Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Date: Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 41m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByBhUl0zlCU
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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[00:03:19] - No, I said fortunately with a capital F, please. So, we have a jam-packed day. We are starting out with our work session to go over the proclamation and recognition changes that we've had the opportunity to have a look at over the last several weeks.

[00:03:39] I'll come back to that in a second. We've got a lunch break. We have a closed session with two topics that we will be taking a look at. and then we are fortunate to be hearing from two of our advisory committees this afternoon, CTAC and HRAC.

[00:03:59] The proclamation and recognition changes, we did do a little Google poll with school board members just to kind of see where people were on these various changes. Our clerk, Ms. Setlo, has done an incredible job of pulling together information or even initially presenting some ideas about what we could possibly do to streamline this process and make it more friendly, number one, for her office, and number two, for the public and for board members.

[00:04:32] So it works out well today to just kind of run through these so that it's open and transparent also to the public what we're looking at changing as we move forward with proclamations and recognitions. So we're in a tight time schedule.

[00:04:48] So what we were kind of thinking about, because these are pretty straightforward, is we'll run through each one. We'll time on comments, let's say, can we say two minutes? Because I think it's, you know, each we'll run through each one and make sure that we can get consensus.

[00:05:08] And then hopefully if we get the ideas to get through all of them and have consensus in each of these areas, And then we can have it, we did have it on new business for our last meeting. So we could put it on for a vote this week and hopefully move forward with some of these changes.

[00:05:29] Anything that we do not get to today, we will turn over to our public education committee. But we're really, really hoping that we can get through it. So with that, I am going to turn it over to, pardon me? Public engagement. What did I say?

[00:05:44] Public education. Oh, public education. Yes. Public Engagement Committee, thank you very much. So with that, let me turn it over to Ms. Sutlow. - Good morning. So we're going to start with proposed changes that have a majority of school board member approval, at least seven school board members approved of the chosen option.

[00:06:07] I'm just going to run through them. If we have a consensus, then we'll move on. If we don't, we'll obviously stop and have a discussion about them. So the first one, majority approval of exact language, the way it currently reads right now. It's ambiguous as to whether the language has to be approved or whether it's the idea.

[00:06:26] So the new proposed language is at least, this is in order of what we received consensus on based on the polls.

[00:06:46] - So this document was posted as 9/26/23 work session, proclamations/changes.

[00:07:11] - Are we okay to continue? Okay. new language would be at least 48 hours in advance of a meeting a draft of the proclamation must be circulated and the proclamation language be approved by a majority of the board or the proclamation will not be presented at that meeting the language that is new is added and read and underlined and the question is is whether we have a consensus of the board on this language miss Marin do you have a comment yeah I just have a comment I would suggest that it says that it is finished 48 hours in advance I think the challenge

[00:07:46] we have is that things are getting finished up within that 48 hours and so I prefer language that says whatever either delineating 72 hours out or whatever but it's 48 hours in advance the language will be done okay so it's not a draft is circulated it's that the language is finalized or it closes but again we're not voting on it behind the scenes so I guess is it draft until we actually vote on it or is it draft until the other parts of it kick in yes

[00:08:21] welcome comments well thank you you know I think that we've used the word draft in different ways lately and I certainly would like to get clarification I mean surely everything that we post is draft until we approve it and I think saying it's draft is a little misleading because it makes it seem like this isn't the thing that is there to be voted on so I'd rather not call it draft so what

[00:09:01] proposed language perhaps or posted language what if we said at least 48 hours in advance of a meeting a draft of the proclamation must be circulated and the proclamation language must be finalized and approved by the majority of the board I think those are two different things the draft gets circulated as one part and the draft gets approved and posted is another and conflating the two is what causes it to be hectic I'll stop there thank you dr anderson i don't have the exact language but something along the lines of perhaps um all school

[00:09:39] board members because we have to provide that why on the document right so all school board member feedback and i guess decision i hate to say it that way i don't think that's the right word must be completed 48 hours this will take care of whatever the version is called it's not the feedback that this is speaking to that's the feed right i i understand that but hang on a second to her point i've been recognized i apologize um so if the question is what is this

[00:10:17] for this is for the clerk's office having final versions that are approved by the board for us to consider at the meeting okay this is not about whether i've got edits to it or whatever this is telling the author of a proclamation that they have to have everything done 48 hours before.

