Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, July 13, 2023

Date: Thursday, July 13, 2023
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 4h 31m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MVFyXp80lA
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 2026-11-03. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:18] board members please take your seats board members please take your seats so we can get started thank

[00:00:45] you this july 13th 2023 regular meeting of the fairfax county school board will now come to order please stand for the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of our a national anthem by Nithi Palakiasis, a rising sophomore from Edison High School.

[00:02:55] Oh say does that star-spangled bent way...

[00:03:10] Thank you, Neethi. We appreciate it.

[00:03:39] And thank you, Neethi's family, for being here. Thank you so much, and that was beautiful. Thank you, thank you so much. Before we get started, I wanted to recognize the Honorable Kate Hanley, former chair of the Board of Supervisors, who's with us today.

[00:03:56] Thank you for joining us today. And I would like to call on Ms. Bukarski very quickly to recognize some of our boy scouts in the room yeah thank you madam chair we have some very special guests here today working on a badge requirement boy scouts from Centerville boy scout troop 1137 are here in the auditorium stand up boys welcome we're very excited to have you thank you and welcome to our

[00:04:35] meeting thank you for joining us today we'll move on to agenda item 2.02 two certification of closed meeting in order to comply with section 2.2-3712d 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 July 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 the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board. Do I have a motion Dr. Anderson is there a second Ms. Cohen all those

[00:05:14] in favor please raise your hand as Ms. Keys Gamara Ms. Marin Ms. Tolan Ms. Corbett Sanders Mr. Koufax Ms. McLaughlin Dr. Anderson Mr. Frisch Ms. Bukarski Ms. Cohen and myself that is unanimous thank you very much that motion passes. Agenda item 2.03 announcements we would like to first welcome our new student representative for the school year 2324 Rita Karim to the school school board welcome thank you so much for joining us we're really excited to have you here and see the great things you're gonna do this year this is miss

[00:05:52] Kareem's first meeting and we're excited to have her and to work with her over the coming year if you'd 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 board school board backslash board docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu backslash tv backslash channel 99.

[00:06:21] After reading tonight's proclamations, the board would like to invite each recipient and their family and friends to join us for a photo. Agenda item 2.04-2023, School Board Character Award Proclamation. I call on Ms. Marin for a proclamation.

[00:06:37] The School Board Character Award is given to a junior or senior who demonstrates a continuous record of high morals, strong integrity, and good character, and who is recognized as a role model for students in Fairfax County public schools in day-to-day behavior.

[00:06:52] The award was initiated by former student representative to the school board, Chris Giovarelli, and established by the Student Advisory Council in 2001. Since 2007, the Apple Federal Credit Union Education Foundation has generously funded the $500 award.

[00:07:07] Whereas Callahan Patrick Rogers, a 2023 graduate of Cedar Lane School, is an exceptional student, is a known leader, and is a source of inspiration for his fellow students. And whereas he has been an integral part of the Cedar Lane community, having participated in many school activities and programs, including being team captain of the school basketball team, editor and photographer of the school yearbook and newspaper, and playing the guitars, drums, bass, and piano in the school's winter and spring music shows.

[00:07:36] And whereas Callahan has shown great potential for continued academic success by attending FCPS's Teachers for Tomorrow Academy class and aspires to become a special education elementary teacher. Whereas during Callahan's time at Cedar Lane School, he demonstrated a positive attitude, strong integrity, and was someone who always was willing to help others.

[00:07:56] And whereas Callahan has been recognized for his stellar sportsmanship on and off the court by his peers, coaches, and school staff. And whereas through Callahan's overall excellence in academics and activities, he in every way personifies the characteristics and ideals to which the school board character ward embodies.

[00:08:16] Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board awards the 2023 School Board Character Award to Callahan Patrick Rogers, who demonstrates a continuous record of high morals, strong integrity, and good character so as to be a role model for students in Fairfax County public schools.

[00:08:34] I will second this proclamation. Ms. Marin, would you like to speak to your proclamation? I think the proclamation says so much, and I've had the delight and honor to get to know Callahan a bit in these last few months and I'm delighted that he is joined here tonight with his family and principal Tom Lundy thank you I'll just say a few brief words that this award is for students who have a record of high morals strong integrity and good character and recognized as a role model and to be that role model for students really speaks very highly of your character and your hard work and your dedication not just to yourself but to those around you and so I'm honored to be able to second this I don't know how

[00:09:14] you have the time to be in sports, yearbook, newspaper, and play four instruments, and have a job, so when, and being teachers for tomorrow, so if you could help me with like time management, I would really appreciate it. No, in all seriousness, it's so impressive to read about you, to hear about your background, to see just your big smile, and your enthusiasm, and the fact that you want to come back and teach, hopefully for us, will be amazing, and I know that the students will learn so much from you both academically and just how to be an amazing human being so congratulations I'm honored to second this and I'll just

[00:09:52] say as a parent of a musician who plays guitar bass keyboards and drums I know how hard that is and he tries to do it all at once and I hope you play them one at a time so with that I will call I see no other board members who wish to speak so I will call for the vote all those in favor please raise your hand that is Ms. Kees Gamara, Ms. Marin, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Ms. Darenak-Koufax, Ms. McLaughlin, Dr. Anderson, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Bukarski, and myself.

[00:10:19] That is unanimous. Congratulations. Well earned. Agenda Item 2.05, Proclamation honoring Daniel Warko and Jonathan Shames.

[00:10:34] I will call on Ms. Darenak-Koufax for proclamation. Thank you, Madam Chair. Whereas Mr. Daniel Warko and Mr. Jonathan Shames have served on the Fairfax County School Board Audit Committee as our citizen committee members with dedication and professionalism, Daniel for three consecutive terms for a total of six years, and Jonathan for one term for a total of two years, and the success of the FCPS Audit Committee can, in part, be tied to the generous time and effort of these two contributing citizen community members. And whereas, they both have been instrumental in fulfilling the

[00:11:10] roles and duties of the Audit Committee's charge. As Audit Committee community members, they must possess the knowledge needed to understand and evaluate Fairfax County Public Schools risks and controls including FCPS's Officer of Auditor General's activities this includes but is not limited to the internal audit activities over accounting auditing business management financial reporting risk and school district finances in addition they need to understand general local government processes, as well as technical and complex financial reporting issues.

[00:11:47] And whereas Daniel has worked as a certified public accountant for over 25 years in both public and private sectors that included audit management experience where he applied for his position here, he stated a desire to serve the public school system in hopes to add value.

[00:12:04] He and his two children -- he has two children who recently graduated from West Potomac High School. Daniel's invaluable audit and accounting-related experience has allowed him to be a valuable contributor to the Fairfax County School Board's Audit Committee. And whereas Jonathan came to us with over 38 years of experience, including leadership and financial expertise, where he also worked closely with other boards and audit committees, which exposed him to dealing with issues around internal controls, financial statement audits, management and operational audits, risk management.

[00:12:40] He joined the Audit Committee in July of 2021 after retiring from the private sector. He has three children who attended and graduated from FCPS, and he stated that he wanted to give back to his community. His wealth professional experience as a certified public accountant made Jonathan a very effective member of our Audit Committee.

[00:13:00] And now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board extends its deepest appreciation to both Daniel Warko and Jonathan Shames as we thank you both for your outstanding service and dedication to Fairfax County School Board students, families, and the entire FCPS community. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Cohen. Ms. Daroni-Koufax, would like to speak to your proclamation? Yes. I've had the pleasure of working with both Dan and Jonathan last year as the audit chair and again this year as a member of the audit committee. I want to thank

[00:13:36] Dan who's unable to be here but I want to thank him for bringing his wealth of experience to the audit committee for the past six years and he has been instrumental in helping us strengthen our internal controls and it was wonderful to meet his children at West Potomac's graduation last month so on behalf of the board I want and extend our thanks and appreciation to you for sharing your time and experience with FCAPS and Jonathan we are grateful that That shortly after you retired, you wanted to jump right back in and help us with the audit committee.

[00:14:10] Your professionalism, expertise, and deep knowledge of the auditing process were so helpful to our committee. On behalf of our board, we want to thank you for sharing your time and talents in service to FCPS. Thank you. Ms. Cohen, would you speak to your second?

[00:14:26] Yes, please, just briefly. I had never been on audit when I was tasked with chair this year and I think was understandably nervous. And the first thing that Ms. Coe told me was, don't worry, the two citizen audit members are amazing. And you all certainly proved that to be true this year.

[00:14:44] And just appreciated always the insightful questions, the tough probing questions. But always said with an awful lot of kindness and understanding for, I think, one of your number one comments is always, I get it.

[00:15:00] It's a big system. And we are very lucky to have your talents. And we hope that this won't be your last time serving on the audit committee. So thank you so much. And Dan, who I hope will be glued to his screen at home later watching this, thank you so much.

[00:15:18] And thank you for the kindness and, again, the understanding you all were amazing as we powered through some tough topics this year. So thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Ms. Toland? Yes. I would like to extend a huge thank you to Dan Warko for all of his work.

[00:15:38] I had the pleasure of serving on the Audit Committee for two years with Dan and certainly valued all of his expertise. Best of luck, Dan. Two years ago, when a Community Audit Committee position was vacated and John Shames applied, I told John he was the most overqualified person for this position that I could possibly imagine.

[00:15:59] Thank you, John, for being willing to bring your professional expertise in the private sector to the public sector for asking tough questions always and for collaborating closely as a thought partner with our auditor general and with our board on so many topics i know our sunshine laws and ways to do business for often a sense of frustration for you so thank you for persevering to provide a valuable and badly needed service for fcps Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Kees-Gumara? Yes, I too want to thank both Daniel and Jonathan.

[00:16:37] I had the pleasure of working with you both when I was audit chair, and it was really refreshing to have people come from the business world who were so professional, no nonsense, which I love, just bringing that best practices, very objective, consummate professionals, and you really did help us to be better so I just want to thank you um we we really need that and our community is grateful for your service thank you seeing no other board members who wish to

[00:17:12] speak I will call for the vote all those in favor please raise your hands Ms. Bukarski Ms. Cohen Mr. Frisch Ms. Dr. Anderson Ms. McLaughlin Ms. Janet Koufax Ms. Corbett Sanders Ms. Tolan Ms. Merritt and Ms. Keith Gamara and myself that is unanimous congratulations with Ms. Amish away from the table congratulations thank you for your service and your time and your knowledge and experience it was very well received and very important to us to do our work so thank you with that i will like to invite you mr shames your family members audit committee members and all those here this evening in support of this proclamation to please join the board for a photo

[00:17:51] in front of the dais and i ask my colleagues remain at the dais for the next photo for our

[00:17:54] school board character award thank you i would like to invite callahan rogers his family cedar

[00:19:14] Lane school staff and all those here in support of the 2023 school board character award to please

[00:19:20] join the board for a photo. Agenda item 2.06 introduction of chief of schools as we noted during

[00:21:31] a June 26 2023 regular meeting we would like to take a moment during tonight's meeting to hear from our new chief of schools. I will now call on Dr. Ponce to provide a few brief remarks to the board and welcome Dr. Ponce we're excited to have you here. Thank you for the 20 minutes Good afternoon, evening, actually, board, Dr. Reed, colleagues, parents, students.

[00:22:06] I'm very happy to be here. I'm ready, I have been ready, and I can't wait to be knowing each of you to be working collaboratively to make sure that all children receive quality education.

[00:22:23] This is my passion, and you're going to know me a little bit more, and you will see that What you see now is exactly what I bring to the table. It's a lot of passion, charisma, and love for the children.

[00:22:39] Because education changed my life. I am from Honduras, third world country. I was very, very poor. I thought that that was my end. But I met a teacher and changed my life. And so that is my call.

[00:22:56] And that's exactly what I'm going to be doing. Every single child, all, but not all, you all, but all. So ALL will receive quality education. I'm going to bring the very best of me, and thank you. Dr. Ponce, on behalf of the school board, I'd like to welcome you to FCPS.

[00:23:20] We look forward to working with you. Agenda Item 2.07, Introduction of our Chief Equity Officer. We now would like to take a few moments to hear from Dr. Nardis King, who was approved at our June 26th meeting as our Permanent Chief Equity Officer. Dr. King, congratulations on being named the Permanent Chief Equity Officer, and welcome to address us in this new role and we look forward to keep working to continue to work with you in your new role. Unlike Dr. Ponce I have to write my words down see he's setting the bar high. Good evening esteemed members of the Board of Education Dr. Reed our respected colleagues

[00:23:57] member of my office principals teachers support staff of FCPS students families and our lovely community members. Today I humbly stand before you filled with profound thankfulness a powerful drive to serve and a firm belief that together we can usher in a revolutionary period of equitable education for the students of fairfax county public schools throughout the past year and a half i've had the privilege of working closely with the dedicated leaders of the chief equity office together we have laid foundations for our education equity policy which reflects our collective determination to uphold the rights and untapped potential of every student in our

[00:24:35] in our division. I want to express my deepest appreciation to these leaders for their unwavering commitment, invaluable insights, and their tireless efforts that have been essential and truly inspiring. However, our work is not finished. As I look ahead, I am keenly aware of the challenges we must face. We will address these challenges by working closely with all departments and schools across the division and with our stakeholders. When we encounter inequities, we will take action and tackle them these disparities present significant barriers to our shared goals of providing a fair education and it's our collective responsibility to acknowledge

[00:25:14] and eliminate them today i promise you and all our stakeholders that we will work relentlessly to pursue fairness fight for justice and ensure that every student can prepare excuse me pursue their dreams as i take on this role i do so with a strong commitment and unwavering determination i understand the assignment ahead and i find inspiration in our shared dedication to this cause we are not merely creating policies we are shaping futures and in every decision we make we carry the hopes and dreams of our students thank you for this opportunity thank you thank

[00:25:53] you dr king agenda item 2.08 introduction of our region 6 assistant superintendent and last but certainly not least we'd like to invite uh dr michelle boyd who's our newly appointed assistant superintendent of region six to provide some brief remarks dr boyd again congratulations on your new position we look forward to continuing to working with you um please thank you and good evening and i promise we did not compare notes i said oh my i wrote that down too um but again good evening madam chair vice chair school board members dr reid fcps staff students family and certainly our

[00:26:28] community i want to take this time to really express my gratitude and appreciation for my recent appointment as the Region 6 Assistant Superintendent. I'm truly honored to have been entrusted with this significant responsibility and I'm truly excited to begin this work.

[00:26:47] I am committed to supporting schools in ensuring we increase student achievement, close access and opportunity gaps, achieve the goals outlined in the strategic plan, and ensure we deliver the FCPS promise of excellence and education for every FCPS student. I look forward to partnering with our students, our staff, our families, and our community to ensure the FCPS vision becomes a reality. I am confident that together we will be able to achieve remarkable accomplishments and

[00:27:23] really create a better future for all. Again, thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to the impactful work that we will do together thank you thank you Dr. Boyd the moment you've all been waiting for agenda item 2.09 annual school board organizational arrangements before we move to the election of our new chair and vice chair as the outgoing chair I'd like to make a few remarks so I'm really honored this year to have the opportunity to chair the school board I

[00:27:59] really appreciate the trust and faith my colleagues have placed in me and the support and guidance you all have provided this year it is truly a team effort and the work we've done this year to move our system forward and I appreciate the team that we have it has both been a very rewarding and a difficult year especially in this environment that public education finds itself in and I'm honored to be part of a team to support and lift up and protect public education I thank dr. Reed for your partnership this year coming in as a new superintendent trying to figure out the system and I appreciate your willingness to have these thoughtful conversations as together we've had

[00:28:36] forge a path forward along with my colleagues and I really appreciate all of our difficult and all of our really uplifting conversations and I look forward to more in a different role but thank you for your partnership and your willingness to really come into a new system and work with collaborative with us I want to thank really your openness and enthusiasm for your work I want to thank your leadership team and staff for the openness enthusiasm I really appreciate the work of our school board clerks Christina Setler and Laura Cornell for all you've done to keep the wheels going and keep us supported and I want to thank my vice chair Tammy Darnett Koufax for all your steadfast partnership and working alongside me through the highs and lows of the year

[00:29:15] your experience and counsel and was very invaluable so thank you and I just wanted to sort of lift up sometimes we're in the moment of the work you don't realize what you've done this year so through the combined efforts of all of us on this board and all of our hard work and staff and Dr. Reed this year we adopted a new strategic plan that will guide our divisions work through 2030 and we started the policy governance work that will ensure strong board oversight over the implementation of the strategic plan we passed a budget that focused on academic excellence student wellness with a third year of raises for teachers and staff we successfully onboarded our new superintendent we hired and

[00:29:54] successfully onboard our new clerk we adopted a collective bargaining resolution that will help with staff retention and recruitment we have overseen a special education enhancement plan that if implemented full fully can make us a groundbreaking leader in special education. We've approved a calendar for the next three school years and I hear from community members how grateful though that they can plan for three years and know when school is in session. We adopted an educational equity policy in alignment with the 2017 One Fairfax policy and our strategic plan to make sure all students have access to opportunities to fulfill their potential. We've stood up for the

[00:30:31] accurate teaching of history in the development of state standards for history and social science we've offered telemental health services for students we've stood up to protect lgbtq students rights and staffs rights and we have ahead of schedule security updates a focus on substance abuse prevention and moving forward on stop arm cameras these are just a few things that we've done just this year so we should all be proud i know i'm proud there's a lot more work to be done and And I really look forward to supporting our new chair and vice chair as that work continues.

[00:31:04] Thank you for this incredible opportunity of a lifetime to be the chair of the school board. And thank you for your partnership in all the work we've done this year. Before we move to the election, I'd give my vice chair, Dernot Koufax, a chance to say a few words. Thank you so much to my colleagues.

[00:31:21] Thank you so much for your partnership and for allowing me this opportunity to serve as the vice chair. I've had the privilege of serving as the vice chair or chair on this board four times during my tenure, and each time it is unique experience, but it is one that I truly have enjoyed, and I am honored to serve for you, so I thank you again.

[00:31:47] To our board clerks and entire staff, thank you for your hard work and your partnership to keep us moving. Recording in progress. And I'm being recorded, so hello. And for your hard work and partnership to keep us and the system moving forward for the people that we are doing it for, our children.

[00:32:09] Michelle, I've enjoyed our Wednesday meetings together, and I am so grateful for the chance to learn from you and to help you better understand FCPS and its many rich opportunities. And Ms. Rachna, thank you for your leadership as our board's chair this year.

[00:32:26] I truly appreciate your strong worth ethic, your ability to quickly synthesize the many initiatives brought before us, and you're able to collaborate to come up with solutions. It's been another challenging year filled with opportunities, my friend, but I am glad to have been in partnership with you.

[00:32:45] Together with our colleagues, you listed the many, many things, so I will not go over them. I have some of them, but I want to say thank you and thank you to everyone. we do have our challenges, but we are a good team, and we keep the system moving forward in the way we know best to make certain each and every one of our children out there have the opportunity to succeed. So everyone, I thank you again for this opportunity, and Ms. Rachna, I know you need a relaxing break, and I do thank you for my mug. You know what that is. It is an awesome mug.

[00:33:24] With that I will call on Dr. Reed the next order sorry the next order of business agenda item 2.09 the annual organizational motion section 2.20 2.1 - 76 of the Code of Virginia specifies that at the annual organizational meeting a school board should elect one of its members to serve as chairman and may elect one of its members to serve as vice chairman both for a one-year term and shall also approve other appointments and designations of responsibility necessary for board operations during the school year it is the honor of my lifetime to be here and I will now call on Dr. Reed to conduct the selection process

[00:34:01] for the school board chair for the next year. Thank you Ms. Sizemore-Heiser and I want to thank both you and Mr. Aranat Kovacs for a great year in terms of having the opportunity to onboard with both of you so thank you for your patience your grace and your inspiring leadership it's much appreciated. At this time I will open the floor to nominations for chair of the Fairfax County School Board. Dr. Reed, I nominate Elaine Toland for the Chairman of the Board. Is there a second?

[00:34:33] I second. Elaine Toland has been nominated as Chair. Are there any other nominations? Hearing no other nominations, the motion before the Board is to elect Ms. Elaine Toland as Chair of the Fairfax County School Board. I'll call on those members who nominated her for comments first.

[00:34:56] Ms. Dernack-Kovacs, would you like to speak to your nomination? Yes, Dr. Reed. It is my pleasure to nominate elaine tolan as the next chair of the fairfax county school board having served as budget chair on audit committee on jet skipped pec and fpac elaine has the vision strategic work ethic and integrity needed to be an effective leader on of this board some of you may not be aware of elaine's impressive and varied career prior to joining our board for eight years elaine started and managed our FCPS Get to Green program. This is our district-wide pre-K to 12 program

[00:35:35] that promotes environmental stewardship amongst our students and staff. There Elaine formalized regional and national partnerships to provide tools to our schools and to create student-driven environmental action. Prior to her work with FCPS, Elaine worked for 10 years for SAIC managing a staff focused on large environmental cleanups for the U.S. Department of Energy.

[00:36:00] Elaine also worked for a Wall Street firm in Manhattan and Tokyo on systems integration and program management. Elaine holds a B.S. in education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught in both middle and high school. She also holds an MBA from the University of Maryland College Park. Elaine, your credentials truly speak for themselves, but I want to add that I am grateful that you'll be stepping into this role as chair.

[00:36:28] You are a consensus builder, a problem solver and have great listening skills. I am honored to nominate you, my friend and colleague, as as the next chair of the Fairfax County School Board. Ms. Pekarski, would you like to speak to your second? Of course, I would.

