Coraggio Consulting Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, April 13, 2023 Date: Thursday, April 13, 2023 Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia Length: 3h 50m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNsKLqS25Mo 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:46:31] Board members, please take your seats. This April 13th, 2023 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order. Please stand for the presentation of colors by the Mount Vernon High School JROTC under the direction of Major Birch Barnum, JROTC Marine Corps Senior Instructor. [00:46:50] Remain standing for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the National Anthem by the Sandburg Jazz Band [00:46:56] under the direction of Christian Donlan. [00:48:03] - Pledge of Allegiance to the flag [00:48:05] of the United States of America. [00:51:50] - Point of privilege, Madam Chair. THAT WAS A WONDERFUL PRIVILEGE IT IS A WONDERFUL PRIVILEGE TO HAVE CARL SANDBERG'S BAND HERE TONIGHT AS A MOM OF A CARL SANDBERG BAND MEMBER A DECADE AGO I AM JUST SO THRILLED TO SEE YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU [00:52:22] AND THANK YOU SO MUCH THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE MOUNTAIN VERNON HIGH SCHOOL JROTC AS WELL FOR PRESENTING THE COLORS TODAY THAT WAS WONDERFUL AND A PRIVILEGE TO SEE AGENDA ITEM 2.02 CERTIFICATION OF CLOSED MEETING in order to comply with section 2.2-3712 d of the code of Virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on April 13th 2023 to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening [00:53:00] the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting do I have a motion Ms. Omish second Ms. Corbett Sanders all those in favor That is Ms. Keith Gamara, Ms. Marin, Ms. Omish, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Ms. Darenak-Koufax, Dr. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Cohen, and myself. [00:53:18] That motion passes with Ms. Bukarski absent and Ms. McLaughlin away from the table. Agenda Item 2.03, Announcements. Ms. Bukarski has submitted a written request to virtually attend this evening's meeting due to a medical conflict. [00:53:38] All those in favor of approving these requests, that is Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Darenak-Koufax, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Ms. Toland, Ms. Omesh, Ms. Marin, Ms. Keith Gamara, and myself. All those opposed? Abstaining. [00:53:54] That motion passes. Welcome, Ms. Bukarski. The Governance Committee Amendment to the Governance Manual regarding recognitions and resolutions has been moved from the consent agenda to action at the request of a board member. The School Board Code of Conduct Standards and Protocols Policy has been moved from the consent agenda to action at the request of a board member. [00:54:13] If you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight, That information may be found at the back of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu backslash school board backslash board docs. Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on Channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu backslash tv backslash channel 99. [00:54:34] Before we continue, Ms. Bukarski, may I do a mic check? Good evening, everyone. Good evening, Ms. Bukarski. I would like to recognize the Fort Belvoir Garrison Commander, Colonel Joseph V. Messina, school liaison officer Marie Bailey, and members of the Military Connected Youth Process Action Team who are here with us this evening. Thank you for being here tonight. Our student representative Ms. Togby is also virtual tonight, and I will call on Ms. Togby for an announcement. [00:55:09] National Volunteer Week is from April 16th through 22nd. Since 1974, National Volunteer Week has served as an opportunity to acknowledge those who dedicate their time and effort to causes that they care about. National Volunteer Week is also about inspiring and recognizing and encouraging people to seek out imaginative ways to engage in their communities. It's about demonstrating to the nation that by working together in unison, we have the fortitude to meet our challenges and accomplish our goals. FCPS is incredibly proud of our dedicated volunteers who give [00:55:44] tirelessly of their time to help and enrich our students thank you agenda item 2.04 month of the military child I call on Miss Corbett Sanders for recognition thank you madam chair April is the month of the military child here in Fairfax County we are extremely fortunate to have over 14,000 students who are part of a military family as well as part of our Fairfax County Public school's family. Our military-connected students bring a strong sense of community and a wealth [00:56:21] of life experiences to our schools. They are resourceful and adaptable while living with numerous challenges presented by frequent moves, parental deployments, and a host of life transitions. Throughout all of this, military children are resilient and patriotic. They know firsthand what it feels like to be the new kid, so they usually are the first ones to welcome a new student to school. Celebrating the month of the military child provides a powerful opportunity to raise awareness and build support to help these children meet the unique challenges they face. [00:56:57] It's an opportunity to recognize and thank military children for their heroism, character, courage, sacrifices, and continued resilience. We invite you to join us on Wednesday, April 19th for purple up day as we encourage everyone to wear purple to celebrate our military connected students before i invite our military families to join the board for a photo i'd like to first show you a very special video in honor of the month of the military child recognition please play the [00:57:33] video what's it like to have a parent in the military cool okay it's already hard to be a kid but being a kid in a military family where you're moving every two three years maybe it's hard to make friends go to new schools so it's nice that they get a little bit of recognition for for everything they have to go through as well one of the benefits i think it creates resilient kids so as a result i'm really i'm really really proud of these two because of the resilience that's built up in the challenge that comes with moving from school to school to have a parent in the [00:58:09] military it's just it's hard but it's like worth it and i just think that him giving up such like a big part of his life. To go serve as country is just something that I really appreciate. I'm very appreciative of the support given by Fairfax County Public School System. Knowing that there are people out there who actually care and want to hear from us as military families and about our experiences, that has been great. I think just understanding that it takes a village for us to do what we do is super helpful. I have a lot of respect for my dad for serving in the military. I'm giving up a lot of his time to stay away from his loved ones to protect a country that [00:58:47] he loves. I'm proud of you guys because of what you have sacrificed and how you've had resiliency through it. But you've done it and taken care of your mom and our family and I'm proud of you guys for that. Thank you. I'm proud of you because you've dedicated most of your life to the Air Force in the military and our country. [00:59:09] - Thank you. - I'm so proud of you. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Get in here. - You have to give me a hug down. [00:59:33] - I would like to ask my colleagues to please make their way to the front of the dais area. I would also like to invite Colonel Messina, School Liaison Officer Marie Bailey, members of the Military Connected Youth Process Action Team, Major Birch Bynum, the Bound Vernon High School, JROTC military families and supporters of this recognition to please come forward to the dais area to join us for a photo. [00:59:57] And that includes our wonderful principals [01:00:00] from Fort Belvoir as well. [01:03:00] - Moving right along. Agenda item 3.01, community participation. The next order of business is community participation. [01:03:17] Speakers must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes in length. At the conclusion of two minutes, the microphone or video will be turned off. School board members will be listening, not responding to individual speakers the school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for public hearings such as the capital improvement program budget and boundaries comments targeting criticizing or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings complaints regarding school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school officials speakers should refrain from using personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student or school-based employee [01:03:54] Additionally, speakers should be respectful and observe proper decorum in their statements, avoiding profanity, inappropriate gestures, shouting, and comments that run counter to the spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy. The school board welcomes community members to provide comments at its regular business meetings and public hearings on school board deliberations, school-related issues, or particular topics. All statements should be directed to the school board, and speakers should remain at the podium until concluding their remarks. As a reminder, speaker substitutions are not permitted. A speaker may not yield [01:04:30] their time to another individual before or during their remarks. Shouting and outbursts from the audience will not be tolerated. We are very grateful to those who have come to speak to us today, and we thank you for your cooperation. Madam Clerk, please call the first speaker. Our first speaker is student number one. Hello, my name is Leah Connell, and I'm a member of the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology Environmental Impact Club. I'm here to advocate for the implementation of electric vehicle charging stations [01:05:07] throughout Fairfax County Public Schools. According to surveys my club has conducted, the percentage of students at Thomas Jefferson who have electric vehicles has increased from 8% in 2019 to 35% in 2023. In just four years, the number of students driving electric vehicles has more than quadrupled. This increase greatly benefits the health of our community. All electric vehicles produce less than a third of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide that gasoline-based vehicles do. However, of the TJ students who drive electric vehicles this year, only 29% drive these vehicles to school, yet 94% say they would consider driving their electric [01:05:44] vehicles to school if there were available charging stations. To encourage the adoption and use of electric vehicles, we need to make charging stations more widely available. By doing so, we can make it more convenient for students, teachers, and community members to charge their electric vehicles. This proposal is more feasible today because of recent actions taken by the Biden administration. The Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act both provide funding for clean energy initiatives, including electric vehicle charging stations. By taking advantage of this funding, we can install EV charging stations in our schools without putting an undue burden on our school district's budget. My peers and I urge the Fairfax County School Board to take [01:06:22] action to involve to install EV charging stations in our schools, making it priority to apply for government grants such as the grants for clean energy improvements at public school facilities. This is a critical and realistic step we can take to combat climate change and support clean energy initiatives thank you thank you our next speaker is student number two our next speaker is david hatcher our next speaker is [01:06:53] david walrod good evening chair sizemore heiser dr reid members of the board recently you looked at the draft special education enhancement plan one of the objectives highlighted was as a necessity was using research-based practices fcps will create systems that provide staff with the time needed to effectively plan for and implement actions required to effectively perform their job functions. Imagine my surprise then when the board was given a list of 64 different proposed [01:07:26] deliverables and only one of them had to do with delivering time. Deliverable 3.2.4 said adjust timeline for completion of IEP progress reports to allow special education teachers more time to enter data. Our special education teachers are tired. They are stressed. They are burned out. [01:07:44] we started the year with almost as many special education teacher vacancies as with all other teaching positions combined that problem has not improved since then we've asked our teachers to take on larger caseloads we've asked them to complete paperwork for substitutes and non-certified teachers who cannot do the paperwork with one flick of dr reed's pen we doubled the amount of meetings they needed to hold this year and added upwards of 128 hours of additional paperwork and research to the workload of every single special education teacher in Fairfax County to say nothing of the expectations given for speech language pathologists, occupational physical therapists, [01:08:19] adapted PE teachers, and other staff who enter IEP progress. We cannot create a list of 64 deliverables and then have one that eases workload for teachers. We can't. We can't. We can't keep asking our teachers to do more. Recently Dr. Reed held a town hall with special education staff and i think she heard loud and clear how tired and overwhelmed our special education staff are and yet there are 64 deliverables most of which will require direct action from our sped teachers either in attending meetings trainings relearning programs taking additional steps and one one designed to give teachers a little bit more time student learning conditions are teacher working conditions students can't learn from a teacher that's left the [01:08:58] profession due to burnout we need to do better thank you thank you our next speaker is phil Lo. I am here once again to discuss inappropriate books in our children's libraries, specifically genderqueer. I've complained about it before, and I've even read a few pages out loud in here, but this board sees fit to keep it in the library, and I must wonder why. Perhaps you are not entirely [01:09:34] aware of what is in it. I cannot see how a rational adult with full knowledge of the book would think it would be appropriate for children. Contained in this book are graphic depictions of masturbation, graphics of male-on-male sex, although the author is imagining herself as a man and is depicted in one in the picture. Graphics of female on female sex, a drawing of vaginal fluids, discussion of oral consumption of said fluids, a vibrator, discussion about using a vibrator, a strap-on artificial penis, a graphic depiction of a female performing oral sex on said strap-on while the protagonist was wearing it, and a very graphic description of two naked males with erect penises. [01:10:11] Once again, one of them is the author's imagination. In what is probably the most ridiculous claim I've ever heard, the protagonist several times declares herself asexual. The entire book is just her talking about her sexual encounters, her sexual thoughts, her sexually pleasuring herself, and others engaging in sexual gratification. The protagonist is obsessed with the act of sex, and while this book sounds like a wild weekend in Tijuana, it is not appropriate for children. [01:10:37] Peddlers of this book to children are no different than the Dalai Lama asking a child to suck his tongue. You have a position of leadership and guidance over our children, which we in parents has temporarily granted you. To put all this bizarre erotic material in front of kids can have no decent purpose. Even in the most charitable interpretations of this book as some kind of guide for a child entering the sexual maturity, it is not your place to sexually guide them. I ask you to get all of these books out of the library and focus on your core mission of educating children on things other than what stimulates their genitals. Thank you. [01:11:13] Thank you. Our next speaker is Lou Di Leonardo. good evening revered board let me begin by just saying that the reports show that Fairfax high school SAT scores are down 17 points sorry 27 points since 2018 while going up 14 points in the rest of the state where was the school [01:11:48] board so far 17 Nova high schools have not or did not inform parents that their children won national merit awards in time to include this information on college applications this willful will withholding of such information is pure racism against asian and white children in the name of equity the schools include thomas jefferson langley marshall annandale and more where is the school board governor youngkin has said that the fairfax county school board has a his words maniacal focus on equal outcomes in other words the same [01:12:27] scores, equal scores for all students, whether or not they earn them through hard work and study. Some books, as you just heard, in some high school libraries are pornographic in nature. One, genderqueer, shows a lifelike caricature of a young boy performing fellatio on another boy. [01:12:48] And there is other examples, but I won't share them with the school board. Do you know about this? Then there's critical race theory that pits children against children by teaching that some are inherently racist. Children, while others are never racist, but always victims. [01:13:04] CRT is sometimes known as social-emotional learning, social justice, whatever. You're a great motivator for parents to pull their kids out of public schools. They should be able to go to private or parochial or be homeschooled with the money otherwise spent on them in public schools being used to get a real education outside of FCPS. [01:13:26] I will just leave by asking you, individually collect-- - Thank you, thank you. Our next speaker is Mark Spooner. [01:13:45] - Good evening. On the agenda for tonight's meeting is a proposed update to the section of the board's governance manual dealing with recognitions and resolutions. This proposal ought to be applauded for a couple of reasons. [01:14:00] First of all, it reaffirms that recognitions and resolutions are intended only for symbolic and congratulatory matters, not for substantive policy. And secondly, the update creates new procedures that will streamline the board's public meetings. [01:14:19] Virtually every meeting begins with a few of these recognitions and resolutions. For example, Hispanic Heritage Month, or Women's History Month, or LGBT History Month, or Grandma's and Apple Pie Appreciation Week, or whatever. [01:14:37] And the text of the resolution gets read, and then every member of the board feels compelled to give a speech to demonstrate their love of grandmas and apple pie. I can't tell you how frustrating it is for members of the public to come here to a meeting or to tune in on TV wanting to hear discussions about important policy matters and then to have to be forced to sit through the first hour or 90 minutes while these ceremonial speeches are given. [01:15:06] The proposed update will eliminate all or most of the speeches, saving valuable time. My only problem is that the language of the proposal has a few ambiguities that ought to be addressed. I sent an email to the chair and to my district representative pointing out a few things that ought to be clarified, and I've urged them to urge the rest of you to postpone a vote on the update for a meeting or two so that the language could be made clear. [01:15:35] And I hope all of you will favor this suggestion. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Amanda Campbell. Good evening. I am speaking tonight on behalf of Fairfax County SEPTA regarding staff retention and support. [01:15:55] SEPTA is also very concerned about the retention of special education staff going into next school year. SEPTA agrees with many of the long-term goals regarding staff capacity that were presented at yesterday's work session. We, however, remain alarmed at the apparent lack of a plan to address the immediate staffing crisis we face right now. [01:16:14] Without retaining our current staff, the long-term goals of the Special Education Enhancement Plan will be near impossible to achieve. We fear for the future of our special ed staffing as so many teachers and IAs already have or are planning to retire or leave due to burnout, work overload, and a lack of visible responsiveness to their requests for help from senior administration. [01:16:36] Additionally, for years, special ed staff has lacked the resources of central office developed lesson plans and planning and pacing guides that have been consistently made available to general education teachers. Gen Ed has a curriculum development team consisting of 21 and a half positions whose main focus is developing those planning and pacing guides and lesson plans, four of which of those positions are devoted entirely to advanced academics planning. [01:17:00] But DSS has never had any dedicated curriculum development staff until this year when ESSER funds paid for a four-person team to develop centralized materials. Unfortunately, these positions will disappear entirely at the end of the year when ESSER funds expire as they are not currently included in next year's budget. [01:17:18] Intentionally or not, this disparity communicates volumes about which staff and corresponding student populations FCPS prioritizes. This is one more example of how the siloing of special education in FCPS results in clear inequities. Please amend the budget to continue to fund these four curriculum development positions which support special education teachers and by extension the students who benefit from and absolutely require quality resources dedicated to their needs. I have attached sample lesson plans and other related sources to my electronic submission. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker [01:17:52] is Cheryl Binkley. Good evening. I'm here once again to urge you to stay the course on fair and equitable education for all of our Fairfax County children not to heed the political drive to demean our children and our schools and you they are misguided to be generous they also portray our [01:18:29] schools as falsely slipping using misleading and incorrect reading of data from the NAEP charts that don't show actual scores, to AP courses, talking about AP courses without accounting for the nationally dropping numbers or the other advanced academics we share and have. [01:18:53] So keep the faith, carry on. The other thing, though, that I had said I wanted to talk about was teacher attraction and retention. As you've heard tonight, our teachers are suffering, and as a result, our children are suffering and to lead children to a balanced and healthy life. It takes balanced and healthy people to be able to do that. So I would urge you as you continue for the next several months to look at the ways you can creatively do that. There's a lot of brain power in this panel and I [01:19:31] believe you have the capability to come up with things that will intervene now not later we can't wait for a collective bargaining agreement to satisfy our staffs we have to do something much sooner than we can have that in place so once again hang in there keep it up thank you thank [01:19:58] you our next speaker is shelly arnoldi hi my name is shelly arnoldi and i'm here to discuss parental rights and the fact that you don't seem to care about them. Last fall, shortly after the governor introduced the new model policies that required schools to notify parents if a child reports having gender dysphoria, I asked Dr. Reed in person at a community forum if FCPS would be following it. When she clearly answered no, I asked if parents would be asked for input. Her answer again was a clear no. I would like to discuss the negative consequences resulting from [01:20:37] keeping secrets from parents. Gender dysphoria is a social contagion being spread among teens at school through social media and FCPS is promoting it. Please read Abigail Schreier's book Irreversible Damage, the transgender craze seducing our daughters to better understand this trend. Last year I met a mother of my daughter's classmate who learned her daughter was using a boy name at the end of the school at an awards ceremony. That same girl had a birthday party with 15 girls attending and only two said they would consider themselves straight two of my daughter's small group of friends are girls living as boys one of which I am I know she has had her [01:21:15] breast surgically removed I'm sad to know these girls likely will never know motherhood because of medical choices made for them as children a few months ago I met the mother of a child who had the worst possible outcome from the school keeping secrets from parents despite the school being aware that the girl had mental health issues she was encouraged to change gender and use the boys bathroom where she was assaulted. She then ran away from home thinking she was meeting a trans friend she met online and ended up being sex trafficked, beaten, and raped in Maryland and Texas. The episode lasted nearly six months. Her mother was able to rescue only with the help of the Family Foundation, and she's on her long journey to recovery. There appears to be a direct [01:21:52] correlation between prescription psychiatric medications and gender dysphoria, drug overdoses, suicides, and assaults. Please move your focus from divisive concepts like diversity, equity, and inclusion and research the problem of over-prescribed psych medication and depressions caused by them. Thank you. We also have one video testimonies submitted by Dion Dixon. Picture, if you will, showing up to an airport on September 14th, 2001, and being confronted with big yellow [01:22:31] signs that say gun-free zone. No other changes to security have been made, just the addition of these signs. If you don't know why I picked that date in particular, it's because it's when the United States reopened air travel to the public after the tragedy on 9-11. After witnessing one of the most horrific attacks on U.S. soil in our history, we realized that our airports and aircraft were soft targets easily exploited by people with evil intent. Our country went into a frenzy of activity to improve security at every airport and in every aircraft flying in and out of our borders [01:23:05] to the tune of over four billion dollars in the first year of TSA's existence. How many school shootings do we need to endure before we do anything meaningful about our children's safety and security? The recent shooting in Nashville proves that increasing school security will help. [01:23:22] The shooter's own writings indicate they were considering other school targets, but ultimately decided on the Covenant school because it was the least secured. Greater security at those other schools was a deterrent to the shooter. The Washington Post estimated in 2018 that providing six to eight armed guards at every school in the nation would cost up to $109 billion per year. Sounds like a lot of money, but distributed among our nation's 121 million taxpayers, it comes to just $900 annually per taxpayer. How many of us would pull $900 out of the ATM right now to never have to see news coverage of another school shooting [01:23:59] again? Meanwhile, this school board has proposed a paltry $400,000 for five additional SROs for next year's budget that is 0.01 percent of our more than three and a half billion dollar annual budget we must do better thank you agenda item 3.02 strategic plan update i call on dr reed for [01:24:29] the strategic plan update so thank you madam chair lots of excitement with the strategic plan currently we're in our final months and closing into a i think a robust strategic plan that'll provide our North Star from now until 2030 I want to share that the family team [01:25:08] convened this week and we've also had two community forums to look at the now updated goals the strategic planning approach that we've taken as you know is iterative it's gone out to the community it'll come back to you again it'll be coming back to the core planning team and additionally we were able to get feedback yesterday from our student or I guess superintendent teacher advisory Council group so the feedback will continue to be iterative and we'll continue to provide updates on that as well there will be another also another survey that's going to go back another feedback opportunity for parents [01:25:46] caregivers students staff and community members before you have an opportunity to look at it and vote on the final plan so additional information about that survey will be coming out so far I want to share the if we can go back one slide sorry Laura I had a second page so to date our planning process has had over 115,000 engagement touch points which is really significant a broad swath of our community and I think the data is up ahead this doesn't include the hundreds of staff volunteers and community members who volunteer to facilitate and [01:26:24] support these efforts so it's a significant amount of input iteratively back and forth upcoming milestones you can see again i want to invite parents staff students and community members to participate in our final april community forum that will be held next monday registration is open and available with additional details online and in addition to the final community forum there will be several planning teams continuing to work this week and as you know your next strategic plan board retreat is planned for april 25th so as we stay connected [01:27:00] WITH OUR STRATEGIC PLANNING WORK, WE WILL CONTINUE TO WORK ON THE LAST PIECES, REMEMBER WE HAVE OUR K-12 LET'S TALK AND TUNE IN CONTINUING THURSDAY NIGHT EVENINGS TO GET UPDATES AND THAT IS THE STRATEGIC PLANNING UPDATE, MADAM CHAIR. [01:27:19] THANK YOU VERY MUCH, SEEING NO BOARD MEMBERS WISH TO ASK A QUESTION, I'M GOING TO GO ON TO AGENDA ITEM 3.03, ACADEMIC MATTERS AND I WILL CALL ON YOU DR. REED FOR ACADEMIC MATTERS. thank you madam chair we really thought that tonight would be a great opportunity to highlight our Fairfax County science work coming off of our recent science fair and of course who doesn't love science right and in particular here in Fairfax County I think our science traditions are long and deep indeed our regional science fair that I had the opportunity to [01:27:56] recently attend was a showcase of excellence that has been hosted for 68 years almost 70 years so we had students from all across the division that exhibited incredible research and it was fabulous to have students explain their scientific thinking their problem-solving and the tools they utilize to do I think really seminal and innovative work so as we walk through this I have a few data points and it's really exciting to see just the excellence and equity and opportunity at work here in our division. These [01:28:32] school-based regional science fairs represent examples of authentic externally moderated research science projects and our students then go on from these regional fairs to compete in state, local, national and international fairs and they don't just compete they actually compete extraordinarily successfully leading the pack across many parts of our country for example in 2023 over 476 students have participated in the regional fair 55 of these projects have moved on to the state fair and 10 will compete at the international fair in dallas [01:29:11] in may this is really exciting and we're very proud of our students our staff that support them and the families that support our students a lot of excitement the regional science fair at the high school level would not be possible without a robust kindergarten through eighth grade elementary and middle school science program emphasizing as we noted the inquiry based learning outdoor learning and hands-on instruction these curriculum programs are built around units that have hands-on exploratory kits which form the foundation of our science program these kits I actually [01:29:47] had the opportunity to visit our warehouse and work look at what the work was going on in terms of the creation of all of these science kits it's an incredible program and this kit management is world-class and unique within their Commonwealth in fact asking for some data last year we purchased package and shipped over 669 thousand 785 pieces of equipment to elementary schools and that's our staff and our warehouse and our delivery folks it's an incredible operation and as we say in Fairfax everything we do here is a team effort and folks take such pride in that work about putting those kits [01:30:26] together and delivering them well. So we're really excited about how this work also connects with our portrait of the graduate skills and just look forward to continuing excitement around science. I would be remiss if I didn't mention environmental science and the importance particularly today around our meaningful watershed educational experiences. Again our partnerships with George Mason and the Fairfax County Park Authority are critical to this while we continue to work with our students in outdoor settings and really are thoughtful about our impact on the environment and what we can do to [01:31:02] resolve issues honestly that perhaps our generation has created so our students continue to work very hard in research stations surrounding four main topics land use and runoff water quality biodiversity and macro invertebrates I out. I can't wait to actually get out to visit the macro invertebrates. In addition, students participate in stations designed by teachers that are led by an interpreter who is either a member of the Fairfax County Park Authority staff or environmental science student from George Mason University. So it's fabulous for our students to get hands-on experiences with those who work in [01:31:41] the field. Really an exciting opportunity for our students. High school science, just to remind our board that this is our read our strong curriculum again around excellence equity and opportunity listing our cores electives and then the note in 2022 that approximately half of our students did take at least one ap ib or dual enrollment science course which we're really proud of and the access again we're going to be continuing to support that at each of our high schools so we did also receive the graduation seal for excellence in science and the environment which [01:32:21] was added in 2022 and the power i think of authentic science experiments of course i think science transforms our world we recently learned the importance of real-time science coping with our pandemic and just want to remind students that exploring and understand the natural world around them as well as empowering our students to take informed action is really a high priority for us here in Fairfax County and as we look to the future many of our fastest-growing careers will require a solid background in science technology [01:32:57] engineering and math and who wouldn't love to be involved in those content areas so for this evening those are academic matters thank you very much Dr. Reed it's very exciting to see the great science and technology and work going on in our county. So with that I'll call on some of my colleagues for questions. [01:33:16] Ms. Corbett Sanders. Yes. Thank you very much Madam Chair. Dr. Reed as somebody who is passionate about science and who was very focused on ensuring that when they took away the science fair in my children's elementary school and the reason was because there was not enough support in all families to make sure that there was that they could participate. I appreciate that we send out the kids, but I do believe that part of [01:33:51] the passion for science is when our children share that passion and that experience in doing experiential science projects with their family members. So I would like to better understand from you how you would envision bringing that hands-on science with parental involvement to each of our elementary schools. I have a second question, so I'll put them all out there, which is using the natural resources of Fairfax County. In my community, we have both Little Hunting Creek [01:34:28] and the Dyke Marsh, which are environmental habitats that have incredible learning experiences and would like to understand how we can better partner with the Fairfax County Park Authority and the Federal Park Authority to bring those hands-on experiences not only to the students of the Mount Vernon and Franconia districts, but frankly to students across the... [01:35:00] So great questions, Ms. Corbett Sanders. I think the science fairs our board has discussed when we talk about excellence and equity and access one of the key drivers is that we have science fair opportunities across all our elementary schools to your point so I know that's a topic we're working on and as a part of our conversation around making sure we have access for all students because it's in those events that our students have opportunities to work with family members and caregivers community volunteers to apply the knowledge they're learning in our classroom so I [01:35:35] appreciate you bringing that up that continues to be a work in progress as far as national resources our whole county is an enormous national resource and I I know our team our instructional services team is working hard with our county partners just as the watershed project that I shared to make sure that we're maximizing the use of our outdoor classroom areas and our natural resources. So I think we probably could come up with a longer list of examples. [01:36:06] This evening I just shared a few given time but I think you raise a good point. I mean the more students are able to see the relevance of what they're learning in the classroom the better. So I would appreciate any updates you can give me over time especially on the science fairs in our elementary schools. [01:36:24] Yes ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Toland? Of course I have to comment on this. A couple of things. We do have a position, which I believe is new this year. You guys can correct me, Noelle, to help promote schools to do science fairs. And I hope we keep that position in talking to the person that is doing that work at the science fair. It's already making a big difference in the participation. Is it new this year? [01:37:00] it is a new position this year I know I will ask for the data on the number of new schools that have been added as a result so I think that'll be a really important piece of our return on investment for that position that would be great yeah that would be great also we do have in our current budget some additional staffing for our get to green program that I think would get to some of the things that Miss Corbett Sanders was talking about to increase those partnerships that we have and taking advantage of getting out to those nearby you know areas [01:37:35] the natural areas interestingly we have at least 125 schools that have a fairfax county park authority property within a quarter mile so the county did a really nice job of planning that for us and we should take advantage of it some great things to take advantage of i actually went on a meaningful watershed um experience yesterday with herndon middle school and i will tell you the macroinvertebrate station is absolutely the favorite because the kids are right in the stream you know of pulling out the critters and taking a look at them and identifying them and you know [01:38:11] really doing some hands-on environmental work and they really loved working with the park authority naturalists um also i wanted to mention um our curriculum teams do work um across disciplines so one of our speakers earlier talked about you know the need for curriculum development for our special education students you know our science team does work very closely with special education as well and developing um curriculum materials it's probably not enough but at least it's something to make sure everyone is included um one thing i do want to mention i just want to [01:38:46] make sure that we are offering all the advanced science classes that our kids need in their junior and senior