dotted line that represents FRM students, or students eligible for free and reduced price meals, sorry. what you can see here is that our rate our frm rate has actually increased every year since fy 2019 however the actual raw number of students has not increased in every single one of those years now in the years where school rates were not being adjusted for needs-based staffing we were still

[00:18:56] estimating what we thought our overall population would be you can see that going from fy 23 to fy 24 we have a sharp increase in the dotted line what that represents is not only an increase in the number of students eligible for free and reduced price meals that's greater than our actual overall increase in enrollment but it's also driving up the percentage of our students that are eligible as a whole putting us close to 35 percent of our students eligible for free and reduced price meals just to note the size of our frm population is significantly larger than the average school

[00:19:36] division across the united states by tens of thousands of students and to to bring things a little bit closer to home the size of our frm population is almost as large as the entirety of virginia beach city schools so just to put that in kind of a magnitude for you so what does it mean when uh frm rates change well from a staffing perspective we incorporate as part of our teacher allocations primarily additional resources to schools as they have a higher frm rate that starts

[00:20:12] when a school at the elementary level reaches 20 frm and it starts at a middle and high school when that rate reaches 25 what you can see from the two charts on the screen is that we have a kind of shift down both of these charts as frm rates are increasing and so if you notice the negative eight in the very first line of the elementary chart and the negative one in the very first line of the middle and high school chart what that means is we have a net of nine fewer schools that are not eligible for needs-based staffing and are sorry that are now eligible

[00:20:46] for needs-based staffing so we have nine newly eligible frm staffing schools which is going to obviously require additional resources and then if you kind of look down the chart to the very bottom you'll see that our highest frm band which is when a elementary school reaches 70 percent or more or when a middle or high school reaches 60 percent or more we also have increases at that highest frm band okay and so basically this movement of schools down these two charts is driving resources to schools that are shifting between those frm bands next we're going to move

[00:21:25] on to english for speakers of other languages staffing again in fy 23 we did have a reduction of 4.4 million resulting from a projection of approximately 23 fewer 2300 fewer students the other bullet there you can see we did not really have much in the way of a shift between the levels of ell service being provided and so that 4.4 million was largely being driven by the reduction of 2300 students and fy 24 kind of like uh our overall enrollment uh change being you know

[00:21:59] focused on need even within the esol staffing area we have increased needs and so you can see that there's a 17 million dollar cost two-thirds of that cost is driven by increased need as opposed to the raw number of students and so that 33.6 percent increase which we'll look at in more detail on a future slide is what's driving some of the higher dollar impact of this portion of the cost of growth i'd also like to point out that that is happening at the middle school and high school level more than at the elementary level although it is also happening at elementary and

[00:22:39] we'll take a look at that as well again we'll revisit the line chart just to kind of juxtapose ESOL staffing in the dotted line now recall it was FRM before now it's ESOL as compared to overall enrollment you can see here that it's not quite as significant a change as the FRM line was but it is still growing faster than our overall enrollment and therefore pushing us into slightly over 20% of our students predicted to be receiving ESOL services next year. So this is quite a busy

[00:23:15] chart and I apologize for that, but I do think there's a couple of key things that you can take away from how the projections are changing by level, not only EL level, but also by school level, elementary, middle, high school, and then a small amount of itinerant. I pointed out previously that approximately 36 percent of our increase is at level one and you can see that kind of down here on the bottom of the chart if you look up that same row or column sorry you'll see that we have

[00:23:52] increases at the middle and high school level of 56 percent and 64 percent so we are talking about a very very large shift in the makeup of services when you consider levels one two three and four and obviously level one being the highest need area we're pushing more resources in when we have more students that have that level of service the other thing that's a little bit interesting to point out is that those large increases in level one and to a lesser extent level two are being

[00:24:25] partially offset although very minorly by decreases in levels three four and kindergarten which again bottom of the chart here you can see certainly there are other things that we could unpack on this chart but those are sort of the major takeaways that i thought would be helpful to point out today as we sort of unpack this entire thing so one question you may be asking is well why is why is this shift occurring or why are these changes happening and so we wanted to sort of provide some of the ideas not just ideas but some of the realities behind that a couple of

[00:25:03] those things are the weta testing was optional in the spring of 2021 2021 and so more students would have um potentially not been tested because of that option optionality and that may have meant that more students than usual remained at their same el level for a longer period of time than they otherwise would have quite frankly speaking there was also a lack of opportunity for english language engagement throughout the pandemic and that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone but i think

[00:25:37] it needs to be stated um and then the last thing that i'll say that is actually not on on the chart but obviously you know with changes happening with regard to border policy and migration those things obviously would all be affecting us so obviously the border was quite locked down during the pandemic and there has been some loosening since then which obviously is contributing towards additional students the chart i just want to briefly discuss really quickly you can see that pre-pandemic we had sort of what i would call i don't know if this is enough data to call a baseline

[00:26:15] but we were hovering around 15 percent of students attaining English language proficiency prior to the pandemic. One thing I do want to warn everyone of is not to assume that that number should be anywhere near 100 percent. I think oftentimes when you talk percentages people think that you know if you're you know not close to 100 percent then you're not somehow doing the right thing. We would never, I don't believe, expect to be close to 100 percent in any given year because we're talking about our population of levels one through four students and it would be

[00:26:47] i think quite unusual to see you know a close to 100 proficiency after one year um but so this 15 percentage point sort of baseline if you will uh has been followed by a seven percent and then a 12 in these last two years fy 22 and fy 23. um and so what that means is that you know running those percentages we have roughly 2500 to 3000 students who given no pandemic may have otherwise attained

[00:27:23] english language proficiency is kind of the estimate again this is a bit of a loose number i would say but it is our estimate as far as the what those two percentages mean in terms of the raw number of students finally i'll i'll move on to the last area of our three areas of staffing with with regard to need and that is special education from a budgetary perspective this is actually sort of the the easiest one to sort of unpack and discuss you can see that in the last two years we had sort of a projected decline of 1400 followed by a projected increase of 1400 and

[00:28:02] so all things being equal to you would expect those two things to impact each other or have this roughly the same impact well you can see we had a savings of 15 million dollars in the fy 23 budget, but a cost of $22 million in the FY24 budget. And really what's going on there is that we are in need of additional preschool and preschool autism capacity across the county.

[00:28:26] And so the opening of 44 new special education preschool classrooms that's included in the budget is really driving the difference between that savings of $15 million and that cost of $22 million. It's about a $7 million cost. And again, without that additional preschool capacity that's being built in and in as necessary, you know, the last two years would have basically offset each other and been a wash. Okay, so again, from a budgetary perspective, much easier to explain what's going on there. I will, however, go ahead and revisit this line chart, you know, that should

[00:28:59] be familiar at this point. You'll see that the dotted line now represents special education. You'll see that it's a much more mild adjustment year over year compared to FRM and English for speakers of the languages services. But nonetheless, we did want to go ahead and show it, you know, to kind of complete the three if you will. Finally, hopefully this chart on the screen is something that's familiar to you all. It is something we include in all of our budget books each year. This details

[00:29:34] school position growth as a result of everything that we've just gone over. It details the positions that are being added at by school level, the caught the overall cost. You'll see that 65.2 million is the same exact cost we talked about at the very beginning of this piece of the presentation um and uh you can see that we have it broken out by uh the the four areas although one of them is co-mingled so the 25.9 million on the chart here is actually the combination of the needs based uh and the overall enrollment increase and the reason for that is that those two formulas are sort of

[00:30:10] intertwined with each other in the way that they work and so you know we've just they're just combined here although we can tease them apart it gets more and more difficult the more granularity you want to have so this is the chart we normally include in the budget book and again it should look familiar and i just want to remind everyone that the change this year is very different than the change was last year it's largely being driven by student need and again 75 of that 65 million is student need based whereas it was kind of the exact opposite last year so i'm going to turn things back over to lee to close out the rest of the presentation there's a few procedural items

[00:30:48] she wants to go over and then we look forward to hearing your discussion and being available to answer your questions yeah I just wanted to touch on the budget question process you all know how we love budget questions so if you want to put forth a budget question you can just go to the budget question google doc we've also opened that up for your all's aides so if you want you know you can have them put your questions in for you if you don't want to do it and you know if you need help with language or what you're trying to get at you know feel free to just send me an email and I'll

[00:31:26] help you with that. You also need to identify what priority it is if you want something done quickly for an upcoming vote. So in the next chart shows what it looks like just so you're familiar with it and then we have the budget development calendar which identifies you know all the major happenings over the next couple of months and again we will have our next work session on January 24th at that time we'll go over salaries and benefits. We have public we have a public hearing on the 23rd I

[00:32:03] believe and then of course we have other another public hearing and work sessions as we get closer to the end of the process. All right thank you very much. So we already have a number of board members with comments and questions so we will start with dr anderson followed by mr frisch all right thank you i did not know i'd be first on this one um but here we go first of all thank

[00:32:37] you for all of this information i'd like to go back to the slides that you raise on frm and esol that information i thought was very important to kind of show the needs of the division um just kind of to tie this up very loose very tightly just to oversimplify what is complex pretty much the increase in this area is pretty much because our kids have more language needs and increased poverty so we need more staff so it's all staff is any of it materials is any of it anything else besides personnel a

[00:33:12] little bit is materials we do give per pupil allocations to schools as well as we budget for substitutes based on the number of staff we have and of course this is showing you know 679 new positions to deal with enrollment and 184 of those are teachers and so we build in some sub money so that line that's right at the bottom of the first section substitutes and logistics of 1 million that is the non staffing piece of all this okay here's gonna be an

[00:33:51] unpopular question when you shared the enrollment adjust the enrollment chart I don't a few I don't have the page numbers it seems as if that we have fewer students now than we did in FY 22 yet we are requesting an additional $139 I know I'm $139 I can give that we just write you a check really quickly I'll Venmo you 139 million dollars. Obviously we have people from the community who feel like every year

[00:34:26] here we are with our handout yet again. Where are we cinching our belts? And I know one of the things that I've talked about and others have as well when we had our conversation back in October, November, I can't recall the date exactly, is where are we making some decisions in terms of some things that we're not going to be doing anymore that we are going to repurpose and reallocate those funds. I would love to hear what that conversation was like amongst staff.

[00:34:54] Well, generally, the departments go ahead and do that, you know, when they're developing their baseline. Like if they have something that they want to fund, you know, they may request that as a new resource, which then has another level of review, or they may look at their current budget and figure out what they want to stop doing so that they can do this new initiative.

[00:35:16] but that is built into that that is part of the baseline development so it's not there's not been a system-wide look at repurposing it's done at each department level and I think that's a piece that's important Dr. Reed we need to have that conversation because people think we're just coming with our hands out every week every year and when we don't engage in that part of the conversation it looks like that so I would want to have the information in terms of within each of these departments? What did they decide? You know what? This doesn't serve us anymore. We're going to repurpose. We're going to do something differently because we need to justify the

[00:35:52] increase of funds. You did a nice job of sharing that our school's a poorer. You did a great job of sharing that our students have greater needs in terms of language, which require more staffing, but we still need that other piece because it doesn't seem to ring as impactful as I think we would like. Do you think that's a possibility for us to engage in that part of the conversation?

[00:36:18] I believe that as Ms. Burden shared, the departments have engaged in that. I think what we need to do a better job is capturing the results of their engagement because the departments were asked to engage in that exercise. Okay, if that could be more transparent and shared with the board, I think it will go a long way in terms of gathering community support around what we need to do.

[00:36:41] You talked about the rate changes. You were speaking about the FRM. I got a little bit confused there. What rate changes were you referring to? you said that we have now to pick up the rate changes yes that's correct so what we do on a school-by-school basis is as those frm rates are used in calculating staffing we pick up those changes in normal years obviously because of the pandemic we weren't picking them up for that period of time when usda had suspended reporting and so that's the rate that i'm talking about actually adjusting those rates for all 200 of our schools to reflect that they are greater and

[00:37:19] And therefore, the staffing formulas that then get applied result in additional staffing and so additional costs. You mean the percentage? It's the percent of students in this school. Okay, that's what I was trying to, thank you. And so the state held those flat. So people were not completing documents, so we kind of had no idea.

[00:37:37] We were working on outdated percentages. Okay, thank you. That is very helpful. I think on page 15, is that the super busy slide? I won't have time to get into that. This is a longer question with eight seconds left. Go back, please.

[00:37:56] And if I may, just quickly before the next question, going back to your question of how we look at our budget departmentally, if you look at what we had in the fiscal forecast for literacy, many remember that large, the $30 million, and actually as we were going through the budget process, people had questions about that $30 million, and now they only see 15, are we changing focus?

[00:38:22] Are we as focused? And we are as focused. It's that Dr. Presidio and his team have gone through their existing resources to be able to do a deeper dive of how we can support student needs with a smaller ask. And so that's an example of how our departments go through their budgets as we think about our asks for the county.

[00:38:46] - Well, I'm very pleased with how you're articulating needs based and making those decisions because that's been a conversation of mine for a while but my time is up thank you mr frisch well it won't let me turn my video on so we can probably figure that out at some point we can hear you the dog is very angry about that um let's see here um let's dive in on uh the slide about the new investments um which i believe is slide seven

[00:39:24] if we could go to that um and obviously thank you everybody for your hard work on this um looking at the equitable access to literacy literacy plan one of the things that's been frustrating is is how long it's taking the virginia department of education to approve materials do we have any updates on when these materials will be available we are still expecting the approved list to come out in the march april time frame okay so no indications of any further

[00:40:02] slowdowns not at this time wonderful okay well fingers crossed um on the achievement gap closing strategies at this point we've seen you know in the improvement plans and how ester dollars are being spent various things that each school is doing to help close gaps i assume hopefully rightly that this funding uh this new money will go towards um reinforcing what's working how are we making that assessment thank you mr fresh it is i'm going to continuing those things that are

[00:40:40] working as well as accelerating our math journey to algebra minimally algebra for our eighth graders as well as a number of other strategies as we complete our strategic plan work it provides some resources to actually implement those theories of action that we determine have the highest likelihood of closing gaps the soonest

[00:41:06] WONDERFUL. I THINK WE SHOULD PROBABLY UNDERSCORE THAT AS WE CONTINUE TALKING ABOUT THE BUDGET, EXACTLY HOW THESE INVESTMENTS ARE GOING TO HELP AND WHAT THEY'RE GOING TO BE TARGETED ON. I THINK PEOPLE WILL BE VERY EXCITED TO HEAR THAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT EARLY MATH, ESPECIALLY. Looking at the early childhood expansion, how are we going to make sure that we do this in an equitable way, so the impact is felt throughout the county in places where it's most needed.

[00:41:33] And obviously this is not enough to solve the problem. Do you envision this being part of a multi year plan? If so, is that something that can be committed to in this budget? So thank you, Mr. Frisch. I do believe the early childhood expansion is part of a multi-year plan.

[00:41:53] Our goal would be by 2030 that minimally 100% of our income-eligible earliest learners would be served. We know that's actually the number one strategy in closing achievement gaps, effectively, and early on. So I do know there's a team. They've put together a white paper.

[00:42:10] we have schools tentatively identified but we felt it might be a good idea to visit with the principals and staff before we announce that and but we definitely have an eye towards placing the new classrooms where we have the highest needs so that would be a seven-year plan can you ballpark the overall cost for seven years to get there seven years seems like a long time it's one dog ear or seven no it's one human for anyhow I what I think is that we're really trying to cobble this together in the least expensive fashion

[00:42:50] possible utilizing existing classroom square feet where we have existing for example playgrounds because we've had programs in some quarters and then moved them and so we have spaces that are more and less conducive to putting early childhood in without extreme cost I don't have a ballpark number for the totality of that as I continue to look at partnerships with the county as well for our SAC classrooms during the day I think we can do this less expensively the better we partner well and as if we don't have a number

[00:43:28] of topics already for work sessions I think this would be a great subject for a post-budget work session about the overall plan of getting from point A to point B and how we're going to do that creatively so that we're not incurring huge costs because I know everybody in the room has schools that would benefit from this. Looking at the employee background checks, you know one thing we've done as a school system is implemented the strongest abuse and neglect reporting policy

[00:44:05] in virginia stronger than even the state requires but we still and we've updated our legislative program asking that the state adopt uh no cost to school systems uh the fbi's rep pack program uh this obviously is not that because it would be significantly more money but how does this fill the void while we continue to advocate at the state level uh so mr frisch this these dollars would fill that gap uh as we work with the virginia state police there is a fee for each background check, and so this expenditure would cover that fee for doing those annual background checks on employees.

[00:44:43] We've had extensive conversations with the Virginia State Police, and they are also very focused on the FBI Rat Back Program. We know that you pointed out that it would be important for that program to be available to school divisions at no cost.

[00:45:02] And at this point, there are also costs associated with the Rat Back program. They're not in a place to talk about those costs, but as they roll this out, we would be engaged with them as we think about costs to the division.

[00:45:19] And not only Fairfax County, but to other divisions across the state. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, I've got Ms. Marin followed by Ms. Karen Corver-Sanders. So thank you for the presentation about need driving the budget versus enrollment.

[00:45:40] That was really helpful, and I will encourage the public to look at that to really understand the status and I would say the crisis that our community is in to have so many thousands of children living in poverty. So yesterday I was talking with a member, and we were talking about the Wizards game, and they were playing the Golden State Warriors.

[00:45:58] Well, if you filled Capital One Arena over three times, that's how many children we have living in poverty. or our GMU stadium, the Eagle Bank Arena, six times to fill that 10,000-seat arena. So I think that this, and this doesn't even include all of our children under the age of five.

[00:46:14] This only includes the students enrolled in FCPS. So I think we need to keep sharing this reality about Fairfax County because what I hear is too many people locally and elsewhere in Virginia thinking that we were as we were five or 20 years ago, and we need to really change that narrative.

[00:46:32] And for whatever reason it is, these children are here, and we have to educate them. And it is poignant to me yesterday for the Martin Luther King Jr. birthday celebrations. I was at Reston Community Center hearing the amazing economist and author Heather McGee, who wrote the book The Sum of Us. And the driving question is, why can't we have nice things?