[00:36:45] And before I do that, I do also want to say thank you to the outgoing chair and vice chair for all you have done this year. Has been a difficult, busy year, as they all seem to be lately. And I am very grateful for your leadership and all your work. And I know how much work it is.

[00:37:00] So thank you. And Miss Tolan, of course, I am so pleased to second her nomination. Obviously, the professional credentials speak for themselves. But I will say, from a human perspective, Elaine is a wonderful, a wonderful person, leader who has such high integrity who is able to get along collaborate talk with everybody no matter what their differences may be it's the chief skill you need to be an effective

[00:37:37] chair on this board you listen to everyone you take in all perspectives and you really take a step back to synthesize um and come to the best solution and i appreciate that about you you're thorough you're detail oriented um and i think you're going to be a phenomenal chair and i'm very excited for us to be finishing this board this current uh boards um last few months with you at the helm and there's still so much work to do so i know we will keep you very very

[00:38:14] BUSY SO THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR THAT ELAINE THANK YOU THANK YOU MISS PECARSKI ARE THERE ANY OTHER BOARD MEMBERS WHO WISH TO SPEAK MR FRISH FIRST I WANT TO SAY TO MISS SEIZEMORE HEISER AND MISS THERE NOT COFAX AS WE CALLED A QUESTION ON YOUR TIME AS CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR A LITTLE PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE HUMOR NEVER HURT ANYBODY I WANT TO THANK EACH OF YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE YOU'VE GUIDED THE

[00:38:52] board through some very consequential work this year and though Ms. Sizemoreheiser mentioned uh some of it I think uh it bears repeating we approved collective bargaining uh over the last year giving our educators a seat at the table um we approved the educational equity policy submitting our commitment to ensuring every student has the tools they need to achieve and we approved the visionary strategic plan that centers excellence equity and opportunity for every student that is a lot of great work to be finished in a year and clearly it it was the

[00:39:27] culminating moment this year it has not been an easy year but you two have slowly but surely guided us through this important work and i want to say thank you on behalf of the students and families of providence district for your service as to the nomination of miss tolan for chair i am proud to support her she is a fundamentally decent person she is smart fair considerate and kind but above all she is patient with others and passionate about helping students achieve she will be a

[00:39:57] great chair thank you mr frisch miss corbett sanders yes thank you dr reed and i too will take the privilege of um speaking sorry speaking briefly about um our outgoing chair and vice chair before I address the nomination of Miss Toland, who I fully support.

[00:40:28] Ladies, I want to talk to each of you individually, because having sat in both of your chairs at some point, I can tell you that each role is very unique. And the uniqueness of being a chair in transformational times can be challenging, but it's also one in which it can be inspiring.

[00:40:54] And we are inspired by all of the work that has been achieved this year, and it's greatly appreciated. And setting the tone for how we engage with staff and with each other is so important, and I think you've done that very well.

[00:41:11] I want to, I will take a privilege of having known you, Tammy, since before either one of us were on the board. We served on the Advanced Academic Programs Advisory Committee, where I think you were the chair when I first went on that committee, and then we served together on this board for eight years.

[00:41:32] And I am forever grateful for your friendship, your leadership, and also for the work you have done in onboarding now three superintendents. That's pretty impressive. So being able to share the wisdom in your experience both as a member of this board but as a parent of students in our schools and keenly aware of the challenges of an ever-changing community and making sure that we meet the needs of each of our children by name and by need.

[00:42:11] You have done that for 12 years and three of which serving as the vice chair and a fourth as the chair, I believe. And that is just something that 25% of your service has been in that leadership role and then doing audit as well.

[00:42:28] So I am audit and budget. So thank you so much for all of your service. Now, Elaine, I have so enjoyed working with you over the past three and a half years, and I cannot think of anybody I'd rather see sitting in the chair seat as we really start the implementation of our strategic plan.

[00:42:52] And we have lots of new staff and new leadership roles, and your combination, perfect combination in my mind, of IQ and EQ is exactly what we need in the leadership.

[00:43:10] And you're always willing to pick up the phone and make a call to find out where people are and how to build bridges. So thank you, and I look forward to supporting your nomination. Thank you, Ms. Corbett-Sanders. Dr. Anderson.

[00:43:25] Thank you. Thank you to Ms. Dernot-Koufax and Ms. Seismal-Heiser for your service. Ms. Tolan, I do want to spend my time speaking with you because as I've shared with you in multiple conversations, you live above the fray.

[00:43:43] You have a deep sense of integrity. And I'm really looking forward to working with you in this position and supporting you. And as we've discussed before, I have a deep issue with the continuity. and absent the fact that you wouldn't be a year-long appointment this would have been a complete no-brainer but I'm really looking forward to supporting you but I will not be voting in favor this evening but it has nothing to do with you it's just I think we need the consistency but I think you are an outstanding candidate for this position and everything that has been said

[00:44:18] about you so far is 100% true I have the deepest respect for you and I think you'll be a wonderful chair. Thank you Dr. Anderson. Ms. McLaughlin. Eileen I know everyone has given you tremendous praise well-deserved praise and I just I wanted to add for our community to really appreciate how unique you are. There are 12 of us that Fairfax County voters put on this board and when people

[00:44:52] say herding cats, they're not kidding. The 12 of us have passion and incredible deep commitment, but it is 12 diverse personalities. And without question, in the conversations I've had with every one of our colleagues, you were held in the highest regard. And to serve in the role of chair is so important. To be able to have each one of us feel that, you know, you're going to listen

[00:45:25] and try very hard to bring us together as a board is what I believe elevates us. And so I'm thrilled to be supporting you. Dr. Anderson, I have a great relationship and I totally appreciate where her concerns are. But when you have eight board members rolling off, you know, at this point, I really wanted to support where we could be with the board as a body, feeling good about our leadership. And to Rasha and Tammy, I do want to personally convey my gratitude as well.

[00:46:02] This is my 12th year. And without question, I've never seen a year as challenging as this one, even adding COVID to the mix. So the fact that you all steered us through all of that, I know it took away countless time from your lives, your families. Most of the public doesn't see that. So thank you for your sacrifices. And I'm really excited for you to get part of your personal lives back. So again, thank you for your service. Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. Marin? I've known

[00:46:40] Ms. Toland for 10 years before we were elected simultaneously to the school board. Ms. Toland is a model of professionalism and someone I respect deeply and enjoy working with. As such it is with sadness that I must vote against this motion because I don't believe that full governance considerations were made before the nomination was brought to the board.

[00:46:58] I'd like to expand on why which was alluded to by Dr. Anderson as it pertains to the continuity of board leadership. I'd like the public to understand that the board term is four years. The chair and vice chair are identified by the board every July for the next 12 months. As this year is an election year, this current board will be in service until December 31st, 2023. January 1, 2024 will be a new board with at least eight new members for which some of the current board are seeking re-election. As such, this coming year will be an unusual chairmanship because there is a risk of interrupted leadership at the end of this year. Since Ms. Holland is not seeking re-election, it is guaranteed that leadership of the chairmanship will be interrupted in the middle of the school and fiscal year. Rather than

[00:47:36] try to mitigate the risk of interrupted leadership voting in an outgoing board member ensures interruption as such the vice chair will move to the chairmanship per state code yet also left unclear is the timing for when the vice chairmanship will be decided I am uncomfortable with the amount of uncertainty involved with the board governance aspect of this nomination and we'll be voting as such that said in expectance that Miss Toland will be elected chair tonight I will be pleased to work alongside her in her new leadership role I know she will bring her professionalism and grace to the position and be a fair facilitator in helping the board work diligently and with accountability to

[00:48:09] the public. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Does anyone else wish to speak? Ms. Keys-Gamara? Yes, thank you. I too want to thank our outgoing chair and vice chair and really do look forward to how we move forward

[00:48:29] And as I consider everything that my colleagues have said, I recognize that we find ourselves in an interesting quandary as a board, trying to figure out how to move forward, how to fully support everyone, and support the incoming members.

[00:48:50] And I have to say, based on my experience with Ms. Tolan, I do think that she is the right choice. She has always, irrespective of the difficulties we've experienced since 2020, yes, there has never been a time when I couldn't talk to Ms. Tolman or that she didn't reach out to me.

[00:49:16] She has the ability to de-escalate conflict, a particularly noteworthy skill. She is a respecter of all. She is a leader who builds others and encourages team building. She's not one to leave anyone out of a conversation.

[00:49:36] And given the difficulties that school being on the school board often brings, particularly in an election year, I look forward to working with her, and I think she's the right person for the job, so I will be supporting her. Thank you.

[00:49:52] Thank you, Ms. Keyes-Gamara. Ms. Sizemore-Hyser? Thank you, and I will take my turn last to speak, and I am thrilled, can I say thrilled again to support Miss Tolan as the next chair of the school board everyone has said it and so I'll go I once words you are grace under fire you are a consensus builder you are somebody who listens to everybody who thinks thoughtfully about all sides of an issue and tries to come to a solution that gets to yes and gets to win for everybody and I think that's especially in this time and era a

[00:50:29] really important skill to have I really enjoyed conversations with you in the last three years and I have I look forward to supporting you in this new role in whatever way you need and whatever way you want but you are the right person in this time I you know I understand some of the concerns around continuity but I think there's also a really important piece to have the right person in place in this era in time where public education is to steer the ship in a calm collaborative consensus building matter that keeps everything not just to float, but really sailing smoothly.

[00:51:03] And you are more than that right person to do that. So I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart that I can take a recess for the first time in three years. And I'm really thrilled to be able to take a little bit of time, but I'm always here for whatever you need, whatever you want, and to support you in any way I can.

[00:51:19] But thank you, because it is a sometimes thankless, very time-consuming task, very rewarding task, but also very time-consuming. So thank you for the sacrifices I know you're going to make and the time I know you're going to spend and I am beyond thrilled to support you as the next chair of the school board. So thank you for stepping up into that leadership role. Thank you Ms. Sizemore Heiser. If there are no other comments then we'll proceed with the vote which requires a majority of votes from those board members present and voting. The motion before

[00:51:55] the board is that Ms. Elaine Toland be elected chair of the Fairfax County School Board. All those in favor of the motion please signify by raising your hand and saying aye. That would be Ms. Keyes Gamora, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Ms. Rachna Sizemore-Hyser, Ms. Dernack-Kovacs, Ms. McLaughlin, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Cohen, and Ms. Bukarski. Those opposed or those opposed? Ms. Marin and Dr. Anderson.

[00:52:27] Those abstaining? At this time I am pleased to introduce the new chair of the Fairfax County

[00:52:34] School Board, Ms. Elaine Tolman. Good evening. Thank you, thank you. I've got big shoes, big chair

[00:53:38] to fill here, so give me a little grace this evening. I am honored to have the opportunity to serve Fairfax County Public Schools and the students, parents, and residents of Fairfax County in the role of chair of the school board. I thank my colleagues for having confidence in me to serve this capacity as we move forward together to continue building the positive momentum we are working on with our staff and our community. I thank Rajna Sizemore-Heiser and Tammy Derenak-Koufax for all of the leadership and hard work over the past years. And of course, I have to thank my

[00:54:15] husband, Jim, who is here in the audience tonight for all of the support over many, many years. It is an exciting time for our school district and our community. We are recovering well with COVID-19 after dealing with COVID-19. We have a new strategic plan in place and a superintendent with one year at the helm. We have new leadership joining us from around the country. Welcome.

[00:54:41] Bringing with them expertise and documented success in increasing student achievement and district-wide efficiencies. We have placed employees that have a depth of experience in our district in new key positions to leverage their knowledge and expertise. And we have plans to continue even more of these efforts.

[00:55:00] It is a time for us to look forward with optimism and a time to think big as we implement our strategic vision to provide excellence, equity, and opportunity for every student.

[00:55:15] There are new and continuing challenges on the horizon, such as school safety, students and social media, staff shortages in all areas, lack of federal and state funding, the impact of AI on education, and as always, how do we maximize student learning? FCPS is poised to be a leader in many of these areas. We have the staff expertise. We have the community expertise.

[00:55:41] Together, we need to raise our conversations to make sure our students have the best cutting-edge educational experience possible. I am proud to be in a leadership role as we do this work in partnership with our families and our board of supervisors. In a recent Education Week article, the author stated, too often education is seen as a system of compliance rather than an institution of inspiration and creativity. My experience working with FCPS is that we are full of inspiration

[00:56:19] and creativity, and we have the ingredients to be even better at spreading that across our entire County. I'm ready to get to work, so please join me. Thank you. Hi, I will open the floor to nominations for vice chair of the school board. I nominate Carl Frisch for vice chair of school

[00:56:51] board. Carl Frisch has been nominated for vice chair. Are there other nominations? Hearing no other nominations, the motion before the board is to let Carl Frisch as vice chair of the Fairfax County School Board. Ms. Cohen, would you like to speak to your nomination? Of course. I first just want to say thank you so much to Rachna and Tammy and the incredibly wonderful job that you've done in such a difficult year and all that you personally sacrifice to make this happen for us so thank you

[00:57:29] so much and of course I have to say a big shout out to my favorite cheese head and recall partner Elaine it's finally your time to be on the school board and I so appreciate that you're willing to give your last six months to do this so that the new board will have an opportunity to choose their own leadership when they come on. That is truly a testament to the kind of servant that you are.

[00:57:57] I have the distinct honor and pleasure of getting to nominate my eternal seatmate and friend and the best champion that my kid and kids just like them have ever had. I'm beyond grateful for your service and am so proud to get to nominate you for vice chair. For those of you who don't know him, Carl began his term as the Providence District Representative on January 1st, 2020, like so many of us, becoming the school board's first openly LGBTQ plus member. Prior to joining the board, he earned a reputation as an effective public policy advocate in our nation's capital on

[00:58:37] various issues ranging from consumer financial protection and land conservation to student lending, and government ethics. Most recently, he served as executive director of Allied Progress, a consumer financial watchdog that sought to protect those targeted by predatory lenders and financial scammers. He also worked as staff for the Committee on Rules in the U.S. House of Representatives, which considers all legislation reported from other policy and fiscal committees to determine the scope of its eventual consideration by the full House. This past year, Frisch served as the board's federal legislative liaison and as a member of its audit the

[00:59:14] best committee and public engagement committees. Previously he was the city of Fairfax board and state legislative liaison. Additionally he's chaired the board's public engagement and governance committees and with Toland served as one of its two representatives on the joint environmental task force. Frisch's policy work on the board has been recognized with awards from the ACLU, Capital Pride, FCPS Pride, Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, and the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers. I can think of nobody better to serve in this capacity.

[00:59:47] I'm falling down on the job already. Ms. Corbett-Sandoves, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I would. It is my pleasure to second this motion tonight. I'm thrilled because a lot of the conversation in the nomination for your position for chair was about the continuity of leadership and so tonight

[01:00:21] we are nominating for vice chair somebody who we fully expect to have a continuity of leadership in addition to the continuity of leadership I think it's important to understand and Carl is one of four members who will be returning to the board ideally but he's been a champion for both students and staff throughout his tenure on the board and he's also been a proponent of our board priorities which include employee recruitment and retention with collective bargaining, lead design schools and the JET goals, curriculum

[01:01:00] development including workforce readiness in the environmental area as well as addressing concerns about safety surrounding guns. Carl has demonstrated a willingness to innovate and bring new ideas on how we do board work and my experience with Carl has been that he has been willing to not only pick up the phone and have a conversation with me but be willing to pick up my phone call when I've called him and those are key aspects of what we expect our vice chair to do is to be able to do that as well as support the

[01:01:40] chair in their leadership and be a thought partner and i do think that carl you will be an excellent thought part partner for elaine in her role as chair and a thought partner with the superintendent thank you are there other board members who would wish to speak i see um miss mclaughlin thank you uh i just want to say mr frisch that i look forward to supporting your nomination i have enjoyed getting to work with you these past three years and we have served on a number

[01:02:18] of school board subcommittees together and every time that you are the chair of those subcommittees you are extraordinarily organized and thoughtful you run the meetings extremely well and efficiently always very knowledgeable on what we're having before us and i just really appreciate that having sat here and watched this process over the last 12 years uh it is a personal sacrifice and so your willingness to partner with elaine which i know having watched both of you you really

[01:02:53] make a great team i i am excited and appreciative as a fellow board member that you're willing to give of your additional time to it and selfishly as a very busy braddock district school board member I am glad others are doing the work so I can keep focusing on my specific district.

[01:03:13] So, anyway, best wishes, and I'm looking forward to seeing you in this new role. Ms. Keese-Gumara, was your light on from before? Ms. Sizemore-Haiser? Kind of nice not to speak last.

[01:03:34] Carl, I'm thrilled to support your nomination and your work as vice chair. I'm really grateful that you stepped up into this role, having served as vice chair, before I was chair I know that truly the best success of a chair vice chair partnership is a strong partnership and friendship and ability to really work well together and I know you and Elaine have a great friendship as well as a real great ability to work well together so I think it's especially that partnership right of that mutual respect that really being a listen to each other it is truly a team right so sometimes you may challenge each other's thinking sometimes you may not agree but being able to consistently work together

[01:04:14] through all of that and to support each other because it is hard and that support aspect is really really important right to kind of be there for each other's astounding boards and I know you guys will do that for each other and so your steadiness your steadfastness and I've never seen anybody who works as hard as as prepared for any meeting you walk into as you and I know that hard work will really pay off as we're moving forward as Elaine said some really big exciting initiatives right moving forward AI and many of these other things I know that hard work and that work ethic and the ability to pick up a phone and talk to people will and pay off but

[01:04:50] especially that partnership you have with Elaine and I'm excited for that continuity it is always difficult to an election year to figure out how to have that continuity because you never really know who's going to be elected or not elected so there's always a question of continuity regardless so I think this is great to have the steadfast leadership to have your strong partnership and and to have you as that continuity and to have the chance for the new board to be able to psych part of its own leadership too when we get to that point.

[01:05:14] So with that, I want to thank you for stepping up into this role. I want to thank Evan for the sacrifices I know he's going to make as you step up into this role. And I just want to say I am thrilled to support you. And as I said to Elaine, anything that you need, I'm here to help.

[01:05:33] Dr. Anderson? Yes, thank you. I do want to say some words to call who I sit next to here I sit next to in the work sessions and we've had a lot of opportunity to engage because we also share several schools we have been working very hard together on the false church renovation so I know that call is a really good partner he is a hard worker he is one who prepares and he is one who has a vision and he executes that vision. So I wish you the very best of luck. I will be here supporting you but I know you heard my

[01:06:11] earlier comment and it just goes into this one too but I'm happy to support you and your vice chairmanship and I look forward to us working together as we support the schools that we share so closely. So congratulations. Ms. Marin. Yes Carl, look Mr. Fish I look forward to your always professional and even keeled approach I have so appreciated your knowledge of Robert's rules I've tried to emulate them I hope to hone them this coming year with your help I've been pleased to hear the other accolades

[01:06:48] regarding how you work because certainly the role of the chair and vice chair is to facilitate all of our board members work on our flat board so on any of the myriad of topics that we're all passionate about I know that you'll do the work to bring us together make sure every voice is heard and find a solution and get the work done so thank you for stepping up. I will take just a minute to speak. I have had the pleasure of working with Carl over the last three and a half years and pretty early on I would call him once in a while and be like just need a

[01:07:25] reality check and he's been super super helpful and you know a good friend through these efforts. We are in districts that are right next to each other so we also will share a number of schools and they have you know issues of the schools that we've worked on together and it's always been a pleasure and I am really really excited to have someone that knows Robert's Rules really well sitting right here so look forward to that anyone else if there are no

[01:08:00] other comments then we'll proceed with the vote which requires a majority of votes from those board members present and voting the motion before the board is that Carl Frisch be elected vice chair of the Fairfax County School Board. All those in favor of the motion please signify by raising your hand and saying aye. We have Ms. Marin, Ms. Rajasai-Sorheiser, Ms. Karen Herbert-Sanders, Ms. Derna Koufax, Ms. McLaughlin, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Cowan, and Ms. Makarski, and myself. Those opposed?

[01:08:36] Dr. Anderson. Is anyone abstaining? Ms. Kees-Gamara, thank you. This motion passes. At this time I am pleased to introduce the new vice chair of the Fairfax County School Board, Carl Frisch.

[01:09:11] Well, thank you.

[01:09:28] First, let me say I am grateful to my colleagues for the opportunity to serve as vice chair of the board as we work together with parents and staff to advance the student-centered mission of our new strategic plan. I want to thank Ms. Cohen and Ms. Corbett Sanders for their kind words.

[01:09:45] I hope I can live up to their sentiments. Over the last three and a half years, I've had the good fortune of being able to watch almost half of this board serve as chair or vice chair. Ms. Corbett Sanders, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Bukarski, Ms. Derenak-Koufax, and Ms. Sizemore-Hyser.

[01:10:04] I want to thank you for your service to the board, our students, and our community. I know this work can be thankless at times, but each of your tenures as chair and vice chair have been truly consequential. To my colleagues, I pledge to each of you that I will remain open to new ideas about how we can do our work better as a board and that I will always assume positive intentions because we're all in this together. I'm excited to get to work with Ms. Tolan and I share her vision for the board and our school division. Drainsville and

[01:10:40] Providence, as she said, have many schools in common and we worked together as the board's two representatives on the Joint Environmental Task Force for nearly two years. This weekend we went for a hike to talk about the future. And we are both committed to doing everything we can. Yes, I went for a hike. I did. We're both committed to doing everything we can to help our world-class educators deliver on the promise of excellence, equity, and opportunity to help every student achieve their full, unique, and limitless potential. And we are ready to go to work.