year even if the classes are small um dr zuluaga and mr tyson are probably tired of hearing um from me on this topic um every year i know i know um but we really need to make sure even if the classes are small we're creative in making sure that kids can take advantage of them Thank you, Ms. Teller. [01:39:11] Yes, ma'am. Okay. Ms. Marin? Yes, I appreciate hearing this. I'll echo some things of my colleagues and add a few more. So what is the update, the status update, Dr. Reid, on getting some of those outdoor learning classrooms that we are going to fund to spec installed? [01:39:29] What is the update? We are working on outdoor classrooms. Mr. Fanshawe, do you have an update to share this evening? I know. Thank you, Ms. Marin. don't have an update this evening but I can get you one I know we've got the designs in progress and the permitting is underway so we are planning to install some this summer well I would thank you mr. Fanshawe well miss Tolan and I were at Carson Middle School yesterday meeting with their very robust green team and they the students want to know they want to know which schools are getting these classrooms and they themselves had made their own outdoor [01:40:06] classroom space using repurposed spools from I think Dominion but it's not you know a really fully purpose accessible safe place and so for those schools that have done some homemade things especially during COVID you know when are they going to so very eager to hear about that and regarding what's known as field trip afoot you know I had worked in with an elementary school that had a creek right behind the property that the staff and children would have to cross one you know kind of quiet road to get there and that's you know considered field trip afoot and you know we talked about are there blanket permission slips that can be given so that teachers can you know with [01:40:46] some advanced notice to tear and generally say you know generally we're gonna go to the creek these days or I know in Vienna we have a bunch of places Reston and I did want to mention as an aside Reston Association is an amazing partner forming meaningful watershed environmental education activities the Hughes middle school students have it made because they just walk down the back of their building into the beautiful trails and Creek and the rest Association staff does an amazing job so so that that's wonderful but back to this field trip afoot there are places like such in Rhode Island like years ago where they would have just these blanketed field trip provisions so teachers and kids could really get out more so I wanted to put that out there a [01:41:24] few other things I'll quickly share is stem as a special I represent a range of schools where some of the schools have dedicated spaces for stem learning and in their specials time and then I have other schools where they've had to now cut the staff member who would deliver a special. That's not very equitable. So can you speak to how we can get that more robust and consistent? Well, I do know that there is a certain amount of site determination in terms of how to use funds for staffing. And so each school has the context at times that they may choose to add more staffing for reading support or maybe mathematics support [01:42:04] or in some cases stem support so I think as we look at the power of a strategic plan that's division-wide that has clear goals I think that's going to be a real driver in terms of our future planning for staff and program in particular determining what measurements the board situate situates under each of those goals will drive the decision-making around the equitable course offerings across schools thank you thank you Dr. Anderson thank you again this is very [01:42:40] exciting academic matters is my very favorite of our meetings and I appreciate what you're sharing that is occurring during the school day I want to pivot a little bit into extracurricular activities because we know that's a space where when our students participate in those activities they connect more to our schools it has many positive yields for our young people in terms of science connecting connecting it back to what you just talked about it reminds me of science olympiad which is a wonderful activity that many of our schools are able to establish if they have the appropriate parent support i am looking for that equitable [01:43:19] access for these wonderful extracurricular activities not only would have academic benefits but also social benefits for all of our students so i would love to hear how do you foresee that we could provide these kinds of supports for our schools that don't have those established parent systems that can not only pay for those programs but sustain them because some of our schools are not able to do that so thank you Dr. Anderson I think I mean that's the question I've been asked multiple times right since coming to Fairfax and I think there's [01:43:54] several keys to that I think our staff to mr. Walrod's comments earlier this evening are tired right now and I think this is a time where we think about partnerships without our where we have communities that maybe have less parent support for after-school programming I come from an area where our industry partners picked up that slack where they would provide staff actually that would come and conduct STEM after school classes for example for students or science Olympiad teams and also judges for scoring for competition [01:44:32] so I think we're going to need to take our game up on our partnership work with local industry to be quite honest as well as Miss Marin mentioned our new staff position with our staff person that's promoting the science fair engagement I think I'm going to be checking in with our instructional services team and checking in on also the middle school work around Science Olympiad because you're right I mean if it's at one school it should be at all schools every student should have that opportunity sometimes it's that opportunity that lights a spark that really changes the course of a young person's trajectory and parents see it they see it as an added benefit when [01:45:12] school X is able to provide it so they want to be there and instead of where they are because they're not able it's not sustained at their current schools I also want to just throw in in addition to the partnerships the industry partnerships that you've talked about and I know we have access to so many Lockheed Martin is also one of them because I know they personally have come and done work in schools where I have been the administrator but we also have other groups that are looking to participate in our schools to support us I think I've talked with your staff about the kind foundation which are students at NOVA who want to come back and mentor they want to tutor so I'd [01:45:50] love to hear also how can we tap into some of those less formal organizations to help support this kind of work so I know that Jay Grant is working with some of those foundation partners and those partnership groups I was just visiting with one of our community leaders Chris Amundsen who's doing a tutor program and they have students that want to be working and tutoring in our schools after school so I think it's bridging those connections right now and putting those pieces in place the spring so when we start in the fall when you ask me [01:46:27] this question I'm gonna be able to say they're in all our schools because I will ask I know you will so I hope you do so I expect to have a 100% answer by the fall and just the last piece to this as we are working through establishing these partnerships and these opportunities I would look for you to allocate and prioritize how we are matching these individuals with schools again those who are not able to establish their own programs in my mind should have priority I would love to hear your thinking on that too I would 100% agree it matches our current hiring practice right now where we're hiring [01:47:07] to support our highest need schools first and I see that as a high priority in terms of allocation thank you and I'll just actually I'm really glad to pick up on what dr. Anderson left off on because I've actually had coffee with a few industry leaders who are very eager to bring this kind of expertise in partnership to our schools and are really looking for ways to more easily know where it is most needed right so I think you know building that infrastructure and I think you and I've had conversations about how do we build a like a volunteer Fairfax kind of infrastructure within our schools and then build these consistent partnerships and I know there's work good work going [01:47:44] on this but I think finding a way to especially target the schools that may not have you know as many of these programs may not have that partnership and I can just tell you what Ms. Corbett Sanders says how important that parent piece is and if there isn't a parent piece how do we get community volunteers in that as a parent of a child who won a prize at the Fairfax Science and Engineering Fair back in the day it was definitely a project that she and her dad worked on together and bonded over and I think it was it lit a spark in her now she's a techie out in your stomping grounds your old stomping grounds and so I think you can it can light a spark a lot of our kids and the only other thing [01:48:21] I wanted to say that sometimes anecdotally I hear you know science education can be different from grade to grade depending on what other priorities there are so you know looking at that consistency of implementation of science education and technology education across our schools and across each grade i think is another area that of opportunity yes ma'am so thank you very much and with that i will um move on to next agenda item oh i'm sorry apologize the light wasn't up before um go ahead miss kieskamara just one comment i'm glad to hear my colleagues talk about [01:48:58] the after school opportunities to learn and the mention of the network that we need i would encourage you and we've talked before about grand involved which is already established and a wonderful program that can be expanded and with a little help from some of our communications friends I think we would get the help that we need and to support the schools that don't necessarily have the support they need right now so I just wanted to mention that thank you thank you thank you dr. Reed and again academic matters is a really great addition so thank you for that moving on [01:49:36] to agenda item 3.0 for student representative matters I will call on Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Good evening, everyone, and happy Thursday. I know for a lot of students out there, it's an extra happy Thursday because it signifies the end of the third quarter. And thank you to the student speaker who was here with us today. Your awards were incredibly important and remarkable, so thank you for spending your time on this Thursday with us. [01:50:05] A lot of great events have happened since I last saw you all. I was able to join a large group of students from all across the county at Chantilly High School for the Fairfax Teen Job Fair, which was hosted by FCPS, Supervisor Herity, and the Fairfax Connection newspaper. [01:50:21] I have to say programs like these are incredibly important because those are available resources and information that you get to take away that you might not always get equal access and opportunity to, and those events like that are incredibly invaluable. [01:50:38] Earlier this week, I joined Dr. Reed as well as board members Cohen and Pukarski at Chantilly High School for a town hall. It was incredible. And I have to say a lot of the great, we had a lot of great questions. And even after the town hall, I contacted a couple of students that I know who participate in certain leadership groups that I am in contact with just to cover some topics that were discussed during the town hall and see if my way of thinking was something that was being thought of in some ways with somebody who doesn't go to a similar school like mine. [01:51:09] um and i have to say the friday before break i had the pleasure of attending fairfax high school's their uh marketing fashion show and this event was entirely put on by students under the direction of miss walters and it was absolutely amazing the theme was fashion through the years and the students brought so much creativity and it was absolutely amazing i loved every minute of it And it was just being there reminded me that it's really important to have classes as accessible as possible. It doesn't matter if they're CTE courses, academies, or advanced classes. It's [01:51:47] crucial that every student has access to courses like that because not only does it help further their education, but you get a big sense of what you are interested in, what you'll enjoy early on. And it just lets you know that you're not limiting them to just what's available at their base school so when i'm just talking about accessibility i don't mean just then of course i also mean whether or not it's providing the tailored needs of other students who want to be able to fully participate in the classroom but let's say the curriculum isn't meeting what their standards [01:52:21] are for success um so i just want to mention that and i also know that april is a month of a lot of wrapping up so i know student groups such as the superintendent's advisory council and the student equity group will be having their last meetings during this month so i just want to give them a shout out for all the hard work that they've been doing this year and i'm very very grateful for all the feedback and support that they've also given me in time and yeah as always thank you so much for your time thank you miss togby as great as ever to hear all the great things going on around the county from the students perspective and before we turn to superintendent matters i just wanted to recognize that we have a boy scout from troop 160 in the [01:53:01] room, Ashwin Shahnemugarasa. Thank you for joining us and working on your badge. Please stand. Thank you, Ashwin, for joining us tonight. And with that, I will turn to agenda item 3.05, Superintendent Matters, and I'll call on Dr. Reed. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to start by welcoming everyone back from spring break, and I hope everybody had a fabulous time to get away, get outside. We're actually having summer this week, so hopefully we'll enjoy this weather. [01:53:33] today was the last day of third quarter hard to imagine uh so we only have one quarter left of our school year uh before we must break for summer so just looking forward to our last quarter and finishing strong uh students and staff and i know it's been a rigorous year and appreciate all the work that's gone into the first three quarters on all fronts prior to spring break i had the opportunity to visit Franconia Elementary School and meet Peyton, a fifth grade student who asked some really tough questions and we had a good [01:54:09] conversation just about leadership today. Miss Toland and I had an opportunity to visit several of her magisterial schools before break, Hutchison Elementary and Coates, and really had a chance to look at the really amazing literacy work going on early literacy work and thinking about excellence equity and access it's pretty amazing and then looked at some family academy topics with our family liaison at coates elementary solange mcpherson and just really provided a lot of information for us as well as meeting with [01:54:44] students who were thinking like their principal for a number of presentations i was also just prior to spring break asked to make opening remarks at the US Chess High School National Championship in Washington DC and I've never seen as many chess boards in one place in my life there were I think a thousand chess boards set up all the same actually and a lot of excitement it's a very inclusive sport and really resolves a lot of critical thinking skills earlier this week had the opportunity to attend a Springfield and Sully District joint [01:55:20] Town Hall at Chantilly High School hosted by Ms. Cohen and Ms. Bekarski and Ms. Togby and it was a I think a really great conversation a lot of topics brought up and some really thoughtful work to be done. I want to give a shout out to the Herndon Elementary Bees Green Team who recently improved their local watershed and helped a bird population by installing Purple Martin Towers at their school and community at nearby Lake Frederick. [01:55:50] pretty exciting outdoor environmental move by our young bees student bees that is and really proud of their work and keeping with our environmental theme just a reminder that Earth Day is coming up April 22nd and it's celebrated each year to demonstrate support for our environment one of of the really honestly it began in 1970 and it includes now a billion people in more than 193 countries. This year's theme is invest in our planet so really excited to join our get to green [01:56:29] team in celebrating earth week division-wide on April 17th through 20th. Should be a great deal of excitement around that and those are the superintendent matters this evening. Great thank you so much Dr. Reed moving right along to agenda item 3.06 local special education annual plan and report school year 2023 to 24 and I'll call on you Dr. [01:56:55] Reed for the introduction thank you madam chair it's my pleasure this evening to introduce Dr. Michelle Boyd our assistant superintendent for special services Dr. Boyd good evening and I will be briefed before you on this evening our presentation this evening is focused on the 2324 IDEA annual plan and I'll refer to it throughout the plan as the annual plan now have our lovely folks here advance since my clicker is not working teamwork Dr. Reed refers to Fairfax County Public Schools is required by our state and federal law to submit an IDEA annual plan this plan must provide [01:57:35] must demonstrate FCPS's eligibility to receive flow-through allocations from the state and federal Part B grant award. This plan also outlines how FCPS plans to use IDEA funding for special education services provided to children with disabilities. First FCPS must ensure that all children with disabilities for which is responsible for law including students placed in private schools are provided with certain rights and protections. The Code of Virginia requires that the annual plan be reviewed by the division school board the advisory committee also known as the ACSD [01:58:15] AND BE APPROVED AND DOCUMENTED PRIOR TO BE SUBMITTING TO VDOE. IN OUR NEXT SLIDE, THE FY24 PROPOSED BUDGET FOR SPECIAL EDUCATION TOTALS $689.7 MILLION, WHICH IS 19.5% OF FCPS'S $3.5 BILLION OPERATING BUDGET. IF WE CAN ADVANCE TO THE NEXT SLIDE. [01:58:39] THANK YOU. THE IDEA ANNUAL PLAN DESCRIBED OUR PLAN FOR USE OF IDEA FEDERAL FUNDING. THE PROJECTED IDEA GRANT OF $40.3 MILLION WILL HELP TO OFFSET FCPS'S TOTAL OPERATING COST FOR THE PROVISION OF SPECIAL EDUCATION AND RELATED SERVICES. JUST TO CLARIFY, THE IDEA ANNUAL PLAN IS NOT A PLAN FOR THE FULL FY24 SPECIAL EDUCATION BUDGET. RATHER, IT'S A PLAN FOR HOW FCPS WILL USE THE PROJECTED $40.3 MILLION IDEA GRANT AWARD. ON OUR NEXT SLIDE, WE'LL LOOK AT OUR APPLICATION [01:59:16] for federal funds. There are two parts of our IDEA annual plan, 611, which is for our school-age students, and 619 for our preschool students. As we look at the next slide, we're going to look very briefly at the IDEA awards. Since FY 2017, the actual IDEA Part B allocation in total has increased by $4.8 million, or 13.5%. Looking at the year-over-year changes for the last seven years the largest single year increase in ida awards is 4.1 percent which occurred [01:59:54] in fy 23. the video e has not yet released the actual projections for this year therefore our projections are similar to the projections to the actual amount allocated on last year in our next slide we'll just look very quickly at a couple of requirements requirements for our 23 24 IDEA plan were outlined and it's included in the standard workbook that is posted to board docs. [02:00:21] Policy statements, we must ensure as FCPS that we will adhere to the established