[00:46:51] And that's what I keep thinking this. Why do we have so many children in poverty? And we're going to do our best to meet their needs and also meet the access needs in the academic needs of our children who have the means, but it's really overwhelming.

[00:47:12] But I think that this budget does an appropriate job of trying to address what we can. So I have a few questions under the identified investments. I'd like to know the specifics of the $15 million investment in the equitable access to literacy program.

[00:47:28] I know it's been talked about generally, but can you talk to us about is it professional development days? Is it more reading specialists? We know we don't have materials yet. And then similarly the specifics of the $6 million for closing the achievement gap. What are we really purchasing with those dollars? Thank you. So I can start with the equitable access to literacy.

[00:47:48] That $15 is primarily earmarked for basal resources which as Mr. Frisch mentioned we're waiting on the state list and after that state list comes through we will go through a committee process and bring our recommendations to the board um based on current pricing we felt like we were going to need to to um to have some additional funds in order to make that happen now of course if we end up with some of the funds not being used for textbooks there are multiple things based on the virginia literacy act such as professional development and um additional reading specialists and things that we can we can look to in the future um and bring back to the

[00:48:25] to the board as options. - So what I'm hearing from the public and from teachers, rather, is that they need more time to, or at least some teachers, I've heard, that teachers would like more time to really hone their expertise in teaching to the science of reading.

[00:48:45] And I know that goes into the calendar, but that is concerning to me that 15 million is just from the resources, including the state, is supposed to be funding some of that. My other question was about the achievement gap closing, the six million. that again? Sure I'm sorry the specifics of the six million dollars for closing the achievement gap what is that purchasing per se? Well it's uh one of the things we need to take a look at is our math trajectory um and we as you know in the recent I don't know if it's a goal three or goal four report we lost ground in our number of eighth graders in algebra so we know coming out of the

[00:49:21] pandemic math is a content area that's been a bit more challenging and we want to make sure as a move that we minimally have students in algebra by eighth grade because we know the benefits of that and we know the office of civil rights tracks that data point so we are going to be utilizing monies in that regard as well as so it may be materials it may be professional development one of the things we know that when a lot of our curriculum is online and students don't have access to wi-fi when they go home it's very difficult to make progress and so six million

[00:49:56] not much in terms of a material purchase but it will allow us I think to purchase some core materials at least to begin to pilot for students who don't otherwise have access at home to work on math. We're also looking at the outcome when the board commits to the strategic plan in May and our five student outcome goals we're going to need some amount of money to resource whatever the plan is moving forward so there's a piece of that that's yet to be determined in the strategic planning outcomes but I would say the bulk of it's going to hit around

[00:50:31] the math instruction K-8. Thank you and I've learned a lot from you you know elevating the need for algebra that trajectory so I think again my overall comment is what I hear from parents and teachers is classes are too big it's hard to offer the instruction at the quality that's needed so while of course we need resources and materials and wi-fi for at home the class size continues to be the challenge and i really would like to see us addressing that more so one of the things that it may not sound like an achievement gap closing strategy but we really are desperately in my opinion overdue for

[00:51:10] some serious conversations around boundaries because as i've been out in our k through eight schools i've been in schools where the class size honestly is quite low and i've been in schools schools where the class size is quite high and it really isn't so much about budget as it is about boundaries in the sense that there are X number of rooms and X number of students and they need to fit in the room.

[00:51:32] So I think we need to couple this conversation around boundaries and we're going to likely need to have some consulting service around that which may fit in this achievement gap closing strategy which wouldn't normally be thought of as an achievement gap closing strategy but in fact it may be one of the most powerful strategies to utilize um anyhow so that's another way of i think looking at class size right now all right ms cover centers followed by ms cohen

[00:52:09] thank you and thank you very much for this presentation especially on the enrollment piece that is something that is new this year and very helpful to better understand and i look forward to other items of the budget being unpacked in a similar manner what i take away from this is that we are fastly becoming an urban district not a suburban district and when you see numbers on free and reduced meals and esol it is quite evident that that's what we are and so i think that there needs to be a communication strategy to really focus on how the county is changing and how it

[00:52:48] has changed over time because to address uh dr anderson's point um i don't or miss marron's point of view i don't believe that most of our community understand the dramatic changes along those lines it would be very helpful to understand which nine schools increased frm um and to what level so that we have a better understanding of that and i would hope that you all could provide that to the board members sooner rather than later.

[00:53:18] We also need to have a heart-to-heart conversation with the Board of Supervisors about how this has changed and why these demands are so critical to addressing and so I would hope that we would have an FRM almost like a heat map that shows that as well as a heat map on our English is the second language, so we know that. And then the third piece is on the conversation around

[00:53:50] pre-K. I am keenly aware that under the state code, we are a K through 12 system. But if we don't invest in pre-K, then we are consistently facing the challenge of catching these kids up. So I would appreciate, Dr. Reed, to have a conversation sooner rather than later with the Board of supervisors on how we can have a shared initiative on achieving the pre-K across the counting.

[00:54:25] So along those lines, if, let me reiterate, we would like to know your heat maps on FRM, on ESOL, and also have a deeper dive on the pre-K. And then finally, I would like to understand a little bit more about how with these higher needs in all of our schools, especially in elementary schools, what are we doing to ensure there's planning time built in to address these needs?

[00:54:55] In terms of planning time, that's a painful topic at elementary, honestly. It came up when I presented the budget last Thursday. And we do have the monitors, I think, currently that are in the budget to support planning time, but I think that's truly a Band-Aid solution.

[00:55:27] We're gonna have to have, I think, a larger group conversation that looks at best research for scheduling within the school day. If we're not gonna look at calendar solutions, we're gonna need to look at scheduling solutions within the school day, and traditionally, specialist schedules have been utilized to support planning time for general education staff in the general classroom, and I think it comes down mathematics right if we don't have enough specialist time for planning for classroom teachers that are not specialists we have to look at what that ratio is and i i think that's going to be a

[00:56:02] deeper conversation we need to have or looking at the calendar in a different way so thank you for raising that but in terms of the budget we're maintaining the monitors i believe mr smith has assured me for that purpose at this time i'm keenly aware of the number of new staff that are recommended especially with the ESOL student needs. Where are you going to find the staff?

[00:56:28] So we just had a conversation today about our current staffing calendar and part of our staffing work is heavily focused on our recruitment efforts and so what we're how we're changing at least our recruitment efforts this year is that we are creating a cadre of principals and and assistant principals to develop hiring teams so that we can always be identifying good staff and always be hiring those staff more of a continuous hiring model versus having a particular window and then once we hit that window

[00:57:07] we won't hire those people until the following year and so that's part of our efforts but we also recognize that it will be very difficult for us to find you know not only the classroom teachers that we're looking for but our ESOL staff and our special education staff. It's an issue. We had a very productive leadership team meeting this morning because we also looked at our engagement survey results, and as we look at those results overall, how people feel about their engagement within the system also impacts their word of mouth to other people that you should come work for Fairfax County Public Schools,

[00:57:43] and that's an area that we also know that we have to address. But our HR team is refocused seen their recruitment efforts but we know that that will be a challenge for us looking for all of these staff members well I'm particularly concerned about the dramatic need in staffing and how we do the outreach and not overburdening our principals to do so and then finally on our teach for tomorrow program and ensuring that it's available at all high schools can someone in the budget staff maybe talk about that heat the heat map idea can we get

[00:58:16] at the data presented in that fashion thank you we will have that thank you Mr. Schuster. And we will also re-release the heat maps that we provided for our pre-K as well.

[00:58:37] Yes, I know we have those. Thank you. Okay, Ms. Cohen followed by Ms. McLaughlin. Well, continuing with that line, you know, when we've had these types of big idea with JET and CIP, we've traditionally have formed like a joint task force with the Board of Supervisors. So since this has been on their budget list for years and years and years and they just need space and we need money and that seems like a good marriage um you know i would recommend that we put together a

[00:59:10] joint task force with the board of supervisors on implementing pre-k i mean skipped yes but skipped has that as one of their many many things that they work to tackle so maybe it's a sub group of skipped but i think that we need a much larger full focus just like we did with jet and CIP that if we know this is the number one way then I'm not sure why we wouldn't you know work really hard to put as many eggs into that basket as possible. On that I would say like being part of the strategic planning community conversations being in the faith group you know

[00:59:48] I think Abra and I both heard faith leader after faith leader saying we had no idea that pre-k was like this big of a deal and here we have you know the one of the pastors sitting next to me said we have 1800 square feet of space and so like you know how could we be helpful in this endeavor and so I wonder if part of it too is partnering with them I recognize the uncomfortable bedfellows that that can make however you know we can be helpful in helping them set what you know goals the kids need before they walk out of that program. You know, how to help them identify

[01:00:24] families who would be best supported and impacted by it. You know, potentially working with the county to do grants for families who can't afford it. You know, I think there's a world of, if we know this is number one, then I guess my argument would be, you know, I would like to see us invest more heavily. And some of that is not just money. I recognize you have a much grander plan, but it's going to take all of us together, certainly. I think, you know, one thing that's frustrating, I will still argue that the staffing formula, in my opinion, especially in special education, is broken. We've had this conversation any number of times. We've had this

[01:01:03] conversation until we turned blue with the state. And so, you know, we know we need, we know the increase in need just continues to go up and up. And so we also know that we're having trouble bringing people in. And so, you know, I still worry when we talk about elementary planning time, we still have SPED teachers who can't eat lunch. You know, we have SPED teachers who have zero planning time because they are pushing in to music or PE or, you know, all like it doesn't exist for them. So talking about increasing it, there's a baseline where it doesn't even exist

[01:01:40] for some of our teachers especially our sped teachers um i'm definitely going to need to go back sorry ms mclaughlin and then karen keys gamara thank you um dr reed i got to tell you uh this budget's going to be a hard one for me uh i'm not going to say i'm the only board member but i distinctly remember saying to the former superintendent that when our enrollment dropped as dramatically as it did while we could have gone one year hold harmless going a second year

[01:02:20] hold harmless and not demonstrating and showing how we could prioritize what our challenges are, which is employee compensation. So we didn't actualize or show how we were going to be more efficient with fewer students. And now we're going to turn around with 27. We're not even going to reach, as Dr. Anderson pointed out, our pre-pandemic numbers, but we've got a $65

[01:02:54] million dollar price tag on there. So if we dropped 11,000, which is the highest number I've ever seen quoted by the school division, by the way, I've never seen 11,000, so that's going to probably take a hit with the public on us. If 2,700, regardless of how we're defining the greater need of that population where was the cost efficiencies on on 11 000 kids fewer um you know

[01:03:28] ms marin talked about the fact that we've got um large class sizes no doubt about it where did we benefit with fewer students to then have smaller classes and respectfully i'm not sure that it's just because our schools are fighting you know bursting at the seams with boundaries i think there's a whole a whole lot to unpack there um but let me first ask this question i would like to see our frm numbers over the last five to seven years um because it's one thing about the percentage

[01:04:07] of our total population that's frm but as we know to leave public school and send your child to a non-public school costs money so is it that our frm numbers have grown exponentially as the total portion of the student population or is that we lost so many non-frm and so the frm became a larger percentage of the total number i think that's going to be important um and i would also like staff to redefine again because ms marron brought this up about poverty as i understand it

[01:04:44] the federal government has definitions of families living below the poverty line and what's poverty but our frm number of 35 roughly that's free and reduced meals so that is not necessarily families you know that are living at you know below poverty line so i think we need to have that definition so that and how that applies to all the wavy schools and across the the the commonwealth of

[01:05:18] virginia so we're just having the terminology be consistent all right thank you i um matthew i think we did have a slide about frm raw numbers and percentages it was on a graph thank you um but to your point uh miss mclaughlin it's not it doesn't separate out free from reduced so it's just free and reduced but it would look like the raw numbers are larger than they were it looks like

[01:05:50] by about 6 000 year over year at least projected but again well i i understand that but then we've got to demonstrate how we're having what is that projection based on i mean correct that's fair point matthew do you have an insight into how we um arrived at that projection i think our actual is currently 56 112 roughly correct or am i is that the budgeted sorry no so all of the numbers on the

[01:06:29] screen are projections so they're all budgeted correct so the the the actual frm numbers this year i don't have it right in front of me but we are pushing towards that 62 000 um so we are actually already sort of well on our way to what next year's projection is would it be possible matthew for the board um and maybe for our next presentation that we have the actuals um i can do something very similar to what i've done on this chart where i have the red x right and sort of where we fell that that's absolutely not a problem thank you i think that would be really helpful

[01:07:04] and then is there a way to um tease out the free versus the reduced or do we keep that as one term or do you know i'm sure the data is available out there it's not something that we typically peel apart we generally do look at free and reduced as kind of a one subset but i'm sure we can get our hands on the data that would be helpful i also think for our community just a reminder and this goes both to ms marin and ms mclaughlin like what does that mean what is the income threshold for a family of four in fairfax county just as a reminder footnote would be really

[01:07:41] helpful i think thank you yeah all right miss keys gamara and quickly we can provide that information i've just gone to the website uh and families who earn less than 130 of the poverty

[01:08:17] level are eligible for free meals and those with incomes between 130 and 185 of the poverty level qualify for reduced meals but we will i think it's the actual number yes we'll provide the numbers but I just wanted to give folks that larger sense and this is as of October 31st families who earn less than 130 percent of the poverty level are eligible for free meals and those with incomes between 130 and 185 percent of poverty level qualify for reduced price meals but we can break out what those numbers are with a bit more detail right but Dr. Reed you you'd asked that they give

[01:08:56] the actual income what is the income when you say it's what's the poverty level income i think it used to be 27 000 for a family of four i don't know if it's been adjusted 2022 so it's 27 000 for a family of four okay all right should i go all right we will get that uh those exact numbers

[01:09:32] okay thank you um ms tolan yes my very first question wasn't addressed by anybody and i'd like to see I said to dr. Reed I raised this issue I would like to understand from from our CFO or our chief operating officer how did we not have any cost savings when we lost 11,000 kids for two straight years yeah so I put the two charts back up on the screen actually and I think kind of what what you're

[01:10:10] asking is if we were to combine those two numbers what what happens right and So obviously a savings of $88 million and a cost of $65 million, you add those two together and you have a net savings of about $23 million. What I would say is that the change in student numbers, if you combine the top two numbers, you have a $68 million savings offset by a $16 million cost.

[01:10:30] So you have a $52 million savings related to the fewer students, which is about $9,000 when you look at the $11,000 and the $2,300. And that's being offset by what's happening in each of these need areas that are then, you know, sort of narrowing that gap.

[01:10:46] So you can look at these one at a time line, and there is a savings related to the student change. It's just being offset by a cost related to need. And it goes back to that $88 million that's at the bottom of the column on the left. That's a reduction, an overall reduction that we saw in the budget last year of close to $90 million.

[01:11:10] we can talk offline but again we're talking two straight years 11 000 kids and we're seeing an uptick of 65 million because we're going to have 2700 students so the math is a little more complicated than i feel like it's being explained but maybe go back so that math is complicated because we talked about the students and their level of service and so when we looked at the number of students who were at level one the number of students who haven't progressed through levels needing additional supports that's how we identify that change and so when you look at raw numbers 11 000 versus the number who are coming in for fy 24 it doesn't match but when you look

[01:11:48] at the additional resources that students with higher level of need uh would need uh that's where we see the that increased costs i will work with staff to come back with a graph or a chart because it i do see where the scale doesn't it intuitively doesn't feel like a match so we'll work on that to to bring some data back that answers that question.

[01:12:14] - Yeah, thank you, Dr. Reed. I was just gonna offer the same thing, so thank you. Thank you. Ms. Keese-Gamara. - All right, thank you. We do appreciate all the hard work, and each year I realize how sometimes it's very difficult to tell the full story of our budget, and so I have a few things that I'd like to perhaps

[01:12:39] help to put in context. I do agree with Ms. McLaughlin. As we are looking at these numbers, I think we might have less confusion if we could see it over time, what those changes can be, which I know is difficult to get into some of these charts, but perhaps that might be helpful.

[01:13:00] One other thing the community may not understand, and this comes from a report on the National Policy Group Education Trust that shows that Virginia public schools serving the highest number of English language learners receive 48% less state revenue per student than those districts serving the fewest.

[01:13:23] So perhaps we need to have a broader conversation along with our legislative agenda, etc., bringing that to the forefront. Similarly, I've spoken with some folks in our community who were very concerned about the impact aid we received, and they believed it was a much larger number than it actually is.

[01:13:51] So I'll just stop here and perhaps ask Ms. Burden or someone to explain how that works and how FCPS particularly may be impacted by the administration of those funds.

[01:14:07] Yeah, we just, we receive, we budget and receive around $4 million for impact aid. For the whole region? For the entire division, and those funds are to offset costs for the entire region, not at a specific school.

[01:14:28] Can I just ask, can I just ask how many military, do we know how many military students, I think we have about, is it 25,000, 14,000? Right, but I think it's 14,500 military connected youth within Fairfax County public schools.

[01:14:46] Okay, okay. So that, Ms. Burton, what does that come down to per student? I'm sorry, I didn't, I didn't put it in my calculator and I'm not. About $275 per student.

[01:15:03] Okay, so I think that's part of the story we have to share. One is the context of over time what these costs have been, what those changes have been. And I fully understand Ms. McLaughlin's question with respect to, you know, where is that offset and what has that meant?

[01:15:24] I did appreciate the conversation in the beginning of this meeting talking about needs being more impacting. Yes, acute is a good word to impact our budget as opposed to the number of students. Just as a pause for this board, I remember touring one of our schools with another elected official who actually divided the number of students with, you know, how many with the costs. And he said, well, we had plenty of room. We shouldn't have overcrowded classrooms, which said to me that we need to do a better job of telling our story.

[01:16:02] So I also want to make sure, if we can maybe touch in my last 20 seconds or so, whether the cost on the SPED is including the recommendations from the study.

[01:16:18] Do we know? The AIR study? Yes. No, we do not. We allocated $2 million to be able to address the AIR study in fiscal 23, and those funds have not yet been spent.

[01:16:36] So they have the funds that they were budgeted for in this year to be able to address the recommendations of that group. Okay. And then just in seven seconds, I think to the extent that we can, I know we're working on the strategic plan, but you just mentioned the goals regarding literacy and math to the extent that we can specifically tie what those goals are. They may simply be superintendent goals at this point to our budget. I think that will also help the community to understand what we're doing. And I'll need to go back. Thank you.