[01:11:20] Finally, I want to thank my partner, Evan, a product of FCPS and an educator in our system for almost 20 years, also my favorite person on earth, for the love and support he has been to me throughout my tenure on the board. I can't imagine being on this journey with anyone else.

[01:11:38] Thank you. Some people do business on the golf course. Some people do business on the hiking trail. I now call on Mr. Frisch for emotion.

[01:11:55] Thank you. Here we go. I move that the school board authorize organizational arrangements and appointments as follows. Get ready. One, designate the 2023-2024 calendar of regular business meetings, which are typically held on Thursdays, as well as closed sessions and work sessions.

[01:12:20] The board's calendar of meeting dates will be based on the school year and will be published in July as detailed in attachment A of the agenda item. Special meetings, board committee work sessions, and other special functions will also be scheduled. Liaisons and committees will be organized to support the board's work.

[01:12:40] Committees of three board members consider student disciplinary cases in closed meetings typically on Tuesdays. Number two, set the salary of board members at $48,000 per year and that of the board chairman at $50,000 and reimburse all board members for travel expenses in the conduct of official business, including attendance at meetings, at the same rate as employees of the board.

[01:13:04] Number three, compensate the student representative for attendance at public meetings, not to exceed $50 per day and reimburse for related travel expenses at the same rate as employees of the board. Number four, appoint Marty Smith to serve as the superintendent's designee to attend any meetings of the school board that the superintendent cannot attend.

[01:13:27] Number five, appoint Christina Satlow as clerk of the school board with corporate assurity bond as required by the code of Virginia. Number six, appoint deputy clerks of the school board for the limited purpose of signing titles of school division vehicles and countersigning payment warrants as detailed in attachment B of the agenda item.

[01:13:48] Number seven, appoint agents and deputy agents of the school board to examine, approve, and order payment of financial obligations of the school board and to approve disbursements made from the petty cash funds as detailed in attachment B of the agenda item.

[01:14:03] eight appoint agents and deputy agents of the school board to examine approve and order payments only in connection with the educational employees supplemental retirement system of fairfax county erfc is detailed in attachment b of the agenda item number nine authorize the chairman of and the clerk to sign all legal documents of the board other than those requiring the signature of some other officers and authorized the vice chairman to sign in the absence of or unavailability of the chairman and the deputy clerks in the absence of or unavailability of the clerk number 10 authorize marty smith chief of staff to execute official documents including those relating to

[01:14:43] state federal and impact aid requiring the superintendent's signature and those relating to the virginia department of education reports documents requisitions and other official correspondence in the absence of or unavailability of the division superintendent effective through June 30th, 2024. 11. Retain the following outside firms as assigned and managed by the Office of Division Counsel. The firm of Hunton, Andrews, and Kurth to provide general legal advice and litigation services. The firm of Blake and Ship and Keith to provide general legal and special

[01:15:16] education advice and litigation services. The firm of Franklin and Prokopik to provide workers compensation services, the firm of Michael E. Kinney, PLC, to provide general legal advice and litigation services, the firm of Jackson Lewis to provide general legal advice and litigation services, the firm of Sands Anderson to provide general legal advice and litigation services, and such other firms are determined to be necessary from time to time.

[01:15:44] Thank you, Mr. Frisch. At this point, I would like to offer a friendly amendment. Item number two, the current salary for board members is $32,000 per year and $34,000 for the chair.

[01:16:10] As of January 1st, 2024, we will set the salary of board members at $48,000 per year and that of the board chairman at $50,000 per year. Is that without objection?

[01:16:29] Any objections? Can you just clarify where that changes? It's number two, where it discusses the salary. SO I'M SEEING ON BOARD DOCS THAT IT IS ACCURATELY SAYING WHAT YOU JUST SAID. SO -- OH, I SEE. THANK YOU.

[01:16:50] OKAY. SO IF IT'S ON BOARD DOCS CORRECTLY, THAT'S GOOD. THERE ARE NO OBJECTIONS TO MAKING THAT CHANGE HERE TO WHAT WE HAVE PRESENTED. THANK YOU. MR. FIRST, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR MOTION?

[01:17:05] OH. IS THERE A SECOND? SECOND. I HAVE NO WORDS THAT I NEED TO SPEAK ABOUT IT. IT'S VERY SELF-EXPLANATORY. THANK YOU. OKAY. MS. MAYOR, NICE TO YOUR LIGHT, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK?

[01:17:23] Yes thank you. I in reviewing the documents just one more time this evening I see that the proposed attachment which is attachment A for school board meeting schedule includes more than just the regular meeting and last year it was just the regular meetings and that is what I understood was required.

[01:17:43] So the work sessions the committee meetings were not included because a lot of times there's a lot of different considerations. Indeed, we're going to hear from one of our esteemed constituents about one of the dates in just a bit, which is already a problem, March 5th, presidential primary.

[01:17:59] There's a scheduled all-day work session on that. For that reason, I understood we had, and the reason that is a problem is because, as the board just faced this past June, the board likes to encourage democracy and being involved in elections and having an all-day workday on a presidential primary is against that.

[01:18:18] So what I've learned since seeing this is that so last year, 2022, we included just the regular meetings. The draft that got put up tonight was from 2021, and that's why it includes all-day work sessions, committees, and such. So I would like to hear from my colleagues about going back to repeating what we did last year, which is to just post the regular meeting dates, whereby then I would be putting forth a motion to do two things.

[01:18:45] One would be to make a motion to update that. And this is not my official motion language. I just want to put out there for your consideration and feedback, please. But one motion would be to change that attachment to only include the regular meeting so that it mirrors the 2022 schedule that we approved.

[01:19:02] And then the language of that first item that Mr. Carl, Mr. Carl Frisch just read, that would need to be changed to reflect again that language that says this only posts the regular meetings and we're going to get back to back to everyone on posting the actual dates.

[01:19:19] So and I also so I would like to hear my comment, my colleagues thoughts on that. Please besides riser. Yeah, I'm happy to provide some explanation on that. In previous years before last year, we had a more robust calendar that listed regular meetings and work sessions to allow for the community and staff to better plan.

[01:19:40] And I know several colleagues have mentioned the desire to have a more set calendar earlier. Last year was actually more of an anomaly because we had a new superintendent coming on board and we wanted to make sure we left space for the superintendent to be able to have that conversations about calendar and work with her staff. So that's the reason why the calendar looks a little more robust this year than last year.

[01:20:00] It's really to have that transparency and planning for the community and for the staff on the calendar. We can still do what Ms. Marin suggests and just both regular meetings and add them later. BUT IT WAS REALLY LAST YEAR WAS THE ANOMALY AS OPPOSED TO THIS YEAR BECAUSE OF THE CHANGE OF SUPERINTENDENT. THE OTHER PIECE WAS I KNOW IN 2016 THE BOARD VOTED SHORTLY BEFORE THE PRIMARY DAY TO CHANGE THAT DAY BUT I THINK IT'S SOMETHING THAT DR. REE CAN EVEN LOOK AT OPERATIONALLY TO DEAL WITH IN TERMS OF THAT PRIMARY DAY. BUT THE MAIN REASON WAS TO TRY TO BE MORE CONSISTENT WITH WHAT WE'VE DONE FOR OUR CONSISTENT PRACTICE AROUND VOTING FOR THE CALENDAR IS TO LIST THE REGULAR MEETINGS AND THE WORK SESSIONS SO THE COMMUNITY AND STAFF COULD PLAN.

[01:20:37] Dr. Anderson. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mary for pointing that out. I did want to offer a clarification because I don't think last year was the only year where we just listed the regular business meetings that also occurred the year that I was chair and Ms.

[01:20:59] Pekarsky was vice chair because I remembered we listed the Thursday meetings during the organizational meeting. And then shortly after we met with Ms. Mulberg to set the rest of the schedule for the year. Particularly this year where we will have a huge influx of individuals come January.

[01:21:19] I would like to have the flexibility to include things that may be on their calendar. The regular business meetings must be agreed to here, but I think we should afford ourselves the flexibility of the rest of the calendar to be able to not only address what's happening with this board, but to address incoming concerns with the new members in the next year.

[01:21:44] thank you so in following parliamentary procedure we actually needed a second to Miss Marin's motion so it sounds maybe dr. Anderson would you like a point of order thank you I did not make the motion I asked for input on what my colleagues thought so okay I do have a moment to make though before if no one else is listed to speak thank you is there anyone else miss Cohen I just wanted to clarify this is just setting the general tone of when we do these

[01:22:22] meetings the actual calendar with dates no you're all right right it's a draft point of order just miss Cohen can you continue speaking please it's a it's a draft meeting it's a draft physical calendar these this is an agreement to that these are generally the practices of the board so I I guess I can defer to

[01:22:57] to Dr. Reed, but in terms of being able to make the presidential day primary, we still have the opportunity to do that as a board, just as we did a couple of years ago when we had to change. Ms. McLaughlin?

[01:23:16] Yeah, I'm reading the recommended action, and I will say that if we vote on this, which is what I believe Mr. Frisch read for us to vote on I will say I share the concerns miss Marin that you've raised and I do recognize that it's saying draft and as long as that's understood that it is draft but because the the

[01:23:51] document itself is titled draft and so I would say I think it's important before we vote that it be made very clear that if this is a draft then we know we'll come back from our recess and the first meeting we'll have is August 15th and I would suggest because I understand there's a retreat happening on that day and for the public that is not a retreat we usually are in a cafeteria here and FCPS headquarters so it is not as it sounds but that would be an opportunity

[01:24:27] for us as a board to then, I think, review the draft and then we would publish it as official. Because I do think it's important for many of us board members that we're seeing this just as it was publicly posted.

[01:24:44] We have not had a chance to talk with each other. And I think that there are some things, including the presidential primary, that I know I have concerns as a board member over many years. We keep almost having the same dialogue And not to draw too much attention to our former chairman of the Board of Supervisors, but I did talk to Ms. Hanley when we were out in the community recently where I alerted her that this was an issue and we've had to tackle this before and we shouldn't have to keep tackling it every single time.

[01:25:17] It does not make us good partners with the County Board of Elections and with our commitment and desire to ensure the smoothest operations possible for our community as a whole.

[01:25:35] So I guess what I would say to my colleagues is that as long as we are very clear here tonight and that this motion in front of us is clear that this is what we're doing is approving a draft, but other than that, then I think, Ms. Marin, I would fully support motion to -- an amendment to Mr. Frisch's motion that just inserts the word that this is the draft for consideration.

[01:26:02] Or if you have another motion you want to consider, but I am very concerned other than we'll have to just reopen our calendar, which I guess we can always do as well, but it's unfortunate we find ourselves here right now with this one.

[01:26:17] For anybody watching, we have more action items than you can imagine, and we've all been talking to each other non-stop for two weeks on all these other action items, and it just doesn't end. Ms. Coofex? I do have words after all.

[01:26:34] I think Ms. Sizemore-Heiser and I, along with the clerks, had decided to do this draft calendar in order to make a smoother transition for the new chair and vice chair. As so many times have happened during this year, you all know that Ms. Sizemore-Heiser and I have had to change things on the calendar. We thought this would be a good base to get everyone started. You know, we understand there may be some things that have to change and some topics, but that's where we find ourselves. We left it in. We wanted to present

[01:27:10] something for our colleagues so they have something to begin work on because it is kind of, it took a few weeks for us to do this here and there in chairs and with our new clerk. so our new clerks so thank you for pointing out some of those things but there was not meant to be this is the calendar and no one will look at it this it was like this is a draft this is one this is how we think it should be laid out and that's why it was presented this way this covers handers yes thank you and I am pleased to follow my colleague mr.

[01:27:46] and at Koufax because in the past we did have a calendar that was approved at this organizational meeting and we have a requirement to at a minimum approve a calendar that includes our next meeting so that we have a way we can actually meet because that's what the calendar is supposed to do is indicate to the public when they can expect to see us working and in what format and so that's why I will support this as it is with the understanding as we have done in the

[01:28:21] past that where necessary we can amend calendars and so I would fully support adopting this calendar which by the way is the school board meetings calendar it is not the school year calendar it's not when our students are in our buildings it's when we are working and now I'm making sure that the public understands that that is the calendar we're talking about and so I would urge my colleagues that tonight we proceed with adopting this calendar make any changes

[01:28:57] throughout the year as appropriate and what we expect our chair and vice chair to manage and to coordinate with us but I do recognize the evening is getting late we have people waiting to be able to participate in community participation and I ask that we proceed thank you so could I ask for a friendly amendment without objection to number one, designate the 2023-2024 draft calendar.

[01:29:33] Just insert the word draft. Point of clarification, Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I was under the impression and I was trying to find the language that we had to adopt the Thursday meetings. The regular business meetings had to be adopted this evening.

[01:29:51] I believe that I saw that someplace else, somewhere, and I just can't locate it. Can anybody clarify that? because if that is the case, then we should adopt those dates this evening and leave the others for a future conversation. Mr. Poster, can you just clarify that for us?

[01:30:17] My recommendation is that the board go ahead and vote, and the calendar as presented, as has been noted, I think, by at least a couple of board members, this can always be amended as the year goes on, as needed. But I I do not recommend that the boards only move forward with the Thursday night scheduled this evening Happy to answer any follow-on questions. I'm so sorry. Mr. Foss. I couldn't hear the last component I'm happy to answer any follow-on questions

[01:30:54] He did say just prior to that that he did not recommend that we only have the regular business meeting And I think that's why I'm confused because that's what has happened before I actually just looked through the meeting calendars for last July and the July before that and the only things that were on the calendar were the regular business meeting items and it wasn't the work sessions or the retreats it was just the Thursday meetings that's what was on the organizational calendar for 2022 and 2021 I didn't check

[01:31:31] any further than that right yeah ultimately it's a board decision as to how detailed you want to get with your with your draft calendar you have a draft before you miss Marin thank you so yeah I have documented in 2020 we only approved the regular meetings on Thursday nights. In 21, we approved all meetings. In 22, we approved regular meetings. In 23, we're looking to do all. I've looked in the governance manual. It doesn't state what needs to be approved. It only says that something needs to be set in July.

[01:32:07] Just to echo my statement earlier about voting for chair, governance matters. The means matter. And I appreciate hearing from Ms. Darien at Koufax that she and Ms. Seismar-Heiser had copious discussions about this calendar but I certainly wasn't part of them and I would like to really review the calendar because as we see again things get missed March 5th yes school is is in session although we're going to hear the case for why it shouldn't be but board members might be busy and I think it's very appropriate to think about we don't know what the new board schedule will look like

[01:32:44] and just as this board decided way back we're going to have work sessions all day on on this particular Tuesday, that could be different for this group. This group might want to meet on the weekend. They might want to meet only at night. We just don't know. So I'm having trouble understanding how we can decide with certainty about the uncertainty of board leadership, but we can decide with certainty about the calendar for an unknown board. So I would ask that since it's been different every other year, and I can only hope, Dr. Reed, that you've vetted all these dates and they don't fall on any of our religious or cultural observances, which we know

[01:33:21] sometimes can be, but I have not heard of that. I can only assume that I would like us to go back to what we did last year. I think that makes sense. So I will propose a motion now to do that. And the motion is that I propose to designate the 2022-23 calendar of regular business meetings only for this

[01:33:47] evening. We have a second. Do you want to speak further to that? No, thank you. I don't think it really matters that much. I think we can set the regular meeting meetings. We can set the other ones. I know that there's several board members throughout the year who have complained significantly about having to add extra meetings or having to change meetings. And so we were trying to set dates in stone so people could plan because it's been one of the issues that's come up this year about not being able to plan. And so to try to be responsive to that conversation was the idea. But really it doesn't

[01:34:27] IT DOESN'T MATTER. LAST YEAR WE DID JUST THE REGULAR MEETINGS. TWO YEARS AGO WE DID MORE, SO REALLY WHEREVER PEOPLE ARE COMFORTABLE IS FINE. ONE OF THE IDEAS WAS TO BE ABLE TO ALLOW STAFF TO PLAN AS WELL. BUT I REALLY AM FINE EITHER WAY. THANK YOU, MS. MCLACHLAN. SO I THINK THIS IS ACTUALLY A WONDERFUL FIRST LESSON FOR OUR NEW CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR. THERE'S NO DOUBT THAT THE CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR ARE ALWAYS CONSTANTLY WORKING HARD AND TRYING TO DO THEIR BEST. AND THERE HAS BEEN, YOU KNOW, REGRETABLE FLUCTUATION IN OUR PRACTICES.

[01:35:00] over time. In years past I've served on governance for probably 8 out of 12 years. One of the most important tasks of governance was to build the school board work calendar and then it would I mean the school board's annual calendar it would then come to a work session and we would all see it. We would talk about it. We would have an understanding of what are the expectations of the sitting board for the number of work sessions how we're going to hold them. And that hasn't happened yet. So that is on no fault of Ms. Seizmerheiser and Ms. Darenette-Koufax. And I truly appreciate that they are coming from this with, from a good place.

[01:35:39] But it is uncomfortable for me that I really do think that collectively, the 12 of us, this is a part-time job. Our lives are in fact, are impacted by it. And we really haven't had a chance because half of our term was through COVID, to ever talk with one another on how are we going to do the business of the board with 12 people's work schedules and others. So it would be my preference that we follow perhaps what Ms. Tolan said, Chair Tolan, and that it would be a draft and that we come in August at our retreat and let's build that into the conversation of how long we're going to,

[01:36:16] you know, how many work sessions are we going to have? Are they going to be four-hour ones and we have to do them more frequently? Are they going to be six-hour ones and we'll do them once a month? I think we owe it and have a responsibility to each other to have that collective conversation because all of our lives are affected by this work calendar, and I would not expect Ms. Seismar-Hyser and Ms. Derenak-Koufax to make and be able to understand or decide that. And so to me, inserting the word draft is the simplest thing with the expectation that we will work on this at the retreat in August so I guess I would say chair Tolan based on what I am

[01:36:54] saying and you are the chair I would welcome hearing to my direct question to you if that seems reasonable I think it's absolutely reasonable to make sure that we have that discussion so that everyone is completely on board we do have a motion on the table so are there others that would like to speak to the motion that's on the table. Just for process clarification, it's Ms. Marron's motion on the table, so I would be voting against it because then I want the alternate motion, which is what

[01:37:30] you suggested, and we insert without objection the word draft, and that with a commitment of August verbally from you and Mr. Frisch that the August 15 retreat will work this out. Are there, I see lots of lights, and I'm not sure if they're from previous requests for speaking. Ms. Marron, would

[01:37:52] like to speak again? Yes and this will be my final comment. Thank you Ms. McLaughlin for what you're saying and I can be amenable to that. I can withdraw my motion. I will withdraw my motion. Thank you for seconding it. I do want to point out that when we take votes I believe I understood that our vote is the decision. If we're deciding that something is draft is it really a decision. I'm just trying to think you know do we usually vote things in draft and you know is someone's promise good enough. We talk about this a lot when it comes to holding the superintendent accountable it's not done until it's not a directive until it's

[01:38:27] voted on so saying that we're voting on a draft it doesn't doesn't seal the deal for me but I'm happy to compromise and I'm glad we could have this conversation and I'll look forward to more of it in August thank you okay Miss Marin isn't I am pulling my motion withdrawing her motion yeah we have to have it withdrawn without objection okay is there any objection to Miss Maren removing her motion okay no objections okay on the screen we see the

[01:39:04] amendment with so we are ensuring that the calendar that we are voting on is draft so we are designating the draft 2023 2024 calendar of regular business means etc under number one with the verbal concurrence from the chair and

[01:39:39] vice chair that we will bring this to the board for discussion at the august 15th retreat okay you second that okay i do not need to speak any further to this motion is there anyone else that

[01:40:01] would like to speak okay can we please vote on this motion number one okay so let's vote on the amendment for number one for the draft calendar all in favor please miss karen keys gamara miss Marin it says draft miss Karen Corbett Sanders mr. Frisch miss McLaughlin dr.

[01:40:38] Anderson and myself are you voting those that opposed the amendment passes I'm sorry can we just clarify that one more time I'm sorry you need the names again yes please okay those voting yes miss Marin miss Karen Corbett Sanders miss

[01:41:16] KEY, KAREN KEYS-GAMARA, MR. FRISH, MS. MCLACHLAN, DR. ANDERSON, AND MYSELF, THOSE VOTING NO, THOSE ABSTAINING, MS. SEIZEMERHEISER, MR. KOUFAX, MS. COWEN, AND MS. BAKARSKI.

[01:41:37] OKAY. SO THE MOTION PASSES. NOW WE CAN MOVE ON TO THE MAIN MOTION. OKAY. AND IN THE MAIN MOTION WE HAVE THE CHANGES TO NUMBER TWO, THE FRIENDLY AMENDMENT TO CHANGE

[01:42:03] NUMBER TWO WITH NO OBJECTION SO SO CAN WE SCROLL DOWN TO NUMBER TWO PLEASE HERE WE GO SET THE SALARY OF BOARD MEMBERS AT 32 000 PER YEAR AND THAT OF BOARD CHAIR AT 34 000 BEGINNING ON JANUARY 1 2024 THE SALARY FOR BOARD MEMBERS WILL BE 48 000 PER YEAR AND THAT OF THE BOARD CHAIRMAN AT 50 000.