[00:10:36] And so to Melanie's point, I can see the ambiguity by calling it a draft. It could just stay at least 48 hours in advance of a meeting. The proclamation must be circulated and the proclamation language be approved by a majority of the board because it's saying at least 48 hours before. That means all of that has to be done 48 hours before a meeting in order for the proclamation to be considered at that next meeting. There's all kinds of stuff that you're not going to spell out that happens before that 48-hour deadline. But for the purposes of this, this is just about when it has to be concluded. When does the process have to tie up 48 hours in

[00:11:14] advance? I think we're saying the same thing, Carl. I was exactly trying to get to that point because I think what Melanie, what Ms. Marin is trying to have us avoid is 48 hours on Tuesday, Here's my stuff, and everybody has to wrestle with it, and Wednesday's hectic, and Thursday's hectic.

[00:11:31] I think we're getting to the same thing, but clearly the language doesn't express itself in a way that we all read it in that way. Ms. Culver-Sanders, did you have an idea? No, just briefly, I don't think we can legally approve something before the, so I would say, has the support supported, not approved?

[00:11:54] Ms. Amaze, did you have a comment? Yeah, I guess I wanted to, like, take a step back and think about this, because when we have recognitions, that's what we're discussing. Like, that's the point where, you know, we have it, it's been already agreed upon, somebody has to read it, and we move on.

[00:12:11] With proclamations, everybody gets to comment, people, you know, there's opportunity, somebody is presenting that, presumably someone is championing that. And it's like a motion. Somebody's bringing a motion, somebody's seconding the motion, people can amend the motion, and we move on. So I'm really struggling to see how this is not just like trying to police and restrict as opposed to create opportunity because either way that can be amended.

[00:12:36] If someone is uncomfortable with something that is in a proclamation, that should be able to be amended live at the session. And we've seen practically where that made sense. You know, one time it was like, okay, we have to change a month. Does that mean we just like postpone, cancel because the month in there is wrong or like some semantic inaccuracy is in there?

[00:12:56] Or sometimes we end up at a place where, frankly, some colleagues are not comfortable with the kind of language that's put forward. So if we're trying to arrive at a consensus and that only arises days before it, and that's a timely proclamation, do we then just scratch it?

[00:13:12] And it can't be postponed the next time because it's meant to recognize something that weak, right? So I find this to be strange. I think with the recognitions, that's different. But again, this is motion parliamentary procedure allows anyone to amend a motion at the at the meeting So I I urge us to consider the distinction there I feel like we're thinking of this as all just recognitions and resolutions whereas this proclamations are different People should have the opportunity to amend those live if they need to miss Turner cofix

[00:13:45] So in listening to everybody I want to I would encourage people to think this way the proclamation language It is much the same as the recognition. It is an honor of something. We are honoring something. We are proclaiming something that we are in support of. While I hear you, Ms. Omesh, about needing to recommend it in front of the public, sometimes I think that could be embarrassing to those who are getting the proclamation.

[00:14:19] Sometimes, particularly for these things, things that are honors, things that are awards, things where we want to recognize the community or a business for certain things, I think the specificity of the language is better worked behind the scenes rather than at the table.

[00:14:36] I don't find this language restrictive in the way that you do, so that's a difference of opinion. And, Ms. Marin, if you are uncomfortable with saying it's a draft, at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting, the proclamation must be circulated.

[00:14:53] You could just take out the draft. I don't see any harm in that particularly because we are, if you are following my thought process, at least for one board member, then you are coming to consensus prior to, and what's sitting there is something that the community or business will be honored and recognized for.

[00:15:14] Okay, so at this point, I'm hearing that taking the word draft out of there makes sense. You know, the comment I would make, I think, is along the lines of Materna at Cofax.