[01:17:08] Mr. Koufax, this can't count to my time, but it says I can't start my video because the host has stopped it. So I guess. So Mr. Koufax, I think Mr. Frisch had the same issue. So we'll work on that, but we can. Okay, you'll work on that. And I'll just speak. You fine. Thank you. Thank you.

[01:17:43] Dr. Reed, I applaud you and your team for putting out a real needs-based budget here. I do agree with my colleagues that we need our board to see the analysis of what staff looked at as to funds that could be repurposed because it is going to take a heavy list to see the numbers drop because the need issue is complex, but I will say that's complex to the general public.

[01:18:15] It is not complex to our board of supervisors. I have numbers from when I gave a speech in 2014 that our FRM prices, not our FRM prices, our FRM percentage had grown by more than 20% in a five-year period and the ESOL population had grown by 51%.

[01:18:40] I think we need those. We need to agree on a point of time and say in a 10-year period, in a five-year period, what happened. The pre-K issue has been well known, and while I appreciate the idea of a task force, that's what SCIP's main purpose is.

[01:18:57] That is what they originated from, and SCIP should be disbanded and something redone if they are not addressing their primary focus. I think it's that important. I believe that the state has also not come up with a universal pre-K plan that many, many others have had.

[01:19:22] So Dr. Reed, I would ask you this. When you look at these classrooms, I think it's really important that the board understand where they are because we have been told for years there's no space. Now I understand there's probably space because of the decrease in population. But I also think we need to have an intersectionality between opening potentially opening up a new prey k site and how and the one we talked about in the cip at the pinewood lakes and opening up these slots and see what the differential will be that these opening these little bits of slots are nowhere near what we need in that area when you

[01:20:01] look at the heat map is has your staff done the analysis on that yet we've done a partial analysis of that which is to say given the budget restrictions we're taking we're putting a stake in the ground to do something understanding that it's a sliverable something uh to the term uh but it will not in and of itself solve the issue i believe that's correct okay and i have seven more seconds on there um so um i i think that needs to be made very clear and um you know honestly

[01:20:40] these issues have been known county-wide the growing ESOL population the growing need for the ESOL population the growing pre-K thing I do not see how that can be a surprise to anyone at this point on this board on other boards but I would like to see what Ms. McLaughlin said at all as well is the FRM coming up higher because the percentage of other students has there been socioeconomic flight from our region we will capture that data i think that's very important

[01:21:19] and the last thing i want to say that you know the meal the meals tax was supposed to be something as well that the voters voted down because it wasn't told the story wasn't told in a manner that these monies could go to the schools and they could go for pre-k funding so i will take a go back as well thank you uh miss heismar heiser thank you i have like lots of devices with lots of notes on here but i think um i'm going to start with something that i've know i've heard many of my colleagues

[01:21:56] say before but i'm a i know i've heard miss mclaughlin say it many times so i'm just going to pick up from there is that you know we are we have a huge ask we are asking for more money with less students that's the bottom line right um and there's lots of pieces in here that explain why but there's no executive summary that sells that story right that ties it all together so somebody who's looking at this so we can share with the public to say look we recognize like you know one of my questions was the budget of a glance at a glance document shows as an 18.7 percent position

[01:22:36] growth in non-school based funding since fiscal year 2019 right and it kind of says well this is for equity compliance school support safety and security position conversions esser i look at that I'm like, well, wait a minute. Are these ESSER positions we're converting? Because the board is really clear that we don't want to add positions for ESSER that would then have to be converted. So if we are, we need to know why. I don't think that's saying that we are, but if I just read that sentence, I wouldn't know, right? And I think we need to make it clear. The board said we're not converting ESSER positions, therefore we're not. These are the reasons these positions have

[01:23:11] increased over those years. This is how we've looked at what we're doing centrally to say we don't need to do this anymore we've reallocated this whatever it might be there's no story behind that and so we're giving people reasons to say but wait you've added here you and i think we need and i don't think that's what we're doing right i think we have reasons for what we've done there but we don't talk about it so that's my first piece i'd like to know more detail about what that 18 is it esser positions that are going to go away is that a bulk of that 18 point whatever present increase is it because of literacy is it what is the reason and why right i think that's

[01:23:46] important for me to be able to tell people I did have one question before I get into my executive summary piece is when we're looking at ESSER funds and the use of ESSER funds we're looking at the extended teacher contracts and we're looking at the OCR and the needs that's putting on our special teachers to respond to the OCR can we is there ESSER funds to extend those contracts even longer to deal with the OCR needs just something to put out there because we are asking a heavy lift for our special ed teachers to deal with that right Right. I think we could budget them to last, but the rules would not allow it.

[01:24:19] So it's my understanding the rules require expenditure by Ms. Burden? December 31st of 2024. But aren't we expecting them to do quite a bit in the fall? And now with IEPs? Well, the extra time will be throughout the 23-24 school year.

[01:24:43] It's the following school year that I think is yet to be determined. I just didn't know if that was something that we could use to help our teachers because it's a huge lift, however that might look. And we can for the next academic year through December 2024. Is that correct, Ms. Burden?

[01:25:00] So I think we should go back to this executive summary, and I have questions as well. But we talk about multi-year initiatives, right? And we've talked about a significant number of added positions for the multi-year initiatives. well why and how and how are they being used and how we looked at what we've done to make sure these are what we need right and if they're multi-year initiatives some of them seem like to me like when I look at the human resource management project right my question for that would be is that to stand up a position then then would be implemented by our current staff or is that new staff to continually manage that right and so and we may need more staff but the way it

[01:25:36] reads is a new project that will be implemented so I just think we need to look through what we've provided for questions that people might have and answer them ahead of time i might need to go back but i'll leave it there got it yes ma'am if i can address one of um besides more hyzer's questions the 18.7 percent increase in non-school-based positions that you see um in the the budget overview um we'll we'll unpack that a little bit more for you but i do want you to recall

[01:26:10] that three years ago we started converting permanent positions that had been traded for year after year after year in the first year that we did that it was 90 positions and so there was no cost associated with that because department heads that were using existing funds to trade for a position they had to give those up to permanently convert it and then there was 15 positions in the second year and then i think there's seven positions this year so the large portion of that

[01:26:46] 18.7 percent is employees that we had on board but they were in traded positions for years and years and years and we made we converted those into permanent positions mr maish would you like to speak yeah yeah thank you so much uh and thank you to staff as always for your work um i i guess i I have too much that I don't know where to start, but I'm going to try. One is just in terms of

[01:27:23] these projections with ESOL and then FRM and even SPED, and I think that was shared that the numbers were suppressed or something, so we didn't have access to the exact data. I guess I want us to reflect just a little bit in what broke to get here, because we knew that these numbers were increasing. I also don't know that we necessarily needed numbers from the federal government or whoever it was that we were saying was a blocker to know the condition of our schools or even have a hunch to begin to plan for that because the 60-some million number is massive.

[01:27:59] So I guess I just want to, I'm not blaming anybody. I know COVID was chaotic and where we are is difficult, but I guess I want to just have us think about that. And then I'd like to ask, what steps are we taking to ensure that we are giving that thoughtful, you know, projection or like estimation over time so that we don't end up here again.

[01:28:24] I would say that during COVID it was difficult for us to know how many of our families were actually FRM because of our free meals that we were receiving from the federal government. So families weren't filling out their forms. And because there was that confusion across the state, the state held us at those initial numbers over two years. And so all of our staffing, all of our numbers that were running off of those FRM numbers were based on the numbers that the state said that we should use, September of 2019.

[01:28:56] So everything was based on those numbers. And again, there was no way for us to project, nor was there any way for us to know what the actuals were because our families weren't filling those forms out. As we've come out of the pandemic and our families, the free meals have gone away and our families are applying again.

[01:29:15] The state has now said that we should pick those numbers up again and that's what we've done within the FY24 budget. So we were following those guidelines, used that guidance to establish our budgets and now that that cap or so has been lifted, we're reintroducing those numbers into the budget process.

[01:29:33] We would have normally picked up these numbers over those two years, but because we were held harmless for those two years, we're picking up that increase now in one year. I mean, I guess that's helpful in the sense that it wasn't documented in the same way i'm wondering if that when we looked at like membership trends or predicted you know generally we're going to expect wealthier families to walk out i know i remember there was talk about analysis of that membership trends report and thinking about the even if it's just a guess but the hypotheses around the reasons and how that might impact things you know has that not come up at

[01:30:12] all in conversation i so going back to the membership trends if you remember from the cip conversation it was less about families leaving and it was more about families who weren't coming in to Fairfax County when we saw that decrease so we do take that into consideration but we really when looking at FRM numbers focus on what those actual numbers are by school and again during that two-year period it was very difficult for us to know what those numbers were. You know I guess this actually lends itself and maybe this is the crisis moment that will lead us to a better place But the poverty numbers that we calculate are actually absurd anyway.

[01:30:52] Like what we were just saying, $27,000 for a four-child family is not livable in Fairfax. That's a joke. I don't think you can find a single place here that you can rent as a single person for $13,000 a year. So I point that out to say maybe, I don't know if this is part of our strategic planning process, but it's an opportunity for us to develop our own, you know, and we have the federal minimums.

[01:31:15] Again, those are always things we have to track, monitor, you know, adjust to, and probably staff based on for legal reasons. But then we have more to work with here. It doesn't have to be the federal minimum that will get us, you know, to lose accreditation, right? It can be a threshold that we put to set an ideal of, you know, we think it's Fairfax County poverty rate is estimated to be blank.

[01:31:38] We want to work towards ensuring that we support our kids if they're within that number. And we might not be even close to that goal yet. we won't be right now because we've been basing it off of that minimum but maybe we can move in that direction i don't know dr reed i don't want us to just walk away from this next year we're going to see that we're going to be in the same place and we're not thinking innovatively about how to because that could have avoided this right if we were doing our own internal assessment yeah i don't all of this seems to be driven by formulas both the staffing formula based on the frm um level so i don't um i'm still coming up to speed on what that looks like in virginia to be honest

[01:32:18] But it does seem like living on 27,000 in Fairfax County does not seem plausible. So I don't know if there's a differentiated cost of living or differentiated FRM by cost of living in a particular location. I would have to defer to Ms. Burden and the team.

[01:32:35] Is that something that occurs in Virginia that the FRM threshold might look different in different parts of the Commonwealth depending on the cost of living? It's a federal number. Well, if it's strictly federal, but it's the poverty level, I don't know. We had a little bit of wiggle room where I came from.

[01:32:54] Yeah, it is a federal requirement. And the federal government also requires that we report both free students and students that are reduced. But we don't recognize reduced at all. They're all free as well. So our standard, like you said, is better than the federal minimum.

[01:33:12] So it's 180% of the 27,000 family of four, which is about $50,000. So, Ms. Lomish, I just want to be clear. What you're asking is what supports do we provide families even that are above that but don't formally count in the FRM but do need supports.

[01:33:33] Is that correct? And can we count that as our number but recognize there will always be the federal number? We have to report. We have to track. Fine. We'll do that. But then can we then also internally hold ourselves to a higher standard? We would certainly want to partner with the County Board of Supervisors on that. But I think it's, I mean, it is an obvious next question. So I think it's a thought worthy of some interrogation.

[01:33:58] Yeah, because what happened here with the projection I think could have been avoided had we had our own. And that's no fault of y'all's. It's just where we are. Okay, thank you so much. I'll take a go back. Thank you. Ms. Pekarski. Okay, thank you. Thank you, everyone, for the presentation.

[01:34:14] I think we've had a lot of great discussion, and probably the best part of it is nobody has said, oh, my gosh, this is way out of left field. So, and I agree. I think Dr. Reed and our staff have done a good job of trying to hit those priorities that we identified in October and November and compensation being and, you know, retention a chief priority right now as we still struggled and as was brought up where we're going to find this new staff that we may need.

[01:34:52] I think, you know, we've talked about this before, but I think that warrants a more in-depth conversation about what discussions you are all having, what your long-term plan is about this. You know, we've got the little patches, the extended contracts from a few, but, you know, we don't, our ESOL teachers have huge caseloads.

[01:35:15] I mean, that, you know, we don't bring that to the table to discuss. And if we're not able to, you know, hire enough staff to cover some of these higher needs, they're going to be having even more burdens. So I think as we continue to talk about this, we need short but long-term plans as well.

[01:35:34] So I would like at some point to hear what are your ideas around this? I know we've at different times brought up suggestions that maybe we have to have some differentiated contracts. And I personally think now is the time to be having those discussions.

[01:35:55] So that's my first point. My second point, I think it was Miss Keyes-Gamara. I'm glad you brought it up. We do have high needs. We've had them for a while. we need our state to help us it's not just local school system and um our local partners uh this is a a much bigger problem than we can help solve on our own so i love the executive um summary idea we need to do a better job of telling our story what is our story where are we because to miss marron's point i mean i meet people every day oh five ten years ago in fcps and i'm like you know

[01:36:33] know what FCPS this is a completely different school system these days so I agree with you and getting that in time for our advocacy day down there I think will be very helpful to us one two things that others have not talked about that I'd like to you know kind of dive into a little bit more the middle school athletics I know when I've talked to some of our staff about after school programs and you know I've discussed with you the necessity to have more uniform one of the things that I've been told is that oh it's difficult for us to get

[01:37:10] staff and to have people volunteer to stay so how do you see this being impacted by by that hurdle so I think that we're gonna need to go out and recruit early we're talking about cross-country and track cross-country in the fall and track in the spring and I think we're just have to go out and recruit early and hopefully the excitement and the fun of being out and being healthy and being with our young people will lure lots of applicants but I think sometimes it's also a structure to work within and if you know I'm

[01:37:50] really looking forward to working with Bill Curran as well to do a coordinated effort and support our young middle school students and doing something healthy after school i ran out of time i had more on that but i'll take it next thank you all right um i'll follow up for you i'll just take a few minutes here um at first i would like to really give a huge thank you to matthew norton for diving into that data and information for us i have heard some of those charts explained better than i have ever had them explained to me so i

[01:38:25] really appreciate it um those are that are big numbers that's a big topic um and we have lots of additional information we've requested so we're gonna keep you hard at work on this but i thought i might focus on some of the smaller dollar items that um were in here um so the middle school athletics i know i said to dr reed the number was only 0.6 million and how can we possibly do that um i do want to tell the public you know and the board members if you haven't looked at the budget overview document that is available on our website it helps a lot explaining

[01:39:04] the details and what the plan is especially around the athletics i'm super excited about the potential of that program um i did want to take a couple of minutes um you know cyber security has been such a huge issue um you know over the last several years it was something that our technology advisory council that we had during the pandemic really focused in on so i wanted to i know we have been growing that program over the last couple of years so I wanted to hear a little bit more about how this budget item fits in with that. So thank you Ms. Tolan. I at this point

[01:39:40] I'll turn this over to our chief technology officer Gautam Sethi to share the growth of our cyber security program in the last over the last several years. Yeah happy to. There's certainly been internal investments as we talked about initially but how do we take existing resources and prioritize those towards strengthening the program.

[01:40:02] So over the last two years, we've used those internal investments to grow the program. Cybersecurity will continue to grow in terms of its needs, right? Till the federal government or the state governments come in and provide some relief, we will all individually have to keep spending more and more, whether that's buying new software, new tools, bringing on more people to be able to have the eyes and ears on the ground.

[01:40:25] So these resources are going to add to the current pool of resources and help us keep answering the challenges and the questions ahead of us. Mr. Sethi, I think you had shared with me the growth in personnel and cybersecurity went from one employee to...

[01:40:45] Well, almost from zero, right? We created the first position, made the cybersecurity program. We moved about 20 internal resources into the initial program, and those were correlated to cyber security, but certainly ability to grow into that role. We also, last year, I think we added five positions as part of our budget request, and this is another addition into the program, which is very welcome.

[01:41:11] And how many positions is it this year? I know it's in this document. I'm just forgetting off the top of my head. How many total positions? So five from last year's budget, and this year's budget request, five. Another five.

[01:41:27] Have been added. Thank you. And as Ms. Burden shared with me, another example of that repurposing by department, Mr. Sethi has done an amazing job within his sphere of IT to create the cyber security office and fund that with positions out of existing resources in addition to additional ask for moving forward. Great thank you very much. The other one I wanted to ask about was under safety and security we have 0.4 million which again

[01:42:06] is a you know relatively small amount and so I understand that it is one person per region to focus on elementary schools but I would love to hear a little bit more about this sort of the vision of what those people would do um i honestly i've had a few people from the community already asked me if it's enough so i would like to hear more about it so this is a proposal to begin if you will the multi-year probably investment in supporting

[01:42:41] safety and security with people at the elementary school level and really the intent to start one per region is to have an officer that's able to be responsive quickly to an elementary school without pulling someone currently which we would be doing from one of our secondary schools and it's it's a start and I think at this point we'll see how this rollout of a responsive elementary cadre you know being more familiar with elementary school operations I think it's a step in

[01:43:19] that direction as you know we do have 141 elementary schools so I think the idea of putting out 141 folks right now number one I know the county it's a challenge to keep first responders also hired and retained recruit and retain first responders as well so I I think it's a start it's and we're gonna kind of see how it grows and builds and what the ROI, the rate of return on investment.

[01:44:00] I also wanted to look back to the, you have in this budget overview, the WABY cost per pupil. And I was just curious looking at that chart, it just had brought to mind a couple of questions for me. So we have $18,772 as a cost per pupil, but But then with the breakout that you did for us today on different types of students and the increased needs for the different types of students, is that included in this 18,000?