[01:42:41] SO THAT IS JUST UH ARE THERE ANY OBJECTIONS TO THAT CHANGE MS MARIN WELL JUST A POINT IT'S already correct in board docs so I'm sorry can the chair just chair tolan I see it as correct in board docs which is the public record so what needs to be changed so it's correct in board docs it was read to the public incorrectly so we're just changing the script okay for that reason yes okay I thought what was

[01:43:18] right what was written yes and we have no objections so let's move forward now to the main motion okay all in favor of the main motion read by mr. Frisch 1 through 11 those in favor miss Karen Keyes-Gamara miss Marin miss Roger Seiswerheiser miss Karen Corbett Sanders mr. Frisch miss McLaughlin dr. Anderson mr. Koufax miss Cohen miss Murkarski and

[01:43:56] myself that is unanimous the motion passes agenda item 3.01 community participation the next order of business is community participation 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 but not responding to individual speakers the school board will not hear statements involving issues that have been scheduled for

[01:44:32] 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 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

[01:45:12] 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 their time to another individual before or during the remarks. Shouting and outbursts from the audience will not be tolerated. We are grateful for those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation. Madam Clerk, please

[01:45:50] call the first speaker. Student number one, Catherine Hanley. For the record, I'm not student number one or number two. I'm Kate Hanley, chairman of the electoral board and before I begin my my quadrennial request, I want to thank Fairfax County Public Schools for the effort and cooperation that everyone in the division makes to help the voters of Fairfax County have safe, accessible

[01:46:29] places to vote. Thank you very much. And a particular shout out to Vicki Garner, who organizes all 167 schools for us, and several of those, almost 30 of those, have two precincts in them already. So that is something I want you to know when I talk about what we need for election day. Over the years since I've been coming every four years, it's been a long time, there have been several changes. One of them was we got the primary move to the third Tuesday and so I could stop bothering you about that. And then we election

[01:47:06] Day became last year, year before, a holiday, so on November, that election day, so I could stop bothering you about that. But this year, both the Republican and Democratic parties have chosen March 5th to be their presidential primary. And you all got a letter from me that pointed out that in 2016, I believe, from all of us, I haven't really read it again that closely, I've been too fascinated with the calendar discussion, and I do want to say for the public that my calendar discussion is about students in schools, not what you all do on whenever

[01:47:44] day you do it. But that particular day could have up to 260,000 people, we've had that before, in our schools. And also, we don't have the flexibility when students are there.

[01:48:01] need to use cafeterias we need to use without the little chairs that are attached to them people fall off of those if they're in junior highs and elementary schools and gymnasiums thank you

[01:48:27] Joe pack Richard Altmyer good evening board members my name is Rich Altmyer I'm a resident of Fairfax County considering the equity policy just adopted I feel it's valuable given a kind of hard to understand policy to issue that for this board to issue some guidances to our teachers so help them execute within that

[01:49:05] policy so i respectfully propose these guidances guidance one do not teach our children an individual by virtue of their race or sex bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the race or sex do teach our children we're working to improve the world the best way for you to do that is to learn the material in this class well guidance two do Do not teach our children an individual should be discriminated against because of the individual's race.

[01:49:35] Do teach our children all children are created equal. Help your classmates to understand the lessons and ace the tests. All can study hard, do their homework, and achieve greatness. Guidance 3: Do not teach our children an individual by virtue of their race or sex is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

[01:49:56] Do teach our children, study hard, help your classmates learn, and become a strong, upstanding citizen. Guidance four, do not teach one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex. Do teach grit and determination, determine the child's results.

[01:50:15] We know that all children of all races can achieve and further that teachers can inspire the children. Guidance five, do not teach a child that they can change their sex despite a child wishing to run faster, jump higher, or dance more gracefully.

[01:50:31] Rather, maintain and protect each child's bodily integrity. Lastly, encourage that no teacher should hide their actions in the equity policy. Rather, each is to stand up and say what they will do. Thank you.

[01:50:50] Elizabeth Zielinski. Although I serve as chair of your advisory committee for students with disabilities, I'm speaking tonight as an individual.

[01:51:08] I'm the parent of a teenager with unreliable communication, as well as a special education advocate with experience throughout Fairfax and neighboring divisions. I'm here to comment on the Student Rights and Responsibilities Policy and tonight's proposed amendment, which involves parents before taking statements from students with intellectual or developmental disabilities who are facing disciplinary suspension.

[01:51:30] These students represent a wide variety of communication challenges, and for some, a cognitive inability to understand the risk associated with making inaccurate statements. Policies primarily designed for non-disabled students do not accommodate their unique needs.

[01:51:46] Involving a parent is an extra step and extra time, but obtaining a student's statement should not prioritize speed over accuracy. Parent involvement is an opportunity, not an impediment. I'd like to respond to a question from last month that was raised regarding data to support a specific need for this amendment.

[01:52:04] I have examples from my practice because these incidents do occur, but you can't measure that effect of an absent policy. We don't know how many past cases were affected by unreliable statements. We have to rely on anecdotal evidence and lived experiences.

[01:52:21] Those of us with that lived experience know that this amendment corrects a critical blind spot in procedure. FCPS, with its size and influence, has the opportunity to set a new standard for best practices related to disciplinary equity. Tonight's proposal is also an opportunity to act upon this board's aim to improve school-family relationships.

[01:52:41] Your support for this amendment will foster trust from families who feel marginalized by a system not tailored for their child by explicitly inviting their participation at a critical moment. Safety in our schools must be the priority, yet we must not compromise the safety of our most vulnerable students as a means of preserving it for anyone else.

[01:53:00] True safety and equity must be inclusive. Thank you. Holly Hazard. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman, and congratulations, and Vice Chair, congratulations, and the rest of the school board.

[01:53:22] I'm Holly Hazard. I'm with For Public Education. Tonight, I am speaking in support of Glasgow Middle School being put on the priority list for boundary adjustments. I was involved in the boundary changes at Glasgow when my oldest child was in elementary school. She is now in her 30s. Because we are inside the Beltway, development infill is the only way to expand housing, and this doesn't come with space for new schools.

[01:53:44] Our neighborhoods have become more dense, then school infrastructure has stayed the same, with the notable exception of Bailey's Upper School. Glasgow is not only an overpopulated school, but one with an exceptionally large, vulnerable population of students due to poverty and ESL.

[01:53:59] Glasgow, at an incredible 1,800 students, is larger than Lewis, and is actually double the size of both Poe and Holmes, double. This is not a healthy teaching environment for middle school children. Our community strongly supports this effort. Please give priority to the amazing school working so hard to lift up some of our most needy children.

[01:54:19] Thank you. Thompson ladies and gentlemen my name is Robin Thompson I would like to introduce myself my name is Robin Y. Thompson I would like to explain my relationship with Fairfax County Public Schools I have worked for cut for the

[01:54:59] public schools as a custodian PH a PHTA and last instructional assistant I'm sorry I'm just having difficulty I worked with the population of special needs students I was proud to work with them Fairfax County gave me an opportunity to get to go to college I took them on that opportunity because I

[01:55:33] wanted to figure out what the disabilities were and how they can manage them disabilities I wanted to be professional 2017 I came to the board with the ideas of opening up a community for special needs students.

[01:55:55] Community that would encourage them, invoke behaviors to push them up. A community with elementary school, middle school, high school, technical center, naturalization center.

[01:56:12] And if you can, put it in pools and tennis and basketball. This type of community is needed because I see so many kids fall through cracks after leaving high school. We cannot keep allowing this to go on.

[01:56:32] Our artistic children have developed data.

[01:56:49] Cheryl Binkley. Hello, everybody. I know it's hard to believe, but I almost didn't come tonight.

[01:57:06] Then two things happened today that convinced me I should. One was I drove by Park Lawn Elementary School, which is at the corner of my block, And it is a major feeder school of Glasgow Middle School.

[01:57:23] I watched as there were two more, maybe more than two, portable classrooms being added to the large garden of portable classrooms all around Park Lawn Elementary. And so I felt the need to come and say, it's not getting better in terms of the number of students we're having to accommodate.

[01:57:46] And so Glasgow's overcrowding problems need to be addressed sooner rather than later, because later will be too late. The second thing that happened, so please do move forward on that. The second thing that happened was someone posted to me that we should not talk about sex in school.

[01:58:09] I was a high school teacher. I'm well aware of how much talk about sex happens between the ages of 13 and 19. Our family life education program has always attempted to be robust, objective, and nonjudgmental so that our students can confront the complexity of their coming of age in a safe and well-informed environment.

[01:58:42] Please don't ever back away from that. It is so critical to their well-being as well-rounded individuals as adults who have a healthy and well-adjusted life with partners.

[01:59:00] So please don't back away from that. those are the things i learned today thank you next is video testimony from amanda campbell good evening i'm speaking tonight as president of fairfax county sector regarding the proposed amendment to the srnr that would change the requirements surrounding parental involvement when deciding whether to suspend a student with intellectual or developmental disabilities from parental notice to parental consent please note that i am recording this on july 7th having

[01:59:39] only seen the first draft of the proposed amendment language students with disabilities in fcps are already disproportionately disciplined representing just 15 percent of the total population that making up 38.9 percent of out-of-school suspensions and 32.1 percent of incidents involving law enforcement in just the first semester of last year alone. We must emphasize that nothing in this amendment prevents staff from responding expediently in the midst of a crisis. The new draft language also makes it clear that administrators retain the right to suspend a student based on other information if they do not receive written or verbal consent within two days.

[02:00:14] These were two of the main concerns voiced at the June 26th meeting and the draft language clearly addresses them both while preserving the change to consent. In our June 28th letter to the school board we shared documentation demonstrating that students with intellectual disabilities are at significantly higher risk of giving false statements when they are being questioned.

[02:00:31] We understand the concerns expressed by staff and the hesitancy to make this change. Those concerns, however, cannot override the inherent inequity in taking statements without consent from students who are at a higher risk for not fully understanding the consequences of such a statement. This school board has made a commitment to equity, and students with intellectual and developmental disabilities must be included in that.

[02:00:53] I am updating this testimony as of Wednesday, July 13th to add that we support the draft language that we received on Tuesday, July 12th. Thank you to board members as well as to Dr. Reed and her leadership team for putting this together so quickly. This draft is a significant improvement over the current SR&R language.

[02:01:09] We urge this board to pass the amendment tonight. Making this change is a small yet impactful step towards equity for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities in FCPS. Thank you. Madam Chair, that was our last public speaker.

[02:01:29] Thank you. Agenda Item 3.02, Strategic Plan Update. I call on Dr. Reed for an update on the Strategic Plan.

[02:01:37] Thank you, Madam Chair. And it's my pleasure to be here this evening to give you an update on the strategic plan. There's a great deal of work that's been going into that. One of the key, I think, quotes that our new interim assistant superintendent, Marcy Neal, is sharing is that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. And I don't know how many of you know who Alan Kay is. No, Alan Kay is the founder of

[02:02:35] modern personal computer. So one of the things that we want to think about is here in Fairfax County often it's been discussed that good organizations react quickly to change and great organizations create the change so with our creativity that our chair commented on earlier we've got this and we're so excited to be launching our new strategic plan. I appreciate the time that our board spent in a retreat on June 21st as we discussed the oversight and monitoring of the new strategic plan in particular how our policy governance work is

[02:03:11] going to align and be able to us to enable us to transparently discuss and hold ourselves accountable to the bold measurements of our student goals we've also had our instructional focus team on june 26 that was convened to finalize professional practices that are going to form the basis of our instructional rounds tool which we're very excited as a leadership team to be launching this year and finally we convened over 80 staff members from all departments on june 29th as we began a portfolio management strategy around drafting key actions that will be

[02:03:50] forming the strength of our pillars enabling us to achieve our goals in our strategic plan on the horizon as we look forward we're going to be identifying a new data dashboard and those of you recall we actually are really excited and thankful i know our chief information technology officer gautam sethe has created dashboards that give us information in real time which is going to enable us to nimbly adjust to our student performance and support our staff in planning and implementing the use of resources that we know will enable best practice strategies

[02:04:29] to achieve our goals. We're going to continue with the review of our operational expectations as we develop our instructional rounds tools as a key staff and we're going to be working with project plans that will then be managed that will be aligned to our new strategy wheel.

[02:04:46] All of this will happen as we continue our communications and branding with regard to our strategic plan. I encourage you as board members and our community watching to stay connected with our strategic plan, and there is a link. Our website will continue to have our latest updates.

[02:05:03] Ms. Tolan, that would be our strategic plan update this evening. Thank you, Dr. Reed. Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak? Yes, thank you. Before I begin, I do want to take a moment to say welcome to Dr. Ponce in his new role as chief of schools.

[02:05:21] We're very excited to have you here. I also want to say welcome and congratulations to Dr. King and her new role as the permanent Chief Equity Officer. I look forward to you continuing the good work that you've begun during the tenure, I think the past 18 months, as the interim in this position.

[02:05:38] So thank you for continuing in that effort. And as a person who I'm going to be working with very closely, Dr. Boyd, I'm very excited that you've joined Region 6, of which I represent one of those pyramids. I'm excited for your leadership in this new role, and I look forward to gleaning from your past experiences to move Region VI forward.

[02:06:00] So thank you to all three of you. Just very quickly, this is very exciting news, Dr. Reed. As you mentioned, some of the instructional rounds that leadership has been working on and fleshing out the four pillars and those key, I'm trying to find the website here, those key pillars to just help really operationalize the strategic plan.

[02:06:26] Just a quick question in terms of will those details be shared with the board or with the public or is that an internal document? Do you see a space for that to be a larger conversation? I think that the key strategy map is something that likely could become public facing.

[02:06:44] I think the work plans inherent and underneath those are less likely to become public documents, but certainly the strategy map will be. Thank you. I appreciate that. As we look ahead, I would love for you to remind us, I do believe you've already made that statement.

[02:07:01] If I'm incorrect, please go ahead and tell that to me. What can we look forward to the school improvement plans in light of the strategic plan, the pillars and all of this work that has been developed to date? So we're really excited.

[02:07:16] We've got really a cross-departmental approach to our school improvement plans at this time. And one of the things that's gonna be really key is the narrowing the focus on the work. And so our principals, in fact, are gonna be coming in, working with school teams this summer.

[02:07:33] And I would like to add a little bit, I think Ms. Neal could add something to that question because I know she's heading up that effort at this time. Ms. Neal. - Sure, and I'll invite my colleague, Ms. Clemingo, to add to that as well.

[02:07:48] so we've been going through a process revising the SIP process for to prepare for summer workshops for our principals and our school leaders and our teams who come in to do that work and so part of that has been the data base the data dashboard that mr. Sethi's team has been creating to provide schools with a consistent set of data so that we know every school is at a minimum looking at a certain set of data as well as any local context data that's important for THEM AS THEY BUILD THEIR SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT PLAN THEY'RE GOING TO GO THROUGH A SIP A NEEDS ASSESSMENT PROCESS SO THEY CAN LOOK AT THAT DATA ANALYZE THAT DATA AND HELP SELECT

[02:08:25] STRATEGIES THAT ARE RESEARCH-BASED STRATEGIES THAT WE KNOW ARE THE HIGHEST LEVERS FOR IMPROVING SCHOOLS SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT SO THANK YOU AND IF YOU COULD ALSO JUST GIVE A LITTLE BIT AND I DON'T KNOW IF MS. KAMENKO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT THIS PIECE WHEN PARENTS ARE LOOKING AT THE NEW SIP PLANS BASED ON ALL OF THIS WORK THAT'S BEEN THAT'S BEEN INVOLVED WHAT WILL IT MEAN to them just kind of connecting those dots to this work plan and how it would impact students in the schools so our historical practice has been for schools to create what we call a sip at a glance right so it takes that larger document

[02:09:05] that schools create and creates a view that is more meaningful to parents it will help to sort of illuminate the kinds of things the school is focusing on I think miss Neal was talking about the research base best the best strategies that we're going to have schools kind of choose from include in their school improvement plans this year that really focus on the work of the strategic plan and really focusing in on third grade reading our eighth grade math and our course take course taking patterns so there's a lot of work that's

[02:09:40] been done to take our school to lead our schools and provide more direction so we can have more alignment and I think those strategies that we have provided are things that parents can see and hopefully that will be visible in what they're seeing coming home from their students they're very much instructional type strategies so parents should be able to kind of understand the connection between how thing what things are looking like in their classroom and and what they're seeing online if that helps no it very much does and i think that coupled with the pacing guides which are now available in all areas will be a real support to parents as they guide

[02:10:17] their children thank you all not seeing other board members that would like to speak um dr reed i would call on you for agenda item 3.03 academic matters would you like to share academic matters thank you madam chair it's my pleasure this evening to talk about our avid program And AVID, as you know, as a board in our community, is advancement via individual determination.

[02:10:47] It's a well-researched program and it's really an exciting opportunity to think about coupling high support with high expectations. And as we maintain those high expectations for excellence here in Fairfax County, this is a program we're really tracking and hoping to expand.

[02:11:04] I want to just give a brief primer on what is AVID, and AVID is a career readiness and college readiness system that's actually in over 7,500 of our schools across 47 states across this great country. Here in AVID we have or here in Fairfax County we're going to be implementing AVID in 35 schools next year. We're continuing to add AVID and we have a strong commitment to add AVID in particular at our title one schools. So we've got a team at the central office that has been working very hard to make sure we have readiness at school sites resources team

[02:11:43] coaching and just a lot of excitement around these strategies specifically we looked at each region and this is a chart that was established prior to the establishment of region six so this is a transition chart but you can see where the title one schools and italics we have seven total and the ones that are asterisked are new schools in 2023 and 2024 so you can see we're bringing on five new schools actually i believe yes five new schools and we're really excited to add to our middle school we're

[02:12:19] adding poe middle school in region two and elementary schools in regions one two three and five and we're continuing to advance this we have actually a plan our avid team has partnered with our title one team and we're looking to adopt avid across the board in title one schools over the next several years the very first title one elementary school to adopt avid in the entire division was providence elementary school in the providence district which came on board last year next year we have five new schools and it's just a great deal of excitement for those of

[02:12:57] you who had a chance to attend our demonstration site at gunston last spring the students were so thrilled to share their work how they've organized their work and their hopes and dreams for their future just want to share the distinction a little bit between avid at the elementary level and the secondary level and so there are elective classes and also school-wide models so there's some similarities and some differences but essentially the largest difference between elementary and secondary is that avid secondary offers this elective course in addition into the school-wide model.

[02:13:33] So not only are students learning their WICR strategies, which I know you can't wait to learn more about, and those are linked, but we also have the opportunity to have these elective courses for students to take a deeper dive into the strategies at the secondary school.

[02:13:50] Students are encouraged to participate in inquiry-based tutorials on a regular basis and have an opportunity to explore points of confusion from their other classes in these electives. Often, our AVID teachers are some serious superhero educators, and having met a number of those who also attend and support their students at scholarship dinners and other community events, it's really inspiring to see the work of our AVID program.

[02:14:20] One of the things that I think you, as a board, have really been clear about expecting is looking at data. What does our AVID program provide in terms of key supports? And I think these data points are honestly compelling.

[02:14:35] One of the things we want to look at is the blue would be students who are AVID students and the orange non-AVID students. And you can see that 84% of our AVID 8th graders took at least one honors course and 85% of our AVID seniors took at least one AP, IB, or dual enrollment course.

[02:14:53] So this program we believe does provide the high support to maintain those high expectations for our Fairfax County students. We have a number of student testimonials and I think the students are our greatest ambassadors for this program.

[02:15:11] So next steps for AVID and Fairfax County we're going to continue to elaborate with instructional services in particularly our math team. We have a fabulous Ms. Klomenko, our assistant superintendent in ISD, and Amy Hunter have met with me and laid out a five-year math plan around algebra in eighth grade, as well as strong supports for mathematics in our division.

[02:15:37] We know mathematics determine 84% of our career goals at this time, and it's a key content area that AVID is really connected to. So our ESOL students in Title III have also teamed to implement AVID Excel.

[02:15:53] So the possibilities are boundless and just look forward to more great things to come with our AVID program. So, Madam Chair, that is academic matters this evening. Thank you, Dr. Reed.

[02:16:09] We have a number of board members that would like to ask questions or make comments. Ms. Keyes-Gamara. Thank you. Really appreciate this report. Dr. Reed I am a cheerleader just truly truly appreciate the AVID program as I have learned about it as a school board member unfortunately when my kids were in school none of the schools that they attended had that particular program I lament that but I'll get over it but I would say one your your honor I'm at

[02:16:43] work Dr. Reed it would be really helpful to have these reports prior to the meeting it would help us prepare our questions but I also want to say you know I appreciate the expansion and I'm wondering what factors beyond title one schools would help us to choose a school where we would need to place an AVID

[02:17:12] program within that school. Well thank you Miss Keys tomorrow and I would say I think it belongs in every school personally. I think at this point based on the resources required we have to start somewhere. It's not possible to provide the resource at every site in the same year. And I'm not just talking about finances for professional development materials and so forth and sometimes extra staffing but also just the staff capacity in terms of professional development. There is a program there is a gear up for that program and so I know our instructional services department is being very thoughtful

[02:17:48] about that readiness to implement because that's key. So I think that the factors would be honestly what we want to always do is think about which schools which students and which schools need the most support as we maintain those high expectations for each and every student and start there and then as we are able to finish the layering of the program at really all of our schools.

[02:18:14] I mean, those strategies are great for all students. - I agree with you. I have two comments. One, I think AVID is an excellent way to address, perhaps, culture concerns within a school where perhaps we're not quite achieving the level of connection we want our students to feel.

[02:18:37] I think that's particularly important where research has shown that loneliness has become an epidemic. And I hope that we have that emphasis on connection. But I also think that where we have high ESOL populations, this program might be particularly helpful.