[00:15:34] The key thing here is 48 hours in advance. Just what we are trying to avoid is, you know, a scramble to prepare this honor or the proclamation for an organization or a person 24 or 10 hours before the meeting and of course miss image anyone at the table can you know make us a subsequent motion that you're absolutely correct but what we're trying to do is get a majority of the board to agree you know well in advance so that it's really organized mr. fish

[00:16:12] thank you so mr. Mace's point yes I think that these are motions that anybody could amend at the table if they so choose or they can at least try to amend it at the table i think part of what this entire process not just this nugget this sorry this item uh is striving to do is to bring some order and clarity to a process that was taking over a large portion of our meetings and in in doing this it's basically trying to um give the author

[00:16:48] of a proclamation some idea as to whether they want to even bring the topic as an example there is a method for somebody to bring a proclamation to our our dais as a motion without going through this process and the board can choose to do that or not but this is the process that's defined in the governance manual i think in in dr anderson and miss marron's point about bringing some clarity to what exactly we're saying here what do people think of this language in order

[00:17:22] for a proclamation to be considered at a meeting comma all work must be completed at least 48 hours before the meeting comma including uh okay in order for a proclamation to be considered at a meeting comma all work must be completed at least 48 hours before the meeting comma including where Where is it? Pick up. Including securing majority support from the board, period.

[00:18:02] Now, you don't have to get into the circulation of this, that, or the other, because it could take, if you start three weeks before, it could take you two drafts to get majority support from the board, right? So this just speaks specifically to what this deadline means. All of that has to be done before 48 hours in advance. So it would be, in order for a proclamation to be considered at a meeting comma all work must be completed at least 48 hours before the meeting comma including

[00:18:32] securing majority support from the board period miss amaze yeah i mean i guess i just wanted to elevate a couple of things one yes it might take certain meetings to like get at a consensus but i think that again poses a practical problem of when things are timely if something you know if we've passed africa if nobody's happy with african-american history month's language and okay i guess that's actually a resolution fine. Caribbean Heritage Month, someone's not happy with something that's in there and now we're discussing it and it's not timely anymore and we're going to postpone it to

[00:19:09] the next meeting, that already puts us a month late and we're no longer in a window where it makes sense to do it anymore. We risk that with every possible proclamation that can arise. Sometimes we're recognizing a day, a week, a month, so this puts that practical constraint. I also, I guess I wanted to clarify too that when we say we're trying to avoid the public kind of chaos, I actually completely agree this is limiting us two days from being able to have discussions and resolving that in advance of the public meeting if something arises even if it's minor prior to the meeting we're now saying actually you have to bring an amendment because we can't discuss that anymore

[00:19:47] 48 hours in advance with other motions we have the courtesy 48 hours i don't think anyone's against the idea of a courtesy like we should stick by 48 hours but we're saying here unlike other motions If it's not 48 hours, sorry, too bad, chance is over, which frankly, like in a board where there's always a distribution of power in a certain way and people feel like they're disadvantaged or in the minority, depending on how the cards fall, sometimes that will mean someone's just going to pull up a stunt and in the meeting they're going to move to bring a proclamation because they're going to feel sufficiently disrespected at some point.

[00:20:22] we've seen that happen and I'm thinking of even like the teach truth thing we didn't have a majority for that we had to tweak it play with it it was games all over the place until we got to a place where everyone felt comfortable that would never have seen the light of day if we didn't allow for this 48 hour back and forth to get everyone on board and to have a cohesive yes vote by everyone so what I mean which we didn't even land at the end but I think the 48 hours actually helps us end up in a place where everyone can come together and we're not thinking of the practical consequences of what we're trying to limit here. I don't understand the intentions behind it. Ms. Cohen? Yeah, I think, I guess I'm