[01:44:37] How does that impact this number? This is fiscal 23 and the fiscal 24 I think is nearly 19,000. It'll be in the full budget document, but we don't have comparative information because every division around us has not released their budget yet to compare but there's a factor is there a factor that you use so the the average student and

[01:45:16] then is there a factor that you used to calculate the FRM need and the the special education etc is that how you come up with the overall yes so we we have in the past broken apart the cost per pupil into what we call the disaggregated cost per pupil which which is where we sort of layer and show like what the average would be if we didn't have any frm spending if we didn't have any east hall spending if we didn't have any special education spending um but that's something that

[01:45:49] typically uh we we would be producing you know sort of after the fact so we we haven't disaggregated the fy 24 cost per people yet and you actually haven't even seen the fy 24 cost per people yet but you'll see that in the next week or so um and then you know after that is when we would start to look at you know disaggregating and things like that so we can look at our disaggregated costs by um these need areas correct and then right and you could go back to it down the road and then um but it would might be it's and then do you have that information even over the last

[01:46:27] couple years compared to other districts like as demographics are different yes so we we only have our internal data to disaggregate we have not I don't believe we would be able to like take Arlington and tell you how their FRM effects there without a pretty I mean yeah I mean I can't even imagine trying to go down that road okay I appreciate that I understand okay thank you okay so would at this point it is now just before 1:00 p.m. and so every board member has had a first

[01:47:06] opportunity to speak I might suggest that since it's just before 1:00 that we go ahead and take our half an hour lunch break and then come back and then we can do our round of go backs for everyone looks like everybody's okay with having lunch at this point so yes so let's be back at 1:20 to begin our

[01:47:31] afternoon discussion thank you okay let's get started we have two we're

[01:48:08] finishing up this topic and we have another topic this afternoon so let's get started miss hullen can i address the last question yes we're going to do that we're going to do that so um before we have our board member go backs and we wanted to just get a little bit more information on the discussion we were having just before lunch on the the per pupil number and how that is calculated yeah on

[01:48:47] On the equity profile page on FCPS's website, under the cost per pupil information, we do disaggregate the cost per pupil. Now, this is from fiscal 21, because there's usually a couple-year delay in calculating, because it's a pretty heavy lift, and we do it after the budget is adopted.

[01:49:08] So this is for fiscal 21, but you can see the wavy cost per pupil in the first column, and that's what it was in fiscal 21. And then the gen ed cost, general education costs, with everything scrubbed out that's for the other populations.

[01:49:25] And you can see that the needs-based staffing is about 10% more, ESOL about 30% more, special ed about double. And then Matthew had wanted to provide some comments. Yeah, so again, just recall that this is for FY21.

[01:49:41] We've had a few years since then. And what I would suggest and expect is that the data that we were going over this morning would lead us to believe that these differentials are growing within our division, right? And so it shouldn't be rocket science, that we may expect that 10, that 30, and that double to – well, the double less as much, but the other two may be increasing is kind of the takeaway.

[01:50:07] And again, you can find that if you just search on our website for Equity Profile, and then there's a button that says Cost Per Pupil and provides it.

[01:50:25] Thank you for that additional information. Okay, so now we have a number of go-backs for specific board members, but I thought what I might do is just run down the list and see who would like to speak and who wouldn't. But Dr. Anderson, before you start, I think, Ms. Kees-Gamara, do you have a time constraint?

[01:50:46] Would you like to go first? I do. If that's okay with you, Dr. Anderson? I think a lot of our discussion has focused on greater clarification to make sure the community understands. And so I'll continue along those lines.

[01:51:02] Obviously, there is significantly more services needed for ESOL. And as I look through the documents, I think we've tried to explain that. i happen to know that there's also some concerns in some parts of the county where we have immersion programs etc that are overcrowded i'm wondering if there's some way we can explain you know the esau needs along with uh what we're doing with immersion and and possible needs there i know that

[01:51:36] that may be a heavy lift um but i do know that we have community members that have been concerned about overcrowding in some of our immersion programs hoping that we can continue those languages where those may not be the languages that are actually in demand So I'm wondering if perhaps we can couple these two things To discuss that. Thank you. Ms. Keyes-Gamara. Mr. Polio, are you able to maybe add something to that or Dr. Presidio?

[01:52:10] You don't mind and I did hear the question, but if you would just kind of restate the thrust of the question what you're most interested in. I so i i think many of our questions today have had to do with um making sure the community understands what we're doing and how it ties to the budget uh obviously we have significant more services needed for esau students i think tangentially related to that is some of our immersion programs that are overcrowded at this point um and parents not necessarily understanding

[01:52:44] how we're making those decisions so i'm wondering if perhaps in explaining the budget we can explain how we're dealing with those issues and how it could have a budget impact yeah no thank you very much for for reframing that for me um we have two different types of immersion programs one is dual language immersion and that's where we have both native english speakers and native speakers of the target language and those programs primarily are the ones i think that potentially might be situated in a few there's a few there's a few schools around the county um kent gardens is one

[01:53:23] where we do have immersion programs that are overcrowded but we do have two types of immersion programs the dual immersion and one-way immersion where all the students are learning that target language together our esol students are primarily in the dual immersion so that's where we would have the overlap with what you're seeing on the slide here is with our dual immersion programs we We don't have that many of those programs and those typically are not the ones that have been overcrowded.

[01:53:50] So I don't know from a facility standpoint or a budgetary standpoint that there would really be a whole lot more that we could add to that. It is an efficiency from a budgetary standpoint because when our English learners are in those dual immersion programs, they're able to get a lot of support and services within the general education classroom and that does help provide some cost efficiencies to the educational services that they're receiving.

[01:54:13] But I don't think there's a whole lot more we could really add on the budget side of that if we could just be mindful of what parents are having questions about and i took about 20 seconds to explain that to you and they took my 20 seconds i want my 20 seconds back um so um let's see so i think it's on page 10 that we have a bullet on there about there being a drop of uh 11 229 20 22 11 220 a little more than 11 000

[01:54:49] students that we lost uh but it's attributed to 2022 i understand what you're saying but i don't want it to be misquoted we you know what i mean this happened this is that loss occurred over the period of the pandemic i believe um but the way that that bullet is written i think that um it could be used in a very negative way and i don't want that to happen you you are correct the the

[01:55:22] actual the actual decline in student membership happened in fy21 from a budgetary perspective we did not recognize it until fy 2023 what i would say is it's that it's that middle year fy 2022 where we really had a decision point as to the hold harmless right in fy 21 we would have been just in the beginning throws of the pandemic and so i don't really feel like there was a huge decision point for us to make as a division but in fy 22 certainly the decision was made to maintain projections at that high level which kept resources in the classroom

[01:56:01] and we would have had lower class sizes than we otherwise would have as kind of a direct result of keeping those additional resources then in the fy 23 budget we right-sized we acknowledge that reduction from a projection standpoint it was from the prior year's projected enrollment to the fy 23 projected enrollment we're not talking about a change from actual enrollment we're talking about a change from projection to projection because that's what drives the costs in the budget and so that's where that 11 229 number that was unfamiliar to folks is because it's really a change from projection to a projection it doesn't really have any play with our actuals it was to try to

[01:56:39] get us back in line with our actuals okay thank you um and just real quickly i realize i'm at zero now if we could get more explanation of what we're doing regarding the achievement gap i think when i look at it it's pretty sparse thanks and i just want to reinforce what matthew just said about budget development is that it's based on projection to projection and while actuals are very important for us as we think about how we're spending our dollars and how we're impacting and supporting students that as we develop budget from one year to the next it is based on the projection that we have from the previous year to the

[01:57:17] projection that we have going forward and then we have the ability to make those adjustments as we get into those quarterly budget adjustments that we see regularly throughout the year dr. Anderson thank you on page five you talked about the contract contractual investments for 14.6 can you give a little bit more detail or point me to whether detail may be located if their appendices about what that would involve the contractual increases the of the

[01:57:57] 14.6 million 7.5 million is cost increases for utilities a couple of million for information technology for student analytics and different licenses and software financial services also has some contractual items like w-2 processing the annual opev evaluation those kinds of things and then facilities and transportation has some cost escalation as well and then inflation for instructional services human resources copiers

[01:58:36] chief operating officer and the total is 14.6 million thank you it will just be good to just HAVE THAT SO THAT WE AVOID THIS QUESTION. I ALSO WANT TO SAY THAT I'M VERY SUPPORTIVE OF THAT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY THAT WAS TALKED ABOUT EARLIER. THAT MAKES LOTS OF SENSE TO SELL OUR STORY. PAGE SIX WHERE WE'RE TALKING ABOUT THE ADVANCED ACADEMICS. I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR TWO THINGS HERE. ONE, WHAT ARE THE EXPECTATIONS AS PER THE REPORT RECOMMENDATION?

[01:59:01] I KNOW THAT THE REPORT SAID THAT SECTION 4, PART 1B, TALKED ABOUT HAVING AN ART IN EACH school and having more than one A.R.T. in Title I schools and at larger schools, what will this entail?

[01:59:17] Who are these people going to? Because I know this is personnel. Sloan, are you able to help with that, please? So we're looking for the phase-in timeline ourselves, but this is year three of the phase-in of those recommendations that the board supported to get to those staffing levels of full-time ARTs in each of our elementary schools and half-time ARTs in each of our middle schools.

[01:59:51] There was not an additional supplement for Title I. I guess I would have to look at the the year three phase in. The other question that I have is also that report provided a recommendation for us to have local four services in all of the middle schools. I would be remiss if I didn't share if we had local level fours at each of our middle schools maybe the overcrowding at Glasgow wouldn't be as exacerbated so i would love to hear when is that going when are the rest of the recommendations going to be part of the advanced academic work so we've got the full report here i'd have to go

[02:00:29] through each of the recommendations but i would say as it pertains to expansion of level four we of course were working on that at the elementary level that's where those recommendations were largely focused was at the elementary level and we've got a couple schools that next year will be I think we have seven schools, if I'm correct, Noel's looking for the exact data, that still need to be phased in, and they'll phase in next year.

[02:00:53] And then we are working on some different options for middle school as well, which I still need to talk to Dr. Reed about. And we could certainly talk to the board about that in a future conversation. And I think you and I have a meeting scheduled for February 8th. We can talk about it a little bit more then as well.

[02:01:10] Yeah, I think that's important because when we look at the CIP, just kind of connecting the dots between these two initiatives, you know, programming is a big part and it aligns with the recommendations here. The other thing that I want to raise is the staffing needs. I know Karen talked about this just a little while ago and it's one of my questions that I do want to highlight.

[02:01:29] We need ESL teachers, we need ESL teachers, we need ART teachers, we need pre-K teachers, general education teachers, JET teachers. Wow, what is a plan and how to prioritize? Because I know in the beginning of last year, central office went out to do the work.

[02:01:45] Great, but not ideal. How are we prioritizing amongst all of those needs? Dr. Reed? I think we have to prioritize the classroom first. I think I've been consistent in that. And we want to make sure we have the highest quality educator in front of every classroom full of students, number one.

[02:02:07] Following that, we'll look at support positions at the central office. Okay, just one quick statement. I want to be sure when we're talking about capturing the FRM percentages, how are we capturing that information for the 14 CEP schools, which are not completing those documents necessarily at the schools so that we don't find ourselves in the same place next year?

[02:02:34] Yes, so we do have CEP schools that at one point in time were all being given the exact same free and reduced price meals percentage because that's the way the feds in the state had given guidance on how to calculate them we do have an option as a system and so what we've opted to do going forward is to actually use their true FRM rate just like any other school and so that is some of the change that's happening in the FRM rates but I will note that every one of our CEP schools is already at the top band and so from a staffing perspective none of them are affected but we won't have a true FRM rate because parents are not completing the document per se just the 40% to meet

[02:03:09] the cp so so there is some guidance from the state on how to um uh accommodate that in the form of what's called direct certification and so uh there are the without having to fill out the forms there will be students who are directly certified as frm and we'll use that percentage i'm not with you sorry i i don't understand um so dr anderson um there are students that are receiving other Federal or other services I should say like TANF and so we get that information and that so without filling out the form

[02:03:47] We are provided that information. So that's what we mean by direct certified. They're receiving other services But you only need 40 percent to meet that threshold What if you just get 40 percent and nobody else completes those direct services documents true?

[02:04:03] Yeah, so what we're doing then is taking direct certification and then multiplying that by a factor that the state provides is at one point the 1-5, and that's how we are determining what their FRM rate is on a school-by-school level.

[02:04:21] Again, though, I do want to make the point that every single one of our CEP schools is falling in our highest FRM band. Right, and I appreciate that. I just don't want us to be caught up in the same situation that we are right now, where we're kind of making, not making it up, but we are trying to recapture what we didn't have in the previous years.

[02:04:40] I just see this as a space where there's a gap. when we're talking CEP we're talking community eligibility provision for free lunch for students yes for all students within the community school I can go on that sorry I was taking my notes and if I may I have a comment on your first comment dr. Anderson so a takeaway that I've actually had a brief conversation with dr. Reed about in terms of narrative we know that our budget staff

[02:05:20] they do a phenomenal job of putting together our budget documents for us and when you look back at the old dragnet it's really just the facts ma'am and so

[02:05:29] we will be working pause for the emergency wipe off her computer I feel

[02:06:11] like I have to get some paper towels so this is an answer to your comment dr.

[02:06:33] Anderson, but it's for the entire board that we will be working with the Office of Communication and Community Relations to help create that narrative so that in addition to just talking points about the budget document itself, we will create that narrative that will help carry us through the entire budget season.

[02:06:51] And then secondly, I know that normally by this time the board has a copy of the budget document itself along with very detailed information about the budget. budget team has worked over the weekend they'll be working this week and we plan to have that in your hands by this Friday so just letting you know that the detail is coming the budget document is coming and we hear you loudly and clearly about the narrative that we need to create around the budget yes and again

[02:07:27] we'll have that for you and then we will create the larger message around the budget as well all right I'm just going to run down through the list here mr. Frisch do you need to go back I'll take that as a no. Ms. Maren, do you want to skip? Okay, you're all cleaned up.

[02:07:55] I'll try again. Our funding for our alternative schools is actually even higher per pupil than our special ed students.

[02:08:37] And so what I think is really important, over a year ago, the previous superintendent committed to doing a full review of our alternative programs programs and how we might be more effective and efficient in providing those services.

[02:08:53] With some of our schools with having less than 50 students in them and others certainly well below the capacity level, I would hope that we would be looking at those programs prior to the adoption of this budget to see how we can have some economies realized so that we can take that funding and put it where it would be necessary to support other students.

[02:09:19] And so, Dr. Reed, I would like to have an update to the board as to the timing of that because if I remember correctly, it's been almost a year since I was first informed that that study was going to be undertaken. All right.

[02:09:35] Thank you. Dr. Presidio, do you have a timeline? I believe that's Joe Thompson that's doing that work. is and it is something that's underway something we're working on I don't have an estimated completion date necessarily right now so I'd have to follow up on that and get back to the board I'll get back to you a completion date you'd like an update even if we're not completed it is what I'm hearing I would because I know that we've been doing this for quite a while and similarly it would be helpful to have a trend analysis of where we're at on our different

[02:10:08] categories of contracting as well. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Ms. Cohen. Thank you. I'll try to be super fast. I have a bunch of questions left. So safety and security at elementary schools. I just want to make sure this is not SROs we're talking about. These are security assistants. Is that accurate? It's correct. These are security staff who would be working with our individual elementary schools. This is not SROs in these buildings. Excellent. The other is compensatory services

[02:10:45] that line item does that include money for providing those hours is that addition for our FCPS staff who's working these extra hours to identify students I was asked this actually Leslie Houston asked this in the budget presentation and this is a set aside for whatever we are going to need to meet student needs if it's extra hours so be it if it's X Y or Z that's what the money's there for, but likely extra hours will be a large part. Okay. Another question, you know, I, Mr. Norton, you referenced the enrollment being down, but I, I was just conferencing with

[02:11:24] a bar a little bit that we both remembered in prior CIPs that we had already projected a decline in enrollment at this time. Is that right? Oh, Brian is here. I just think it might be interesting for people to recognize that we had already anticipated due to birth rates that we were going to start to decline. I'm not saying it's the same thing as the students that we lost, but

[02:12:00] I'm also saying we were not in a huge uptick of where we were going to, where we had seen past year's growth. Right, you are absolutely correct that we do have, you know, birth rates have been declining. You've probably heard about it in the news. I mean, they're talking about it in, you know, multiple countries in the world, but so, you know, from that perspective, we're sort of in the same boat. So we, yes, we, births five years ago are, you know, have been declining, and so that have affected our kindergarten it would have not been the substantial drop that we saw but yeah we would have seen and we already do have smaller cohorts of kids at kindergarten first grade second grade third grade than you see in our middle schools and high schools and we had spoken about

[02:12:40] seeing those enrollment increases over year year over year but not at the same rate that we were seeing so it was sort of a contracted enrollment increase yeah because i think there's much has has been made about losing 11,000 students, and that's not where we are, and it's not where we were going to be. Our numbers were going to be different anyway. Again, I know COVID was, you know, a big blip, but I guess another question that I've gotten from some parents is conversations about optimizing bell schedules, Dr. Reed, because we have so many schools that want to provide

[02:13:18] before and after school services to their kids, especially trying to help some of them with math and reading in particular. And we've already discussed in multiple forums how difficult it is for us to get staff to do that. And so there's been some conversation about bell times, especially with our elementary kids, that we have some schools that get out at 4.10 p.m.

[02:13:40] And by the time, if those kids stay after, their late bus is 5.30 at night. We know that we bus some kids up to an hour um we have kids getting home at 6 30 at night which for our elementary schoolers was about an hour before bath and bed so um i i wonder again as we go delve into this i don't know what the cost to look into that but if it's a budget question okay or is it an optimization question i would say that when we look at optimization some of the things that dr we talked about earlier when we focused the the conversation around boundaries

[02:14:20] so as we look at where students are and to lessen our reliance on buses for transportation we could then reallocate some of those transportation positions to help make an adjustment to some of our Bell schedules right now Bell schedules are driven a lot by our transportation needs as well to ensure that we can get students back and forth to school but if we look at this holistically to see where students are again reducing that reliance for transportation staff to get students to schools if we're more focused on neighborhood schools and then reallocating we might have an ability to

[02:14:55] impact that we'll see some things hopefully we've just reintroduced the the RFP we explained to the board and the it will be coming in the Tuesday letter that the RFP for middle school start times we've had to re-release that hopefully somebody will provide a bid for that or an offer and that will be part of that discussion as well.