policies, procedures, and programs that are administered by IDEA in order to be eligible for this grant award. On the next slide, to be eligible for IDEA funds, FCPS must ensure that we have 16 assurances regarding our responsibility for use of the grant funds as part of the application process we must also address our interagency agreements we provide full educational programming at the juvenile [02:00:54] detention center as well we also provide jdc is operated and supervised by our office of non-traditional school programs but is fully funded by bdoe in addition to the detention center We also have an interagency agreement with our county sheriff's office that operates the adult detention center. [02:01:16] This agreement outlines our responsibilities for the provision of special education services to those that are eligible. Very quickly, as a part of our application process, we do have to report on implementation of our prior year's plan. And just to highlight a few things, we primarily focus our implementation on two areas. [02:01:35] Identification, evaluation, therapeutic, and instructional services for students with disabilities. and also child fine screening evaluation for our students that are ages 2 through 5. Last fiscal year, we used most of our IDEA grant award for personnel costs. [02:01:52] More specifically, 301.6 FTEs were funded by IDEA in our 611 grant and six positions funded in our 619, our preschool grant. And looking at our enrollment projections and our trend for FY22, we had 27,136 students with disabilities that we served, which was an increase of 200 students from the previous year. [02:02:17] If you look at our screen, the number of students with disabilities continues to grow in FCPS, as evidenced by this year's enrollment of 28,316 students. Here you will note the number of screenings and evaluations conducted for our preschool students and on the next slide you'll notice the number of psychological evaluation social cultural evaluations and speech language evaluations for our school-age students another component of our application is a maintenance of effort we're in short we have to ensure that we expend at least the same amount or more on the provision of special education services as we did the last [02:02:55] fiscal year we do anticipate that we will meet that maintenance of effort requirement based on preliminary projections. And looking at our next slide, our expenditures for our funding source for FY22, FCPS spends significantly more on special education than we'll receive from our federal and state contributions. [02:03:16] For FY22, federal and state contributions combined total $127.6 million, or 19.9% of the $640.4 million spent in special education, in which 80.1% came from local funds. Divisions are not required to provide comprehensive coordinated early intervening services, but they may voluntarily choose to set aside up to 15% of the IDEA award. We in FCPS do voluntarily set aside 15% or $6 million to support students who are not yet eligible for special education [02:03:54] services and that's used to support behavior social emotional supports attendance supports and things like restorative justice in addition to our coordinated early intervening services we also have to have proportionate set aside and that is pretty much funds that are allocated for our students that are in home school or parentally placed in private schools our allocation for our PSA is 0.2 million. In summary, we have our Part B allocations is estimated to be 40.3 million [02:04:28] dollars of which 34 million directly support special education, 6 million support that early intervention. Further, almost 99% of our grant award supports personnel costs of which most of those positions are school-based positions. In closing, here's a timeline for submitting our IDEA annual plan school board action and requested approval is scheduled for April 27th and thank you so much for your attention this evening. [02:05:00] Thank you very much Dr. Boyd. I have a few questions from my colleagues starting with Ms. Cohen. Thanks very much. I appreciate and I look forward to the work session to come. One question that I had though on the accompanying document where we see that speech service screenings we had 14,309 and 3,851 evaluations of which 2,200 were initial speech and language evaluations so does that mean that 14,300 students were screened for speech related concerns but only 3,800 were [02:05:39] determined eligible for further evaluation? Yes that is what that means and again that determination is identified by that special education IEP team or that child fine team. Were you surprised looking that that went down, given all the conversation that we've had about the implications of COVID on speech in particular for younger kids, were you surprised to see that number go down the three and a half percent? [02:06:06] It looks like the only one that went down. You took the answer right out of my mouth. And looking at our evaluations, again, those are made on an individualized basis based on those child find or IEP teams and most of our evaluations actually saw an uptick that area of SLP or speech evaluations did decrease I don't know that I would say that I'm surprised because there can be many nuances and factors that go into that we continue to watch that and monitor and listen to the feedback we do know that there are some concerns from our community we know that CEPTA share shared some concerns as well as ACSD regarding speech services particularly for our youngsters and our students who may use augmentative [02:06:43] communication devices and so we are engaging in conversation and dialogue about that terrific thank you so much yes ma'am thank you miss Marin yes dr. Boyd can you please crosswalk this or align it with the recommendations and discussion that we had on Tuesday in our work session about the special education audit report findings and your team's recommendations sure and thank you for that question so here one of the things and again I know I went extremely fast a number of these positions are actually instructional positions or related service provider positions that provide direct services [02:07:20] to students and so these are the same teachers that I know a gentleman spoke earlier on this evening about workload and supports and so these are the persons that we're looking to do that assessment and one of our proposed actions to do an assessment of the workload versus caseload to see what additional supports are needed the same persons and classifications of persons that there's that advocacy for that additional planning period at the secondary level and planning days at the elementary level to adjust that workload but these again are not reflective of any of the additional FTEs included in the plan because this is really and as we share it most of the [02:07:58] funds supporting that special ed program come from our local dollars and I know Ms. McLaughlin lifted that up on last week or earlier this week but they're really classroom positions IA positions providing direct services to students by and large. Okay thank you. I'm just trying to rectify that we know we have great need. We've had these recommendations. We know we have the state report that's needed. We've talked about a more holistic universal design. So I feel like we're in this place where I understand we've got to do the things we've got to do to get the very paltry amount of money. I mean that pie chart is just quite disgusting that the federal government with all of its money can only fund a tiny little [02:08:37] smidge of that but you know it's hard to say yes let's approve this plan when we had just had this discussion on Tuesday on the horizon about our teachers and workload and more inclusivity you know I wonder Dr. Reed maybe if you could also speak to just how are we supposed to rectify pushing this plan forward even though we've had this very robust conversation and a vision to better educate our students and right size the workload. So Ms. Maren I think it's a good question I think what this special education plan is resolving the use of these specific dollars there clearly are more dollars that are spent on special [02:09:15] education that come out of our general budget so I think this plan is based on the funds the grant funds local funds and state and federal funds but I think we're gonna clearly we're going to need to do more than simply what's on the screen here. So I see it as part of the solution, but not the complete solution. [02:09:38] So is there flexibility with this plan to adjust it, especially as we come into the strategic plan and further consider how to take AR's recommendations into implementation? When do we have the opportunity to go back and revisit this, if at all? So I'm happy to address that. So one of the pieces, and it's in the notes, but I kind of skipped over that section. We do have certain PARAMETERS ABOUT HOW WE CAN UTILIZE THESE IDEA FUNDS AND WE HAVE TO SUBMIT PERIODIC CERTIFICATIONS TO VDOE FOR REIMBURSEMENTS. [02:10:07] IF WE WANT TO REPUPOSE THE FUNDS AT ALL, WE WOULD HAVE TO SEND A BUDGET AMENDMENT AND A REQUEST TO CHANGE THAT TO VDOE AND TO HAVE IT APPROVED. AND AGAIN, THE LARGE MAJORITY, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THAT CIS MONEY THAT WAS AT 6 MILLION, THE OTHER 34 MILLION HAVE TO BE SPENT DIRECTLY ON THE PROVISION OF SERVICES SUPPORTING THOSE STUDENTS THAT HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED WITH IEPs. [02:10:29] And Dr. Boyd is included in this plan is the position of early childhood special education coordinator the ECSE I know I might ask you about that I have a constituent who works in that position but that position is being not funded and that person will go to another education position but you know when we talk about early childhood so these were coaches that were helping to support preschool staff under American rescue plan funds are they part of this plan. [02:10:56] So we got additional under the AARP grant that was an additional grant in addition to the to the annual plan that was allocated and those funds have sunset so those are not those funds are not included in this and they're not. Thank you and I appreciate your response on that particular person you know when we also looked at the increase of children arriving before they've even set foot into our building they are arriving with such need and I do wish that some of our public commenters were here to see that you know. [02:11:26] THERE IS NOT HARM BEING DONE TO KIDS IN OUR SCHOOLS. THEY ARE ARRIVING WITH GREAT NEEDS AND THESE MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS AND THINGS THAT LEAD TO FURTHER, YOU KNOW, PUBLIC HEALTH CRISES BEGIN BEFORE THEY EVEN ENTER OUR SCHOOLS. AND THAT'S THE COMMUNITY'S RESPONSIBILITY. SO JUST WE REALLY NEED TO HIGHLIGHT THAT AND TELL THAT STORY MORE, I THINK. [02:11:42] THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MISS MARIN. MISS CORBETT SANDERS. YES, THANK YOU. AND THANK YOU, DR. BOYD. MANY OF YOU MAY NOT REALIZE THAT WE DIDN'T TYPICALLY present this plan to the board or to the public until I think three or four years ago and I thought it was really important for the public to understand that the funding is really through the generosity of the Fairfax County rate payer and I want to start by thanking [02:12:18] the citizens of Fairfax County for continuing to recognize the importance of Educating our children with disabilities. I worry a little bit about not providing a holistic approach that says okay This is the IDEA piece and this is the what we've been with the AARP And this is what is done through operational funds for Fairfax County And so at some point we may consider Dr. Reed having a standalone special education plan that shows each of the various parts because this [02:12:54] somewhat does a disservice in not fleshing out all the other areas in which we're supporting our students but I wanted to really bring your attention to it looks like almost a thousand more students are in our schools this year needing these services than they were last year and it's still even higher than the number of students who were in our schools in fiscal year 19 and fiscal year 20 so we're seeing that as our enrollment trends are slowing they're not slowing in this [02:13:30] area and I would like to understand because in looking at this it looks like the federal government which has a statutory obligation to fund 40 percent of the cost of educating a child with disabilities it looks like we're getting about 11 percent from the federal government correct uh dr reed i think it might be helpful in the future if we also start publishing the unfunded piece yes ma'am thank you thank you once again thank you to the people of fairfax county [02:14:04] for supporting our students thank you uh mr sorry dr anderson and mr fresh thank you and looking at slide 14 where you talk about the number of preschoolers who were screened evaluated and and then found eligible the increases in this last school year the 21 22 school year were quite dramatic especially when you compare it with the previous two years can you speak to what created that we screen more kids and obviously found much more of them eligible. How did we get to a [02:14:39] place where we screened 43 more 43 percent more kids than the previous year. What I think we're still seeing some of the impact of the pandemic for some of our youngsters that may not have had the opportunity to have those early daycare services or be connected and things like that or they weren't able to go and see grandma and things like that who said normally little Michelle is doing these things hitting these developmental milestones they weren't able to have those connections and so if you all recall on last year we added some additional positions to our early childhood assessment team because of [02:15:15] the numbers and the uptick we're going to continue to have that and then we're adding a number of preschool special education classes on this coming year because our classes are really really tighten at the seams here the knee continues to grow no thank you I was hoping you would connect it to those additional positions because I know that was a need but this has been an increase that I was really surprised to see in a good way that means we're catching our kids early read and maybe even Miss Dernot-Koufax I think I would love for you all to speak to some of the [02:15:53] efforts that the board has been putting forward to deal with the unfunded sections of the IDEA I know this has been part of our legislative agenda for numerous years and I would love for that to be articulated to the public that we are still seeking to have a more comprehensive and more fulsome support of our special education programs because it is now 20% of the FCPS budget. [02:16:21] I wasn't sure who. I think Dr. Revy better at this point than he can speak to it. I'll speak to it during my turn and if Dr. Revy would like to speak. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Dr. Anderson, speaking to the advocacy for fully funded federal special education, I think every superintendent in the country would take this up because this is something that has been discussed repeatedly [02:16:49] And the irony is not lost on us that the Office of Civil Rights finding is a federal arm that is finding fault with a division that they don't fully fund. So, I mean, I think there's a serious irony there that if we're expected to provide a level of programming, we need the funding to provide the level of programming. [02:17:12] And then on the backside, not have a judgment about the level of programming that we weren't able to provide because there wasn't a level of funding. So I think that that's something that superintendents would agree across the board on in terms of advocacy and we'll continue that work. [02:17:29] I think now more than ever it's critical. So I appreciate the nudge. Thank you. And I look forward to hearing more when Mr. Koufax has her turn because I think that's a piece that our public needs to know that we are not resting. And I'd like for them to be clear on the efforts that we're putting forward to ensure [02:17:49] A BETTER FUNDING MODEL. THANK YOU MR. FRISH. THANKS. OVER THE LAST FEW WEEKS I'VE HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO VISIT THE CAPITAL WITH OUR LOBBYIST MICHAEL MALLOY TO MEET WITH CONGRESSMAN CONNOLLY AND CONGRESSMAN BUYER AND TALK ABOUT OUR LEGISLATIVE AGENDA AND CHIEF AMONG THAT IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S SHARE OF THE COMMITMENTS WITH IDEA AND SO THEY KNOW HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS. YOU KNOW I WISH I HAD BETTER NEWS THAN TO [02:18:26] say that it's not coming but you know I think if more people were active about connecting with our federal lawmakers everywhere across the country because this is a bipartisan issue and school divisions it doesn't matter if they're in urban areas or rural areas they all have this need and so thankfully our congressional delegation know how important this is and how much we need I THINK ONE OF THE REASONS THAT SO MANY FAMILIES COME TO FAIRFAX COUNTY IN SEARCH [02:19:02] OF OUR SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES IS BECAUSE WE PICK UP SO MUCH MORE OF THE SLACK THAT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT DOES NOT PICK UP. AND SO AS WE TALK ABOUT, AND ONE OF THE THINGS I WANT TO ECHO THAT MS. CORBETT SANDERS SAID, AS WE TALK ABOUT THESE TYPES OF REPORTS THAT ARE REQUIRED BY LAW IN ORDER FOR US TO GET THE FUNDING, WE DO SEVERAL OF THESE THROUGHOUT THE YEAR WITH THE STATE AND WITH our federal partners I think it is a good idea to connect these to the larger picture you know we just had a work session on similar topics connected to that but also connected to what more we would be doing if the federal government were meeting its obligations and [02:19:40] its commitments because they were commitments to local school divisions across the country that they would meet those levels and they never have. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. McLaughlin. Yeah just picking up on this conversation I know Dr. Reed we've talked about this a lot including work sessions one of the great things about Fairfax County Schools is that we are one of the largest in the country and that means our superintendents interact with the largest school divisions around the country and what I would really like to emphasize again is that we finally start to put some very [02:20:19] public and vocal muscle to this and use data to drive home the decision let's YOU KNOW HAVE YOU WORKING WITH THE CONSORTIUM OF LARGE SUPERINTENDENTS BRINGING TOGETHER THE DATA ON THE UNDERFUNDING OF IDEA FRANKLY I WOULD LIKE TO SEE OUR OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS AND COMMUNITY RELATIONS BE CREATING SOME SORT OF YOU KNOW PRESS CONFERENCE I THINK WE HAVE TO START BEING REALLY STRATEGIC BECAUSE MS. DERRENAT COFAX AND I KNOW THAT WE'VE NOW spent 12 years talking about this with our boards and with superintendents and [02:20:57] you know Mr. Frisch I'm so glad to hear you guys were yet again on Capitol Hill but we know sometimes that it's it sometimes takes very public dialogue to happen and I think they've counted on public schools not you know just being good soldiers and doing what we need to do with what we get but I don't think the public is aware and we have a very very large influential voice collectively with the other large divisions to start bringing the data out for everyone nationally understand I think the newspapers would love to pick it up and I think we've been patient long enough and so we can go [02:21:35] back showing what may be 10 20 years of underfunding whatever the data shows let's start to bring it TO LIGHT AND I FOR ONE I'M CERTAIN WE BOARD MEMBERS ARE ALSO GOING TO BE HAPPY TO HELP ELEVATE THAT VERY PUBLICLY AS WELL AND DR. BOYD I DO WANT TO SAY THANK YOU FOR YOUR HARD WORK I KNOW THIS HAS JUST BEEN AMAZINGLY HERCULEAN ALL THAT YOU'RE DOING AND TO YOU KNOW WHO WE'VE HEARD FROM IN OUR COMMUNITY INCLUDING TONIGHT'S SPEAKERS WE ARE LOOKING TO GET SOME RESPITE FOR OUR SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS. [02:22:14] Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. Bukarski? Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate all the comments from my colleagues. I just wanted to add, especially if there are parents of special education kids listening, such as me, that we don't forget what a game-changer IDEA was for these children, and while we need to continue the advocacy and work with partners to keep asking for this to be fully funded, that we have an [02:22:52] obligation to continue providing these services despite the cost for these kids. And I really appreciate what Mr. Frisch said in that just imagine what more we could do if IDEA was actually funded in the way and the promise that had been given to to local school divisions so that's it just wanted to put that out there because I didn't want us to lose sight of the the larger picture [02:23:26] thank you thank you Mr. Koufax thank you my colleagues you've all spoken so eloquently about this situation with IDEA. Perhaps my only ad is I've been at this a long time, 12 years, and probably 50% of that time I was the federal legislative liaison where I did go to Capitol Hill where we did talk. And while supportive in words, we are not supportive in actions. And that is becoming [02:24:02] crucial as you said Dr. Reed when we are at a place where we are criticized and found found at fault for not you know doing exactly what was needed and I think we were targeted as a large school system because of that but families all we are premier in what we offer to our special education students we are not perfect by any means but at the work session I noted about where families come from all over the country to one of our schools that sits in my district the [02:24:39] key center and the staff at that location and the people who service those children each and every year of my 12 years on the board I've been there and families that school was a family and people there are incredibly kind supportive nurturing in ways that I haven't seen anywhere else so when we are funded, you said, I want to get the number right, at 17% of the, instead of the 40%, [02:25:12] is that correct? 11%. 11%. And I do, I don't want to negate what Ms. Bukarski just said. IDEA was a game changer, but what so many of my colleagues said, imagine what could be done. We must band together we must continue not just talking but demanding that our students need this and we require your partnership on this thank you thank you I'll just take my turn before I just the question IDA I'm sorry I'm so much I [02:25:51] just saw your light just came on so I will take my turn when you're done go ahead but yeah thank you and thank you to staff for putting this together I am happy to follow the passion of my colleagues I think this is another example of how, you know, the character of our system and its moral, it's a moral statement really of how we treat our most vulnerable. And our special ed kids are definitely an area where, you know, many can't advocate for themselves in the same way that we're used to perhaps, and we have to meet them where they're at and make sure that we're meeting their needs and helping them thrive beyond just the minimum. So with that, I wanted [02:26:27] to ask you, what, if anything, in this plan has been adjusted, shaped by reflections you may have had in this process of the special ed enhancement plan that we've been doing and working with the consultants and just rethinking how we're doing it this year? Well, again, because and I think Dr. Reed said it very eloquently, this is really the use of FTEs, which is really just us trying to find teachers to provide that basic required service. [02:26:58] A lot of the things that we want to do in terms of the enhancement plan require using perhaps some of these positions differently and also providing additional supports for these positions to be able to again to some of the discussions earlier make the workload more manageable so the persons could be more effective and also as we talk about looking at our programs um miss darina koufax spoke about the key center and as we look at burke school and things like that to make sure are there things that we need to be doing differently in some of our public separate schools to really make them even more robust as they're providing that very unique programming and supports for students but i i just [02:27:33] can't echo enough what dr reed said and that this is really a skeleton basic level of positions that really um can't come close really to the number of supports we really want to provide that again um are so relying upon those local dollars and did that draw from findings or discussions in that process with the consultants at all or is that you know something that is separate which is fine if it is. It's something that's separate. It's making sure that Little Sloan has a special ed math teacher in front of him. That's what this is. It doesn't talk about that specialized programming [02:28:11] that Little Sloan's going to have in that math class or the additional social emotional behavioral support that we're funding with those other local dollars to Mr. Frisch's point about really trying to provide that comprehensive picture so that we can see what are all of the things that we're doing and how might we leverage some of our resources differently to have a better a return on investment, if you will. Yeah. I mean, you hit on what I was going to get to, which is the return on investment piece. I guess I'm reflective just in terms of this whole process, what we could learn from it, the OCR situation that we're in and the reality of we've been doing these plans and OCR still happened. And God knows if we got investigated on every little thing, [02:28:47] what else would come out, right? And the lawsuits we're aware of and whatnot. To just be reflective in how we might want to do things a little bit differently. So I guess I just want to hear a little bit about if it's not the AIR part, maybe the OCR part. I don't know if anything reflected itself that is responsive to what we learned of where the breakdowns were. And I get it was COVID, but still, there was something, you know, systemically that we could have done better in. [02:29:15] Sure. And I think without going too far into the OCR component, I think that some of that is certainly different. We have four days of school a week versus five days. And so if I was getting five hours of service for five days. That's vastly different than five hours of service for four days. So some of those things are not able to really be applied for apples to apples. [02:29:35] But certainly we continue to reflect about the bottom line, which is making sure we're meeting the individualized needs of students. And I think that that's the piece that we're really trying to lean in heavily upon in that enhancement plan, whether it supports the student's need in the advanced curriculum for some of our 2E students that might need additional service, but also that more rigorous and challenging curriculum so we are definitely reflecting upon that but again um these dollars really are just a small sliver of the pie that we're really trying to look at really the larger picture for some of those adjustments right no but to clarify I'm not thinking of OCR forward looking I'm really kind of trying to be reflective of what broke down [02:30:13] based on what we had set up before and how we might think about this plan and using the resources that we have uh in ways that might be a little bit different based on what we learned from that Yeah. So I'm happy to follow up with you, and it'll probably be better for us to talk offline on that subject. [02:30:33] Okay. If I might, I think what Dr. Boyd's maybe trying to clarify is that the plan provided tonight is really a plan that just utilizes the core staff budget with the IDEA local and federal grant dollars, and that there will be a subsequent plan in terms of utilizing other budget monies. [02:30:56] I think that will be more responsive to the types of program changes or shifts that are going to be the result of the reflection that really we're all doing and the enhancement plan will be hopefully illustrative of, right? [02:31:12] Yeah. No, that's fine. I just hope that we're always reflective. You know, things went wrong for a reason and doing the same thing isn't going to get us different results, But I do appreciate the work that's been put into this. Thank you, Ms. Omeish. [02:31:28] I'll just take my turn. Dr. Boyd, thank you very much for this information of the report. I'm just wondering, looking at the 37.4% increase of preschool students who are eligible, I think slide 14, if I'm reading that correctly, and then mirroring that with the decrease in speech and language evaluations. [02:31:47] I know Ms. Cohen brought this up as well. Also, the difference between the social culture evaluations and psychology. It just seems like there's really odd differences here that just raise a concern as to why we have 20% more social work, socioculture assessments, but only 2.2% more psychological evaluations and 3.5% fewer speech and language evaluations. [02:32:09] So I just want to fly that that just raises alarm bells for me. So-- and I want to just address the IDEA funding. And while we, I think, definitely need to have a campaign maybe coordinated around full funding for IDEA, I just want to flag it's really important that we frame that in civil rights language. [02:32:26] IDA was a civil rights game-changer for special education students, and I don't think we can lose sight of that, right? And while it is imperative that our federal government, you know, do what they said they were gonna do when IDA was passed and fully funded, and I agree with Mr. Frisch, think what more we could do, and you know, it just feels a little unfair to be held to a standard that we're not funded for. However, it was a civil rights game-changer. It stopped the the segregation of special education students or at least made it you know against federal law you know we have to look at least restrictive environment it required that special education students are educated to their full potential it [02:33:04] is it is a game changer in the outcomes for special education students at once they leave our schools and we need to talk about it in that way and to say you know we have to full put our full faith behind and support behind this law as we advocate for full funding and saying we school systems around the country are struggling to maintain this and to do what we need to do and to fulfill the civil rights of special education students per federal law because of the lack of funding I just want to put that out in the air that this is an important law thank you absolutely yes ma'am thank you very much I see no other one my colleagues want to speak so I will say thank you for your report and thank you [02:33:43] for your time thank you dr. Reed and we'll move on to the next agenda item Thank you Dr. Boyd. Agenda item 4, action. Agenda item 4.01, confirmation of action taken in closed meeting. I will call on Ms. Corbett Sanders for the motion. I move to expel a student for possession and use of a weapon to assault another student while on school property. Thank you Dr. Anderson. [02:34:13] All those in favor, that is Ms. Keyes-Gamara, Ms. Marin, Ms. Amish, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Ms. Darnett-Kofax, Ms. McLaughlin, Dr. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Cohen, and myself. That motion passes. [02:34:30] I will move on to Agenda Item 4.02, Governance Committee Amendment to the Governance Manual regarding recognitions and resolutions. I'll call on Ms. Corbett-Sanders for a motion. I move that the Board approve the Governance Committee Amendment to the Governance Manual regarding recognitions and resolutions. [02:34:47] Is there a second? I will second. Ms. Marin, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, would I just speak to your motion? Yes, thank you. Hold on one moment. I apologize. It is my pleasure to introduce these amendments to the governance manual. As you all know, this board has discussed the importance of looking at how we approach recognitions and resolutions while being respectful to the public's time. The modification to the governance manual builds on the work that has been done in the past and mirrors the approach that has been taken [02:35:26] by the board of supervisors. School-related recognitions will be read by the student representative heritage and holiday recognitions will be read by the superintendent and staff and volunteer recognitions will be read by the vice chair during the announcement section of the regular board meetings the school board chair and vice chair may convene a task force of board members to review and revise the list of standard recognitions and resolutions this review shall be done in advance of the annual school board calendar being approved by the board. As a recognition board members will not be asked to speak, but they may [02:36:04] speak to recognitions during their three minutes allotted time of board matters. Proclamations will be presented for action by a board member and seconded by another board member and voted on. There are a number of items that will be on the agenda annually including the recognition of our student representative's departure, as sad as that is. Up to two additional proclamations may be put forth by individual board members annually with the majority of the board's support and in recognition of a current event, retiring or resigning staff member, a milestone school anniversary, and or outstanding student teams, ensembles, and publications in accordance with [02:36:43] the guidelines on the school board recognition of outstanding student teams, ensembles, and publications. These proclamations do not automatically repeat each year and individual school board members are encouraged to work with each other to identify and present recognitions when the recipient is represented by more than one magisterial member. Board members at their discretion may choose to present a proclamation approved by the board at a community event at the school in which the honoree attends or is employed and is honoring that milestone. [02:37:15] The provisions allowing for letters from the school board chair on behalf of the school board and certificates of appreciation will be maintained as well and so I really appreciate all of the hard work of my colleagues not only in the current governance committee but in prior renditions of the governance committee because I know that this has been on our agenda for a long time and we have we did have a work session about this in February to provide additional refinements and so I hope [02:37:48] you will all support this. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Marin would I just beat you a second. Yeah I'm always glad to do governance work. So I'm glad that we put this through and I hope we can keep doing good governance work. I think it's really important for us to keep finding what we can do more strongly. So onward. Thank you. Miss McLaughlin. Yes. Thank you. As noted by one of our citizen speakers this evening who's my Braddock district constituent. I think there are some important questions that need to be answered before we vote on this tonight. [02:38:23] So the first thing I wanted to understand for myself and hopefully for everybody is the way that this is listed as the motion is that we accept the amendment. Is it amending the existing pages 66 to 69 or is it replacing? [02:38:43] It's amending it. I actually, I'm sorry, I wait for being. No, no, you're fine, Ms. Corbett Sanders. I was lucky to you because you're the governor's chair. IT IS AN AMENDMENT TO THE EXISTING GOVERNANCE MANUAL WHERE THIS NEW LANGUAGE WILL BE ADDED ON THE SECTION ON RECOGNITIONS AND RESOLUTIONS. [02:39:01] I DID RESPOND TO YOUR CONSTITUENTS QUESTIONS WITH A RESPONSE TO THE WHOLE BOARD YESTERDAY, I BELIEVE. TWO DAYS AGO. [02:39:18] Okay. I didn't see your response. I apologize, then. I can re-forward it to you. Yeah, that would be helpful. I still will say that I get that this is amending the manual, but I think we should have made clear for the public and the board that this is replacing the language in that section, because that's a different thing. [02:39:41] The second thing is that in paragraph four, where it says recognitions will be presented by the student rep, superintendent in it it says in the second part as a recognition board members will not be asked to speak is it asked to speak or permitted to speak because there's a difference it's one thing if I I'm not asked to speak but I want to speak or is it I'm not permitted to speak and the only way you can speak is that during board matters goodness go with Anders it's my understanding that we currently don't speak to recognitions that the only time that we speak to [02:40:20] to items is when there is a vote amongst the board members, but that if you would like to speak to a specific recognition, that you would be able to do so during your board matters. Yeah, so I would just say, I think for future boards, we might want to think about making that clear. [02:40:40] If our practice is you don't, then we should just say it's not permitted, so then we don't have that lack of clarity. Then the next sentence where it says, second sentence, fourth paragraph, as a recognition, I'm not trying to be an English teacher here, but board members aren't recognitions. [02:40:59] So I would suggest that maybe for cleanup language without objection, we just delete as a recognition. It just says board members will not be asked to speak, but they may because we're not recognitions and it sort of sounds that way. The other thing I just wanted to bring to my colleagues' attention that has me a little concerned is the lack of what I think is equity in process. So a student who wants to bring forward a new now called proclamation, formerly known as resolutions, they can just go to the chair and vice chair and get permission. But if board members want to do it, they've got to get six or more to [02:41:39] create a majority to allow them to do up to two proclamations a year. So can you maybe share why I, the Governance Committee, thought the student only needs the chair and vice chair's approval, but we need to get six or more board members. Go ahead, Ms. Corbin Sanders. [02:41:55] Yes, Ms. McLaughlin. That was left over from an earlier version of this recognitions and resolutions that was presented, I believe, during the tenure of Chair Pekarski. [02:42:11] And so we didn't actually go into more details on that. It was just something that had been part of an earlier one. And I see Ms. Cohen has her hand up. Ms. Cohen, do you want to add to that? Yeah, I'm happy to speak to it. I think when we had initially done the work, I think it was actually under Chair Anderson, the idea was that we know that it's difficult for the student to get six people and work through calling six people to make sure they get to it. [02:42:42] I mean, we actually have not really had in the past, you know, three iterations of students, like, to us it felt like if this became problematic, it could absolutely be addressed, but it is so rare that a student brings us, you know, a proclamation that we just felt like it was burdensome to them to try to get them to call through six board members. [02:43:06] Thank you. I appreciate that. I just want to share with my colleagues, though, it does give me pause because we are elected officials. I mean, every four years, the public elects us, and if we're not even giving each other the same, what I think, level of, you know, respect and opportunity, I mean, granted, you don't want to necessarily have chair and vice chair creating gatekeeping either, but I will just say, I don't know how that came about, don't really support it. [02:43:36] I'm not certain that that's what the Board of Supervisors does. So I'm glad we're adopting their proclamation terminology. I think then maybe we should have looked at what their process is because I'm not sure that that's helpful. And then, you know, with this said, you know, I'm fine to support this because, you know, again, every board is, you know, going to come on and we know we're going to have a lot of change in the next board. [02:44:07] But I will just say as a housekeeping note, in