[00:21:02] struggling with this a little bit. I guess my question would be, I mean, this is your bookend, right? Like you could send the language months ahead if you wanted to. You could send it weeks ahead if you wanted to. I think to me what this allows for is that, you know, we all have a million things that are happening as we lead up to the day of the meeting. And in the past, we have seen substantive changes that somebody sends at one o'clock in the afternoon the day of a meeting and and there's no way that 12 of us have seen it and so i look at this as trying to mitigate

[00:21:40] you know people feeling exactly as you're saying that they weren't a part of the process this gives us plenty of time um to work through it and you know people to submit their comments ahead of time and i mean i find this really very reasonable and so i my concern is we continue to circle the drain here i think the language that we had already had seven people who had approved it and so i guess my confusion is i'm not sure why we all why we're i'm totally fine with the change that melanie said but i feel like we need to move on i mean this is this is like we are never going

[00:22:20] to change this and it will never get better if we can't move together so i would just like us to take a vote i would like to call the question all right let's see a show of hands for consensus on i guess the proposed language the i'm i think we're looking at the the purple there the proposed language in order for a proclamation to be considered at a meeting all work must be completed at least 48 hours before the meeting including securing majority support from the board

[00:23:00] Can I see a show of hands? Four, five, six, seven, eight. So we have a consensus on that one. It would be the proposed language at the bottom.

[00:23:25] So, you know, and I think Mr. Frisch already said it too. Really the spirit of what we're trying to do here is make the proclamation and recognition process a little bit more smooth, particularly prior to the meeting.

[00:23:41] You know, keep in mind that our school board office has to post everything for the meeting as well, and we're trying really hard to post things well in advance because it's more transparent to the public as well.

[00:23:56] So there are a lot of things happening in the school board office leading up to that meeting time, and we're trying to streamline that. That's really the spirit of this. Okay, moving on to the next one, setting recognition language.

[00:24:17] currently it is unclear as to how we're dealing with recognition language which is different than proclamation language as a reminder recognition language gets read we'll deal with by who later but it gets read um the board does not vote on it they do you all do not speak to it it is something something that um we have annual recognitions that are listed in the board governance manual so this would outline how we would deal with that language the red underlined is the new language we would add so we would add in for each recognition the school board office staff will annually draft the recognition language and obtain initial approval

[00:24:56] of the recognition language from a majority of the board at least 40 hours 48 hours in advance of the meeting at which at which the recognition will be read so that is the new language that we're adding in miss keys camara i'm sorry to ask for this clarification but it's something that's always bothered me and that is the difference between recognitions and resolutions and if we have similarly situated groups split between recognitions and resolutions then i'm concerned

[00:25:31] about that creating a type of disparity with respect to how we deal with similarly situated groups and people can feel slighted so is there any way that in including this we can see the distinction between recognitions and resolutions the governance manual does already speak to that thank you can we put it up there so it's a part so people know what we're talking about

[00:26:12] one second if that takes some time and you guys want to come back to that that's fine i just dr anderson do you want to make a comment yeah just i just wanted to put something in the room

[00:26:45] um i'm looking at the list on page 86 of the recognitions to which we would not be speaking and i think the current language is that we would do this in the last three in the board matters let's just be real board matters is at the end of the night nobody's there that's one board matters is also often um edited out omitted because of whatever the reasons sometimes we have to go back and sometimes the hour is late i'm just really concerned that some of these things that are on that list that do not permit any kind of commentary from the board i don't know if it

[00:27:22] serves us um i'm looking at some of these things like black history month veterans day these are things that there are people in the audience who do come for those proclamations and we say nothing i i'm not sure if that really is the best way for us to honor it just seems too perfunctory just to have it be read and just moved on i just wanted to offer that in the room mr frisch i agree with dr anderson but every meeting where we complain to each other about

[00:28:00] the length of the meeting typically includes 90 minutes to two hours of proclamations and resolutions beforehand where every board member speaks to every resolution now that's an exaggeration but not by much um and so i think we need to have a conversation and part of this is like this whole thing kind of talks about it around the edges right like around how do we shorten this process to shorten our meetings um that may not be saying there's no discussion about resolutions