[02:15:21] Ms. McLaughlin. Thank you Dr. Reed I think going back to my earlier line of questioning what I would like to see for the next work session or in advance of it's just how do we have

[02:15:42] integrity in our budget calculations for enrollment. We're really good over the years that if we have an increase, we are immediately coming hat in hand saying, hey, 2,700 more kids, we need $65 million. But if I do the calculation of the 11,200 students, even for the one year that staff is saying we could have accounted for that, that's 209 million. It's not 88 million.

[02:16:12] So if we are saying that we recognized $88 million in savings, and now we have $65 million for this coming year, it's really $121 million. So I don't expect people to, if they've got an answer, great.

[02:16:30] But I'm just looking at 11,200 students times the projected rate back then was 18,700 students. That's $209 million. But the slide that we got only showed $88 million that they said was some cost savings.

[02:16:50] Does anybody want to answer that now, or do we want to wait until the next budget session? I don't have an answer at the moment. Do any of you have an answer, or do we want to postpone the answer? I can provide a little bit of information, and we can see where it goes from there.

[02:17:07] What I would say is that when we have a decline in students, and you look at our average cost per pupil, Our average cost per pupil includes costs that we are not going to save when we have a student leave. For instance, we don't have a utility cost savings.

[02:17:22] We don't have fewer LT members. We don't have fewer people in the budget office. We don't have fewer payroll people. There are a number of parts of that $18,000 cost per pupil that are not directly related to a fluctuation in enrollment. And so when you have a decline or an increase, you're not going to see a step-for-step cost per pupil multiplied by the number of students that you changed by.

[02:17:49] Matt, thank you so much. And Dr. Reed, that's what I'm talking about, integrity of budget calculation. If it doesn't, if in the inverse, we lose students and it's not a one-for-one, and the adding in, it's not a one-for-one either. So I think there's some budget calculation.

[02:18:04] If we really want to have our stakeholders support what we're talking about, then we need to have some homework in the math. And then the only other thing I would say is that it would be helpful to know, I've had people in the community raise questions to me on two things.

[02:18:23] One, how we identify true ELL students and move them off our calculation numbers once they are deemed not in need of ELL services. And some families have expressed frustration that they got over-identified and there was never an ELL need to begin with.

[02:18:42] And number two, with FRM, I have had people in the community tell me their family's temporarily qualified for reduced meals, but they never move off the rolls. So do we know non-COVID-wise that with Fidelity, all 200 schools are having our FRM rolls reviewed and updated on an annual basis?

[02:19:12] Yeah, the state allows us to carry over free and reduced kids eligible every year until October 30th, I believe. And then as of October 30th, the students that were carried over come off of the list unless they are directly certified through the state or they have completed an application and are deemed eligible.

[02:19:37] So that is revisited every single year to make sure that we don't, we're not just carrying kids over. Okay. Thank you. Sure. With respect to English learners, we, when students, when families answer the home language survey, when they register, if there's a language listed other than English and those students are, we are mandated by the federal government to assess them for ESL services.

[02:20:11] At times we do hear from parents who ask us to Revisit that either the home language survey they feel like they made a mistake They didn't really understand the questions And so we look at those all of those on a case-by-case basis and speak with multiple families per year sometimes the home language survey is amended and sometimes student families simply refuse ESOL services if they want and those Students who refuse ESOL services are not in our projection count They're not but to clarify the question I had asked When we move them off

[02:20:50] Because they no longer qualify as ELL Then they're pulled out of the system and then that if that helps with our calculations for the budget They're considered. Yeah, that's correct. So if the way that students are Qualified as English proficient is through the WIDA access test. So when a student is then when a student is proficient, that student becomes a former L and they are not in our calculation as a current English learner. Former L's for first two years are required to be

[02:21:25] monitored. Some school divisions do staff for former L's. We do not staff for former L's here in Fairfax County. So we staff for students who are current. We look at the number and project for number of current english learners in grades kindergarten through 12. and all levels of l correct that's correct levels one two three and four and we we count our kindergartners because it's a little bit of a different screener we count our kindergartners we call them a level nine so it's basically any kindergartner who is either receiving or not receiving services

[02:21:58] thank you so much rich thank you mr kofax yes uh two quick questions um since i didn't speak to this the first go around dr reed i do appreciate your ask for compensation as a priority uh for recruitment and retention of our teachers and staff can you or miss burden tell us and if you don't have this data now i would like it for the next budget session where we stand in relationship

[02:22:32] to surrounding jurisdictions on our starting and end points on our salary scales thank you mr net kovacs and i i know that our next budget work session we're going to drill down even more on salary but we do have the data you're requesting um right here i know that years ago the division made an intentional decision to have a high initial salary coming in and yes we did and i think that

[02:23:09] was you know a great strategy because we want to recruit right that attracts our um candidates it's my understanding right now that for the bachelors step one we're actually ranked fourth um which is that first step behind loudon county falls church and prince william county and then when we get to the end that last step we're second from the last so we're eight out of nine is where we rank um which is i'm told anecdotally and perhaps there's also not just anecdotal data that that's one of the reasons we lose some of our most experienced staff

[02:23:46] because the salary schedules ahead of us are prince william alexandria city arlington county manassas city manassas park city falls church city montgomery county are all ahead of us at the highest scale so i think the strategy was a great strategy for recruitment but retention it's not as great a strategy right now because we're losing some of our most experienced people unfortunately thank you that that is uh that is concerning to hear that um basically when you read that list and yes that was that was done by a previous board that i sat on which in that moment

[02:24:24] in time was the right strategy we were looking for uh new we were losing we couldn't hire anybody with surrounding jurisdictions and here we are we find ourselves so i think when we talk about the narrative um of how to sell this in terms of compensation retention recruitment which is very important i think that data point has to be uh shared widely um with our funding bodies so thank you for that um my second one will probably go i guess to you matthew i didn't thank you because i was having frustration with my first comments um because of you know promises

[02:25:04] made promises not kept but um i will say for i really appreciate your frm and esau data um as well special education data but i think for a real trend analysis we need to go beyond five years is it possible to go uh 10 years or even longer um because so many colleagues have commented well you know their neighbors and friends don't at it they don't understand they see us as the wealthy county, I think we really need to show the increases in population and what that means to

[02:25:39] making sure we address the needs of these kids who are um in poverty, who are new to our country and new to our community as well as special education. So can we go beyond that um five five year analysis? Sure we we can do that. Okay I and and Marty I will happy to talk to you online where i don't want it to be a uh labor intensive thing but if we can do 10 and if you

[02:26:12] feel like 15 will yield even 10 and 15 will yield better results thank you that it miss cauffax yes thank you okay and just to reiterate we will have a much more extensive discussion on just the compensation piece of the budget um at our next work session miss mclaughlin do we have time to

[02:26:46] take any more questions since we don't start till 2 30. well let's get through everyone's go backs we haven't completed that yet um mr mace thank you so much um i did have a question uh earlier just about how what process we took to prioritize with the budget um there are a couple of pieces that i'm a little bit confused about how they ended up there only compared to some other needs just want to make sure we're being thoughtful in that way so i don't know dr reed if you can share

[02:27:20] about that a little so which items i'm trying to on the itemized list or the multi-year list or i mean one thing that stood out to me was you know i wanted some more understanding of like the high school counselors piece or oh okay but but but it's not even that specifically to me these pop out to a bar but you know i'm thinking of how we've weighed the various things and the things i don't even know our needs that are potentially screaming but we're not hearing the screaming right right so i think what i tried to do and i think what staff tried to do

[02:27:59] our budget staff and senior leadership as well as um you know you as a board is you provided a resolution with sort of those items or those goals broadly that you expected the budget to be responsive to and i think what we tried to do is make sure that we provided number one the recruitment and retention of staff we felt was a high priority and we've been losing ground a bit in that area. So that's critical at every level. The pre-K I think we've addressed has been a concern. Achievement gut, closing strategies, I mean that is our work moving forward I expect

[02:28:37] with our strategic planning work. The multi-year continuation, whatever those projects were that we began we wanted to make sure we continued. And then in terms of some of the sort of what I would call smaller budget items, the security, the counselors, athletics, cyber security, et cetera, the pilot with our ISTE international tech partners.

[02:29:06] We want to make sure that even as we continue to put out fires and close achievement gaps and provide each student with that mountaintop experience, that we also have some part of the organization facing forward and looking at what's next educationally and what's next the world that our young people are going to be facing so trying to provide as much attention to as many topics as we really prudently could given the financial constraints i think we were sitting with was was the plan more than anything i'm sure there are other needs right but trying to be sensitive to elementary middle high uh different programs um overall supporting the whole child and

[02:29:45] a world-class education here at fairfax county yeah i mean there's nothing that is on here that that I don't think is valuable. I guess to me, I'm always, keep coming back to this every year, but how are we assessing the needs and then assigning urgency to the various needs to be able to put them in a way that is truly equitable?

[02:30:04] I don't know that we're doing that. And this is still reflecting kind of our conversations. We're on the ivory tower somewhere, not really, you know. So, I don't know. Hopefully we can do this differently in the following year. I know this is you picking up from, yeah, go ahead.

[02:30:19] If I might, until we have a clear strategic plan, it's really difficult to assign a needs-based resource allocation directly to a goal that you're, as a public body, going to measure, right? Does that make sense? So, like, my hope is that in May, when you, I mean, there are a lot of voices at the table that are going to come around, I think, three to five goals, that then that's our North Star until 2030.

[02:30:44] And then it's like everything next year when we come to you with a budget, it's going to have to address the attainment of those goals based on the measurements you set. Right now it's a little bit of a, it's a little more loose, I guess, a little less aligned. But once we have that planned, everything moves in alignment with that.

[02:31:05] No, that's fair. I appreciate that. I mean, I certainly did appreciate, you know, kind of the staff pieces in here and then the achievement gap prioritization of that. This is really the first time we're intentionally, you know, putting a budget item on that. which brings me to kind of another piece I know I mentioned this the last time we discussed the budget there was a placeholder from before for a multi-year ESOL staffing and then a separate multi-year language interpretation services increase they're not reflected here that's something Dr. Brabrandt had put in place and was meant to carry over I want to make sure we don't lose the progress that was made to get that moving I don't know where that is yeah that

[02:31:45] That original plan was 50 ESSER teachers per year, and I believe we did that for two years. And then there was an add of 10 positions out of ESSER funding back in August of '22 when we were looking at the ESSER funds.

[02:32:02] But we did not add an additional 50 this time because the $17 million that is a result of the ESOL staffing standards being applied to the ESOL enrollment will generate about 160, 170 positions.

[02:32:18] And so we did not put another 50 on top of that because of that. Okay. But I guess that the number you just mentioned will put us in a place where we're still meeting the less than adequate ratios, right? And that additional 50 was meant to improve on that ratio.

[02:32:36] Yes, and we have improved on the ratio, and we certainly, you know, exceed any of the state standards, the SOQs on ESOL. But the $17 million that we have in the current year budget will push those numbers to even better as far as comparison to the state standard.

[02:32:54] If I might add to that topic, Ms. Omish, I think I was really struck by a data point, I think, Rich, that I thought I saw in a document that came across my desk. And I believe it was that 71% of our staff work with ESOL students, even if they're not providing direct ESOL instruction.

[02:33:15] So I think one of the things as a division and as a country we're going to have to come to terms with, some states require ESOL certification of all teachers that get certification. And I think we're going to need to think about what does universal design for learning in terms of staff that are working with students with special needs in an inclusive setting, what requirement would all staff need to have including administrative staff educators in the classroom be they certificated or otherwise and same with esol right like what is the credentialing or what is the professional development that provides a certain level of understanding for

[02:33:51] everybody that touches the educational experience of a student because i don't think we're going to it's almost like siloing services right we're not going to find enough staff that have that level of certification even if we put it in the budget is a concern i have rich was my number close uh yeah it actually was right on well done 71 of our teachers um work with english learners on a regular basis thank you rich sure but there's still the ratio that's pretty it's one to 40 something the last we checked which is why we did this you know i mean it's unreasonable to expect kids to learn any english in a setting like that um so i hope that that doesn't get lost if we're

[02:34:31] we're not going to do it this year, there's the following gear. And if you could just answer the other piece, the language and interpretation services part. I'm going to have to research that and get back to you unless one of my colleagues knows. Okay. Can someone pull that number? I know you guys came up with an estimate last time. We can go around, but I know my time is up. I think the other thing around ESOL services, Matthew, do you have the PowerPoint still?

[02:35:01] So we were going to look at the, did we decide not to use the slide around program exiting? I think it was still in there. We really, yeah, we really need to be strategic about our ESOL work, particularly as students progress through the system, because there seem to be places where we stall a bit.

[02:35:25] And I know that the team is working really hard to think about what, particularly post-pandemic, where we had a disparate impact on achievement for our ESOL students but where are those pinch points and how do we really strategically and intentionally intervene there so that our students are able to exit at a rate that we feel more comfortable with i think this is the progression chart and i think what we're seeing is that in 2022 there was a real drop and again Again, that's post-pandemic with students coming back.

[02:36:02] But we need to get back to a place where the students are exiting the program so we can also lower caseloads because there are fewer kids because they've exited out. Does that make sense? I mean, so there are a variety of ways to get at this, I think. That was my time.

[02:36:19] I know those are two separate pieces, though. I don't want to lose the language and interpretation piece to the ESOL piece because that's just making sure we're communicating with families. And that was a massive number we came up with last time to estimate the need. yeah 98 million which we have not made any progress on so I'm not I think let's take a closer look at that and also kind of the technology that we've been able to utilize Mr. Sethi because I know the talking points I don't know I don't know if some of those are helping but 98 million is a big ticket item so it's something we need to take a look at

[02:36:53] thank you Ms. Omish thank you got it on my list Ms. Seisberheiser thank you and I appreciate There's a lot, right, to unpack, and I do appreciate the fact that you are presenting a needs-based budget.

[02:37:11] There's, of course, additional needs in additional areas, but I think that's in some ways the messaging. I don't mean to keep harping on this executive summary, right, but I think that's the messaging. We believe in needs-based budget. That's what equity is. That's how we make sure we close these gaps.

[02:37:27] However, the balance of needs has shifted, and that's, I think, very important to flag for our community and for our board of supervisors. the balance of needs has shifted and I think I agree with Ms. McLaughlin like I'd like to see a little more digging into the math right of the changes of our enrollment and you know if you're talking about overhead per se like the business rural cost of per people versus the income cost for people let's dig into that a little bit and see what that looks like um I'm wondering a little bit I don't see um I appreciate the pre-k need that you're flagging and the two million set aside for the AR report but we have quite a bit on special ed between the AR report I know that

[02:38:06] Dr. Boyd is working on the special education enhancement plan but I don't see any funding here for what may come out of that special education enhancement plan and my understanding is there's you know a vision a mission a reimagining of special education is kind of the idea behind that so I'd love to hear your thoughts and how we implement it then. Well great question I do know that the enrollment increase identifies by formula a number of new positions for special education BUT THAT OF COURSE IS DRIVING OUT WITH OUR CURRENT STAFFING FORMULA.

[02:38:40] I WOULD ALSO SAY THAT WE TOOK MID-YEAR IN OUR MID-YEAR REVIEW. I THINK WE PULLED ANOTHER 2 MILLION. WAS IT 2 OR 3 MILLION IN THE MID-YEAR THAT YOU APPROVED? I THINK IT WAS 2 MILLION THAT YOU APPROVED LAST WEEK AT THE BOARD MEETING MID-YEAR REVIEW. SO THAT'S 4 MILLION.

[02:38:56] AND WE'LL HAVE TO LOOK AT SPECIAL ED FUNDING AS WELL AND ANY YEAR END. I KNOW WE WERE DISCUSSING WHAT OPTIONS ARE THERE. if we're talking ongoing costs for more staff you're correct um two million doesn't buy a lot of staff uh moving forward i bring that up because i look at some of these multi-year investments right and and there's you know some the jet goals and i'm behind all these i'm not trying to pull one but there's you know a decent amount of people involved in these and they're and one of the one of the things i've asked um two superintendents prior i will say starting with dr garza was to look at our staffing formulas and the way we staff special education because i think it's been decades

[02:39:35] since we really took a holistic look at it and it may or may not need additional staffing but we don't know that yet and without sort of some thought around that i worry that we're going to get to the end of this long process and have an inability to really implement it in a way that needs to be implemented so just something to think about in terms of that stakeholders because we had the ocr the ar and this enhancement plan and that's the same thing i'd say about the um strategic plan Like, is there a set aside to implement what comes out of that?

[02:40:01] I know my time is up, so I'll see if anyone has that. Okay, Ms. Bukarski? So I'm actually going to give you all my time because we are going late today.

[02:40:17] We have another budget work session, and the calendar, there's a lot to unpack there, too. So that's it. And I will reserve my comments. I needed a facilities and maintenance person. I'm not seeing here, but I'll take care of those.

[02:40:33] and I'll just kind of close out so we had a couple of people I think that had quick additional questions if you maybe can you put your placards down if you need if you don't need like a like a one minute yeah you should have okay Dr.

[02:41:02] Anderson one minute yes very quickly in the conversation earlier regarding the placement of pre-k classrooms. Dr. Reed, you mentioned something about utilizing existing structures like places where there would be space. I really want to throw in to make sure that we are prioritizing need and not just space in that effort. I know there's a convenience to the space being available, but I would love to hear how need is going to be the driver of placement.

[02:41:32] So I think need and space and transportation are the three, if I think of a three-legged stool, what we're also trying to make sure is we can get our littles from home to preschool to home again within the transportation structure but I think if we could go in rank order I think need would be first space second and transportation third okay thank you similarly as we're talking about the statement that you made earlier about space how some schools have more than others I want to be sure that we're highlighting some of our title one schools have

[02:42:08] lower ratios in their classrooms primarily because they're title one schools so i wouldn't want that to be caught in the conversation so people just don't think oh this class only has 19 or 21 and this other one has 30. there's a reason for that so i want to be sure that we're protecting that title one supplement supplement thank you yes ma'am thank you karen core sanders i'll be really quick uh two questions one this esau progression chart is really helpful what i What I would love to see is our progression compared to the state and to the nation, kind

[02:42:46] of like what we've done in other areas of academic achievement, and that really helps tell our story about the why we are investing in this. The second piece is back when we had an economic downturn in the past, we actually cut out most of our summer school programming.