the future, it's something I keep saying is so important. We should have cited the pages so the public knows where to go look. We should have listed as on board docs a link to the Strategic Governance Manual, and we should have had a red line to say this is existing language, this is language we've changed. [02:44:31] I know we're all trying to not only help each other but help the public understand the things we're doing And I just want to say to my constituent Mr. Spooner thank you for you know being so engaged in our work it's appreciated and you know I miss and I do want to say the governance committee I'm sorry that I was sick the day you discussed this the work session and I do appreciate you entertaining my questions tonight. [02:44:59] And Miss McLaughlin I re-forwarded my response from a day or so ago. Thank you Miss McLaughlin and without objection we can do the cleanup language that you mentioned in the in the manual. Thank you very much, Ms. Omeish. [02:45:18] Yeah, thank you and thank you to the governance team for all your work in this. I know sometimes governance can get into the nitty gritty and it takes a long time to just get one thing done. I was also grateful for the work session where I know the purpose was for us to all come together and discuss and then have the opportunity for the governance team to take in that feedback and respond to it. [02:45:40] I know I had asked during the work session about how we're ensuring that with the recognitions resolutions that we're doing we're fair we have a system or process in place that we've we thought of in mind in a way that we're attempting to be equitable because so that this is not just a reflection of what we all thought was important and who we've heard from and what's reflected or not because by definition we won't know about the communities that we're not recognizing or thinking about if they're the ones that are underrepresented right or or traditionally unheard so I wanted to ask what was that process and where what [02:46:17] What was the intentionality behind the choices that were made, hopefully in response to what my ask was, but either way. Ms. Corbin Sanders. Ms. Yes, and thank you, Ms. Omesh, for your question. That is precisely why on an annual basis a task force can be convened of board members who will then make recommendations to the board in advance of the adoption of the annual calendar and by doing that you'll have the opportunity to have a have input into [02:46:53] it and that would be not only members who are put on this task force but as good governance I would expect that they would reach out to not only other board members but the student representative and ideally other groups to make sure sure that it's representative. But for those that were identified, I mean, the committee still came up with a list, so I'd like to better understand that process. That list was actually provided [02:47:24] initially from the work that had been done prior to this year's governance committee, and it was a list of those that were widely recognized, recognitions that had been done in the past, and that they any additional ones would certainly be available by having this committee put together additional recommendations and that if you had if an individual board member feels that there should be others they have the opportunity to bring two per board members so it's quite [02:48:03] significant if all if each of us present two that would be 24. right um i don't mean to interrupt miss Cohen and I worked on the initial list if you want to miss going to answer that question or I'd answer that question about how the initialists came up with we're happy to do that yeah I mean whoever governance is what miss Cohen was Pekarsky and then well this miss going to go ahead and explain this part of it sure we we were oh sorry the Anderson crew hi guys um we we were initially I was distracted by cuteness sorry we initially came up with this list [02:48:43] by trying to we reach out to ISD to try to see instructional services sorry to see you know what what months like mirrored things in our curriculum also what things in curriculum that they were trying to incorporate that maybe hadn't been in the past we work to see if there were any national months either from VSBA or NSBA or like you know any kind of like organization with school board organization that we could find that like chose particular things and the [02:49:21] idea was to try to consolidate and cut down as much as possible because you know we have for three years gotten feedback like mr. spooners which is very fair that people sit here for you know two hours and wait to be able to speak and so you know I absolutely hear that I remember sitting there too and and feeling similarly so a Sizemore hyzer and I tried to like when there had been three resolutions that might have been different service providers for example we tried to make sure they all went in one resolution that was about like you [02:49:58] know special ed service providers instead of there was like an occupational therapy month and a physical therapy month and a speech language so we tried to group things together as much as humanly possible. And it was vetted through governance at that time, which was, were you running governance then? Maybe like Peck saw it, governance might have seen it, another year of governance saw it. So it's just been around a long time. I don't think it's perfect by any means, but the goal certainly was that it incorporated, as Ms. Corbett Sanders said, the idea of that anybody could bring, you know, additional ones, [02:50:36] and that every year that that list would be a living breathing you know thing if I could add to that when we this was under when dr. Anderson was chairs when it started and it we had a retreat I recall what we discussed it at length during that time at miss Cohen and I had worked on it and then it went to governance then it was come for vote it went to governance it came back to at least one more work session if not two and that initial list was put together the as miss Cohen said that for The staff and volunteer were trying to combine similar groups, so we didn't have, you know, four different recognitions. [02:51:09] As far as the Heritage Months, we looked at, we worked with ISD to what list they have, but their list is based on sort of the nationally recognized Heritage Months, and so those are the ones that we went with, were the nationally recognized Heritage Months. So that's where those came from, and then some of the other ones were things that we had just kind of always done that ISD worked with. [02:51:27] So that was how the initial list came through, but it went through at least two rounds of governance and at least two or three different retreat work sessions. No, I remember, which is why I'm following up on my question at that time because I don't necessarily see much of change, but I'd like to understand from ISD how that list is generated. [02:51:53] It was several years ago when we engaged in that, but it is the national list that had been typically observed through processes. So there wasn't a new process that went in place. [02:52:11] We just shared the ones that we had been developing. we develop resources and things. So as Ms. Cohen said, it's definitely a list that could be looked at and changed and be a living, breathing list. Yeah, I mean, I definitely cross-compared. There are one or two things that aren't the same as the federal list, but that's fine. I mean, but that's where I'm coming at this, where it's like, what is the process and how are we being fair? Because when I look at this right now, we removed Immigrant Heritage Month, which was something that we reflected from the community. We're doing Black History Month and Juneteenth, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but that's a reality. [02:52:49] You know, Holocaust Remembrance, from my understanding, the UN says it's January 27th, and the Holocaust Museum says it's January 27th, so I don't know why it's listed here for April, May. We removed Jewish Heritage Month. I mean, so that's where it's kind of like, okay, what was the process for being fair and, like, thinking about the things that we chose not to capture? [02:53:10] And then what's the process for adding recognitions from the community? Because I know I saw, I appreciated that there's, I was very happy to see the process for the community to bring forward, like, celebrations or accomplishments. But this is something that's a community process, too. And it can't just be, oh, yeah, we've heard from X group, and they lobbied us enough that we did it. [02:53:30] Because that's how we ended up with some of these. But that's still not a fair and consistent process. I know I had the explicit ask of involving the equity team. So did anyone, and Lisa Hall, so the chief engagement officer and equity officers from the work session, were they engaged? [02:53:46] I don't know if anyone can speak for that team tonight. Ms. Anders? So I will remind you again that individual board members have the opportunity to bring forth two additional recognitions per year. [02:54:09] So that's an additional 24 by the board. And I would hope when we talk about the community bringing something forward, they bring it forward through individual board members. And then it's up to the board member to work with their colleagues to make that a reality, and I fully support that. [02:54:29] I also, so we built in that piece, and then the second piece that was built in was the annual review through this working committee. And then the third piece as far as in getting support and input from staff at every governance meeting, we have Dr. Reed and other members of her staff to talk about the individual and specific issues. [02:54:57] So I would urge that tonight we pass this amendment to the governance manual and that you work with the chair in the establishment of a task force to identify and review the current list to see whether or not there should be some others and bring that to the board. [02:55:24] But that's the process. There are built-in processes to allow for input from the community, allow for input from individual board members, and to determine whether or not there should be additional pieces. [02:55:40] The other piece, which I think is really important and exciting, is that when you talk about the proclamations, that we have the opportunity to go out to the community to share in their celebrations with these proclamations rather than always expecting people to come here. [02:56:03] And, you know, so it's a balancing, and there's lots of opportunities to continuously identify, but also be respectful that the community wants to hear about the policymaking and what we're doing at the board, and so that's what I would urge, is that balance. [02:56:30] Nobody disagrees with that, that it's policymaking and whatnot. the point is we're doing it anyway and this right now is still a selection the work though the work session was the process to set up a different task force is a different piece but I provided my input as a board member that the equity and engagement team should have been a part of determining this or at least vetting it and looking at it to make sure it's fair and developing a process by which the community can elevate things because frankly to leave the onus on a board member to bring two resolutions because they happen to know about it isn't the right way to do this i mean we're a diverse division it can't just be the person who represents a certain identity is going to bring that one resolution and if they're not on [02:57:09] the board that's not a community we celebrate that i have and this is how we do a lot of our equity work where it's like oh squeaky wheel somebody on the board brought it up it's you know seems to be important because enough people are talking about it but what is our process for making sure we're fair it's not even about what a brar is going to bring as two resolutions it's like past a brar forever and eternity what is our system's commitment to equity how are we making sure that we're recognizing things fairly not overdoing it for one side one community more than another and making sure that we're not missing significant segments of our population and being thoughtful about that that the part that frustrates me is that we don't have a process like where is the [02:57:49] thought that was put into making sure we're being fair and I can appreciate that there are processes for changing this but that's not the same thing and I wish that I could have heard today that the equity and engagement teams were included in this because my understanding is they were not contacted. They had no idea about this. And I heard that directly. So, and they're not here to answer for that today, but I don't know why they weren't in governance or weren't a part of the conversations in governance to develop this after the work session. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Omish. Dr. [02:58:22] Anderson. Thank you. I appreciate some of the comments that Ms. Omish has made and I want to get back to that, but I have a few clarifying questions that I'd like to ask. When a board member offers a proclamation. Would that mean then the proclamation in the next year would become a recognition? I'll give you an example just to kind of make this a little bit easier. I think I've been talking with you, Ms. Heismalheiser, about perhaps bringing forward with the language that we had up until today a Caribbean American recognition. If I bring it forward now as a proclamation and it's [02:58:57] approved for this year, everything happens with it, what happens next year? Do I need to bring it up again as a proclamation or does it become a recognition? So every year, I'll stop and let you answer. - My understanding is, and I'll ask Ms. Corbett Sanders as Governor's chair to check me that you have to bring it back again the next year as a proclamation. [02:59:16] It doesn't get added to our automatic list, but confirm that for me. - So a proclamation is not an annual proclamation. If you bring a proclamation and it is widely accepted by the board as something that should be a recognition going forward, then that would be part of that annual review where they would say, okay, this is now a recognition that should be added to our recognitions. [02:59:46] And then it would not require an annual vote, but rather would then be added to the calendar. So it's a two-step process. The first step is to gain the support for the proclamation, and then the second step is to bring it forward in that task, that committee, structure to say we are going to you know this should be an annual recognition or is this something that is just a one-off? Thank you Ms. Corbett-Sanders. So if that were to happen I guess what would then prevent the task force if all of these proclamations that people are bringing [03:00:23] forward and I'm speaking particularly to the heritage and holidays what if they're all really great ideas and that list will be further extended so there's not a limit in terms of how many of the heritage in holidays that can be recognized no there's not currently a limit okay on the task force can then so the task force will be the sole responsible body to make that decision no no they would bring it back and hit be voted on again by the board as an update to the governance manual as part of the annual that's why the task force would make their recommendations prior [03:01:02] to the adoption of the annual calendar so looking at the annual calendar you would say, and I apologize, I don't know when Caribbean American Heritage Month is, but if it were to be, say, June or May or what? Actually, it is June. Oh, well, thank you. So you would have your proclamation this June, and then as part of that task force, the decision would be made, okay, we should now make this an annual recognition, and it should be built into our [03:01:35] calendar, or it may be, you know, is it something that is a, you know, and I can't tell you what the vote would be because it would have to take a vote by the whole board to add it as a recognition. [03:01:50] It would be added as part of the board calendar approval every day. Sure. Can you speak a little bit to what other duties are of the task force outside of that? Ms. Corbett Sanders? It's my understanding it's just that. It's just taking the recommendations for certain holidays or recognitions to be annual in lieu of just a once a year presentation. [03:02:15] Well, and the task force isn't automatically every year. It's on request, is my understanding, you know, that the chair can convene the task force, but it's not an automatic thing every year. So, Dr. Anderson, if you wanted the task force because you've said that your two proclamations are things that you want every year for recognitions. [03:02:34] So I can activate it. You can ask the chair to activate it and it would be activated, but it would its work would have to be done in advance of the adoption of the annual. Sure. I do want to say some of the things that I appreciate in this approach because I know we've had this conversation with who's not there. [03:02:51] When this originally began was that we did want to be more efficient about our time in terms of what was happening when we have these meetings. But there is something here that just really caused me to have some pause where it says if we had a large number of student recognitions that we would start the meeting, I believe it said at 6 or early, which would cut the time that we spend taking care of a business and closed. [03:03:16] And so that causes me some concern, but I also wanted to know what happened to the idea of having some of the student recognitions take place at the schools where all of the students can come and there are no challenges to that because we know not all of our kids can make it here. What I'm hearing is a both rather than moving it to the school site. [03:03:35] Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Corbett Sanders, you want to address that question? You're absolutely correct, Dr. Anderson. It is up to the magisterial member to determine whether or not they want, you know, so for example, if, I'll say it, Hayfield just won the state championship and Ms. Derenak-Koufax and I both share Hayfield secondary schools. So we would, say you know we want that recognition here at the board and have everybody come here or no we've [03:04:08] decided that we want the proclamation passed by the whole board but we're not going to have all of the kids come here we're going to go to the school and present that proclamation at the school and we would invite all of our colleagues that would like to join us in that celebration to be there I have follow-up questions when my time is up but I'd like to go back if possible Mr. Frisch I think what we're witnessing here is why this was so difficult to create in the first place. [03:04:44] There is no shortage. There's probably no limit to the number of Heritage Month recognitions and other items that could be added. I remember looking a couple years ago when the first list was being circulated around the board to make sure it wasn't missing anything. It was dozens and dozens and dozens of items. And I remember thinking, oh, I wonder if there's anything I can add. So I started doing some preliminary research about some topics and found that I could add dozens more. And so as to the question of fairness, I have no idea how you could possibly be fair [03:05:22] in a system that limits what the recognitions are. And so I see the governance solution to that as being probably one of the only things imaginable that opens the process up to things that may have been overlooked. Because I'll tell you what, year after year, somebody's not going to get recognized, right? And maybe we recognize, you know, if it's me and I want to do LGBTQ pride month, maybe I want to do something else the next month or the next year rather. And so that doesn't get recognized that year because there's only so many spaces. My hope is though [03:06:02] we've created this process that allows for the unlimited addition of recognitions, I hope we don't take advantage of that too liberally because we'll be right back to where we started. And, you