[02:18:55] So I can't say enough. I've visited a number of programs. I've seen a number of students really benefit from this. I understand the budgetary limitations. but perhaps there's, you know, a discussion we can have as we consider some of those things.

[02:19:13] I think at one point I mentioned to you that where perhaps we are not getting back the type of surveys we would like, that we may want to have a way of addressing those and perhaps AVID is one of those considerations. So I look forward to those discussions.

[02:19:29] Thank you. - Fair point, thank you. - Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. - Thank you. Dr. Reed, I will echo what Ms. Keyes-Gamara said. I mean, I'm trying right now on BoardDocs to pull this up, and I can't even reference the PowerPoint to even talk to you more intelligently about this.

[02:19:49] A glow is that I'm thrilled about AVID. I think the data, as you know, being a fellow data junkie, that when you see that chart and you see the incredible growth of participation in AP courses from our eighth grade AVID students versus their peers where it's not there is tremendous.

[02:20:09] Where I'm trying to contain my frustration is I don't understand the game plan. You give us the data that shows how effective this is for 8th graders, and yet your team wants to grow this for elementary schools. Our 8th graders, our middle school kids need this to excite them to be college and career ready.

[02:20:31] If we can't get it everywhere, to me strategically, we'll start in our middle schools first and get to all of those middle schools, especially where our higher poverty is and where we see the disparities, the academic disparities first, then I'd like to see it in our high schools because we know it's proven to help kids with applying to colleges, first generation, students who are underrepresented.

[02:20:57] The elementary is the one that baffles me. I don't see why. Why is the game plan Title I elementary? - Well, I think that's a piece of the game plan, right? What we know is we want to establish those learning habits and study habits as early as possible so that students can take the most advantage of our early literacy, mathematics, and establish those study skills prior to getting to middle school, ideally.

[02:21:24] Your point's well taken, though. I mean, it belongs at every level. I think that middle and high school, we also have to find room and schedules at high school. But I think, I mean, if we could, move eventually the goal is to get it in all schools but I think that the elementary school the larger phase in is to establish those habits early well I would say what would be helpful for the board and the public then is to bring data charts that show what it's doing for progress with our elementary school students because the data isn't matching the strategic plan that you've laid out

[02:21:59] it's also disappointing to me that we run Fairfax City schools and so their entire pyramid has it and yet all of our schools don't so they have it at both their elementaries their single middle school and their high school it's it's very hard for me as a school board member to stomach that especially in the Braddock district we have very few schools and and there are plenty with there's high need so to my colleagues I really look forward to us I think we need to take advantage of partnering with Dr. Reed on this. There's all this talk about

[02:22:37] recognizing how great AVID is. And Dr. Reed, again, to your credit, this is the first time I've actually seen something that's laying out what we're doing, where it is. I really would like for us to get this information sooner if possible. But I would say that this IS SOMETHING THAT IS VERY MACRO VERY IMPACTFUL AND I THINK THERE'S MORE WORK THAT IN COLLABORATION WITH YOU AND YOUR TEAM WE CAN MAYBE MAKE YOUR STRATEGIC PLAN ON AVID ROLLOUT BE BETTER THAN WHAT I SAW TONIGHT SO YES MA'AM I THINK WE'LL TAKE THAT DATA I'LL TAKE THAT FEEDBACK

[02:23:14] AND WE'LL COME BACK WITH A WITH AN UPDATE I I DO APPRECIATE IT OVERALL THANK YOU THANK Thank you. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I'd be remiss if I didn't speak about this because I know this is one of the things we discussed when we visited Justice High School when you first got here. We're touring schools. The results are there. I've had the opportunity to participate in the AVID recertification at Justice High School where students who are in college and beyond have come back to mentor others and to talk about how impactful it had been. The prepared the preparation that they received through the ADVO.

[02:23:51] program has been what has made them successful in their college careers and these are the students who had the embedded AVID the elective I love the idea of expanding it school-wide because there's some particularly tenants that I think every child can participate in note-taking and some of the other study habits I think that should be across all of our schools what I want to kind of plug in as we're talking about expansion I'd like to pay attention particularly to our students as Miss Keese Gamara referred to our students particularly who are second

[02:24:27] language learners who are first generation college goers that's who AVID is targeting initially that's how the program began those students very often they have other classes that they need to take such as ESL classes ELL classes even other study skills classes that may prevent them from participating in AVID in the embedded class because they need that level of rigor. And I know we've talked about this before, but I want to connect it to the Twilight program that you've begun to offer students opportunities in different hours. I know the

[02:25:03] staff at Justice High School, particularly Mr. Eric Welch, who has been the AVID teacher there for almost 15 years now, has been lobbying very hard for us to offer after school AVID in an Intensive fashion so that the students who are unable to take advantage of it during the school day because they have these conflicting Schedules and they need that embedded full class not just the study skills that are going to be provided across the board I would like to hear that your team is going to look deeply into that because there is interest at that school site The principal is interested. The staff is interested. They're willing and ready to go

[02:25:41] I would love to hear how we can support that effort Thank you, Dr. Anderson. And I couldn't agree more about Mr. Welch. I've run into him several times, and he is one of our most incredible academic cheerleaders and has results. Young people come back and really credit him with that inspiration and the tools to have their dreams, you know, come true.

[02:26:06] And Principal Narcisse as well, I know, is a strong supporter at Justice High School. As we expand the Twilight program across the entire division, I think that's an excellent suggestion because these are strategies that should support students academically regardless of the course they're in.

[02:26:25] So that's one of the things I'll be asking Dr. Ponce to be aligning in terms of -- we've We've talked about one of the roles of the chief of schools is lining expectations across the regions. And I know our regional assistant superintendents and our instructional services department are avid fans.

[02:26:44] So I appreciate the excitement from the board as well. Absolutely. The other thing that I want to highlight is I've been super excited about the advisory periods have been embedded in middle schools. And I think there's so much opportunity to maximize that time because it is consistent And it's a consistent curriculum that all of our kids can have access to.

[02:27:03] I see this as a space to provide those broad spectrum studies study skills because every teacher does not have to create the lesson plan it's already created. I would love for us to be a little bit more intentional about maximizing that period to address some of these things in addition to the social emotional work that I do know take that takes place during that time.

[02:27:25] Thank you Dr. Anderson and I I if you'll indulge me in just a moment. One of the things I was remiss in was recognizing that Dr. Ponce actually most recently was overseeing 52 high schools in the Houston school district in Houston, Texas.

[02:27:42] And I suspect AVID was a program that was key in Houston. I just wanted to give you a moment, Dr. Ponce, to kind of a moment to mention the impact of AVID as you see it and your commitment to that.

[02:27:58] Yes, I was very involved with AVID. Actually, when I was a middle school principal, I brought AVID to my middle school, and we saw that was in 2012, 2014. The data showed that the children were able to learn how to write, and I'm also certified as an AVID person.

[02:28:25] I have been trained, and last year we were implementing and bringing it to all high schools as well. It was through ESSER, but it has been very good for the children, especially for EL students, special education.

[02:28:41] We call it special POPs, Economical Disadvantaged Students, and we implemented Cornell Note across, and that helped us for English 1 and English 2 as well. So we're going to be working hard with all schools to make sure that all children benefit.

[02:29:01] Thank you, Dr. Ponce. One of the things I think that we can say about AVID is because it's in 47 states, it's been highly researched, it is identified as a best practice, it gets results. So we don't need to study it. We simply need to implement it. So thank you, Dr. Ponce.

[02:29:18] Thank you, Dr. Anderson. No, absolutely. I'm just really looking forward to that expansion because I know we have so many students in our area THAT WOULD SO DEEPLY BENEFIT FROM IT, AND I WANT TO BE SURE THAT OPPORTUNITY IS PROVIDED. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. MS. THANK YOU, DR.

[02:29:34] REED, AND THANK YOU, DR. PONSE, FOR YOUR COMMENTS AS WELL. I HAD THE PLEASURE OF BEING AT GUNSTON WHEN WE DID THE DAY OF SERVICE, ALONG WITH CHAIR TOLAN, AND WHAT'S SO IMPORTANT, I REMEMBER WHEN AVID WAS INITIALLY ROLLED OUT, IT WAS when my daughter was in elementary school in Fairfax County and they were rolling it out at the middle school level.

[02:29:59] She's now almost 30. So it has been in pockets. But the thing is, is a lot of people don't understand what AVID really is. And so I think you did an excellent job of talking about where it's being rolled out and the benefits of it.

[02:30:16] But I think also emphasizing that what we're talking about is pedagogy that is a skills builder approach. And the skills building that we're talking about are those executive management skills that are so essential for our children to be able to achieve at their highest potential in the academic world.

[02:30:36] It also gives them not only the organizational skills, but the note-taking skills and the collaborative skills. And so I think it would be very helpful If we did something, perhaps a newsletter to the whole community, which kind of is an introduction to AVID for those that don't know what it is.

[02:31:00] Additionally, I was very happy to hear that you have a five-year plan on mathematics and eighth grade algebra. As you know, this is something that is -- those at the board know that I have been advocating for advanced math in all of our elementary schools for the greater part of the past 15 years.

[02:31:23] And one of the pieces of that advanced math in elementary schools that came up last year during our advisory committee reports is that although we have advanced math at all of our elementary schools now it's not consistently deployed as to when we introduce advanced math some do it in sixth grade some do it in third grade some do it in kindergarten and so it would be very helpful understand a little bit more about what your five-year plan is and how we'll ensure the fidelity of implementation so that the FCPS promise is realized at every

[02:31:59] one of our elementary schools and consistently at the same level in each one of our elementary schools so i don't know if one of your monday letters or some other way that you can find to getting us that five-year plan i'd appreciate it yes ma'am thank you you bet miss cohen thank you so much i really was excited to see this on academic matters um and and wanted to give an opportunity to shout out the key middle school program who i think has been such a model i know uh just a couple of years ago they had to rent a bus so that they could take all their teachers who were interested in getting

[02:32:38] trained in AVID and they wound up taking about 40 staff members and it's outstanding and as you said it's a model that works for every kid in our family we were the beneficiaries of having a teacher who thought this was an opportunity for our oldest instead of strategies for success to take AVID and And so what I so appreciated what Dr. Ponce just said that I think maybe sometimes people don't realize that for a lot of our students who access special education, this is such

[02:33:12] an outstanding fit for executive functioning skills and the same kind of reach opportunities that are given. It really is outstanding. I would argue it along with EIP are some of the best things that we do in this system.

[02:33:29] One question that I had is, in talking to the folks at Key a couple of years ago, that one of their biggest concerns was the opportunity maybe to partner AVID with ESOL teachers so that they were really able to have a much higher recruitment in AVID for especially newcomers who potentially were still really struggling with some language acquisition.

[02:33:57] And so I will throw that into the mix of as you look into AVID and look at different populations in schools, and I would argue that with our SPED students, too, of, again, going back to that kind of team teaching opportunity that we have as a way to really increase participation in the AVID program.

[02:34:18] But thank you again. This is such an amazing program, and I appreciate you highlighting it. Thank you. Ms. Tysmerheiser, did you want to speak to the AVID presentation?

[02:34:35] I had actually turned my light off, but I'll say a few words if you don't mind. Just briefly, I'd love the wicker. I never heard that phrase before, but embedding some of those into advisory, I would, and we've talked about this before, but really look at using that in conjunction with the intervention period for those who need more explicit education to, that way, it's fewer students who have to give up an elective for some of this explicit training while keeping the elective program for those who want the full breadth or need the full breadth of programs so really having that i think if you have the wicker skills in the advisory period and then more explicit intervention intervention block you could reach a lot of students and allow them to have an elective for something

[02:35:14] that gets them that connection and belonging to school so i'll just leave it at that thank you all right seeing no other board members that would like to speak um i just want to echo my support for the program um i've been able to observe that we were at gunston and then at herndon middle and herndon high school and I really enjoyed hearing from the students about what the impact has been for them, and I would like to welcome Mr. Eric Kinney, who is in our audience with us here, one of our educational specialists for the AVID program. Thank you for joining us.

[02:35:47] Thank you for seeing Mr. Kinney, and thank you for sure, Eric. One of the, I think, most incredible byproducts is the building and development of student agency, and it's just so important, so thank you, Eric. Thank you, Madam Chair.

[02:36:05] Thank you. Okay, now we have agenda item 3.04, Student Representative Matters. Welcome, Ms. Kareem, for your first set of speaking with the board. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm thrilled to be here tonight.

[02:36:23] My name is Rilla Kareem, and I have the honor and privilege to serve as your 53rd student representative to the school board. First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to the Superintendent Advisory Council.

[02:36:41] I'm honored to have been chosen to represent over 180,000 students and am beyond excited to work with diverse communities across the county. It is through these interactions that I can learn more about other schools, their challenges, and their innovative ideas, ultimately enhancing my ability to represent and advocate for the student body effectively.

[02:37:01] That being said, for the students who are listening, I would like to make it clear that I'm your student rep. My role is not defined by a title, but by the trust and responsibility you have placed in me. Moving on, I'm currently appointing student representatives for all advisory committees, and I encourage all of you to take this opportunity to make an impact and apply for a position that interests you.

[02:37:22] In my aspirations for the upcoming school year, I'm committed to ensuring equitable practices and promoting the enhancement of technological skills. Firstly, I plan on introducing initiatives, such as a SPIRIT program, which is powered through the Department of Justice. This program aims to provide opportunities for students to identify areas where inequitable practices exist and actively execute solutions to address them.

[02:37:48] Secondly, because of the advancing nature of technology, I aim to collaborate with local organizations that offer enhancement of technological skills, providing hands-on training and real-world experiences to empower students with the necessary skills for the digital age. Lastly, I emphasize my commitment to actively listen to students without judgment and provide them with a safe space to share their perspectives.

[02:38:11] By demonstrating interest in their experiences, I aim to build trust and encourage honesty. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, and Ms. Crane, we see your mother in the audience as well.

[02:38:28] Thank you for joining us. Thank you for lending us your daughter for several hours this school year. Thank you. Absolutely. Okay, we are on to agenda item 3.06, fiscal year 2023 year-end review.

[02:38:49] I call on Dr. Reid for the introduction. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'd like to introduce our Chief Financial Officer, Lee Burden, for the end-of-year budget review. Ms. Burden.

[02:39:17] Good evening. The year-end review offers an opportunity for final revisions to the fiscal 2023 budget and provide carryover information and revision to the fiscal 2024.

[02:39:42] approved budget once the year end is approved by the school board we have to forward it to the county for inclusion in their year-end packet for the adjustments to our budget all of the data is as of june 30th of 2023 on page one of the attachment the summary identifies the changes to fiscal 23 based on revenue and unspent expenditures and then increases to fiscal 24 for routine reserve funding commitments and carryover and also for expenditure adjustments that are recommended by the superintendent the revenue variance from budget to actual

[02:40:19] is a decrease of 42.4 million that is attributable to an increase in sales tax and the sales tax increase was about 15 million but it's offset by a reduction in basic aid and the calculation error for VDOE which Fiscal 23 and Fiscal 24 were subject to so that the net is 7.6 as increase in state revenue overall. There are also some unspent federal funds to be carried over and that's the majority of this and that is a little bit of ESSER II which we'll finish that

[02:40:56] up in September and then ESSER III of course and our Fiscal 24 plan for that spending that you all approved in March and then there are a couple of other slight revenue increases and that are attributable to tuition increases the next section of the the chart I'm going over reduces the amount that we have for reserve funds which is the school board flexibility reserve of eight million you may recall that we do not budget for that annually we carry it over every single year and if any of

[02:41:32] it's used then we replenish it and bring it back up to the 8 million at year end every year the fuel contingency is 2 million we also have encumbrances or undelivered orders of 53.3 million schools and multi-year projects carryover is 83.1 million department carryover 29.4 million and then we recall that when we had to align the adopted budget for fiscal 24 back in May, we increased

[02:42:07] the beginning balance in fiscal 24 to help us address the reduction in funds from the county and the state. So, and you should know that the expenditure variance of 127.5 is attributed to greater vacancies and turnover for contracted employees and lower costs in hourly and overtime in salaries and benefits the next section is basically the recommended expenditure adjustments the special ed compensatory services fund at 30 million you all know

[02:42:46] all about that the OCR and and what we need to do for our students and to get them back up to speed this number is the number of the original number and the special ed group has been working very hard to give us an updated number for that so this number may change but for now we we we're not we don't want to change it and so we're leaving it 30 million we also are recommending a staffing reserve replenishment at 200 positions or 21.5 million we have 360

[02:43:22] positions budgeted in fiscal 24 and all of them have been allocated you should also know that the projection for this fall is about 180,000, but the number in June of the number of kids that we had was 182. So we've been running ahead of what we have projected next fall all year long, and so there's a decent chance that we're going to need some additional staffing

[02:43:54] reserve as the next item is the achievement gap closing strategies as part of the fiscal 24 budget process this was one of the things that we reduced and said that we would fund it with year in again in order to align with the county and state funding levels so and that number was six million at the last time that we talked about it but we have increased that transfer to construction for major maintenance is at $7.1 million. That's the same amount as it was last year. Recall that back

[02:44:28] in 2014, we had been budgeting $10 million for major maintenance. And due to budget cuts, we needed to cut $3.6 million out of that. And so now they are, ever since then, they have been regularly budgeted at $6.4 million with the promise that we would budget $3.6 million to bring them back up but to the 10 at year-end every year.

[02:44:50] We increased that last year and this year as well just because of the backlog of maintenance projects that need to be completed. We've also included a line item for enhanced summer school reserve for the summer of '24.

[02:45:08] We know that we're gonna need enhanced summer school for a number of years and as a result, we may need to have some additional funds for next year's summer school. Recall that this past year's summer school and this current year, a lot of that was funded with ESSER funding.

[02:45:24] And so, of course, we won't have that next summer, so we're trying to err on the side of caution. The Human Capital Management System Replacement. Recall that we included the recurring costs in the adopted budget, and these are the one-time costs of $6.6 million that it was our plan all along to fund that with year-end because it's just one time.

[02:45:49] The substitute incentive, you may remember that in fiscal 22 we initiated a substitute initiative that helped us with hard to fill Fridays, just basically helped us overall with their substitute fill rates.

[02:46:07] My understanding is that has worked very well to increase the fill rates, but we do need to increase them further, so we're continuing this initiative for one more year. The Safety and Security Screening Pilot Program, $3 million is included to fund a pilot program to install security scanning technology at selected high schools.

[02:46:30] Utilities, we build a rate increase into the adopted budget, but then we actually get the new rates in May after the adoption is done, so this regularly appears on the agenda for year-end review, and we've got $2.9 million for utilities rate increases.

[02:46:50] Fuel inflation is also an item that we often have to fund with year-end because we did budget an increase in the fiscal 24 budget, but then we get the numbers as far as the rates go, and it's a little bit more, and so we have allocated $2.1 million for that.

[02:47:08] Transfer to the construction fund for turf fields, West Poe, Edison, and Mount Vernon are all scheduled to have replacement of their turf fields and this this is what will be funded out of the two million the next item is an administrators in schedule C enhancement of 1.8 million as part of the fiscal 24 budget process we were recommending that we make this enhancement to the administrators and school-based administrators and schedule C salary schedules but we

[02:47:44] We weren't able to fund it because we did not receive full funding from the county or the state, and as a result, we put that off until a year-end, although this does have a recurring cost and so will have to be built into the fiscal '25 budget for that proposal.

[02:48:03] Also the fine arts stipend is something that you all are familiar with, that we wanted to add in to fiscal '24 and weren't able to, and so we're including that at year-end and that'll have to be built into the fiscal 25. This is just the first step to be able to address the band director, the choral director, the theater director, orchestra, and assistant marching band director at the high school level as well as band director, choral director, orchestra director, and drama coach at the middle school level. And then a comprehensive review is is going on right now to look at all of the stipends to see where we might need to make

[02:48:41] changes to make sure that we main that we are continue to be you know within the market in the metropolitan area the next item is a transfer to grants and the self-supporting fund for the pre-k expansion of 0.8 million again we funded the preschool recurring costs in the fiscal 24 budget these are the one-time costs we pulled those out very early on with the with the idea that we would fund it with year-end because they're one-time costs. Certified athletic trainers we have a

[02:49:14] five-year plan so it's going to be 0.6 million for five positions in the first year to add an additional athletic trainer at each high school so at the end of five years we'll have two at each high school instead of just one and then the supplement money that they have to be able to get some additional assistance from, you know, staff within their school. The Adult and Community Education Fund, or ACE, needs a supplement of $400,000, and that is included at year end. That

[02:49:50] too is, should be, you should be pretty familiar with that. And then the last item that's being recommended to be funded is the mental health teletherapy support. We budgeted $500,000 in fiscal 23 but our experience has shown that that is going to cost about 300,000 more and next year and so we've included that as one of the recommendations as well we always budget for the beginning balance a year in advance so the fiscal 25 beginning balance we're setting that aside as well of 25 million and then we

[02:50:28] have the school operating fund grants which is primarily IDEA Carl Perkins and And ESSER funds, all of those funds are being, you know, they're automatically carried over as unspent grant funding. And then we had a few new grant awards. The Carl Perkins grant went up a little bit, as did IDEA.

[02:50:47] Well, IDEA only went up $15,000. So most of it is ESSER. It's a little bit of ESSER II and then ESSER III funds. The remaining pages detail changes to the other funds and other supplemental information. I don't usually go over these funds because they represent multi-year programs whose funds flow from year to year with fund balances, stabilization reserves, everything in these funds carries over automatically.