[02:43:05] We invested in summer school programming with ESSER funds. I don't see anything here about summer school programming. And what assurance do we have that we are going to be leaning in to ensure that we have that continued learning experience for all of our students that need it?

[02:43:25] So I think it would be an example of an achievement gap closing strategy. So I think that would be a potential funding source. I know Title I also has monies dedicated to summer intervention. And at some point, I'm hoping the board will have an appetite to discuss year-round school.

[02:43:42] It's something that I am a fan of. I think it really, around the country where it is utilized, it has a higher staff satisfaction and student and family satisfaction rate. So this budget does not have any, it doesn't have a nod to that yet.

[02:43:59] But I think if I might, you know, even if our commonwealth decided that was something critical is summer slide and I mean there's just a lot we could accomplish with that little bit of extra but you're right there's not a line item for summer school. So if you could come back to us as part of that gap language to also explain your vision of what we're going to be doing during the summer I know that it's an important area for our students.

[02:44:24] Yes ma'am. Yeah and I guess you should know that the summer school planning is well underway and has been for a few months it's my understanding that we are going to do enhanced summer school albeit at fewer sites this coming summer, but there's not any additional funds included in the budget because that is a separate fund, and by virtue of the fact that we use ESSER funds, ESSER II, and ESSER III funds to fund summer school previously, we did not have to add anything because they didn't use their general funds, and they also get an annual supplement

[02:45:04] from the school operating fund for summer school so they shall have they should have enough funds with what they have currently to be able to provide enhanced summer school this coming summer i really appreciate that miss burton the real challenge is people come and look at our budget documents and think that that's the explanation of everything that we spend and so we need to be very clear that there are these other funds and how we spend them too thank you thank you miss cohen thanks um the last thing i just wanted to highlight is we all collectively as a board have had a lot of conversations around our the extreme issues that we're having with substance

[02:45:42] abuse and addiction in our schools and so i'm wondering what if there's any piece of the budget that we're using to better support our students and families and in particular our staff who are really struggling with these kiddos and trying to find them some resources so i know the added high school counselor hour has a high school counselor at least that's on deck during the summer where previously that's been up to left or left up to schools to fund I don't know that that's for the substance abuse topic per se I'd like to hope that

[02:46:18] middle school activities anytime we keep students active we'll hopefully keep them engaged in healthy behaviors having said that I think it's a huge area of concern I don't think we go a day that we don't have a situation that causes great concern and I think a partnership with the county I've heard you all

[02:46:37] mentioned skipped. I don't know if that's a group that is addressing this, but we've talked about even a treatment school or having supports that are honestly much more significant than what we currently have. And to your point, I don't think there's a particular line item here that addresses that. Yeah, there is the opioid task force. True. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I wondered if as we have done kind of in some previous budgets where we put a line item kind of placeholder dollar amount just so it stays top of mind in the planning even if we don't have the bandwidth this year to make you know big

[02:47:13] changes that would just be my advocacy I would say we're looking for grant funding I asked dr. Presidio's team I know there's some some of our principals we're working on a treatment school grant application some question about whether that was the right grant or not the right grant but I think that there has to be grant funding and this has to be a shared priority with our County Board of Supervisors yes Ms. McLaughlin thank you Dr. Reed there's no question this board and prior boards have always been committed to attracting

[02:47:50] and retaining our employees, particularly our best teachers. The prior conversation so far has not captured the robust work done with Superintendent Karen Garza and the prior board that I served on. It wasn't simply the early years that the step was improved. It was to get people faster earning their pay and then throughout their career. And so we, instead of having a very elongated scale like we have in Prince William and Loudoun, it was a truncated scale because total career earnings

[02:48:26] would be higher by remaining with FCPS, but getting you earning money sooner when you and your families needed it. So I am begging you before the next work session, do not come to this board and have this crucial conversation where 90% of our operating costs are salaries and compensation and we don't have the analytical data to make a holistic conversation because it is not end of scale to end of scale. I've said this to the leadership team under your predecessor and it is alarming to me that we would ever have a conversation without the intellectual honesty

[02:49:04] and transparency and comprehensive data to make a tremendously important decision adding an extra step is not you can't do that in a vacuum we just can't thank you Ms. McLaughlin Ms. Amache we're closing it out rapid fire all right one number one oh okay okay okay got it are you good oh no Ms. McCursky that's going to take hers I just have a brief update Dr. Boyd said that there are information forthcoming about opioid abatement funds that could be used to

[02:49:43] support the needs and it's a county-wide initiative so more to come. Okay number one speaking of things we're spending that we're not necessarily talking about we continue to pay six to six and a half million dollars to bus kids when we could provide advanced academic programming in their base school this is the third work session in a row that I bring this up Dr. Reed can we please get rid of this waste by next year if we're going to be paying for it the coming year? I don't know where that decision sits at this point because I think we

[02:50:18] have a current program structure that requires the transportation of students so at this point and that's a at least in the state I came from we have an obligation to provide transportation to programs for which students qualify regardless of what those programs are so I don't know that we can make that decision for next year we can't do it for next year but the year after that can we plan because last i heard it was going to take two to three years i'd like us to do it within the year so that we're prepared the following you know why are we paying another 12 million 13 million i will

[02:50:54] have to look at the i've read the um report i'm trying with the jonathan plecker report i think and i don't know it feels like we've kind of slowed down the implementation of those recommendations and maybe that's covet and everything that happened within that but i don't i can come back to you with a response i don't know that i can make a commitment to that this afternoon okay um all right next uh i know that folks on uh grant-based positions i've asked around everywhere and kind of haven't been able to find an answer i'd really love for us to look into this in terms of who we're folding into benefits apparently they're not included even

[02:51:33] though some of them have been in our system for years and have taken a cut to get those positions so please let's fix that. You know, I keep hearing about it. The other piece is if the conversation with the Board of Supervisors, Dr. Reid, please, when we talk about pre-K, let's also mention ACE. I don't want that to get lost. The adult and community education.

[02:51:52] I know that was something that came up, but in terms of joint collaboration, those are two key pieces. It is a budget piece that we're taking money from here. That's my time. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Pekarski. Okay, thank you. I thought we'd start early, but okay.

[02:52:09] the i'm glad you're willing to talk about year-round schools dr reed some of us had some very heavy advocacy right after the pandemic that that would have been a great time to kind of put something into place because of the academic loss so looking forward to your thoughts and what you bring us on that topic safety and security where are we with the safety and security review that we had asked for. And so we have an update coming to the board in this

[02:52:45] week's Monday letter and I don't have that right here and I don't want to take the time to do it but there is an update coming in the board regarding the safety and security review as well. Okay thank you that's helpful considering we've got this new safety and security line you know I'm not opposed to that I've heard a lot from parents I continue to hear it every day they are concerned with security measures the vestibules that are being built you know still many schools don't have I kind of wonder one in every region that's about 35 schools

[02:53:19] each I don't know what kind of impact that will have so I will discuss that further with my colleagues all I have time for thanks okay thank you again thank you to staff and thank you to our school board members for a great discussion around the budget today i have um a long list and have been taking copious notes throughout the meeting so what i am proposing you know we've got a long list from things like you know heat maps that were requested around some of the data um an additional data list so what i am

[02:53:56] going to offer is that perhaps with miss pekarski we'll put together an initial list of what these items are and you know circulated to make sure we've captured everything and then go back with work with staff to see what is possible and what's possible when that type of thing so that we can get some additional information that people need as we move through the budget process do recall as miss burden said in the beginning of the meeting we do have our budget question process so please take advantage of that as well if additional needs come forward as to areas where you need

[02:54:36] additional information and do also we will alert you later this week you will be getting more information around the budget our full budget packets and things will be hopefully available toward the end of the week so with that i am going to close out our discussion on the budget we're like three minutes late for our calendar discussion so i am going to turn it over to ms pokarski thank you i think we need to do a little reshuffle let's take two minutes maybe

[02:55:09] and then we'll go right into the presentation because we've only got till four thank you

[02:55:44] staff i'm not going to introduce all of you uh let's just go straight into the presentation okay good afternoon everyone we are going to begin our calendar discussion this afternoon we've posted quite a few documents for you to review we posted those documents before the the long weekend and so there are plenty of uh documents that you can review between now and the the final vote in february but we do want to take this opportunity to go through the presentation to explain to you and the community, how we got to our calendar options that we've presented you.

[02:56:22] Before we begin, I do want to thank my colleagues here at the table. It's, I feel like it's Marty and the Chiefs, if you remember Josie and the Pussycats, it's Marty and the Chiefs who were, and Benny and the Jets, who were all involved in this process. It does take a village to get the calendar moved across the the finish line. I also want to thank colleagues in Human Resources and the Office of Professional Learning and Equity and also the Office of Communication and Community Relations who've been actively involved in this

[02:57:00] process and then also Julie Fowler who has been the project manager for this work and we were just mentioning that without her efforts we wouldn't be here today with the documents that we've placed before you. Before we start I do want to say as we say every year with calendar development that there is no perfect calendar. We know that there are a variety of variables to consider as we're developing calendars and we also state that calendar development is both an art and a science and so we take a lot of different factors into consideration as we're developing the calendar. And I don't know where the

[02:57:37] clicker has gone to. Next slide. So if we go back, here we go, right here. This is the the criteria that we used in developing our calendar options this year. It's important to note that there is no prioritization of the criteria as we develop calendars and we will have an opportunity to go through all the bulleted items on this list in a little bit more detail so that the board and the community can get a better sense of

[02:58:10] the criteria as a whole. To begin with we focus on our state and federal law and with that we must have a secular reason to establish a holiday and we must provide 180 days or 990 hours of instruction for our students. We bring this back because there was quite a focus on the previous year on establishing holidays with regard to religion and so we wanted to bring this back to the board and the community to help understand that that is an important criteria for us. As we look at the superintendent priorities you can see that alignment with the strategic plan goals is an

[02:58:49] important part of our work. Ensuring that we have high quality teaching and learning experiences for our students is a very important piece of our work. Adequate staffing to maintain school division operations is another superintendent priority, as well as our educators having professional development opportunities to extend and deepen their learning in support of our mission driven work. With regard to school board top priorities, I'm going to begin with with instructional continuity as one of those things that we've had discussions with each of you with regard to your priorities and your priorities as a whole have focused on,

[02:59:27] I've called it with a few of you, the Swiss cheese effect that we had in October this year and ensuring that we have as much instructional continuity as possible. Of course, having a multi-year calendar that allows for forward planning, we've provided that to you with that multi-year approach with our options, alignment with surrounding divisions, and we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get into the presentation, our conversations that we've had with our surrounding divisions who are in Region 4 here in Northern Virginia. Ensuring that our decisions are data-driven to ensure clarity around our decision-making, that it follows the law, and that it's respectful of religious

[03:00:02] holidays. So this slide shows what our surrounding jurisdictions are doing with regard to their calendar approaches. You'll note that all of these jurisdictions have approved their calendars for the coming school year, and you can see the standardization across jurisdictions.

[03:00:24] So I don't want to go through everything on this slide, excuse me, but I do want to highlight some consistencies that we see across the board. We'll note that there are spring break consistencies with our neighboring jurisdictions.

[03:00:41] You note that three of five have winter break beginning on the 21st with an eight-day winter break versus a two-week winter break, and that three of the five jurisdictions have a 180-day calendar. You'll note that Alexandria City is the outlier in Virginia with a 178-day student calendar, as well as a two-week winter break. I shared earlier that we have had a meeting with our neighboring jurisdictions with regard to calendar development, and we We all share the same concerns around operations within the calendar process, and we are hopeful

[03:01:19] that we will be able to develop a Region 4 approach to calendar development. We recognize that individual communities have individual needs with regard to their calendar development processes, but if we could get to more of a regional approach, it might make this process easier for us all moving forward.

[03:01:44] With regard to our student and staff absences, we've attached the data as part of the presentation today for the board and the community to review. I do want to point out that it has been challenging for us as we reviewed the data this past year in looking for and identifying patterns with absence data.

[03:02:07] If you remember when we implemented O days in the 21-22 school year, we saw some differences and our attendance patterns, and so with the addition of those O days, we've seen variability from one year to the next in terms of the days that students and staff have taken off.

[03:02:27] We also, I want to remind the board that we did enhance our leave options for staff, and so we've seen where staff have taken advantage of the ability to take religious leave without having that leave denied. And so with that, while we've provided that data, again, we've seen variability within that, and it did create some challenges for us. But we feel we were able to create calendars that still align to and adhere to the criteria set forth. We also surveyed our

[03:03:02] students, staff, and our community, as well as holding a community webinar. And with that, a few of the highlights from the information that's attached is that all groups preferred full student holidays for professional development days instead of early releases, that our employees had a preference for shortening the school day to accommodate extra planning time, but our families in the community preferred those clustered student holidays. And you'll note that we have clustered those student holidays at the end of our quarters on all of our versions of the calendar.

[03:03:36] No group favored extending the school year to add additional student holidays. We did talk about that to provide, or at least discuss extending that school year to provide more opportunities for professional workdays within the calendar, and our employees were unwilling to shorten spring and winter breaks.

[03:03:55] Families in the community were willing to shorten the winter break by one day and to have school the day before Thanksgiving, and our students were willing to shorten spring break by one day and see again you can see with the input that we received from our communities it was as some might say kind of all over the place and so we had to take that information that was all over the place to create the many options that we've put before you today. We did ask some questions about happiness or satisfaction with this year's calendar and all groups were somewhat happy with this year's calendar. Our employees and students preferred starting

[03:04:32] two weeks before Labor Day, where our families in the community favored starting one week before the holiday. That was important for us to develop options for the board to consider with both two weeks prior to Labor Day start and a one-week start. All groups preferred a longer winter and spring break. We did provide options with shorter winter breaks as we looked at alignment with our neighboring jurisdictions. Our families preferred a fixed date for spring break and our students employees in the community preferred it to rotate with the timing of Easter. So again lots of data to consider as we were developing these

[03:05:12] calendar options. And the alignment with surrounding jurisdictions was considered extremely important by employees when we think about our operational issues. If you remember last year we decoupled our spring break from our neighboring jurisdictions and encountered operational issues where it was an all hands on deck approach for our central office staff to support our schools much the same we did at the beginning of this school year and again with that alignment it was not at all important for families in the community and again the complete survey results are attached in the agenda item and board docs.

[03:05:47] We also engaged a calendar feedback committee so our efforts with our chief experience and and Engagement Officer in the Office of Communication and Community Relations helping us with those engagement efforts. You'll note that there is some consistency across the recommendations from our Calendar Feedback Committee. And we've also attached the members a full presentation on the information that we shared with those committees and there's a full listing of those

[03:06:22] members who were part of this particular process. You'll note that many of our groups that we broke our larger group up into smaller groups had a focus on inclusion and recognition of different holidays and belief systems in terms of keeping religious holidays and and focusing on those different belief systems. We saw that our neighboring jurisdictions and that consistency with neighboring jurisdictions was important across this particular group. We didn't see the consistency and feedback that we saw from last year's committee, but we

[03:06:59] did note that there was some alignment with ensuring that we had instructional consistency for our students. I want to take this time now to go through the proposed calendars for the 23-24 school year. While we have included calendars and the out years I'm not going to go through all of those calendars as we think about time but I do want to share with the board in the community that we use we use the same methodology on all of our calendars and so when I highlight that methodology with next year's calendars how we develop the blue

[03:07:39] calendar is the same for the following two years orange green and purple and so will take an opportunity to go through those calendars. This is a bit of a comparison among our calendars as we look at the four versions. The first day of school is a two-week before Labor Day start on three of those calendars, the green version being one week before Labor Day. For winter break, you've seen that we have developed a variety of approaches with a two-week winter break and a less than two week break. And again, that was based on information that we received

[03:08:16] as part of our engagement processes, as well as looking at our neighboring jurisdictions. The last day of school is variable across all calendars. When you adjust numbers of days within the calendar, you will get a different end date across calendars. And then we've created four calendars, three with 180 instructional days and one calendar, which is a less than

[03:08:40] 180 a day version, which aligns with the 990 hour requirement with 177 days. And so we're going to go through those calendars at this point. So for our blue option, you'll see on the left that the blue option here starts for the next school year starts on August 21st. That is two weeks before Labor Day. It ends on June 14th. You'll note that we have an elongated winter break. That's two weeks plus a day. And that additional day is

[03:09:13] based on the way our holidays fall during winter break. And it is 180 instructional days for students. We've had a lot of questions, not only from the board, but from our communities. You feel those questions. We've heard it from our student member at the board table, at the board dais, as well as our own employees around instructional continuity. And so we wanted to provide an update on those five-day weeks that we've built into the calendar versions and we've

[03:09:47] a comparison there for the 22-23 school year versus the 23-24 school year and you'll note that in the first quarter this year we had a four week or four weeks of five-day weeks and we've built in six weeks of five-day weeks. For the second quarter we've had we're experiencing five this year and five next year. For the third quarter on this version, we have seven weeks in this current year and eight weeks in the 23-24 calendar. And for the fourth quarter, it's seven weeks. For a total of 23 five-day

[03:10:21] weeks in this calendar and 26 five-day weeks in this blue version. This is not only important for our students as we think about instructional time, but it's important. We had lots of conversations about our transportation employees last year, ensuring that they have that continuity of instructional time during the school year. And so we feel that all of our calendars help with that instructional continuity. You'll note that with 195 days for our teaching staff,

[03:10:56] we've built in 15 professional workdays within this calendar version. You'll note where we have holidays scheduled throughout, and we have included O-days within this particular calendar version and in all of our versions with the holidays that are recognized and that starting at sundown the night before, we've identified where those O-days would begin the night before.