[00:28:37] right but one of the ideas that was proposed in this was like if you've got a proclamation there will only be three people who speak to it and the proclamation maker will help facilitate who those people are if if the board doesn't want to limit any of this stuff that's fine but nobody should complain about the length of our meetings um because almost always what drags our meetings on is we've all been a part of it where we didn't plan on speaking about a proclamation or resolution and then four people speak and in your head you go is it going to be five and then it's six and

[00:29:14] then it's seven well now i've got to do it um and so at some point the board has to wrestle with the fact that we are asking people to come to our meeting and sit there for two hours while each of us speak to each proclamation that is on uh up for consideration um and i don't know what the right solution to that is but some of these things are designed to get at that this is one of those things right another one of the things that are in here is how long we get to speak for one of the other things was you know how many people get to speak and i get that none of us

[00:29:50] want to be limited in any way but that's what makes our meetings long okay quickly we have several other speakers so the reason i pulled this up and thank you dr anderson for highlighting what my concern is if we can look at the list itself of what because i only see one thing the okay recognitions these are the things that we can't speak to is that correct recognitions and then

[00:30:25] resolutions do we have the resolutions resolutions are the same as proclamations we've changed the name and so proclamations you can speak to although that is something we'll discuss later so all of those things that we annually speak to are in within recognitions is that correct that we tip it but that we speak to every year so let you know what let's look miss Cohen I know miss Cohen and miss Sizemore Heiser did a lot of work on this in the last year so I'm gonna put you guys on the spot to maybe explain because I think you probably have the most in-depth

[00:31:05] knowledge sure i think you're absolutely right what the only thing that that stayed the same because we felt like it wasn't our place to change it that the board needed to change it anything that was a recognition stayed a recognition anything that was a resolution became a proclamation to your point that does not necessarily this this board i imagine it not the last five boards like i don't know who made that decision so i completely agree with you that like why would Hispanic heritage be a recognition and then Jewish American heritage be a proclamation?

[00:31:43] Totally, totally agree with you. And I wonder if you guys might have thoughts on how do we bring that back into this venue? Because I agree with you. Here's what I'm trying to get to. If we're talking about a group of people, they should all be in the same category.

[00:32:01] Either we speak to them or we don't speak to them. Because we have people in the community that are looking for that. but when you have some that are and some that aren't aren't that's a disparity my recommendation is we figure out a way to limit the number of people that may speak to each of these i've suggested that before three four people whatever but when people start seeing different groups of people treated differently it raises a flag that's my point miss heismerheiser i mean i

[00:32:40] have a comment on my time i just wanted to share some of the background for this piece of it and And when Ms. Cohen and I went through the list of what was already what we did every year for recognitions and resolutions, and this is two years ago now, I think, we tried to streamline it so it wouldn't be so many. So for example, we didn't do any Muslim American, Jewish American, we didn't do any religious based ones.

[00:33:02] We did, this is why we have Arab American and Hispanic, but we didn't, that was just a distinction that we had made that eventually came to the board, I think a couple of years ago in a work session. doesn't mean there isn't space to maybe look at that differently and i agree with you we wrestled with that but that was one of the distinctions we tried to make so there wasn't so many that that we could then leave room so i think if we want to open this list up to sort of i think miss kees kamar you made a really good point about we don't want to treat if we want to open this list up i think that makes sense to open that list up to say are there you know recognitions you want to add so every group is treated the same that we do but that was i think through that i just wanted to

[00:33:40] that was a distinction between religious and you know identity based so that was that so i can take my turn in my my comments i just wanted to clarify that it's your turn thank you um i appreciate that and i think you know one thing that i i you know i really appreciate everything we're lifting up and i agree with you miss keys tomorrow we don't want to look like we're treating differently but one of the things that i hear regularly from the community all over the county is why do you guys make us wait till 9, 10, 11 o'clock to actually be able to watch the business of the board, right? Whether you're talking about the budget or CIP, whatever. And we spend