[02:51:15] You also have at the end year-end fund statements for each fund, and that's just, of course, financial statements that display the revenue, the expenditures, transfers in, transfers out, those sorts of things. We also have a supplemental appropriation resolution that we transmit to the county of the changes to the fiscal 23 budget, and it's cumulative, so it's all of the changes from mid-year, third quarter, and year-end combined.

[02:51:40] And then the fiscal planning resolution represents the transfers from the operating fund to the other fund, and that's it. Thank you, Ms. Burden. We have several board members with questions.

[02:51:56] Dr. Anderson? Thank you so much. 7.5. I mean, that's definitely a big number. Can you speak a little bit more in detail in terms of how did we get such a huge carryover amount? You mentioned vacancies. Are these like substitute positions, positions that were never filled? It just seems like a lot of money. It's across the board. I mean, it's a little higher than we expected it to be. Last year it was 90 million was the amount that we were able to you know recommend expenditures to the

[02:52:34] school board this year it's 127 the vacancy and turnover we had 200 more vacant positions during the fiscal 23 compared to fiscal 22 and that's valued at about 20 million dollars and then we had some tech technical grant encumbrances and that's about 12 million also in the operating fund and so those Those two items together pretty much make up why we had a little bit more year-end funding than we had seen last year and the previous year.

[02:53:06] You should also know that, you know, we've been kind of monitoring lapse and turnover all along, and we adjusted the lapse and turnover assumption in the fiscal 24 budget to increase by about $14 million, so we didn't, you know, go all the way, but we did increase that negative number that we include to account for the fact that we have been experiencing increased vacancies over the last two or three years.

[02:53:31] Yeah, that's just a little bit astonishing, but thank you for that additional information. Can you speak a little bit as to when the state, if the state adjusts budgets over the summer, what impacts that would have for us here? Now, Dr. Anderson, you know that I do not like to speculate as to what a bunch of elected officials will do.

[02:53:50] I don't know what the General Assembly will do. They could leave the budget as is, they could add some other initiatives to it, and if they add some other initiatives that require local matches or expenditures on the air side, in a perfect world, they would do that sometime between now and when we bring this back to you for final approval.

[02:54:12] And if that happens, then we will revise this, and of course you'll all get heads up for it long before that. And I think you kind of hit on where I was hoping to go. IF THERE HAS TO BE A LOCAL MATCH, WE KIND OF HAVE, YOU KNOW, SOME FLEXIBILITY HERE. I'M WONDERING HOW WE SHOULD KIND OF HEDGE OUT BETS A LITTLE BIT IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SOME OF THOSE THINGS THAT IN THE PAST WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO BECAUSE WE JUST HAVEN'T HAD THE FUNDING. IT'S JUST A WONDERING BECAUSE I KNOW YOU HAVE TO MAKE THIS, YOU KNOW, BE BALANCED, BUT IT'S JUST A WONDERING. I'M ALSO WONDERING ABOUT THE STAFFING RESERVE

[02:54:50] replenishment 21.5 for 200 positions I do realize that there's a need as you described it here but I would love a little bit more detail and the second part is it always gives me heartburn when we're funding positions with the year-end funding because it means that we now have to embed it into next year's budget which means the ask has already increased yeah we would not increase next I mean the the following year's budget we would continue to budget the 360 positions that we normally do in the staffing reserve it's just the last couple of years we've needed to shore that up with a year-end ask for staffing

[02:55:30] reserve as well so this particular 200 is not recurring in that sense we wouldn't build that into the next year's budget the athletic trainers you know those five positions yes we absolutely would need to build that in the fine art stipends we would need to build that into fiscal 25 so there there are a a handful of things on here that we'll have to address in the baseline of fiscal 25, but they're mostly small amounts that they end up being recurring costs, and so we have to build it in.

[02:56:00] Thank you for that, and I do agree with you that there are smaller amounts that we'll have to build in, but I still want to reiterate what I have shared in the last couple of years, and I know others have as well, when we're rebuilding the budget in the fall, is to ensure that we are SHOWING WHERE WE ARE BEING FISCALLY PRUDENT, WHERE WE ARE MAYBE NOT FUNDING THINGS THAT NO LONGER SERVE THE DIVISION BECAUSE WE NEED TO REALLOCATE THOSE RESOURCES INTO SOME OTHER PLACES. THANK YOU FOR THAT. MY LAST QUESTION REGARDING THE ADVISORY COMMITTEES, I KNOW EACH

[02:56:36] YEAR WE HAVE THIS PUSH AND PULL OF HAVING THE REPORTS BE PROVIDED TO US IN MAY, JUNE, JULY, by this time it is entirely too late to impact the budget is there space for us to squeeze a little bit of that here given the significant number of this carryover no the normal I mean our normal process is you're absolutely right that the meeting with the advisory committees and not all of them actually have a budget request a couple of them I don't I don't think you had that this year but we take a look at that when we start building the fiscal 20 there's

[02:57:14] always it's the next year's budget that we try to address whatever you know assuming the school board wants us to do that it's where we try to address what they've recommended well I'm hoping miss Toland that we can lead to you and we can look to you and mr. Frisch to kind of help us determine a cadence that allows us to really pay attention to the advisory committee recommendations because I know very often we want to act upon them and we just haven't the having the funds to do that.

[02:57:43] So I'm hoping we could just restart on when we get those reports so that we can be more responsive. I think I'll stop there. Thank you. And there it is. I just wanted to add we have had that discussion in just going through those advisory committee reports that we might want to even look forward to some kind of a set format that staff would use to report back.

[02:58:12] WE GET REPORTS, WE'LL BE ANSISFATING THOSE REPORTS FROM STAFF SOON, YOU KNOW, RESPONDING TO ALL OF THE RECOMMENDATIONS SO THAT WE'VE GOT SOME WORK TO DO ON THAT. ABSOLUTELY. MS. MCLACHLAN.

[02:58:28] THANK YOU. MS. BURDEN, I GUESS MY FIRST QUESTION TO YOU AND DR. REED WOULD BE SECTION FOUR TALKS ABOUT THE FY24 SCHOOL OPERATING FUNDS, IT LOOKS LIKE it's ESSERS 2 and 3 and that there's 65.8 million in carryover and then at the top section 1 talks about because of our voluntary resolution agreement with the feds that we would be dedicating 30 million for special ed compensatory services fund so my question would be why can't we use some of the 65.8 million

[02:59:05] that's the ESSER dollars which is what the ESSER funds were supposed to be about COVID, post-COVID, and then that way the $30 million can go somewhere else to where we also have need? Well, my gut reaction is that we checked with the feds and they said we absolutely could not use federal funds to meet a requirement that they have imposed on us. So that's the first problem. The second problem is that all of the ESSER funds are allocated. The ESSER II funds just have a little bit less like three or four million which is the final cleanup of all of

[02:59:43] the HVAC projects that we funded with ESSER II and then ESSER III the board approved the allocation of those funds in March and so we need those funds to fund that plan. Okay Dr. Reed I will just say again I this board or at least some of us on the board were very disappointed that the system did a VRA with the federal government and didn't come talk to us.

[03:00:11] We are being harmed by the federal government coming after a large school division like us when we were no different than just about every school division that closed. And listening to Ms. Burden, I still don't understand. Rather than being unsure, I hope you and your team working with our division council, go be sure.

[03:00:32] Go find out. But the way this is written and what is not helping the public and doesn't help maybe some of us on the board is when we use the word carryover that's how it reads so maybe it needs to be rewritten differently and I certainly want I guess first make sure are we going to be having a work session before the boards expected to vote on this okay well I think that's a huge problem so if I if I might respond miss McLaughlin I think the on item four with the carryover of unspent grant funding my

[03:01:07] understanding is that we actually planned for it to be unspent and have encumbered it in other words I believe some of this is going to pay the 30 minute the extra half hour for our special education teachers a significant portion so you are correct I think in the suggestion that it's not clear and perhaps it's the language so it's a carryover that was planned so that we would have the funds to provide that support for our teachers this year so we probably need to add something there and I'll work with staff on adding a statement that makes it clear that

[03:01:43] because otherwise it looks like money that we don't have a plan to spend and there is a very clear plan except for I believe around three million ish but I could be wrong about that that's just kind of a I think we're also holding it is all allocated but we were thinking next year summer school is one of our last big ESSER pushes because we want to continue we knew it would take several years to work with our students coming out of the pandemic and next year summer school is again one that we anticipate being enhanced or enlarged to utilize those funds but

[03:02:20] I will look at language to make this more clear yeah I mean if we want the public and I'm just one taxpayer when I see 127 million dollar carryover 100 million dollars more than we typically have that's three pennies on the tax rate so I'm just trying I just think that we're not messaging this very well and I also don't understand based on what has been past practice and I know this goes with the board of supervisors this is a significant amount of money so how is it that we're not gonna have a work session to have a conversation or are we just gonna plan on a five-hour vote on the

[03:02:59] what's gonna happen with the carryover well miss McLaughlin it's my understanding we have not previously had a work session on year end. I would say last year last year was the first year that we didn't have one. Oh last year was the first year we did not. Just last year but otherwise that's my whole history. That's okay. It is our practice that we do it and I imagine that we can have a longer conversation on why it didn't happen last year.

[03:03:24] Well, there's a tentative all-day work session on the draft calendar for August the 27th, the Tuesday before the 31st meeting. I appreciate that, Ms. Burden, and I think you know that this is something I've always taken very seriously.

[03:03:43] And, I mean, Dr. Reed, I just can't say this enough. Please understand that we are held accountable, constitutionally held accountable. And this is a significant carryover for the last two years compared to the history of this division in more than a decade.

[03:04:02] So I think that it would be in our best interest to have a work session that we can hopefully expand upon more details in this document. And I look forward to maybe having a meeting with Dr. Reed and then also with Ms. Burden so I can talk more extensively over where my concerns are.

[03:04:23] Yes, ma'am. I mean, you know, you've got to acknowledge that it is not just Fairfax County Public Schools that has an increased carryover due to vacancies, the great resignation, the pandemic, all of the things that we've experienced for the last three years.

[03:04:41] Every single public organization that I am aware of has had increased fallout at the end of the year because of the things I just mentioned. So, it is more than we're used to. It is a little bit more than it was last year, but it is by no means unusual for a public entity during the last two or three years that we've had to not have a significant carryover than what they had had previously.

[03:05:06] Well, then, there's the public talking points that you've proved my point. Without having that context, the public's going to have the same reaction that I just had about five minutes ago. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Burden for this presentation and I absolutely understand and appreciate the unique challenges that we are in based on a whole myriad of reasons including I was

[03:05:40] a bit surprised at the number of vacancies and so I think going forward it might be helpful if we were to get a perhaps a quarterly update on just vacancies because I think it people will better understand that but there are some some interesting pieces of this budget that I'd like to better understand and I would also like to speak to a bit Dr. Anderson's question about what can you expect from the state budget I don't think any of us know what to expect from the state budget but I do

[03:06:15] believe that this board should be advocating regarding the recent JLARC study which was extremely explicit about the chronic underfunding that the state and frankly the federal government has taken to towards public education and so although we have a carryover that carryover is largely attributable to the staffing issues the recognition that we've had to address the impact of Covid and we've had money to address it through ESSER funds but there's a state a staggered

[03:06:54] approach to spending it and then there's another area that I would like to bring attention to which is there is a bill before congress right now which I also think this board should be getting behind and that is a bill to fully fund the IDEA and that's the individuals with disabilities and education act the idea has never been fully funded and it is with the generosity of the people of fairfax county more than anybody else that has allowed us to have the robust programming so i

[03:07:29] understand the frustration that um you know did we suffer during covid could we have done things better you know hindsight is always 2020 however we do have to address the needs and that voluntary resolution agreement so it's appropriate to be in there my question though is about two things what are you anticipating on the specifics of the admin increases and will that make us competitive with

[03:08:04] neighboring jurisdictions so we don't continue to have administrators move south and then the second question I have is regarding the safety and security screening project I see you have some funding in there and I would like to better understand what those are yeah the administrators and schedule C enhancement you're absolutely right that is our attempt to stop the poaching I

[03:08:31] If I can be blunt, this came about during the fiscal 24 budget process, and it will bring principals and other administrative salaries to 100% of the estimated market maximum. It will also raise the increment between the steps from 1% to 1.5% from step 12 up to step 20, and we extended the scales to 20 steps.

[03:09:01] Again, one of the things that we grapple with is that the divisions that are closest to us have 30 steps. One of them has even more than 30 steps, and we only had, I think, 16. And so we've increased ours to 20 as well to give people who are top of the scale so they can see some growth and not think, well, I need to just go ahead and go somewhere else and work, because we want to keep our people.

[03:09:28] We want to retain them. and we're hoping that this will do that. Like the elementary principals market average was 96.7%, and with this change, it'll be 104%.

[03:09:43] Middle school went from 93% to 101%, and high schools is going from 92% to 101%. That's very helpful, and I am a visual learner, And so, if at some point somebody could actually share with us how our scales with these enhancements would compare to the neighboring jurisdictions, that would be very helpful, and it allows us to better explain it to people that ask those questions.

[03:10:18] Regarding the safety and security? Yeah, the safety and security item. I can't really give you more detail on that. It is my understanding that if the board would like to discuss the details of the screening pilot, that that is appropriate and allowable as a closed session because that's security.

[03:10:45] Security is not something that we want to talk about in public. That would be very helpful. It's the first I'm hearing of it, and so it would be very helpful to have a little bit more detail prior to us adopting this. Ms. Corbett Sanders I have some information on that we are looking at we are looking at different technologies that would detect weapons as we as students or staff enter schools.

[03:11:15] I know the technologies our staff have been visiting surrounding jurisdictions as really all the divisions within our region are looking at technologies and softwares that are going to mitigate security risks and the estimated implementation for what we would consider first order interventions was roughly that $3 million figure.

[03:11:40] And then I'll ask Mr. Vaccarello to provide more detail in the upcoming Monday letter, but that's related to software that's weapon detecting software. - I'm very glad to hear about that. And I'm at first blush thinking that's an easy thing to support, but having a little more details would be helpful.

[03:11:59] Appreciate it, thank you very much. And once again, colleagues, I'd love your support in both advocating for JLARC and IDEA funding. Thank you, Ms. Burden.

[03:12:16] We don't have other board members currently with questions, but it sounds like we'll be discussing this further before our vote on the 31st. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your presentation. Dr. Reed, we need to go back to Superintendent Matters.

[03:12:34] Oh, yes. Well, thank you, and I will be brief, But I want to start with probably the most exciting news of the evening, other than welcoming our folks and celebrating our people. I want to ask Ms. Klemenko, our assistant superintendent in ISD, to share an award that we received.

[03:12:52] And I want to thank board member Karen Corbett-Sanders for going to Richmond to the VSBA conference to actually personally receive this award on behalf of our division. But Ms. Klemenko, would you share the details and the actual artifact? I'm very excited too. It's not often I get to hold up a plaque. So Fairfax County Public Schools. Yes, thank you, Mr. Frisch.

[03:13:17] Fairfax County Public Schools was awarded the Virginia School Board Association Excellence and Workforce Readiness Award. And we won first place in school divisions over 10,000. And it was related to our residential construction program.

[03:13:34] So many of you all know that we partner with the Fairfax County with FATE, right? The Foundation for Applied Technical Education, and we build houses. Our students actually build houses. I think many of you have had the opportunity to visit those amazing houses.

[03:13:50] So far, we have built 12 on our 18 lots, and they're currently selling for over a million dollars. This provides our students just amazing opportunities with all phases of the construction process, us. And I think it's a truly unique and amazing program. And it's so wonderful that our teachers, our students, our central office supports, the partnership with FATE could all be recognized in this way. So. Thank you, Ms. Klimenko. And thank you, Ms. Corbett Sanders, for being there.

[03:14:20] I just have a couple other short items. This past Sunday morning, I had the opportunity to visit Wayanoke Elementary School, the home of the woodchucks. Principal Felicia Usher was the host for Fairfax County Public Schools as the National Association of Elementary School Principals National Day of Service accompanied their conference and we had over 60 educators from all around the country there to help put in new playground equipment weed and I understand dr. Anderson you were there before I was there and helping to clean in a day of service but I just you know

[03:14:58] it's another example of learning happening best in community and really our national community coming together, just big props to Principal Usher and the Weyanoak staff. It was a lot of excitement and I know our woodchucks will be excited to see the new playground when they return.

[03:15:14] Monday morning, I had the opportunity to address the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce and Northern Virginia Tech Council and talk about the future of our county in terms of educational goals and just really exciting to partner with such a supportive community.

[03:15:32] Lots of excitement there. And then later this week, board member Frisch and board of supervisor Dalia Palchek, Marty Smith, Chuck Fanshawe, Lisa Pilsen and others, we toured the Graham Road Community School and looked at different possibilities for that program.

[03:15:50] Want to give a big shout out to our Department of Financial Services. And we had several members here, Ms. Lee Burden, Matt Norton, and Alice Whittington for earning the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association.

[03:16:09] This Certificate of Achievement is the highest form of recognition in the area of governmental accounting and financial reporting, and its attainment represents a significant accomplishment by a government and its management. So congratulations to our Chief Financial Officer, Burden and her team on this well-deserved award. Finally, we do have nine Chantilly band students performing in Europe this summer as part of the Virginia Ambassadors of Music program and lots of excitement. We hope to learn more from them and for those of you watching and listening, you are exactly the person we want to employ at Fairfax County Public Schools and we do have

[03:16:48] We have several job fairs coming up, if you're still up at 11 o'clock. But anyhow, we have bus driver job fairs, we have food and nutrition services job fairs, and just critical work. And I want to say, and a couple board members mentioned it earlier, I am so proud of our summer school staff, our transportation on day one, we were buses on time, vans on time, in classrooms food service folks we have started summer school smoothly and just want to thank all of the summer school staff who have been responsible for the

[03:17:26] planning and execution of an outstanding start to our summer session and in the next couple weeks I'll be visiting classes but just really excited because you know our folks care so deeply so thank you madam chair okay agenda 4.01 confirmation of action taken in our closed meeting motion number one I call in mr. Frisch for a motion thank you I move to authorize counsel to take the steps discussed in closed session related to a pending litigation matter

[03:18:03] is there a second thank you miss McLaughlin all those in favor miss Keys Gamara miss Marin miss Sizemirheiser miss Karen corporate Sanders mr. Frisch miss McLaughlin dr. Anderson mr.

[03:18:28] at koufax miss cowen miss burkarski and myself believe that is unanimous motion number two i call in miss cohen for a motion i move that the chair of the school board be authorized to execute on behalf of the board the contract for a chief position in operations as discussed in closed meeting i will second that all those in favor miss burkarski miss cohen mr koufax dr anderson Mr. Frisch, Ms. McLaughlin, are you voting?

[03:19:07] Mr. Frisch, Ms. Karen Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Ratchett-Sizer-Heiser, Ms. Marin, Ms. Keyes-Gamara, are you voting on this one? We're on number two, motion number two. Thank you.

[03:19:24] And myself and Ms. McLaughlin. That is also unanimous. Thank you. Okay, we are on to agenda item 4.02. Did I miss one?

[03:19:41] The other issue is done as 4.06, so it's later in the votes.

[03:20:00] since we have it written out separately on BoardDocs. - You want us to address it under agenda 4.06, is that what you're saying? - Yes, later on in the agenda. - Okay, thank you for that clarification.

[03:20:21] Okay, so then agenda item 4.02, the FY24 OAG Risk Assessment and Audit Plan. I call on Ms. Cohen for a motion. - I move that the school board approve the FY2024 OAG Risk Assessment and Audit Plan.

[03:20:38] - Is there a second? second. Ms. Cohen, would you like to speak to your motion? As always, Ms. Cohen and her team do such an amazing job. I so appreciate all of the work that goes into sort of the cat herding of our different priorities of what we'd like to see audited in the year in addition to the things that are required to be audited. I really appreciate the flexibility of the office in being able to the change around kind of our normal process due to a couple of conflicts that we wound up having.

[03:21:13] So thank you, Ms. Coe, for being willing to be flexible in how we do this. And thank you to my colleagues as well who were willing to do this in a little bit backwards way than we normally do. I'm really excited about the audits that are ahead.

[03:21:30] I encourage everybody if you haven't had an opportunity to look again at the final list. Really exciting things coming in the future, so can't wait to get to spend more time with Ms. Ko and her team. Ms. Sterna Koufax, would you like to speak to your second?

[03:21:46] Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you to our audit team under the direction of our Auditor General, Ms. Esther Ko, for your robust outreach to our staff, our board, and citizen members of the audit team via phone calls, interviews and surveys to identify our audit topics for this coming year.

[03:22:04] In addition to their personal outreach, their financial, reputational and operational risk reviewed and risk conditions were re-evaluated. The audit team has reviewed this plan more than once, maybe twice or three times and a presentation was given to our full board.

[03:22:19] I am supportive of the plan before us and I look forward to approving the FY24 OAG plan tonight. Thank you. SEEING ANY OTHER BOARD MEMBERS THAT WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK, I WILL CALL FOR THE VOTE ON THE MOTION.

[03:22:37] THE MOTION IS ON THE SCREEN. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR, MS. KAYES GAMARA, MS. MARIN, MS. SIZEMERHEISER, MS. CORBIT SANDERS, MR. FRISH, MS. MCLACHLAN, DR. ANDERSON, MS.

[03:22:52] DERINA COFAX, MS. COHEN, MS. MCKARSKY, AND MYSELF. THAT VOTE IS UNANIMOUS. THANK YOU. OKAY. AGENDA ITEM 4.03, STUDENTS' RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES AMENDMENT.