know, even in the process that we're currently embarked on, we miss dozens, doesn't even give it justice, hundreds of things that we could be recognizing. [03:06:28] And that's not why we're here. I'd rather recognize them with our work. And look, and I'm somebody who brought something that hadn't been recognized before. So I get it. But something's got to give. [03:06:46] Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Before I go back, I'm just going to take my turn, and I really am glad to pick up where Mr. Frisch left off because one of the biggest reasons we embarked on this two-plus years ago was because of things that people in our audience had talked about, how they want to come and watch the business of the board, the votes on the budget or some of the other policy things, the other work that we're doing. [03:07:08] And by the time we got to that, it was late, especially for our teachers or our students. You know, we had a Boy Scout here tonight trying to earn his badge. That was one of the biggest impetus for trying to reduce the number of these. And, I mean, there's ones that I've brought that aren't on this list that I'd love to see every year. But, you know, maybe I'll bring it as one of my two. [03:07:26] Maybe I won't. But I do think finding that balance is very hard, right, between we want to recognize and be inclusive, recognize everybody. but we also want to make sure that we can focus on, I think, and as Dr. Brabant used to say, sorry, you know, I think it was before Dr. Brabant, the main thing, I don't know who said that, Bud Splenane said the main thing, and the main thing is the business of the board. [03:07:48] And through the business of the board is how we show our inclusivity and how we show the real recognition of our, you know, of our group. So I appreciate all the hard work that's going into here. This will never be perfect because there's just many more things we want to recognize and we have time for and so I think this is a good balance of trying to find you know recognize our staff recognize that the nationally ones and give space for the students and for our board members to bring things that are either particular interest to the board member or to the community that they represent or serve so thank you to the Governance Committee for all the hard work and I see this I think the summation do you want to go back as well [03:08:26] okay so we have to go back to summation dr. Anderson miss miss image yeah I mean the point I had was made earlier, I just wanted to address this idea that recognitions and resolutions are like not important. We need to focus on the business of the board only because I don't think the solution to this problem of having long meetings is like poo-pooing recognitions and resolutions specifically because as a board, we also tone set, like we'd kind of convey the values, priorities, set a cultural, you know, expectation of what our division should be. [03:08:57] And for many communities, particularly ones that are historically and will probably continue to be underserved in many ways, that could be one of the only, if not a main nod to recognizing and seeing them, which is why I'm so invested in this whole fairness question, because I know there are many that still don't feel that. [03:09:14] So I just I just wanted to address that. Maybe it's a philosophical question about what we all believe our roles are. But but I on a personal level and and from what I've heard from the community, I think it's deeply, deeply empowering and impactful for a lot of people. But in any case, I appreciate the work always that's been done. [03:09:32] Thank you, Mr. Mesh. Dr. Anderson, thank you. I do agree. And again, I want to underscore this. I am glad that we are going to truncate part of this. That's really, really important. But I cannot underscore again my concern if we are going to be of the business of the board that we are actually going to cut some of the board's work shorter that happens in the session before this in order to do more of the recognitions here. [03:10:00] The starting early really is a sticking point with me. And just one other cleanup item. The list on, I believe, page is one that goes into two of the recognitions. It goes from one through nine and then seven for Juneteenth. [03:10:16] I think that's supposed to be ten. So hopefully we can just clean that up without any objection. And I do want to echo what Ms. Omesh had said. We do have some communities that are not seen. And hopefully we can provide some space for that. If it's the two proclamations that are provided, yes. [03:10:34] Hopefully we can get into the space where those become annual. Since we were told there's no limit, Ms. Omesh. So that's a space that I think we should take advantage of in order to make sure that our groups that are not typically seen are. [03:10:48] Thank you Dr. Anderson. Ms. Cohen. Yeah I think sorry to weigh in here because this whole conversation has gone longer than any actual resolution but I I I feel like I just need to echo what Carl said and Rachna did the same thing when we sat down with this list guess what I'm the one who proposed Jewish American Heritage Month last year like I gave it up because we're trying to make this thing shorter so that people actually are still here when we're talking about the business and the actual work of the school board. [03:11:25] Rachna gave up Autism Acceptance Month or Disability Awareness. There were like two different ones and Rachna gave up that. Like we went through and everybody gave something up because this is not working for people and it may be working for us. [03:11:40] You can do that, but I'm just saying like everyone, I don't know what to say. We did, there was a question from Dr. Anderson that said will anybody on the board tackle these russian and i raised our hands and said yes we would and it that was two and a half years ago so this is not perfect it's a starting place like everything else it can be changed by future boards and i hope they will make this run even better um but i think it is frustrating to me that the implicate like so many people's work has gone in [03:12:20] this we met with dr williams when dr williams was still here that's when the equity team like i don't know what to say like the work is the work and if somebody wants to change it please be my guest i have no pride of ownership in this like i just want us to be more efficient and effective as a board and i was willing to give some things up for even my own community to feel more seen to make this better for everyone so that's just my two cents thank you mr frisch [03:12:50] it's all right all right with that I will call for the vote the motion before us is on the screen are we gonna what the she's voting yeah the motion before us is on the screen agenda item 4.02 all those in favor please raise your hand that is Ms. Bukarski Ms. Marin Ms. Tolan Ms. Corbett Sanders Mr. Koufax [03:13:23] Ms. McLaughlin Mr. Frisch Ms. Cohen and myself all those opposed Ms. Omesh all those abstaining Ms. Keith Gamara and Dr. Anderson that motion passes thank you very much the members Bikarski I think I called your name out as voting for it I want to make sure um thank you very much everybody we will move on to agenda item 4.03 school board code of conduct standards and protocols policy I'll call on Ms. Corbett Sanders for a motion I move that the board approve the school board code of conduct standards and protocols policy is there a second [03:14:01] I'll second oh Ms. Bikarski thank you very much Ms. Corbett Sanders would like to speak to your motion yes madam chair thank you when i joined this board almost eight years ago board members did not directly supervise any employees except for the superintendent as we have professionalized the operations of the board by hiring an auditor general and staff aides it has become apparent that we need to be to explicitly address a policy that i believe was implicitly understood by the members of the board the policy details the roles and responsibilities of board members and managing [03:14:39] employees allows for an employee to raise concerns and details the process for investigating and resolving those concerns we discussed this policy and governance over several months presented it at a work session and this proposal addresses concerns raised in the work session to clearly delineate roles and responsibilities the policy was passed unanimous unanimously by the governance committee and i hope that my colleagues can support the motion tonight thank you miss Ms. Bukarski, would I just speak to your second? [03:15:09] I think Ms. Corbett Sanders did a good job. I'll just say that we did have conversations and lots of questions about this in governance. And we were thoughtful about it. [03:15:25] And there was unanimous support without any reservation during those meetings. So I hope the rest of the board will be able to also support this action tonight. Thank you, Ms. Bekarski. Dr. Anderson. [03:15:44] Thank you. I am all for this code of conduct in order to give employees the job protections that they are due. I want to make sure that I clarify that. [03:15:59] That is something that is a must, and I am glad we've headed in that direction. However, given what I've expressed before, there are some pieces here that I'm not able to be in support of. And so unfortunately, I will not be voting in favor of this motion this evening, but I am glad that we do have some of the conversations to provide those protections for our employees, and I think that is key. [03:16:27] Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Seeing no other board member wishes to speak, I will call for the vote. The motion before us is on the screen. All those in favor, please raise your hands. That is Ms. Bukarski, Ms. Cohen, Mr. Frisch, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Darnock-Koufax, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Maren, Ms. Kees-Gamara, and myself. [03:16:47] All those opposed, please raise your hand. That's Dr. Anderson and Ms. Omeish. That motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you very much to Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Governance Chair, and the Governance Committee for your hard work in landing those two planes. I know it was a lot of work, so thank you all very much. [03:17:04] Having said that, we'll move on to Agenda Item 5, Consent Agenda. Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure, Robert's rules, provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval by the board in a single motion. Many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance. [03:17:23] Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. The consent agenda items are on the screen. Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Hearing and seeing no objection, the consent agenda is approved. Agenda item six, new business. [03:17:38] The following are new business agenda items. There will not be a vote on these items this evening, but action is scheduled at a future meeting. The new business items are on the screen. Agenda item seven, board committee reports. I call on Ms. Cohen for an update from the audit committee. Well, this week we came, we saw, we audited. [03:17:57] We had a status update on the FY23 OAG inquiries. We also took a look at the audit recommendations follow-up and then took our first pass. We'll get to see it again next month at the FY24 Risk Assessment and Proposed Audit Plan. [03:18:16] Thank you to presenters, Esther Koh, Danielle Moore, Joni White, and the entire OAG team. You guys are amazing, and audit is, well, not exactly my favorite time of the month, but it is right up there because of you guys. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Cohen. [03:18:34] I appreciate that. Agenda Item 8, Board Matters. Next on the agenda is Board Matters, and I'll call on Ms. Cohen to begin. Sorry. Thank you very much. Last night, Lake Braddock had their Pyramid Art Show for the first time in four years, and as the mom of a senior artist, it was exceptionally cool to get to see my kiddo and their BFF and their incredible artwork and get to see all of our kids from so many schools around. [03:19:08] I can't, I, I, my husband walked around and said, I am 100% convinced that nobody we knew was this talented when we were kids. And I think that is totally true. I was blown away. These kids are amazing. There were, there were things that looked like they were photographs and it was, um, you know, drawings or paintings. It was amazing. So congratulations to all the amazing artists in the Lake Braddock pyramid. I know Robinson's got one coming up too, and we'll see if you guys are as good as the lake. No, I'm just kidding. Everyone's a winner here. Thanks again for Springfield, Sully, Town Hall. Thanks to everybody who came out, especially the first day back from spring [03:19:45] break. Oh my gosh, I don't know what we were thinking when we booked that thing. I really appreciate Dr. Reed and Ms. Togby and Ms. Bukarski agreeing to hang out with me on a Monday night, and I just thought we had a lot of, I appreciate what you said, a lot of thoughtful questions and so many principals came thank you so much I know it had to be an exhausting day so we really do appreciate that and the last thing I just want to say is today I'm wearing purple for my very favorite chameleon kids so Ava Ainsley and Grayson I am so incredibly proud of the amazing human [03:20:22] beings that you guys are turning out to be good night thank you Mr. Frisch thank you just before spring break i joined several of my colleagues in florida for the national school board association there's something particularly special about being in orlando right as spring break is beginning and not doing anything with disney very strange um but it was a great opportunity for uh some fellowship with other board members and professional development i even met a few school board members from washington state who told me how lucky we are to have dr reed um and uh here at [03:21:00] HOME EARLIER THIS WEEK I VISITED STENWOOD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WITH DELEGATE HOLLY SIEBOLD AND REPRESENTATIVES FROM THE DON LORING IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION TO DISCUSS ROAD AND PEDESTRIAN SAFETY ISSUES AT THE SCHOOL'S ENTRANCE AND KISS AND RIDE ON THE BACKSIDE OF THE SCHOOL WITH PRINCIPAL RILEY I LOOK FORWARD TO CONTINUING THESE DISCUSSIONS WITH DELEGATE SIEBOLD AND SUPERVISOR PALCHIK IN THE WEEKS AHEAD ON TUESDAY EVENING I HAD AN OPPORTUNITY TO ATTEND Shrevewood elementary schools PTA meeting with principal to smiter I enjoyed talking with parents [03:21:35] and connecting with them on a variety of issues including advanced academics the upcoming Dunloring elementary school and different ways that families can support our staff in our schools and finally April is earth month and there are plenty of eco-friendly opportunities to celebrate our planet around Fairfax County. I so appreciated hearing our student tonight talk about the importance of electric charging for vehicles at our schools. In fact, it was some students from TJ years ago that lobbied our legislature and delegate David Boulevard passed a bill [03:22:09] to allow electric charging of vehicles at our schools. And while we haven't quite made progress there yet, as my colleagues will indulge me as I say yet again what we have been up to. We have more electric buses than ever before. We are moving forward with solar on our schools. We are conserving energy and moving towards zero waste by 2030 and net neutrality by 2040 as long as we stick to our JET directives, our Joint Environmental Task Force directives. [03:22:40] And again, this doesn't just benefit the planet and the health of our students and our staff. As I say, every time we talk about the environment, the issues that are the environmental initiatives that our school division have already pushed forward save us $9 million every year and that's money that we put right back in to student success. So I look forward to celebrating Earth Month in the community and for anybody in Providence District I hope you will join me on Friday April 21st at the Earth Day celebration at Providence Community Center Center hosted by Supervisor Dalia Palchik. [03:23:15] We will have opportunities to decorate planters, propagate seeds, and learn about how we can protect our local environment. So happy Earth Month. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Anderson? Thank you. [03:23:30] Last night I had the pleasure of attending the Bryn Mawr Park Elementary School Renovation Community Meeting. During the presentation, which was being offered by Kathy Ryan and facility staff, I had my camera on as well as those two staff members because it's difficult for people to just present into the abyss. But during that time, I don't think we were more than 15 to 20 minutes into the conversation, an individual unmuted himself to repeat a racial slur, the n-word, [03:24:08] multiple times until he was muted. I'm a Generation Xer, which means I've seen and I've experienced a number of things during my lifetime. Unfortunately, I've been the subject of derogatory commentary because this is a society that is built for me. It doesn't embrace all that I offer in this skin. [03:24:31] However, the incident yesterday really placed a heavy weight on my chest, and it was one that I had to carry with me as I completed that meeting and completed other duties as a community member, as a board member, as a mom, as a wife. And it was hard. It was challenging. And this is the experience that our community members who were on that call felt. Several of them reached out to me to call and talk to me. And just the shock of the event was just one that it was very difficult to [03:25:08] get over. We just felt as if we were just dragged by this experience yesterday. And it really stunted what should have been a beautiful moment for the Brenner Park community. It really marred that experience when these individuals came to engage in a conversation that they've been waiting for for a long time, which is a new school. These families, these teachers, these parents, this is not what they came to hear, but this is what they experienced. Instead of hearing about [03:25:42] the new building, they were traumatized by hateful words and terms that really sullied the moment. To the Bryn Mawr community, I am so very sorry that you were subjected to this terrible experience, especially for those for whom the N-word holds a personal and traumatic history with deep impact because you live in a darker skin. This type of experience is why this division continues to focus on the work of addressing racism, of teaching tolerance, and engaging in the work of equity [03:26:19] and inclusion and diversity. I do want to say to the staff, Dr. Zuluaga, I don't know if he's left, Dr. Ivy, Dr. Reed, Mr. Sethi, and Helen Lloyd, you were wonderful. You were responsive. You acted quickly to respond to the situation, to determine who the individual was, to communicate to the community in terms of this kind of hateful assault will not be tolerated. And for that, I am grateful. But what this did [03:26:56] remind me of is that we have so much more work to do. Thank you. And I'm sorry that happened. And I appreciate our staff quick responsiveness. And there's clearly a lot more work to be done. Thank you, Miss. Thank you. Go ahead. [03:27:15] Well, Dr. Anderson, certainly want to echo what I'm sure we're all feeling, which is our deep sorrow for you and the community that experienced it and as you noted our deep commitment to continuing to create the most welcoming and inclusive environment we can in our schools and out in Fairfax County as a community as a whole and it is elevating and speaking to these events when they happen and making sure people really understand the lived experiences that people have and why we all have to be collectively together to stop it and again I can't there aren't words enough [03:27:54] to say more to it but make it tough to follow you on my board matters so I think I'll keep mine very brief and just say you know Dr. Reed I want to convey how much I appreciate that with a board of 12 that's deeply committed to improving the school division I