[03:11:27] For our orange option, you can see here it is also a two-week prior to Labor Day start, beginning on August 21st. It ends June 11th. The winter break here is eight days with 180 instructional days. I'm not going to go through the chart in total that you can see there for five-day weeks, but again it follows that same methodology where we wanted to increase our number of five-day weeks for students instructionally. Bless you. Again, increasing that from 23 weeks

[03:12:02] to 26 weeks in this particular calendar version. In looking at this calendar, you'll note that there is alignment with our neighboring jurisdictions with the shortened winter break that does allow for an earlier end of the school year. And we also note that for staff who are working over the summer, for students who are working over the summer, that that earlier end of the school year provides more opportunities for students and staff to take on other employment

[03:12:32] opportunities not related to Fairfax County Public Schools. Again, we have identified where we have our additional professional work days. One thing that I haven't shared that's unique on all of our calendars and it wasn't asked for the board, there's a difference from these versions that you saw initially in our two by twos, is that we have ensured that our election day is a day off for students and so you'll see that consistently in all of our options we've had some questions around that and there may be questions from the board and we'll be able to explain our thinking on that

[03:13:10] but we wanted to continue that for again safety reasons and security reasons noting that we would have many community members in our buildings and as we think about ensuring that we have a heightened level of security we have the recommendation that those be student holidays on this calendar it's 15 professional work days where we oh yes it's 15 in both you'll see that there are more professional work days on the 990 and i'll go through that but where we see 180

[03:13:48] instructional days we have 15 professional work days built in for our green option the input that we received from the community there were questions about a one week start before labor day and so we developed the calendar with a one week start which shows an august 28th start date

[03:14:09] With an end date of June 20th, we built in an eight day winter break on this particular version, because if you looked at a two week winter break, it pushed us well within the last week of June for the last day for students and employees. And so we didn't feel that that that was an option that the board would want to consider. So we developed this with the eight day winter break. It again has 180 instructional days, 15 professional work days. It provides two additional weeks of five day weeks for our students and for

[03:14:47] our staff. The O days are aligned as they were aligned in other calendars, as well as our holiday approach. And then lastly, we have our purple option, which is our less than 180 day option or what we know is the 990 hour option. It does start on August 21st first with a two week prior to Labor Day start. It ends June 13th with a two week winter break and today as we we have because of the way that the holidays fall with 177 instructional days and with that we were

[03:15:25] able to add in an additional three professional work days for staff and I know that we have colleagues around the table who will be able to speak to the need for those additional professional work days and how we might program those professional work days. This particular version provides two additional weeks, 25 weeks of five-day weeks versus the 23 that we have this year. And again, this does speak to the board's request to have us

[03:15:56] bring back a 990-hour version to consider along with our other options. And so with that, I know that we've given you quite a bit of information to review, and again, our vote is not until February, so there will be ample time to have discussions for us to answer questions, and we know that I have colleagues around the table who are also here to help answer those questions.

[03:16:27] I am the face of the calendar for the presentation, but again, it was a joint effort across all. Yes, I have shared with NARS that this is not Marty Smith's calendar. This is our calendar that we are presenting to the board. And with that, we are open to questions.

[03:16:43] Thank you. Okay, thank you. We do have, I believe, a hard stop at four because there are people who have to leave. Is that correct? That's correct. But we will have another opportunity to talk about this. So I think we're only gonna have one round and we're gonna need to be judicious in how we use our response time.

[03:17:04] And there's a lot here. So if we can start to try to build some consensus, if there are definite no way, I will never consider a calendar without two weeks winter break or any of those, I cannot compromise, please share them now so we can try to understand each other.

[03:17:24] Ms. Corbett Sanders, followed by Ms. McLaughlin. - Thank you and thank you all for your hard work on this. I really appreciate the comparison chart. It's very helpful to be able to see and the drivers for when we, the various calendars is whether or not we start one week or two weeks before Labor Day and whether or not we have eight days or two weeks for winter break.

[03:17:59] My concerns continue to be and they are even heightened as a result of some of the enrollment data that we had earlier this afternoon or earlier this morning is the need to have continuity and learning and instruction, the ability to recognize that not everybody can take full two weeks off at the winter break.

[03:18:27] And therefore, it has an impact on many of our families and the need to have the availability during summer for families to either engage in enrichment activities, to engage in summer school remediation activities or to engage in work activities.

[03:18:46] And so having a larger scale break at the summer, I think, is important, especially in light of the conversation we had as a community when we first went to opening schools prior to Labor Day.

[03:19:02] And so looking at these opportunities, the ones that have the earliest out for our students, which creates opportunities for the summer, and the most continuity of learning, I look at the calendar orange as being the optimal calendar from my perspective.

[03:19:29] That was very succinct. Everything, just emulate that. Okay. Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Well, welcome to the contrast, because I'm, I was going to get my, I'm not, yeah, I was going to get the award out, but I thought I was going to go to.

[03:19:53] Are we resetting the clock? I'll be happy to take an extra minute from Ms. Corbett Sanders. Dr. Reid, a couple things I've shared with you and I want to make sure all my colleagues understand.

[03:20:13] I continue to have very strong concerns about how we are complying with the law. And I have spoken with our division counsel and I just want you all to know that that is going to continue to be a very important part of my deliberation on this calendar.

[03:20:34] Secondly, I want to really ask Dr. Reid if these slides can be corrected because board members are now going to start making the same mistake. It is days, days, days in the comparison of winter break. Eight days or 10 days. When we say weeks, people are going to now think 14 days.

[03:20:52] So it's got to be apples to apples. Yes, we know it's two school weeks, but the bottom line is people need to understand we're talking about a delta of two days. So I would like the slides corrected for that. So we're all on the same page. I want to compliment your team, number one, giving us choices to look at with our community.

[03:21:13] Number two, I do really appreciate that we've got survey data to be able to help inform where we are. I do think that while I value our community and employees liking the eight day or you know the 10 days total for winter break, I am willing to have conversation about shortening winter break by two days, but I think that needs to require a lot of employee engagement with it.

[03:21:47] I respectfully disagree that there is no prioritization of criteria, which was stated at the beginning of this PowerPoint. There better darn well be prioritization among the criteria that was holistic, and I really want to compliment everyone for looking at all the criteria, but there absolutely has to be prioritization, and that is maximizing student learning.

[03:22:11] I would like to offer a counterpoint to my dear colleague, Ms. Corbett Sanders. We just talked about in the earlier session about summer learning loss. And so I do think we're going to have that more difficult maybe longer analysis and conversation that we are mindful of all employees who are less than 12 months are impacted by the longer we run a school year.

[03:22:37] And that is part of our FCPS family concern. But we also need to be talking about how that impacts student learning loss. And I want you all to know my number one thing is how do we minimize the impact on our working families.

[03:22:55] When we compare workdays or we can have our professional and staff workdays align with religious observances, that minimizes the time that working parents have to take off of work and it also then allows for our employees who want those religious observances and the families and students to have that so I've run out of time that's why I wanted the extra minute but I think there's a lot more here that needs to be discussed thank you miss McLaughlin I don't know if

[03:23:28] anybody has anything to okay mr. mesh followed by dr. Anderson oh I'm sorry your thing was up okay dr. Henderson it was similarly I had questions about the criteria not being prioritized because there's always a driver and so I would like to have some sort of information from dr. Reed in terms of how did that criteria come to weave itself into the options that we received there's no way

[03:24:04] that they're equal. You can't make decisions that way. All right. We'll do. I think Dr. Anderson would like. She wants an answer now. Yes, ma'am. Sorry about that. I apologize. The calendar decision making. Go to that page too, please. I'm sorry? No, I was asking for the presentation to go

[03:24:33] to that page. So is this the page we're referring to? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So the decision making priority i would say that um i think the federal guidance probably is out there certainly number one i think the um probably over there two slides next slide there you go um

[03:25:11] this is the general list of all of the criteria if we could stay on this list so i'm gonna phone a friend down at the other end of the table because i have not been as directly involved i'm certainly responsible for the outcome and have been briefed but in terms of looking at the criteria i would think that the absentee data would be probably if i were looking at it right underneath the federal and state guidance i of course think my priorities are important because i think they were kind of generic around student achievement

[03:25:45] right which is really our core responsibility here as a school division board input i do think the surrounding jurisdictions are important because we share staff many of our families who are staff here might be families in another division or we have families here that are staff in another division so we split people which affects attendance but if you're asking me to rank order, put them in a list. Dr. Presidio, did you have a thought on that as well?

[03:26:17] Well, I was just going to offer a little bit of historical context on it. This is only my second year being part of this process, but this is exactly what we did last year. All the criteria that you see here were criteria that we used last year in the development of the different calendar options, and then it was really the board's discussion to determine which of these criteria might we need to weight more than other criteria in terms of adopting a calendar and coming to consensus.

[03:26:42] So as Dr. Reed said, all of these are important and we try to take them all into consideration as we develop those different options. Of course, instructional continuity is always incredibly important in where we started as well as stakeholder feedback and I won't go through the entire list, but it was really trying to look at it holistically.

[03:27:01] I don't want to waste my entire three minutes on this question, but I feel like this is exactly where I was last year when you offered the criteria and I asked how did you utilize them to create this if calendar orange has you know the criteria just you know maybe superintendents first staff second etc list that if criteria blue had this other had other this other re-listing of the criteria list that because for me that is important because now we're engaging in a conversation about maybe shortening the winter breaks when the survey data shows that's important

[03:27:36] to our families and our students. So that is not part of this criteria. That's higher. I'm sorry, on that calendar in which we are proposing eight days instead of 10, then obviously the feedback is lower. I just want us to capture that information because I think there's a real problem here that I just cannot let go of, but I'm going to because I have other things to talk about.

[03:28:01] Professional development, 15 days across at least the first three calendars that you talked about. I would love to have a little bit of a breakout in terms of what do those 15 days entail. Is it conferences? Is it report cards? Is it individual staff work time?

[03:28:19] Is it I'm going to complete the 33 hours of stuff that I need to do on my PDE? Is it conferences? Is it the school initiative? What does that entail? I would love to respond to that question for you, Dr. Anderson.

[03:28:35] So in the past two years, there's been 15 professional work days. Eight of those days are teacher work days, so they're directed by teachers. Principals can't touch the teachers during that time. It's their time. Four of those days are school administration day with half of the day learning provided by administrators in the school, and then half the day goes to teachers.

[03:28:57] And then three days are central office-directed staff development for the entire county. Okay, so the three days that are directed centrally will be those days where we're pushing out those major initiatives on reading and math for next year.

[03:29:15] And so the schools, they'll have two days to do school initiatives throughout the year. They have four days. But half days, half belongs to the teachers. So two days to do all of the things we're in. you know former principal I have to just kind of throw my hat into the ring on this it is insufficient and I think we're doing a real disservice to our schools by saying they can really do all the things that they need to do in two days given the weight of what we're asking them to advance and the fact that we have some schools that continuously have to bring teachers up to step one because such high turnovers take place in those title one schools so I'd really

[03:29:55] like for that to be looked at um i i miss the opportunity to kind of offer my commendations i'm very excited about the three-year outlook i i think that's great because people want to plan and i really like the focus on the 180 days i want to share that because while we could count the hours i know what a school day looks like by the time it's two three o'clock people kids are done staff is done just because we have the time on the books does not making it optimal learning opportunities so i really want to stress that i myself prefer a 180-day calendar the more condensed

[03:30:31] possible those that give weight to what our community our parents have outlined in the surveys as well as as well as um will allow our employees who are not 12-month employees to explore other options for employment because whether or not it's our responsibility it's just where they are thank you mr frisch thank you um a couple things i'll try to keep this succinct

[03:31:10] um i'm only going to vote for a calendar that has three years um i'm not going to support some you know effort to land something for next year and maybe the year after only to be back in this process in short order so whatever calendar i end up supporting i will be supporting for three years and i hope my colleagues will do the same that will give us some distance from this conversation to gather perspective from the community and it enables us to pause future

[03:31:44] discussions for like a year and a half before uh the superintendent goes back into the community to begin conversations around what i hope will be the following three-year calendar so that's my first must. I've been looking at these different options with hopes that we would find balance between maximizing the number of five-day school weeks, maintaining regional alignment around holidays and breaks, and then the squeeze that most families seem to want, which is almost

[03:32:17] impossible, later start times and earlier end times. And so that kind of matrix kind of eliminates the blue and green options for me. And I'm left with orange and purple. And looking at the things that I think are most important, orange has slightly more five-day weeks. They both have the same start times. Orange has a, you know, slightly earlier end time. And as for the discussion around winter break, I don't think families necessarily think about break in terms

[03:32:57] of weekdays just for the record we may think of it as like a break from school but they they think of it as the break is the weekends too so um this is a choice between 12 days in the orange calendar which is two days shy of two weeks or 17 and 16 days in the purple calendar which is more than two weeks um so um you know i'll see how the conversations continue but right now i'm drawn to the orange calendar because it does the best job of balancing um the number of five-day school

[03:33:35] weeks um the start time being uh you know where it is quickening the end time so that we can get to summer enrichment opportunities and it provides an ample break in holidays that are aligned with regional other school systems within the region which i've heard significant praise for our operational uh choice that we made uh last year with the calendar so i'll leave it at that thank

[03:34:03] you thank you mr frisch um um miss cohen followed by miss sizemore heiser thank you um i've been trying to keep a tally from uh both facebook and my emails of where people are so far um and just for my colleagues edification um i purple has the most right now blue behind that and then apparently nobody likes green and orange so take it for what it's worth i think we all you know when when we

[03:34:43] We had this conversation, I think Abra and I with Miss Youngblood Hall, we said, you know, however much work you put into it, no one will like it. So set your expectation because it's true. And the comments, the emails will be on top of each other of just adamantly, like directly opposed and the one behind it is totally.

[03:35:04] So I think we collectively, you know, obviously we want to pay really close attention. And if there is one that is way more preferable and still meets what we all feel, I'm supportive of that. I'm one of several members here who this has real-world consequences in our homes.

[03:35:23] So I will say that while I kind of flirted with the idea of a shortened winter break for a lot of reasons, it made me the least popular Cohen parent in our household. know there's a few things that that bug me about some of these that I think are potentially easy fixes. The Passover one has not made any sense. We flagged this last year for Scott as well.

[03:35:49] The last day of Passover in this country is is nothing but the first two nights are way more important than recognizing like the nights of Hanukkah. So the first and second nights are seders. You're required to do these and so I don't understand the O day and since we're not doing anything with it like that is fine but I think those should be moved to the first and second nights um as the the evening owes um it doesn't need to be during the day but the evening owes the the last day is is not nothing and at least in this country it's nothing um the um election day

[03:36:27] was a non-starter in our group both that I was in and so I really appreciate you guys going back and adding that um there's a few things that don't that i've really questioned you know we pushed really hard i think it was miss corbett sanders and i who made the motion to get veterans day as a day off and i will tell you honestly the feedback that i've gotten has not been great on veterans day being off so i'm throwing this back out to you of that you know potentially that gives us especially if purple winds up being something that we consider it gets us closer to

[03:37:01] that 180 and it winds up being kind of a mishmash because of election day being that week it would give us a much fuller week the other question I have there's a few like in October where we have three professional work days again if we're trying to eke out a 180 day with a purple type calendar oh son of a biscuit um all right may I please have a go back we if we have time miss Sizemore and I apologize if I missed this but do we have a demographic breakdown on who

[03:37:36] took the survey did I miss it somewhere number of people who responded so that is all in the documentation but we don't have the demographics in terms of the demographics that we often think about by race or ethnicity I'm really more interested in free and reduced price meal demographics of who took that survey And I bring this up because one of the things that I have flagged, especially with the, I mean, look, my kids love the longer winter break, too.

[03:38:10] And, you know, when I'm hearing from, you know, on Facebook and via emails, I think I have about, I don't know, 50, right? I just would love to know the demographic breakdown because I've been a single parent. And I can tell you child care during that winter break is exceptionally hard.

[03:38:26] And so I, you know, and I do hear the learning loss of longer summers, absolutely, that that's documented. but also during that two-week break, but I just would wonder, how many working families? I think that would be helpful for me to be able to break down that survey data to understand the needs, right?

[03:38:44] So I just put that out there. I also, one of the things that came up in my conversations with Dr. Boyd, which I don't know how much the board is aware, but the shrinking of the summer actually impacted ESY.

[03:39:00] And so I am really interested in a calendar that ends earlier so it doesn't impact our summer programming, especially that summer programming that is designed for students who have needs. And Dr. Reed can tell you the number of hours I spent talking about ESY and the impact that the shortened summer has had that none of us, I think, were aware of when we voted for the calendar previously because I don't recall it being flagged, and I apologize if I missed it.

[03:39:27] And I hear anecdotally from a lot of students that they're working over the summer now. College is expensive and the costs are going up and given the cost of inflation a lot of students want to work. So again that to me goes to and plus our bus drivers we talked a lot about that and other staff who may want to have summer jobs. I think it's really important to have a school year that ends earlier and I do wonder about the survey results in winter break in terms of who responded. So to me you know the number one is of course the continuity of learning in the instructional days I think that's very important they all seem fairly balanced in that aspect but ending on June 11th

[03:40:07] and having that shorter winter break I think is is very important for I mean we have 60,000 free and reduced price meal students many of them may have two income families if you're working hourly jobs and you have to stay home take care of your child that's child care needs so I just think and that particular time of year is very difficult and I think the shorter summer for access I mean there's many enrichment programs that we don't run that start much earlier because so many other school systems get out earlier that I think students miss that for the enrichment that families can afford to send to but then summer programming I think is we can't have ESY shortened because of how we do our summer calendar at least we need to have that

[03:40:43] conversation so I saying all that I'm leaning towards orange because it's the one that ends the earliest has that shorter winter break and 180 instructional days so that's where I'm at I'm totally open to conversations my time is up. Thank you. I see Ms. Somesh and then no other. You can be next. And if I could just add briefly, excuse me, that many of those points were points that were brought up with the region four group of our neighboring jurisdictions as we talked about how their calendars were developed

[03:41:16] and the kinds of conversations they were having with their individual boards as well. Happy to follow Ms. Seismarheiser actually on both of those points. I hope we can look into those and make we're not causing harm um especially on the frm piece uh i i did on that note i'm not you know strongly leaning in any direction i think it's important to take community feedback at the end of the day not everyone's going to be happy but um i guess i just have some questions around uh what happened at the early release conversation i know that that was something we discussed having

[03:41:51] a day in the week or something that it's a good practice for professional development etc just Just share with me kind of where the staff conversation left off and why we chose not to do that. Well, I think with regard to early releases and looking at some of the responses from the survey data, ensuring that we were clustering those days at the end of quarters was something that we felt that we could do.