[03:23:12] I now call on Ms. Cohen for a motion. I move to amend the language from the Student Rights and Responsibilities clean copy posted on the June 26, 2023 regular business meeting, page 60, section D4, which currently reads, when a disciplinary incident involving a student with an intellectual or developmental disability may result in a suspension of any kind, school staff shall not request a verbal or written statement from the student until a parent slash guardian has been provided notice.

[03:23:41] To read, when a threat assessment is deemed necessary pursuant to Regulation 2111, school staff will notify the parent of any student with an intellectual or developmental disability. Efforts to notify the parent must be documented in writing. To the greatest extent practical, school staff will ensure the presence of an adult who is known to the student and familiar with how to support their communication needs, i.e., IEP team member familiar to and with the student before questioning a student with an intellectual developmental disability. If a disciplinary incident involving a student with an intellectual or developmental disability, e.g. autism, may result in a

[03:24:21] suspension of any kind, staff shall not request a verbal or written statement from the student until a parent/guardian is present or a parent/guardian has consented to the questioning of the student with the support from an adult who is known to the student and familiar with how to support their communication needs i.e. IEP team member familiar to and with the student staff shall make reasonable efforts to obtain consent and/or the presence of a parent slash guardian and such staff efforts to obtain parent slash guardian presence and slash or consent shall be documented in writing absent the presence or or

[03:24:58] consent of the parent slash guardian within two school days of the notification by staff of the alleged incident and request to obtain a a statement written slash verbal from the student school-based administrators will make a disciplinary decision based on all other existing information. Thank you. Is there a second? I'll second. Ms. Cohen would you like to speak to your motion? I would. I appreciate all of my colleagues

[03:25:35] having the patience to help us work through this one. As you all know this is something that I feel very passionately about and have brought up the last few years of having concerns about statements being solicited from students who potentially might not have the support that they need to be able to make appropriate statements on their own behalf that are then used in a discipline process.

[03:26:05] I know that initially that we had some concerns from some board members who were worried about a couple of issues. One was implementation, and I so appreciate Dr. King and Dr. Reed, who worked with our principals to make sure that this was language that could be agreed upon, understood, and could actually be implemented.

[03:26:28] I also -- there was a question from Ms. Keyes-Gamara about ensuring that we were not in a situation where this would keep anyone any principal from to the fullest extent examining any kind of safety or security threat and we went back and made sure that exigent circumstances are absolutely removed from the equation and that of course all school staff should be immediately dealing with any sort of safety and security issue.

[03:27:07] So I appreciate it. I again want to thank Dr. King and Dr. Reid and Miss Sizemore Heiser and our ACSD chair and my ACSD representative and SEPTA president, Amanda Campbell, who also worked through some of the language with us.

[03:27:26] Thank you. Miss Sizemore Heiser, would you like to speak to your second? Yeah, I appreciate this is in response to the follow on motion from the board from the last meeting to develop it. I really appreciate Dr. Reed and Dr. King working hard and Edmunds Hurd as well working hard to develop it.

[03:27:44] We have talked to -- I want to just address a couple of thoughts on this. First of all, the purpose of this assessment -- of this amendment is to ensure that students who have intellectual developmental disabilities are able to give accurate statements in response to a disciplinary procedure.

[03:28:01] We have bifurcated the threat assessment parts because there are several concerns about safety and making sure principals could be safe. So if there's a threat assessment piece, we do not have to get parental consent for questioning, nor does they're going to try their best. It says to the extent practical to get a support person in there.

[03:28:19] But the threat assessment process, per its own regulation, is a separate process than the disciplinary process. There is also on page 48 of the SR&R a blanket statement that applies to the entire SR&R. And Dr. Reed, I'd like to ask you to, I'll ask you a minute to talk about it, But a blanket statement to the SRNR that says for the entire document, nothing herein stops a principal from being able to manage, get information and manage an emergency or a situation in the schools that threatens their safety or security.

[03:28:49] So regardless of any of the pieces of the SRNR, a principal always has the ability to manage safety and security. So, Dr. Reed, I'm just going to ask you that question on the SRNR. If a principal needs to either question somebody or investigate, do they have that ability, regardless of the other pieces of the SRNR, to do that in an emergency or exigent circumstances?

[03:29:06] Yes, they do. Could you point to the section of the SRNR that gives this permission? Yes, ma'am. We have currently—thank you for bringing this up—currently in regulation on page 48G, G the statement notwithstanding foregoing nothing contained herein shall be construed to diminish the authority of the principal to one protect the health and safety of students and others in connection with the school or School-sponsored activity or to ascertain the facts about any incident The principal shall do so in a reasonable good-faith manner and shall be accountable for respecting the rights and responsibilities of everyone in the school

[03:29:45] Thank you. So it's really clear in the SRNR, both from a threat assessment perspective in the amendment itself and from the SRNR about emergency circumstances. Reality is, if you think about this language that we're adding here, it is like a Miranda warning, right?

[03:30:00] The purpose of Miranda warnings is to give due process to people to make sure that they know their rights before they speak. Everybody's goal, I believe, our principals, our staff, our teachers, and people on this board, is to make sure students with intellectual developmental disabilities who may not have the same capacity to be able to speak or understand the consequences of what they say or may use echolalia or scripting or may not understand fully the questions that are being asked, have the support in the room when it comes to discipline that might lead to a suspension.

[03:30:29] That is all we're talking about. Do they have the due process so that we all can make sure that they're able to give accurate information and reliable information in a disciplinary proceeding, separate from an emergency situation to keep the school safe. And it's only in a discipline proceeding that may lead to suspension.

[03:30:46] We talk a lot about equity on this board. Students with disabilities get out of school suspension 2.5 times more often than those without disabilities. In addition to that, studies show that students who are suspended are much more likely to be in prison, to not graduate, to have poor secondary outcomes, and to have poor educational outcomes and grades.

[03:31:07] All this does is to ensure that we give People with disabilities who have difficulty communicating or understanding the right to have either a parent in the room or a familiar adult who can help support their communication. That is it. In the same way that when we look at a court case, for example, you can go to trial without a defendant speaking, and we think it's a fair trial whether the defendant who's on trial speaks or not.

[03:31:32] But it's more unfair to have a trial where the verdict is based on unreliable information. That's all we're trying to do here is to help the student make sure that they have the supports they need to give reliable information in their own discipline proceedings. That's what this does.

[03:31:47] We have talked to -- thank you, Dr. King, very much for checking with the principal association's heads to make sure that they are okay with this language. We have talked to ACSD, to SEPTA, and other community advocates who approve of this language. We looked at the threat assessment regulation, which specifically says that information of threat assessment is part of that process, not part of the discipline process.

[03:32:07] So it's really just making sure that some of our most vulnerable students who already have disproportionate discipline are able to adequately participate in the process. So that's what this is about. I really appreciate the patience of our staff, I really appreciate the conversations with the board members that Ms. Cohen and I have had over the last week around this and I know that everybody has the same goal which is just to make sure that students who are disciplined can adequately participate in that process and that we're using reliable information and disciplining students.

[03:32:37] is a pure equity matter. Thank you. Ms. McLaughlin. Dr. Reed, I know I spoke to this two weeks ago, but this is something I've been championing for 12 years about more restorative practices and student-centered practices for discipline. So I just wanted to spotlight that I really appreciate your leadership and the leadership of your team that understood why this was important to the board. And rather than fight it, you collaborated with the board members on this.

[03:33:10] AND I THINK THAT SPEAKS A LOT ABOUT YOU, DR. KING, AND EVERYBODY ELSE WHO WAS INVOLVED IN IT. AND HAVING FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT FOR TOO MANY YEARS, IT WAS REALLY NICE TO SEE THIS COME TO FURITION TONIGHT. SO THANK YOU. SEEING NO OTHER BOARD MEMBERS?

[03:33:31] NO, THANK YOU. I DO WANT TO SAY THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO BROUGHT THIS FORWARD. AND THANK YOU FOR THE CONVERSATION TODAY, MS. COHEN. I WANT TO JUST RAISE WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT HERE BECAUSE I KNOW WE WANT TO GET TO YES ON THIS. AND I ALSO KNOW THE INTENT BEHIND THIS IS TO ENSURE THAT WE ARE, supporting our most vulnerable students but I also want to be sure that where we don't have any unintentional consequences one of the things that I raise in my conversations with miss Cohen earlier is if we have a student who for whatever the reason does not receive the consent to provide the

[03:34:08] statement or the parent lets the time expire and does not return the outreach from staff and then the administrator goes forward and is able to make their decision based on all of the other existing data is there a space for that students due process to be considered violated because they did not get that opportunity because maybe it's not just that the parent said no but just the non-response I'm just wondering if there's a problem there and maybe that's

[03:34:42] a mr. Foster question I'm sorry a problem a problem where dr. dr. Anderson if the time expires because I there's 48 hours two days for the parent to give the consent if for some reason school reaches out to a parent and there's no response after two days the administrator uses the data that is available before them in order to make their decision is there a space where we could be accused of not giving that child an opportunity for due process was

[03:35:19] that since they didn't get a chance to provide information that could have maybe steered the data I'm sorry the investigation in a different direction right if I understand the question this is a situation where student to parents involvement elects not to provide any information correct I'm sorry I didn't hear what you said say it again yeah so if I'm understanding the question I mean that there would not be a due process concern there because the decision made by the student with the assistance of his parents they've had that process

[03:35:59] they've elected not to pursue it that's a that's a right they have okay and my other very quick question if we have a situation that occurs between students

[03:36:14] And does this mean that, and I'm going to use Dr. Boyd's usual example of Little Sloan, if Little Sloan goes forward and does something and, you know, hits Little Michelle, does that mean that there's a two-day space for the administrator to be able to explain to Little Michelle's parents what happened because they're waiting for the additional information?

[03:36:43] or can they proceed with that part of the investigation and communication? I would say that if it's exigent, if there was a danger to a student in that immediate moment, then the principal would certainly have an opportunity to ask questions.

[03:37:03] I think at such point that discipline was contemplated for the student, which we couldn't talk about to the other student's family anyhow, there would be the clock for the 48 hours for that parent and that student to meet with the administrator to hear from the student what their side of the concern might be. But in the moment, in that exigent circumstance, that emergency moment, we would expect our school administration to act to make sure everyone stays safe. And we would not make a practice of discussing

[03:37:41] discipline of one child with a parent of another child so oh definitely for a administrator here I know that does not happen but I also know that our principals are looking for clarity because they want to do the right thing and they don't want to be caught in a space where they did it and right it's a violation and so I am just making sure that from this there's really clear guidance that is provided to our administrators in order to operationalize this because they want to support all of our kids and I'll be honest I think some of my principals already do this 100% because they already understand the need and they know that our students are not

[03:38:19] necessarily able to some of our students are not necessarily able to communicate in the same manner as others so they do take those precautions but now that it's codified I just think there's a little bit of hesitation and I just want to make sure we're taking care of those folks so thank you little

[03:38:35] Michelle. Mr. Anna Koufax? That's you, Mr. Pritch. Excuse me. Thank you. We haven't changed the labels yet. I appreciate the makers of the motion for bringing it forward and the work that went into it. The parents that I spoke to made it clear that they want their children to be heard. They just want it to be done appropriately. And I think that's fundamentally what this comes down to, is making sure that we're protecting the civil rights of these kids and making sure that when they do speak that they're heard appropriately.

[03:39:17] So, I appreciate the conversation, I appreciate the work that went into this, and what got us here. I appreciate staff's willingness to work through this, and I look forward to voting for it. Ms. Keyes-Gamara?

[03:39:34] Yes, thank you. Just one question, and just for clarification, and I also want to address Mr. Frisch's concern with respect to making sure a child is heard. In the event that it's important that part of what we're trying to protect is the child themselves, are we imposing a two-day waiting period to get that information?

[03:40:02] Let's say in Dr. Anderson, she walked away because I wanted to use little Michelle. In that situation, and let's say there's something that we need to address with the child that actually is having difficulty communicating, How do we make sure that we're actually not harming that child?

[03:40:28] Do we have a two-day waiting period to get information from that child absent parental consent? So it's not, as I understand it, it's not a two-day waiting period.

[03:40:44] We would hope to connect with the parent as soon as possible. What we're, I think, saying is we would wait as long as two days. But really, the hope would be, and I would expect more often than not, we would have some reasonably immediate connection with a parent or a family member, and in particular, even a staff member who would be familiar with the student's communication needs within that 48 hours.

[03:41:12] But we're really, I think the intent would be to try to have that conversation sooner than later. Okay. I also want to make sure we're not having some unintended consequence because when I read this and there was a part, I appreciate the fact that there was a parentheses on the end of this that's been removed and I appreciate the cooperation in removing that. But I do want to make sure that when principals read this, they don't see a two-day waiting period, right?

[03:41:47] ma'am yeah I think I think this is a really good conversation for all of us because it's highlighting the need for professional development and clarity because we want to all read it the same I think to correct in that spirit right and I sent a question earlier to miss Sizemore Heiser with respect to I when I when I read over this initially I think oh you can't talk to this child unless you get this permission is that what this says and if not then please clarify and I want to make sure that our principals understand that as well

[03:42:23] correct so are you asking for clarification on that so the clarification on that is that in exigent circumstances or in an emergency circumstance we would expect our school principals or school leadership to speak to the child or intervene to keep the child safe as well as the other children safe as well as other staff safe right like safety is our priority what we're saying is if there's something about that incident once everyone's safe that might result in discipline that at that point we really want a parent to be part

[03:43:02] of that conversation or a trusted adult someone in the family who's familiar with that students communication needs to be part of that conversation should discipline result as a part of that conversation and that's really a step after making sure we've secured the safety of that child other children and any staff in the vicinity okay yeah thank you and I really appreciate that the question in the conversation and I agree I think it helps to clarify the professional development but I just wanted to make it clear that this isn't saying you can't speak to the child at all and it's not saying you can only

[03:43:41] speak to the child and exigent circumstances it's around a verbal written statement that's being collected for discipline purposes right so if you wants are you okay I mean you can talk to the child it's not a wall right it's just when you have those statements that you collect from students for discipline that may lead to a suspension so it's not even all discipline it's discipline that may lead to a suspension you want to make sure that there is supportive communications there's someone to the parent or someone who is familiar with the student to help support that statement so I just you know and I appreciate the conversation because I don't want any principal think they can't speak to a child at all or there's a wall or they and it's just if

[03:44:18] it's not an emergency but this it's that when we look at discipline proceedings those formal statements that's what we're looking at here you know things that that will be used in a discipline proceeding from the child you want to make sure that child has support thank you okay seeing that no other board members have comments um I just have a couple of sentences myself I just wanted to sincerely thank Dr. King and Dr. Boyd for reaching out to principals I know that was something I had asked for after our last meeting because I really

[03:44:48] We wanted to make sure we weren't doing anything unintentionally to impede the process operationalizing this good work. And I also want to extend a huge thank you to our ACSD and our SEPTA community members.

[03:45:08] I know they have worked tirelessly to collaborate with all of us to make sure that we got this wording just right. So with that, I will call for the vote. The motion is on the screen.

[03:45:24] All those in favor, Ms. Keyes-Gamara, Ms. Marin, Ms. Seismar-Hyser, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Mr. Frisch, Ms. McLaughlin, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Derenak-Koufax, Ms. Cohen, Ms. McCarsky, and myself.

[03:45:42] That is unanimous. I call on Ms. Toland, or Agenda Item 4.04, Kent Gardens Elementary School Boundary Study Scope.

[03:46:01] I call on Ms. Toland for a motion. is recommended that the Fairfax County School Board authorized the Kent Gardens Elementary School boundary study scope to include Chesterbrook Elementary School Churchill Road Elementary School Franklin Sherman Elementary School Kent Gardens Elementary School and Spring Hill Elementary School boundaries also Haycock Elementary School AAP and Churchill Road Elementary School AAP BOUNDARIES AND THE MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL BOUNDARIES FOR

[03:46:34] OPTIONS THAT MAY INVOLVE A SPLIT FEEDER IF IF HAYCOCK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LEMON ROAD ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND WEST GATE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ARE ADDED TO THE YEAH THIS IS JUST EXTRA INFORMATION IN THE

[03:46:59] SCRIPT UM IS THERE A SECOND MS SEIZEMORE HIZER MS TOLIN WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR MOTION YES PLEASE WE DISCUSSED THIS LAST AT OUR LAST MEETING THIS IS AN ADMINISTRATIVE STEP TO SET THE SCOPE for our facilities department to begin to develop scenarios for presentation this fall to our

[03:47:34] community based on some input with unanimous consent I moved to add Haycock elementary school to the list of schools included in the full boundary scope and one second seeing no objections I think that is in order with unanimous consent yes Ms. Toland just asked for unanimous consent to add Haycock Elementary School to the list of schools included in the full

[03:48:09] boundary scope and there's no objections so it is none you can you may continue so I'm just so that the public is fully aware what's happening here facilities and I have discussed the fact that we are interested in just broadening the scope slightly and we are acutely aware of Haycock Elementary School sitting at close to capacity at this point in time and nearby west falls church development that may impact

[03:48:46] enrollment at haycock the reason that we are just opening the scope a bit is to allow for any small adjustments to be made to the haycock attendance one way or the other either adding students or subtracting students as we look neighborhood by neighborhood in developing our scenarios for the fall doing this now will alleviate the need for an additional school board vote as we move through our boundary process if a situation should arise where we want to adjust the boundary for just a few homes this will have no impact on the middle school or high school boundaries my experience with the

[03:49:24] McLean-Langley boundary adjustment is that having the leeway to do small adjustments like this as we gain community input can be beneficial from all affected school communities will be part of the fall community participation efforts and were invited to the meeting that we had in april note there was one exception churchill road was added to the scoping subsequent to input we received at that april meeting so again fall is the time when we will be bringing forward specific scenarios for any

[03:49:58] proposed adjustments thank you again to our team and to the kent gardens community and the surrounding schools please watch our websites newsletters etc for further information thank you miss tollen miss Sizemore heisler would you like to speak to your second given the lateness of the hour i'll just say i really appreciate all the hard work that our facility staff and miss tollen has put into shepherding this i know this was from our the amendment passed to the cip that we passed in february and i'm um fully supportive of adding haycock but i also want

[03:50:34] want to just you know make sure that we are you know mindful the fact that it is very close to capacity and there's a lot of construction around that areas but I appreciate adding it just to make sure that we don't have one or two houses that get left off as we're doing the scoping so it's important to have the full breadth of what we can look at but I also just think this is this is a school that staff has worked very hard to try to implement many different solutions over the years to address the overcrowding but it is significantly overcrowded so I think it is a good point in time to really look at capacity solutions and look at some of these small boundary adjustments to help

[03:51:12] relieve the overcapacity issues at Kent Gardens. So I look forward to supporting this and I thank you Ms. Toland for bringing this forward. Thank you Ms. Sizemore Heiser. Dr. Anderson. Just really briefly I do want to say thank you to Ms. Toland for being so thoughtful about this because in order to be efficient and really responsive to your community you have to expand that they may not utilize all of these schools but having to come back to this board i think would have been an undue burden so thank you for having the foresight to go ahead and broaden your scope and i'll be supporting it

[03:51:47] thank you dr anderson i will seeing no more speakers lined up i will call for a vote on the motion as amended which is on the screen um all those in favor miss pekarski miss cohen Ms. Darenak-Koufax, Dr. Anderson, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Tolan, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, Ms. Maron, Ms. Keese-Gamara.

[03:52:14] It is unanimous, and I turn the gavel back over. Okay, item 4.05, amending the Capital Improvement Plan, Glasgow Middle School.

[03:52:35] I call on Dr. Anderson for a motion. Thank you. I move to amend the adopted FY 2428 Capital of Improvement Program, CIP, by adding Glasgow Middle School to Table 4, Priority Recommended Boundary Capacity Adjustments on page 39 of the adopted CIP with a scoping during fall of 2023.

[03:52:56] This will allow staff to do a full scoping to determine if a boundary change, a program change, or both are good options to reduce the capacity issues at Glasgow Middle School. Is there a second? I second. Dr. Anderson would you like to speak to your motion yes with unanimous consent I move to amend the main motion to read I move to direct the superintendent to complete the Glasgow middle school scoping study concurrently with the development of the proposed 2529 capital improvement program the initial scoping project will be added to the end of the existing FY 24/28 CIP work

[03:53:34] plan this project will be considered for inclusion in the priority recommended boundary capacity adjustment chart in the proposed FY 2529 CIP without objection since there is no objection the amendment will be accepted dr.

[03:54:01] Anderson would you like to provide additional remarks yes I would before I go ahead and get started on that I know there have been there were some questions to the initial proposal at all why is this happening at this point in July when our CIP is adopted in February. To that end, I'd like to ask Dr. Reed to weigh in in terms of what led us here. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I think that it's, I want to say it's been clear for a number of months that Dr. Anderson's had concerns about the size of Glasgow Middle School

[03:54:38] and has addressed that topic with me on multiple occasions. It's also, we've had a year where We've had -- it's my first year new to the division. We also had our lead oversight of facilities new to the division.

[03:54:57] And it's my understanding that we certainly had some confusion, certainly miscommunication, lack of clarity on specifically the process by which we would get this included in the chart for and the current sip for the February vote I'll own the responsibility for that at this point and one of the things I think that is important is to realize that moving forward I'm more familiar with the process and can make sure that we have the critical conversations at the

[03:55:32] critical time where they need to happen having said that initially when this topic came up we raised the concern I know on the part of staff around the work plan that was generated as a result of the February vote in the dialogue that we've had over the last week or so I think we've reached a reasonable solution where in which we're able to move forward with the scoping that Dr.