continue to experience from your staff from the leadership team to the directors who report to them a deep willingness to engage in meetings with us and talk about things just in this [03:28:29] week alone very quickly I had regional superintendents I'm assistant superintendent Sherry Wilson making themselves available to answer questions Jen Allard in the math department answering questions that I had about algebra 2 honors what kind of data are we collecting how are we helping to ensure when we are as a division helping students and families find the right courses for them and so it just is something that I want to kind of spotlight this evening since I those who've watched me for a long time know I [03:29:05] tend to ask a lot of pretty demanding questions so in practicing some gratitude tonight I just wanted you to know that it is a culture that has changed during my tenure it's one for the better it's one that I appreciate and you know to all the staff who are listening I hope they know that I may not always agree with some of where our recommendations are but it does mean a lot to me this earnest commitment to try and answer and provide information as needed because we really are a collective team and uh that can't be done if there isn't a cultural [03:29:43] mindset for that and i i believe that you emulate that each and every day and um that your staff continue to represent that in in a really powerful way so thank you thank you miss corbett sanders thank you um first i would like to reiterate uh my sincere apology that you experience such hate during a community meeting dr anderson it is unacceptable and it's that kind of hateful [03:30:21] rhetoric which has become all too prevalent in our community and as our student rep likes to say the students are watching and we need to call out when inappropriate things happen and lift up that that is not acceptable in our public discourse it's not acceptable in our classrooms and we certainly want to show our support for you and for your community and i apologize on behalf of our [03:30:56] our overall county that you experience that. Now for what I had planned to say, yesterday was Workforce Readiness Day across the Commonwealth and across the country, and I want to give a shout out to all the students and staff whom are engaged in our Workforce Readiness programs. [03:31:18] Annually, 16,500 certifications are awarded in our Fairfax County public schools. These experiences allow our students to either immediately work or apply these lessons to post-secondary education. [03:31:34] And I want to say happy Workforce Readiness Day. And along those lines, I enjoyed starting Spring Break, also in Florida, but at the Collaborative of State School Board Association's meeting, where I had the opportunity to present at the conference on the work that we are doing here in Fairfax County in Workforce readiness and career and technical education. [03:31:57] The work that we are doing in healthcare, the trades, and our foundation for applied technical education should be lauded. As I mentioned, 16,500 certifications were awarded last year. Each one of those has a value of up to $2,000 per year in real income for our students. [03:32:20] And when they're stacked, it's even greater than that. And so I am just so appreciative of the work we do here in Fairfax County to create those opportunities. Another fun fact that I shared was something that many of you may not know. The Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority has a partnership with Fairfax County Public Schools where they donate abandoned cars from our airports. [03:32:47] And so just this week another 11 cars were donated to our school system. I think 25 were donated last month, and we'll continue to see this flow of abandoned cars where our students do the diagnostics on them, make any necessary repairs, and then in our own dealership, they market and sell these cars. [03:33:09] And so it's just really exciting, some of the things that people don't necessarily know we're doing in our schools. So, Dr. Reed, thank you for all you're doing to continue this work. Thank you, Ms. Corbett Sanders. Ms. Tolan? Yes. Let me just say, Dr. Anderson, your story is heartbreaking. [03:33:27] I'm not sure what else to say. Thank you for sharing. I wanted to do something a little bit different tonight for the month of the military child. My staff aide is a military wife and mother. That's one of the reasons I hired her, so that I would make sure I had that voice in my office. [03:33:48] And so I asked Wendy to, in her voice, tell me a little bit about her experience and things she might consider for FCPS. So now I'm in Wendy's voice. I would like to prepare this or have this statement. [03:34:08] Our military family of six moved to FCPS 12 years ago. Out of the 12 total moves my kids faced, it wasn't the hardest one or the easiest one. But since we've been here, FCPS has implemented things to help military families transition. [03:34:25] We've expanded the number of our Purple Star schools. We've improved the FCPS military webpage. The PRC offers direct help for the military families, and it has a three-part recorded webinar on their YouTube channel to address specifics on how military families and students can have a successful transition. [03:34:47] our new pilot for online registration at 31 schools can provide stress relief when you are in the middle of yet another move some things she wishes fcps would consider is um she says veterans day i may be in the minority but i'm not in favor of veterans day as a student or school holiday my kids really loved it when my husband could come to school and talk about submarines They felt proud and excited to be a military kid on Veterans Day and military service member visits strengthened our school community. [03:35:25] The half-day Veterans Day let my husband speak at school and let my kids spend time with their dad at home. Now that her class of 2022 FCPS grad is an ROTC student in college, she wishes FCPS did more to share the military as a post-graduation choice like they do for gap years. [03:35:44] The pathway beyond high school is either enlisting or joining ROTC and military academies. Both have much to offer for our youth. It is not an easy decision for any parent or caregiver to consider or encourage the military with real risks and many benefits to any student like hers in our country. [03:36:05] These pathways should be shared with all FCPS students, not only military-connected families. Other things that would be great to see in FCPS. More explanations on the battery test that measures developed abilities and helps predict future academic and occupational success in the military so all parents would know about this. [03:36:28] And just generally really educating our parents and families and students all across the district on opportunities in the military. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Toland. Ms. Amesh? Thank you. And likewise, I think, you know, words are words, but obviously, Dr. Anderson, and your story speaks to the costs of racism and how they have rippling impacts on our community. [03:36:51] So I appreciate you sharing that story, and that's part of uplifting narratives and speaking truth. Sometimes it makes people uncomfortable. People don't want to hear it, but it's real, and that's one micro example of what people in this country have to live with time and time again. [03:37:09] In any case, last board matters. I spoke about the shooting in Nashville, and again, here we find ourselves seeing something in Kentucky. I'm not sure what to say about state and national leaders and when they're going to act, but for now, I know that Dr. Reid and my colleagues are committed to safety, whether through the queue for vestibules, making sure those get to all our schools, or whether that's through introducing security staff in elementary schools and making sure that that's specifically their role. So thank you to the team who works to keep our schools safe. Our thoughts, prayers, and actions are with families and the community at large. Last board matters, I discussed the [03:37:46] number of holidays and observances we had this month. A super important observance is coming up April 15th, everybody. Tax day. Staff and colleagues, just a reminder not to forget. Is it 17th? My oversight. Anyway, an Earth Day, of course, which is April 22nd. It's a great opportunity to raise awareness about environmental issues and promote sustainability. We can celebrate Earth Day by taking on a new habit to support the environment. I've already started identifying mine to commit to this year and hope to hear about yours. I am thrilled to uplift the engineering students and [03:38:21] their teacher, Mr. Mark Smith, of this very middle school, who are creating gardens of the future as a part of their commitment this month, a sustainable aquaponics farm. It's a combination of hydroponics, growing plants without soil, and aquaculture, which is growing fish and other aquatic organisms, in a red barn behind this school. And the food they're growing is being donated to the school food pantry helping out families in need i just love the innovation and generosity displayed by these students and it's special it's particularly special that it's right here finally our multi-faith holiday season reminds us of the importance of compassion generosity and kindness towards others [03:38:59] congratulations to those colleagues and community who survived lent and passover and i and many muslims of course are still trying to survive ramadan but there are also many holidays coming up palm sunday vaisaki which celebrates the hindu and sick Spring harvest, Orthodox Easter, and Eid al-Fitr, which my family will be observing. [03:39:21] And as I reflect on holy days, people, and spaces during this time, I am saddened to see all that's happening in Jerusalem and the attacks on worshipers. I know it weighs heavily on money in our community, who are not only watching, but are deeply pained by what's going on. And I hope their observations of this can be opportunities for all of us to learn how we can do better. [03:39:41] I look forward to a world where faith can bring us together instead. So with that, I wish the entire community a blessed religious experience during these wonderful opportunities to celebrate our differences together and encourage tolerance and understanding as we learn more about the beliefs and traditions of each other. Thank you, Ms. Amish. [03:39:56] Ms. Marin? This weekend, I'll be attending the First Baptist Church of Vienna's service to focus on the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King's writing of his letter from a Birmingham jail, which hearing Dr. Inneson's horrible and the community's horrible experience at the meeting, I think, is just all the more needed. [03:40:15] And that purpose is to renew the call to action directed at the moderate audience who remained silent in the face of overt racial injustice. So I look forward to joining many faith leaders at that event. I do have some really bittersweet news. Today, two longtime leaders in the Hunter Mill community, one in the Madison period and one in the South Lakes pyramids, announced their retirement. [03:40:37] So I want to, with bittersweetness, congratulate Principal Jennifer Hygis, who is retiring, departing Marshall Road Elementary School after being there 21 years at Marshall Road, but a total of 31 with FCPS. And then Principal Amy Monticchio will be retiring, having spent 20 years in the South Lakes Pyramid, serving four years as assistant principal in South Lakes High School and 16 as principal of my own kiddos, Langston Hughes Middle School. [03:41:04] So I know we'll spend some time honoring their incredible work. this week has certainly been quite an emotional one I started meeting with some high school teachers who really were very transparent about just how tough it is right now for a number of reasons something that I wanted to work find out how we could as a board and as a school division do more of is to stop layering things on to teachers and figure out how to best integrate things so they could really connect with their students which is what they want so and we talked on Tuesday about you know staff overwhelm when we think about special education and other things so just a lot of big heavy things happening and I'm glad that we can [03:41:40] try to solve some of those those issues. I did get to see some also incredible student art with the International Baccalaureate program over at South Lakes High School. I joined about 50 other parents at Hunters Woods Elementary School where they host their career day and I met all sorts of really amazing parents and the staff just did an amazing job putting it together. Langston Hughes had a college fair with the AVID program where students had to try and win your raffle tickets to win some prizes and some of them are very clever and I've also been working with some parents on various safe routes to school issues so connecting with county leaders and rest [03:42:15] and association leaders so I'm looking forward to this weekend some Earth Day celebrations including at Marshall Road the rest and founders day celebration which is really quintessential to that community and honoring the designer and founder of it Bob Simon and also going tomorrow night to the iftar dinner at the government center that's being hosted by the American Turkish Friendship Association. So I'm delighted to have been invited, and I look forward to that. [03:42:37] Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Kees-Gamara? Yes. I want to start by thanking you, Dr. Anderson, for speaking and explaining. We can never get too much of that, and certainly I understand that. [03:42:57] I have shared stories myself, particularly with regard to my children, and it's also part of the reason and I there's no intent in this I know it's part of the reason I didn't support the changes because with respect to how we present our recognitions and resolutions because there's nobody here to hear you and sometimes we can create structures and ways that voices end up not being heard and I know that wasn't the intent and I know there's a lot of work going on and I I understand that we can improve, and that's why I abstained. [03:43:37] But I think that it is really important that we look at the impact of what we put in place because there are people in the community who simply need it to hear that because they're walking that place. [03:43:53] And to speak it from this dais really means something. And I believe that it is our business to affirm the people we serve so that they have an opportunity to understand that we get it. And we're trying to move the needle to bring better results in our community. [03:44:13] So thank you. I, too, had the opportunity. I was with Ms. Marin for a few of those events at Hughes Middle School. And we got good pictures and Hunter Woods Elementary School Career Day. [03:44:31] I also participated in the Strategic Plan Community Forum. I'll just skip real quickly. On April 17th, I will have the Special Education Comprehensive Review virtual listening session with Dr. Michelle Boyd, Ms. Esther Coe, Harry Henderson, who was the chair of the FCPS Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities. [03:44:54] So it is long awaited. We will focus on hearing questions from the community. I think it will be good for all of our staff members to actually get an opportunity to hear how the community is responding. and I think it will help us to grow as we move forward. So I hope everybody has a great weekend, and thank you. [03:45:13] Thank you, Ms. Kees-Gamara. And next is Ms. Janet Koufax. Thank you. Dr. Anderson-Rickey, I'm sorry you experienced this trauma. I really am. This type of hate and ignorance should never be tolerated. [03:45:32] And thank you for sharing with us, because I know as you shared it, you relived it, and I'm sorry for that. So my heart reaches out to you, And you never experience that again when you're just trying to do good for your community. So I do hope everyone had a good spring break. [03:45:55] I, too, as Mr. Frisch did with Dr. Anderson and Ms. McLaughlin, spent part of my break attending the National School Boards Conference, and it is always great to gather and network with other members of school boards from around the country. Every time I mention to a few I was from Fairfax, they go, ooh. [03:46:16] it was we are we are now this week several members attended the public hearing with the Board of Supervisors outlining the changing and real needs of our system and I think that needs to continue to be heard we may have a few less students but the needs are greater and that was noted in a lot of our presentations tonight and we need to keep working for that because our county partners are the ones who provide 70% of it but as I noted before we need help [03:46:48] from additional help from our our national funders as well and I wanted to say that this coming few weeks our theater season is in full swing and Lewis High School will be showcasing legally blonde the weekends of 21st and And in case you cannot get enough of Elle Woods and her Greek chorus, West Potomac will also be presenting Legally Bronze the weekend of April 27th. [03:47:21] Mount Vernon will be presenting Disney's Beauty and the Beast the weekend of April 27th. And this weekend and next, Edison High School will be presenting the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. And if you come this Saturday, you may see this board member try her very best to be one of the guest speakers. [03:47:40] so I'm a really bad speller so wish me luck I can make it through the first round and with that have a good night thank you and I'll just take a few minutes to first say also Dr. Anderson I am very sorry as to what happened and like Mr. Koufax I know the trauma of repeating the story and I thank you for your courage and sharing it because I think it's important for people to hear how much work we still have and the hate that's out there and the work we need to do to combat that so I'm sorry that happened I can't imagine how difficult it was and thank you for having the courage to speak up and share it from here and thank you for just trying [03:48:18] to do good for your community things like that should never happen ever so thank you you know I had the pleasure this week of being able to speak at the Board of Supervisors public hearing on the budget thank you to Miss Toland as the budget chair and to Miss Burton for helping prepare the remarks to speak on behalf of the board and really being to lift up the good work we're doing and the innovative work we're doing but also the increased needs of our students and the increased staffing that takes to really serve our students well so thank you to that and to Ms. Bukarski as well for her help on that and I attended this strategic plan community forum the virtual forum as well to hear some of the comments and I was pleased to hear that people like the direction that we're [03:48:57] going they like sort of the streamlined goals and so I think we're moving in the right direction with our strategic plan so that was really great to hear and I just just from a personal note wanted to lift up for the month of the military child. I do not have a military child but I was married to a military child who became a military officer in the Navy and as someone myself who grew up with very little experience with military families. Being married to him while he served was was very eye-opening especially meeting military families and children and learning what they what they do and they and the difficulty of moving every few years and the resiliency but also the difficulty just [03:49:34] for military families and living in an area that has quite a few military families. I really respect the service and sacrifice but it made me realize how lucky I am being married to a military officer even for the few years he served. It was very eye-opening to me so I just wanted to say I really respect the service of our service people as well as their families and their children and we're very grateful. So with that I will say this meeting is adjourned. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com