[03:42:18] And we wanted to think about that continuity of instructional time as well, not only for the week, but for the day. But again, that's something that we can certainly consider if the board would want to have further discussion about that. Lisa, Dr. Reed, I don't know if that was something you guys thought was a practice to consider, you don't think? Lisa? We did look at this together as a team, as an option, and in addition to looking at early release, we looked at what made sense in terms of clustering

[03:42:55] closer to the end of quarters. When we talk about the Swiss cheese effect and all of that, looking at more you know half days that were not toward the end of the quarter didn't make as much sense so that's where we landed okay no I appreciate that and then how do the professional development days on here purple or orange I guess since that's where folks are at compared to last year it's the same number of days on the purple and orange the one that would be different excuse

[03:43:29] me on the you said orange and blue purple purple we would add two more additional days so that it would give us a total of, I think, 18 days on Purple. I mean, a total extra three more, yeah. Which would be helpful to all of the learning that we need as well, if I can just put that plug in.

[03:43:48] - Yeah, no, I guess 'cause if it's the same as last year for the other calendars, I don't know, colleagues, this is something we continue to hear about year after year, the need for more professional development time. If we're not choosing to do the regular early release, which we were thinking might be a solution towards that, and I know I shared this in my two by two, we need to find some way.

[03:44:07] if we don't end up choosing purple there's got to be some solution to it otherwise this is just an exacerbation of the issues we know we're facing with staff and this is a place where we can do it that we don't have money to to fix elsewhere so I feel very strongly about that and if that means looking at a calendar perhaps that has that early release option even if it's not the community's favorite thing we're losing staff so we got to think of other ways to address that problem that's one the other is just a question around whether we're being thought how we're how we chose the holidays that we chose whether to be O days or whether to be holidays. I continue to have

[03:44:43] significant issues with the equity questions surrounding that. And again that goes back to looking at a variety of factors and so when we look at neighboring jurisdictions, when we look at dates that were already in the calendar, those are pieces that we strongly considered. As I noted, when you look at the attendance data, because we've introduced O days, it did create some different spikes and so we saw some inconsistencies with dates that

[03:45:18] may have had more staff and student absences in one year and then not as much in the following year. The other piece that we note when you look at the the date that some of our holidays fell on they were also next to other days in the calendar which are just normal days that that are days that you know Fridays Mondays that are high absentee days for us so it's there is no if-then machine that we put everything in because it's very difficult to do that we feel that

[03:45:55] it's important to look at the criteria holistically to create the calendar and then to bring the best options forward for discussion and then so that we keep our judgment out of the calendar provide the board some opportunities to have that that conversation then I guess why did we choose the ones we chose so when you look at neighboring jurisdictions and the dates that we looked at with neighboring jurisdictions when we think about operational issues that we talked about and discussed across the board with neighboring jurisdictions and when

[03:46:35] you look at the holidays that we've that we've begun recognizing I think that it's a question of looking at other jurisdictions and not to call up other jurisdictions but we we had one jurisdiction of Falls Church City which was the only jurisdiction that pulled back on the holidays that they provided within their current calendar and I think that that might be a conversation I know that we had those conversations and that I wasn't sure if we wanted to

[03:47:07] open that up for discussion yeah I mean I guess I just struggle from a fairness standpoint. When I remember looking at the numbers, some of the orthodox holidays had similar absentee rates to other holidays that we'd have taken off. I don't know. I can understand the operational piece. I think Diwali, for example, Loudoun and Prince William chose not to do that operationally. I don't want to point out specific examples because that's easy to misunderstand and we certainly don't want to pit communities against each other, but I just name

[03:47:44] that because we haven't found a perfect solution to that. We need to have some kind of, I don't maybe it's criteria maybe it's something that moving forward we can lean on because even the o days there are plenty of faith communities that are not represented in our list you know um yeah that's something that's a struggle for me because there are certainly days that operationally are obvious we saw that with bus drivers and whatnot over the past several years but others where you know that question remains uh for me so that's another area i'd really like to hear some maybe Maybe you guys can spend some time thinking about that in ways that outlast this year,

[03:48:22] especially if we're going to plan out three years, which sounds like a deal breaker for some colleagues. We've got to have some idea of how to be fair around that. I see that's my time, but if we have time for a go back, I'd want one. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I think this is a really much improved product from what I've seen in the past, so thank you.

[03:48:42] And I hope the process was also a little bit better. That was the board's intention. I think having the comparison charts is really helpful for making the informed decisions. And, you know, I see that there's quantitative data and there's qualitative data, so totally art and science, as you said, Mr. Smith. For me, my priorities are that five-day instructional week.

[03:49:00] It was a very difficult fall for too many families and staff and students, so especially in the first quarter where routines are being set. I also think alignment with surrounding jurisdictions is really important, both for our staffing and for child care needs, when you have staff who have children in Loudoun or vice versa.

[03:49:16] I do think that that's something to communicate. I'm not sure that much of the public is aware that so many of our staff live outside of Fairfax and White is so important to look around, so I think that's an opportunity to inform people about that. I'm interested in the calendar that does the most to sustain academic learning.

[03:49:33] And so if Dr. Reed wants to move toward a year-round calendar, which calendar of these ones gets us a little bit more there to start to shift the different supports and habits that we all need to create in the community? And I also would love to adopt a three-year calendar.

[03:49:49] not just be one year, because I think people will really be upset at that. We need to have the planning. I have two questions. One is, can someone please verify about Labor Day weekend? Is it by law that we must have Friday off? I ask because something that I read said that for the jurisdiction that does it for the first time, that makes that switch, it must be Friday off as well as Monday. That made me think, well, does that mean every subsequent year must be Friday off? I tried to look up the code, couldn't quite find it. I think it's a really pertinent question and many people are asking me.

[03:50:24] Thank you, Ms. Marin. John, do you have a definitive answer, Mr. Foster? Can you turn your mic on, please, Mr. Foster? Oh, you don't have one to turn on, sorry. So, good afternoon everybody. As I understand the question, it's on Labor Day. Is that the question? The Friday before Labor Day. My understanding is that yes that we are required to do that but certainly you know I can do follow up but that is my understanding I don't know if mr. Smith you've been working with my team I don't know if they had anything that they'd added to you in the

[03:50:57] debrief prior to this meeting so so I do have a citation here it's 22.1-79.1 states that in each school division in which the school board sets the school calendar so that the first day students are required to attend school is before Labor Day, such boards shall close each school in the school division from the Friday immediately preceding Labor Day through Labor Day. So if we have a start before Labor Day then the Friday off. That's good enough for me. That's something I read must have been incomplete from news coverage. Thank you so much for clarifying that. The other question I had was I'm getting a lot of

[03:51:37] questions about having the end of the third quarter the week after we come back from spring break in many of the models. Can you share some thinking and And is there some space to end that quarter earlier? This way students and teachers finish out that quarter, go on their break, and come back fresh.

[03:51:54] That's been a really big concern. I guess my question is, why was it set up like that? Was that something to try and even out the quarters or -- but now with that feedback, it seems like maybe that's not -- needs to be more art than science.

[03:52:14] I've been working with calendar development now for -- oh, since 2014. And one of the things that we looked at prior to many enhancements that we put in place was ensuring that alignment among quarters and so we wouldn't want, and we've had calendars in the past where we had a, you know, 53-day quarter and a 38-day quarter and it just doesn't work instructionally.

[03:52:38] And so keeping instruction at the forefront, we know that having a break there for this particular calendar coming up may be an issue, but in subsequent calendars, it perhaps may not be an issue.

[03:52:55] And so it's really thinking about the methodology and one of those criteria would be ensuring that we have that continuity among our quarters as well. Well, thank you, and I do see in the draft calendars that really great summary of the bottom right corner of each.

[03:53:11] I just wonder if it could be reviewed a little bit more, because they all seem like they're between 5, 6, 7, 8, and if there is room to make 1, 7, and 8, it just seems like mentally it would be a lot better than going on a break and knowing you have to come back and finish your quarter.

[03:53:26] So I see a lot of heads nodding, so I'd love if perhaps next session we could come back with more thought about if that's a possibility to change and if the math really, you know, disadvantageous or not. So three quick things I'll share is, speaking about camps and child care, again if we're going to move to a more of a year-round calendar eventually, the more that we can be in tandem with surrounding areas is better. I also, my input for wiggle room is I could be okay with federal holidays having school on Veterans Day or even Indigenous Peoples Day and the first two weeks of school could be shorter to give, especially the little ones, a little time settle in and have more time for a PD and the last thing I'll say is don't love

[03:54:05] the end of the quarter on Halloween. Parents were not thrilled about that. The kids are pretty excited to get all that candy but if we do do it we need to advocate and tell people that it's because of teacher work days not because we're going out trick-or-treating. Thank you. I like that. Ms. Toland. Yeah I take a earful about that from my high school kids this year. Why did we have that?

[03:54:31] But they wanted the day off after Halloween, not, you know, before, anyway, or on Halloween. So a consideration. Anyway, the two biggest things I have heard from constituents is maximize the five-day weeks.

[03:54:50] And please, please, please do a multi-year calendar so that we can plan ahead. So I appreciate that, the information here, and the fact that you have done multi-years of calendars. I think that's a great move in the right direction.

[03:55:05] My number one thing I've mentioned over and over during our staff discussions is maximizing academic opportunities. So I think that goes with the five day weeks, but I also see how professional development and time for our teachers to be prepared for the classroom also maximizes our academic opportunities.

[03:55:29] So planning time is something people have also brought up and that it's not doesn't necessarily fit in the calendar you know it's part of our i guess our scheduling and you know budget questions as well it all kind of fits together um i also you know talked a bit in our um in discussions with staff around the summer programming and how can we have a calendar that maximizes our time for summer programming so kind of looking at all of that and looking at the different options I kind of come out

[03:56:07] looking at orange and purple and really the only differences between those two are you know the orange of course has the slightly shortened winter break and purple has the you know at least 10 days of you know school days on the winter break but then what happens is two more days get added to the summer so it's you know it's really obvious where those days are coming from but then the difference between the 180 days and 177 days is really those three days for teacher professional

[03:56:41] development so i understand the importance for that um but very there's also one less five day week so you know it's all you know a balance so just um i would lean toward either one of those two calendars for those reasons i think everybody's had a turn i'll take mine um i've been trying to read through all the different oh i'm sorry timmy didn't see your hand i please go ahead that's okay

[03:57:14] you can go if you want it's fine i just wanted to go ahead you started go ahead okay um very briefly look i'm still listening um i think um you know all the things i i think we're all being very thoughtful about this and i and i appreciate that i appreciate staff's work on um coming back um to us with the hours um right after we said uh you know can we look at that and so i think that's important um for uh for me um my constituents are telling me they really like the two winter break

[03:57:54] the two-week winter break i think it's a bit disingenuous to say that coming back two days two days on a thursday and a friday after a long holiday is going to be you know people are going to resettle in after two weeks they're not going to come in on a thursday and i think we will have low attendance on those days for people who are traveling to meet their families not going on some big exotic vacations but people who are just traveling and wanting to be with families and spending that extra time um i do think um it is i i uh one of my colleagues mentioned that there

[03:58:31] there was a change in the calendars and i too recall that the orthodox uh holidays had higher rates of absences so i would like that revisited i would like data on that next time because i know i think it falls on a weekend next year but in three weeks at three years if we do if we choose to do a three year calendar um i think by the third year it would fall out and it wasn't noted as a holiday to take time off when that that showed high absentee rates so i would like that

[03:59:02] listed and um as i said i'm still i'm still listening um right now i'm leaning toward uh the purple uh because it provides i think some of the things that um we talked about in my group some of the things i'm hearing from my constituents thank you um mr not koufax i apologize i skipped you um so uh you know reading through all of the feedback that i've received and i i have had constituents reach out and i you know calendar is a number one thing i hear about at least when i go

[03:59:41] out into the community um and i will say at least from parents the anecdotal data that i've had is is that that two week break is very difficult for them and that they would like to just shorten the year, shrink it up so they can make their childcare plans.

[04:00:00] You know, if it's the summer, it's the summer. It is what it is. But, you know, I think the orange strikes a balance and I do think there is a balance. I don't think there is one overarching besides try to have maximizing instructional time as much as possible, but even that, different people have different ideas on what that means, right?

[04:00:25] So I think the orange strikes the best balance of all of those things right now. However, what I do hear consistently from teachers is that we have too many professional development days.

[04:00:43] And I hear it all the time. So I'm trying to balance that with what we hear here. And there's just a disconnect for me. So could you all speak to that? Because if we are providing these days, they need planning time.

[04:01:00] That's what I hear. And they want to know where is that coming from. But not necessarily the professional development that we are doing. So I'd welcome thoughts. Yeah, I think this is maybe a situation sometimes like the terminology gets a little bit confusing. I do think and I hear consistently the teachers are concerned about some of the required trainings that we have in place right. So we're trying really hard to streamline that as much as possible. Those are really for compliance purposes. Those are those are trainings to make sure that staff have information to be able to

[04:01:36] meet state and federal law. The professional development time when that's done well I continue to hear a lot of requests for additional professional development time. If you think about the work that we're doing around the science of reading, one of the biggest things that we hear from our elementary teachers right now is we don't have enough training. We need more training in the strategies. We need more time to do that. So I think it really depends on making sure that we're, you know, using the right vocabulary on some of these things because I would agree with you the required trainings, compliance trainings, that's a frustration point for our teachers and we need to do a better job with that. The actual professional development that

[04:02:16] they're receiving in terms of teaching and learning and assessment strategies that is something that continually we do here at least I hear more requests for more of that time well you know then I think we need to do a better job of communicating that to folks if that is the case I that's not a you know I can't go back and forth I don't have much to share beyond what people are telling me and that continues to be a main concern from our our teachers while I like the

[04:02:47] orange. I do have, you know, I think the last week is a little bit odd. I think we come back for two days. So I did wonder if there was another way for us to kind of, you know, take two days somewhere during the year and get out even earlier if this is where we land. But, you know, I don't know how many people will be coming back for that. Speaking about the survey, though, I feel like

[04:03:23] I read it somewhere, but I can't find it now. What was the response rate for those survey results? And so on slide 15 of the calendar survey presentation, we have the data for response rates, and it's also broken out by central office staff and by region. And so I was going to jump in with that before the end of the work session for Ms. Sizemore-Heiser who asked the question about demographics.

[04:03:50] That's the breakdown we have, and I can get that number for you. Yeah, please. The employee response rate, let's see, I'm looking at this year.

[04:04:09] Employee response rate was 48% was the employee response rate this year. And that's based on 18,000 responses of 38,000 responses.

[04:04:30] For our family response rate, the number of responses was 38,000 families out of 183,000 families, which is a 21% response rate. And for our students, it was a 25% response rate. We had 21,000 responses out of 86,873.

[04:04:47] Yeah, that's great. So point being, I mean, this is a data point. It's neat to look at, but it's not exactly definitive, which is why I think we hear different things. However, being what it is right now with, and my clock's not going, So I want to be fair.

[04:05:03] Yeah, you know, we want to make sure that we are also considering the needs of our teachers and aligning with the other districts. So I appreciate that because that was a big burden. And I am now done, but I have a lot more.

[04:05:19] And with that, there seems to be some consensus, I think, around the table starting to take form. I don't we don't have time for go backs well we could do I mean are people willing to stay past four just raise your hands if you are able to do that one two three so no four five um me six we don't have enough people but we do have another scheduled work session correct

[04:05:55] oh yes okay so I will let chair superintendent figure out what we are doing next and in the meantime, I think if there are questions that have not been answered, please reach out to staff directly. I know they're willing to answer them. And we, you know, look, there's so much

[04:06:29] stuff. And we will have to have conversations as well. But thank you. I agree. You know, this three-year outlook is wonderful. You've brought great options to us. So thank you very much, everyone have a good go ahead if i could just add so i think it's important to thank you all for your participation in this process as well uh we've had two rounds of two by twos where we've gotten lots of great input from you on this calendar process uh and so we do thank you for your input to this process we've thanked everybody but i think it's important that the community understand

[04:07:05] how involved you've been up to this point so thank you thank you have a good afternoon yes the vote on this is the vote on this is February 9th I believe we said is that correct yeah so I want to flag that because I'm worried about if the 31st is not going to work for a work session we should I don't want to end up meeting the Tuesday before the Thursday I think our work session yeah

[04:07:44] to do that. So, no, absolutely. I'm not going to say, oh, we'll have a vote on Tuesday. No Thursday. That won't be a good job. Yeah, and Ms. Amish, I will just tell you, like, given the fact that we still have to have a legal briefing, we still have to get feedback from the community on these actual options, I am requesting an advocacy to our chair and vice chair to consider get through the budget vote and then deliberate and vote early March. I think...

[04:08:12] Can we please clarify that? I did not know that it was part of the the process that we're going to go back out again no no what wait a minute that was always that they would draft these options and just like every other jurisdiction people that you have a calendar committee but you don't have the public that sees our options that's what we asked to have these multiple options so the public would say to us we like option purple blue green orange there was no other reason to do this just for the board we talked about it a year ago to do it this way

[04:08:45] That was not my understanding, but I'm going to leave that as well to the chair and the superintendent to work out because it is out of my lane. So, yes, Ms. Marin. Yeah, I've been very vocal that I absolutely do not support delaying this one minute more. The calendar, the schedule has been set.

[04:09:03] I know I've been sharing it for weeks, if not months, that February 9th is the date. So, that is what has been widely published for some time now. Thank you. yes i mean i i feel like i don't know that's incomplete information since you have not sat down to figure out but well i'm deferring the rest of the meeting towards your side go ahead say that um doctor we're not going to go and look at calendars because the 31st miss corbett sanders has offered to see if there's a different day that we can go down but i don't think there

[04:09:43] is because that's part of the vsba lobby day so we're going to go look at calendars we will do the best to make sure that we have a robust but we need to talk operationally and all these pieces so um if if they're going to consider a change of the voting date i will put it out to the board first before finalizing that date so let us take a look and have a conversation and then we'll see so just three years is a longer minute so that sound good i'll put out in chair's notes as you know if we're going to make a change so thank you guys i appreciate it bye go ahead i'll turn it back to ms pokarski

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