[03:56:00] Anderson's referring to to look at the possibility of mitigating the size of Glasgow Middle School as a part of the work plan for this fall but not to interfere with the originally scheduled project so we believe the staff have met mr. Smith mr. Fanshawe and I and have reviewed that work plan and believe we can complete that within the time of fall of 23 and come back to keep us as close to the schedule as we would have been had we included it in February of

[03:56:35] this spring so that is my explanation of how we're there and I support the amendment thank you very much for that I appreciate that because this is an issue that I've been speaking about pretty much since I got on the board there were some other attempts in terms of addressing the number of students at Glasgow and I do want to be sure to not use a term overcrowding because with the modular that is in place of school is at 94% capacity but it is still a middle school that has almost 1,800 students that is larger as you've heard from some

[03:57:11] speakers earlier that is larger than even John Lewis High School it is untenable 47 buses literally 1600 students being dismissed at a time and prior to this conversation today you've heard from other parents and you've received emails from those parents regarding the concerns that we have and also the is the administrators of having so many students and that school in addition the size of Glasgow is even beyond the capacity that is provided an FCPS policy in terms of size of middle schools it is well beyond that so it is

[03:57:48] this issue took years to get here and we should have addressed this multiple years ago but it is time for us to ensure that this community that is not harmed because of what Dr. Reed explained by having to lose a year of the process so I'm very appreciative of your ability to work with staff to really understand and address that the community is waiting to have this I I've worked on a boundary before and I have not had people asking for a boundary process so this is something that is being welcomed by the community to

[03:58:25] address the size particularly since we have two other middle schools that are under 900 students each so I'm really looking forward to having this work done I know the school community the the staff the principal they are looking to be able to service their students in a matter that is tenable because this has been very challenging with this high number of students so I would appreciate your support for this this evening but I do want to say a very quick thank you to members of CPDC and your work in dissecting this not once but twice this is the second time we've

[03:59:04] engaged in this in CPDC and I am glad to see that we are yielding some results thank you. Ms. Maren would you like to speak to your second? Yes please um you know the board is committed to making data-based decisions about the capital improvement program you know my colleagues and I have said that we want to make um want criteria on how to make decisions that it shouldn't be based on membership advocacy and I've certainly heard Dr. Anderson say this numerous times, but yet the data are showing that this middle school is way over capacity and the range of challenges just keeps growing. Also, let's remember Mason

[03:59:41] District is a special case when it comes to middle schools. This board approved action for the superintendent to look into why are the middle schools in Mason District of a different configuration of 6, 7, and 8 compared to other middle schools. And that came back kind of inconclusive, but yet here we are with another, you know, circumstance. So as much as we've talked tonight about governance and having processes, there also is an urgent need that has emerged here. And I think it's very much warranted to address this and then continue the work that the facilities department has done to map out how we more systematically and through data make decisions about capacity

[04:00:17] and facilities issues. I just want to say that I really appreciate Dr. Anderson, that you worked really hard talking with board members, trying to make sure that we could strike the balance with tonight's language.

[04:00:39] You worked with staff, the superintendent, and I really do hope that all of us can support this. You brought this forward very early on prior to the CIP being voted on. You had followed the best guidance that you understood from the superintendent's administration we were trying to be mindful of the projects list and in this regard the bottom line is we don't want to have a lost opportunity here you were very clear and understanding that this would be added to you know the end of the

[04:01:16] already existing work plan so I think the the depth and breadth of collaboration that's gone into this effort and it has been very helpful as a member of CPDC the comprehensive planning and development subcommittee for the board to really understand this at a deeper level as well I fully support this for the Mason community specifically Glasgow community we need to be messaging to all of our magisterial districts that when we recognize there is overcrowding that

[04:01:50] the use of of modulars is not a reason that then we're fine and meanwhile we've got capacity in other surrounding schools and to your point when communities are asking for this that is so unusual so I do hope everyone will support it tonight this case Camaro yes thank you and thank you for the shout out for CPDC I know we kind of traveled into an area as a result of some direction from the previous chair but it really I think has been helpful to have

[04:02:28] a hub of expertise in that committee and also having access to FPAC as well as staff kind of one-stop shopping and so I wanted to speak to this because we talked a little bit about making legislative intent clear right in in this particular situation we know that you communicated these concerns prior to the adoption of the CIP, but you received some information that was not as clear as it should have been at the time. And so one of the things that we talked about in CPDC was that we were

[04:03:07] going back, and one of my colleagues liked to call it a technical error. I like to call this action a type of retroactive correction. And I wanted to say that specifically because I know that sometimes these topics can become interesting or sticky or whatever word you choose but this is a special circumstance and I wanted to make that clear in the language before we adopt this so thank you for bringing it and allowing us to grow as a committee because I think I really do think it was as the more that

[04:03:43] we work together and support board members like yourself it really does help to ease the burden and we can operate a little bit more like a board supporting one another so thanks okay I don't see others that would like to speak I would also just like to thank Dr. Anderson for her collaborative efforts on this and I know staff has been very involved in you know this and spending a lot of time I made a joke to dr. Anderson earlier today that I felt

[04:04:19] like I spent more time in Glasgow in the last week that I spent on Kent Gardens um but you know so as someone uh also with a lot of you know facilities issues in my magisterial district and in a very engaged constituency um you know i appreciate you know where you're coming from and i and i all want to thank the glasgow community as well for um you know spending time to send us emails give us information speak at our meetings and you help us to understand what the issues are so thank you with that I will call for

[04:04:55] the vote on the motion as amended both the motion and the amendment are on the screen all those in favor Ms. Keyes Camara Ms. Marin Ms. Seisberheiser Ms. Corbett Sanders Mr. Frisch Ms. McLaughlin Dr. Anderson Mr. Koufax Ms. Cowan Ms. Makarski and myself that is unanimous I would like to call miss corporate sanders for a follow-in motion thank you madam chair i move to direct the

[04:05:34] superintendent to provide the board with guidance based on best practice practices and pedagogical research for the optimal size of elementary schools middle schools and high schools this guidance should be used to inform future capital improvement plans and with unanimous consent i I WOULD LIKE TO MODIFY THE MOTION TO ADD THE WORDS THAT WERE LEFT OUT, WHICH SAY, AND PROGRAM MAKE UP.

[04:06:02] SO IT SHOULD BE SIZE AND PROGRAM MAKE UP. NEW SPEAKER: ANY OBJECTION? SEEING NO OBJECTION, THE AMENDMENT WILL BE ACCEPTED. DO WE HAVE A SECOND? NEW SPEAKER: SECOND.

[04:06:17] NEW SPEAKER: THANK YOU. NEW SPEAKER: I THINK WE DID THAT. NEW SPEAKER: MS. CORBET SANDERS, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK? NEW SPEAKER: YES. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. THIS IS REALLY A PROCESS THAT WE NEED TO PUT IN PLACE to really get the best thinking from our superintendent on how we should approach future activities or future challenges such as what we've seen with Glasgow and other schools of do we include things in our capital

[04:06:51] improvement program do we need to have more specific guidance on more specific guidance on boundaries and this is really asking for the best thinking of our superintendent going forward Dr. Anderson would you like to speak to your second yes briefly I could not be more supportive of this because absent this kind of data this kind of research this kind of guidance then we get what we have right now in many of our schools Glasgow included

[04:07:27] I would love for this work to be the driver in terms of our decision making and also to spur staff recommendations to make adjustments once we have schools that are falling outside of said guidance.

[04:07:42] So it should not be work that is arbitrary. It should be work that has a criteria which I believe this kind of research will provide. Thank you. Ms. Cohen.

[04:07:58] I appreciate the follow-on motion here. You know, I think my only concern is there's a lot of really great research out there about right-sizing schools, and we still find ourselves right back in the same place that we continue to be in, which is I look at my sully neighbor to me, next door to me, and, you know, we have overcrowded school on top of overcrowded school with nowhere to put anybody.

[04:08:26] We had this conversation three years ago, the same conversation that Dr. Anderson did, about looking at boundary scoping for Chantilly because of this severe overcrowding. And the answer is there is nowhere for our kids to go.

[04:08:44] So I guess, you know, what I would say, this is great. Of course, as a parent of a secondary school with 4,500 kids in it, you know, I would argue that it is certainly not right-sized for the best educational practices and educational experiences for our kids.

[04:09:03] Meg and I both have the distinction of having two of the three secondary schools in the county that we represent. And, you know, I mean, I think we all agree they're too big. And what is the answer? And so I guess, you know, I, again, am thrilled at the idea that this is going to be part and parcel of the conversations that we're having.

[04:09:27] And I guess the question that we leave ultimately, especially those of us leaving the board to you and your team, is then what? So I appreciate this, and I hope that it will be used to guide, since we unfortunately are not in the business of new schools anymore, though we would like to be.

[04:09:47] um you know that this is more a conversation of of how do we right size so thanks for the follow-on motion the size for hyzer thank you and miss cohen said um several of the same things that i wanted to say but just you know i feel your pain with the size of glasgow whether there's a parent of two students who went to a secondary school where the middle school and high schoolers had the same passing period so there's 4 300 students passing in the hallways at the same time middle schools and high schools as much as they did a lot of work to try to keep them separate the at lake paddock the middle school is in the middle of the school and the high schools went back and

[04:10:26] forth so i do understand the importance of right sizing but i think this is a really good start i will say especially with the new board when eight new members coming on board having some guidance from staff on kind of how to look at how to approach the cip and the right sizing and maybe it can lead into a really holistic conversation about how we right size our schools and looking again at the sixth grade and middle school option and really that's why I'm really glad that we have optimal size and program makeup based on research because I think that's gonna really drive a lot of conversations and thoughtful conversations around the CIP going forward but I feel your pain with

[04:11:05] the school size I know it is challenging I personally my students had a great experience at Lake Braddock but the size is big and there's a lot in the hallways thank you miss McLaughlin I know it's a very late hour but dr. Reed I do want to just give a little history lesson this goes back to before Koufax and I were on the board and it was when the community was questioning the closure of Clifton Elementary and when we got on the board there was many of us who talked about then closing Clifton because it dropped below 400 well then

[04:11:42] what's the best practice and pedagogical research about what is the right size. And so we've got some elementary schools like one in my own neighborhood that is under really close to 300 students for a K-6. But we closed Clifton and that one's still sitting open while I can jog to any elementary school within a mile. So there's just things in our system that have not made sense for quite some time. And I just think that under your leadership with your

[04:12:18] team we're in a really good space to use this follow-on motion to just help us continuously improve as a division and I really look forward to supporting this I want to thank Miss Corbett Sanders for doing this this is so important because when we are the 10th largest school system the United States if we're not being driven by what's here just as another tool for your team then we really miss an opportunity to do our best work on behalf of students staff and the county as a body mr. Kofax yes happy to follow miss McLaughlin I do want to add

[04:12:58] to that dr. Reed there was a study done we have a study you know let's get our staff to look at that and so you can start from there to you know I don't think it was probably done within the last seven years so it's one of those things that when you look at optimal sizing not much of the data would change there I think some of the things that Ms. Cohen brought up were also very much reasons why we didn't move forward in some areas of this so you know start

[04:13:34] there move forward I will support this but we we are as many colleagues noted kind of boxed in in some places so thank you okay I don't see other board members that would like to speak I just have a couple of comments just along these lines too this is just one piece Dr. Reed of many items that probably need to be looked at for best practices around capacity etc you know when we do

[04:14:09] our renovations we generally add capacity to the schools just to kind of take advantage of you know being there and doing the work but I'm not always sure you know we need that capacity or if we're building above what is the optimal capacity you know it's something we need to think about however it's also a great opportunity for if we're right-sizing the elementary school perhaps we've got room for pre-k you know and we're looking for our pre-k you know spaces etc across our community so you know there's some opportunity there

[04:14:45] to be looked at as well um yeah so there you know so there's just a lot anyway um i do appreciate the motion and um at this point in time not seeing others that would wish to speak or they vote so all those in favor miss keith gamara um size merheiser miss colbert sanders mr frisch miss mclaughlin dr anderson miss darren koufax miss cowen miss mcarsky and myself with miss

[04:15:22] marion away from the table that motion passes okay we are on to 4.06 contract notification and approval during the school board's summer recess i call in mr frisch for a motion thank you i move that the board gives the superintendent authority on behalf of the board to approve contracts included on the list provided to the board on july 12 2023 and after consultation with

[04:16:01] with the chair and vice chair to sign on behalf of the board other contracts that need to be authorized during the recess. - Is there a second? Mr. Frisch, would you like to speak to your motion? - Very briefly, this is a new usual step and something that will have to be remedied in the board's policies, but for the sake of continuity of services and making sure that we maintain our world-class school division this motion provides the

[04:16:39] superintendent with the ability to execute a number of contracts while we are in recess that she would not be able to without this authority while we are not in uh in session so that's covered sanders yes thank you madam chair this really is a housekeeping item that i believe should probably be included in the future housekeeping items that we do every year in July.

[04:17:13] And it's a housekeeping item that ensures that we continue to be a going concern. And so what the superintendent and her team have already done is provided as a detailed overview of what we can expect to be contracted during the recess.

[04:17:36] And at the same time, there is some flexibility working with the chair and vice chair to address extenuating circumstances if necessary. And so this really is something that is fully consistent with our policy on procurement and oversight.

[04:17:59] and I appreciate that the superintendent and her team worked so closely to find a way of allowing us to enjoy a recess while they are working hard to open our schools, so thank you.

[04:18:18] - Thank you. Ms. McLaughlin. - Dr. Reed, as you know, we spoke extensively about my concerns on this request, and as I shared with you, I trust you implicitly FOR YOUR ABILITY TO MAKE TREMENDOUSLY GOOD JUDGMENTS AND DECISIONS FOR THE DIVISION.

[04:18:41] BUT I HAVE JUST ENDURED THIS FOR TOO MANY YEARS, FINDING MYSELF AS A BOARD MEMBER, HAVING THIS COME TO US, INFORMATION COMING VERY LATE, INFORMATION BEING INCOMPLETE, AND GETTING SIX PAGES OF, YOU KNOW, A RANDOM LIST OF SOME CONTRACTS THAT ARE GOING TO BE APPROVED, need just notification they weren't sorted not even by date and at some point I just feel like when when I am being asked as a board member to go ahead and signal my public approval it's just

[04:19:16] too much and so I I do want to say that my voting no on this has nothing to do with my lack of trust in you. But we should never have found ourselves in this situation, not even in the least. And I do hope that you will help our division get better at this so that the next board will not find themselves in this situation. And I do want to share for my colleagues and for the public that you have been extraordinarily patient in listening to me and others about our

[04:19:56] desire to get better but when I'm I'm faced with consulting contracts that are anywhere from three million dollars to eleven million dollars when this board just put in its own policy on consulting contracts ways to tighten up our approval process we just seem to have a ways to go so I but I wanted to sure you and the public and anyone watching knows my trust and confidence and your leadership is

[04:20:26] at the very top thank you just I want to remind the public in particular that part of the reason that we're here with this housekeeping motion is that I guess a couple of months ago maybe more than that during this past year we increased the the number of contracts that the school board is taking a look at before they're approved we change the thresholds for dollar amounts high contracts so the school board is seeing a lot more contracts than

[04:21:03] they have before so as we discussed earlier among our colleagues and with dr. Reed you know there's some changes and procedures that need to just be tightened up or it's straightened out around contracts and notifying the school board and I'm hopefully next summer we won't be in the same position so you know we'll have that straightened out thank you very much for comments at this point I would like to call for the vote all those in favor that is miss

[04:21:36] Sizemore Heiser Miss Corbett Sanders Mr. Frisch Mr. Koufax just Cohen and Miss Bukarski and myself all those opposed Dr. Anderson Miss McLaughlin and with he's Camara thank you thank you okay so that motion passes 4.07 community participation changes icon Miss McLaughlin for a motion I move to

[04:22:16] approve the changes to the school board's governance manual and the meeting script language as outlined in the attached documents is there a second second miss McLaughlin would you like to speak to your motion yes chairman Tolan. With unanimous consent, I move to amend the motion language to read. I move to approve the changes to the school board's governance manual and meeting script language as outlined in the attached documents entitled 7-13-23, Community Participation and Video Testimony, the redlined

[04:22:55] revised version 2 PDF, and 7-13-23, Community Participation Script Language, redlined version revisions two-point PDF without objection since there is no objection the amendment will be accepted miss McLaughlin would you like to provide additional comments just briefly it's given the late hour I do want to just share what was sent to my school board colleagues as the public engagement

[04:23:31] committee chair we and the committee unanimously approved these recommended changes that are shown in the red line versions. They're very modest. There's some language cleanup in terms of where we reference community versus citizen, where we reference videotaping versus the fact that we don't tape so much as we record now. That we wanted to have the script updated that we read before citizen community participation so that just again our speakers would know what

[04:24:07] to expect prior to their coming, presenting their remarks to the board, one of those changes was trying to provide some physical and respectful space to the speakers when they come up to the podium.

[04:24:24] So in general, you know, we had presented them and sent them out to all the board members. There didn't seem to be any concerns. So it was originally going to be a consent agenda item, but then with some of the technical language changes, we felt it best to bring it forward as an action item.

[04:24:44] So to my colleagues, I hope you'll all support this and we'll move forward. Mr. Frisch, would you like to speak to your second? Very briefly because Ms. McLaughlin covered everything except we also, in these changes, are making allowances for flexibility with time and having the timer stopped for speakers NEED TRANSLATION SERVICES OR HAVE ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY SO THAT'S BEING CHANGED AS WELL WITH FEEDBACK FROM THE BOARD. OKAY SEE NO BOARD MEMBERS THAT WOULD LIKE TO PROVIDE ADDITIONAL

[04:25:19] COMMENTS. I WILL CALL FOR THE VOTE ON THE MOTION AS AMENDED. BOTH THE MOTION AND THE AMENDMENT ARE ON THE SCREEN. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR. MS. BRITKARSKI, MS. COHEN, MS. DERANET-KOFAX, DR. ANDERSON, Ms. McLaughlin, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Ms. Sizemore Heiser, and Ms. Karen Keyes-Gamara, and myself. That is everyone at the table. So this motion passes. Item number five, consent agenda.

[04:25:54] Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure, Robert's rules, provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by 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 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

[04:26:24] consent agenda hearing and seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved number six new business 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 number seven board committee reports i call a miss keys gamara for a comprehensive planning

[04:26:59] development committee update thank you um i'll try to summarize i know we have to go back into close we met in cpdc met on july 11th i want to thank my colleagues megan mclaughlin dr ricardi anderson and our interim chief operating officer mr chuck fanshawe for attending we discussed and review the review of the cip community engagement framework which we will provide a copy of two

[04:27:30] board members um for your review um it is much improved um and we look forward to hearing your feedback the the goal is to fully communicate to the community uh when we are making facilities changes how they can participate and make sure that we have a greater transparency we also talked about the efficiency of handling facilities issues and as you heard tonight we've had a few board members utilize cpdc including our new chair as well as dr anderson um let's see we provided the

[04:28:10] committee an update on the reorganization and structuring which we'll discuss more later and the staff also provided updates on key facility projects including Glasgow and the Dunloring renovation project and the objective or the goal is to at least to continue to report to the board so that we have greater board knowledge of what is happening within with our facilities thank you thank you Ms. Cohen would you like to give an audit committee report yes we met yesterday

[04:28:45] and today. I'm sorry, it's so late. Yeah, now it's not today anymore. And did our follow-up presentation, looked at continuous monitoring for Q1 and Q2, looked at the audit plan that we approved tonight, and also had a preview and then got to see today our IT cybersecurity security audit report. Thanks so much to Mr. Frisch and Ms. Derenak-Koufax. We were a tiny but mighty team the last two meetings, and we are excited that we'll be having some

[04:29:22] new citizen members join us shortly. Thanks. Ms. McLaughlin, a public engagement community report. Well, you all voted on the work we've been doing, so the only other thing I guess I would add is that I really appreciate that Mr. Frisch and Dr. Anderson have continued to speak with individual board members about how we can make our school board standing

[04:29:54] committees be more effective and expansive to the work we do and so that will be carried over for the next lucky individual serving on the public engagement committee but other than that I think we've covered it quite well this evening thank you for those reports the next item on the agenda is board matters considering the fact that it is after midnight and we will be going back

[04:30:28] into our closed session without objection we've been doing that all night without objection we will not have word matters um I did want to welcome Ms. Karim again and thank you for sticking it out to the very end um thank you for being here we look forward to working with you um happy summer everyone this meeting is adjourned no no no I'm sorry oh I'm sorry because we're going into close

[04:30:58] I'm sorry madam chair um point of order thank you um since we're going back into close and AND COMING BACK TO CERTIFIED CLOSED, MAY WE -- I DON'T WANT THE EXACT -- DO YOU REMEMBER, MR. MORGAN, WHAT THE EXACT WORDING WAS WE DID THIS? NO, I DO NOT, BUT I THINK IF IT'S JUST CLEAR THAT YOU'RE JOURNING UNTIL -- OR RECESSING UNTIL AFTER THE CLOSED SESSION, THAT WAY YOU CAN CERTIFY SEND A JOURN.

[04:31:27] WITHOUT OBJECTION, CAN WE CHANGE THAT TO RECESSING UNTIL -- I APPRECIATE IT. IT'S OVERZEALOUS. THANK YOU, MADAM CHAIR. THANK YOU FOR THE CORRECTION.

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