[00:34:19] a lot of time on proclamations. The flip that I hear, or resolutions, however we want to call them, the flip I hear is, well, how come six of your colleagues spoke to this, but you didn't? Do you not care about this issue? Right? And so I think if we put in some really strict rules about the number of people speaking or whether there's only two people speaking nobody speaks, and it's easy to say, look, we're trying to streamline our meetings so we can get to the business, so we can hear a public comment at an early enough hour, we can get to the business of the board, while still recognizing groups and days and events that we all feel very strongly are important to recognize and our community feels strongly, but we don't need all of us to speak to it, understand we all feel, you know, we support

[00:34:59] it, that's how we're doing this proclamation or recognition, but we're also trying to balance getting to the meeting. I think when we have these hard line rules it's easy to explain to the public what the purpose of it is and why it's not a statement whether we support or not it's more of a statement of trying to balance these important recognitions for our community and balancing getting to our work at a reasonable hour. So that's why I think it's important to have these limitations in place and that's why I think we structured it that way in the first place. I will gift you back my 25 seconds. Thank you and we have a few people that haven't had the opportunity to speak on this yet.

[00:35:34] dr anderson oh did i think you did i'm sorry i think you did what we're really talking about is meeting management that's really it um my huh self-discipline yeah self-discipline respect for each other and for the audience that comes so my suggestion would be to make it very simple you actually amend the um script that the chair reads as uh and only three people or you know name

[00:36:08] a number will be speaking to this resolution and they have uh coordinated or they have uh discussed the importance of this with their colleagues in advance and the three will be this it's how the board of supervisor does it it's how other organizations do it but then you build it into the script and you take off the table any concerns that you know somebody is not being able to do something and so i that would be my quick and easy answer to this and i do think that um

[00:36:42] differentiating between um cultural heritages and um you know i think cultural heritage versus religious heritage heritage is something that we probably should avoid because with 50 of the American people not identifying with a religious organization but with a cultural organization they are I they do identify I would suggest that we want to be more even-handed with that mr. Kofix happy to follow miss Corbett Sanders she

[00:37:17] is correct this is a meeting management and self-discipline agenda item we're talking about right now but we are talking about something else as well This board has blurred the line significantly between proclamations and recognitions.

[00:37:36] We have allowed, if somebody goes, can I speak on that? Annie, you're not supposed to be speaking on that. We have allowed that to happen. I think, I don't know if it's the right time to take this up, perhaps with the new board, though. I think everything should be one thing.

[00:37:53] I don't even see who is the arbitrator of what this is. you made a suggestion, you made a suggestion, you made a suggestion. They're all different, but at the same thing, they're all honors. And at this point in time, I think because we have blurred the lines, because there are so many things and people that we want to honor that I think we should be able to speak to them all. I think we should be able to take a picture with them all if we want to, and if they want to in particular, which finally then goes back to the meeting manager situation. If we do have all of these things and we're going to allow two to three

[00:38:31] people to speak on each one of them, we are going to have to be judicious on how we do this. But I think the lines are blurred. I think it's like, why was I chosen? All those things that people say, why was I chosen to do this? Why was my group chosen to do this versus this? And we should be able to speak to everyone, pictures with everyone. We have to do it in a manner that's limited because what did we what was it the other night I was uh state of the schools came on at 10 43

[00:39:05] that was ridiculous so anyway um like I said I don't know maybe take that back to peck that portion back to peck I thinking colleagues if we want to do that like kind of leave it this way for the very short term and then talk about just rolling them all into one type of thing and I think we could maybe talk about limiting right now something that other

[00:39:34] part later miss Amish yeah I guess I want to start by I'm reminding myself really the whole point of doing these from the get-go is the fact that there are communities that feel unheard unseen marginalized by the system and have been and there's evidence for it we know we all know the data and the whole point is for us to take up space to celebrate recognize acknowledge etc does it make our meetings longer yes is that does that defeat the purpose no that is the purpose is to create

[00:40:13] space for that so we can start thinking of better better ways to plan our agendas set up our meetings schedule things yes all of the above but not cutting into the very thing that was meant to create space for what is already marginalized that seems to be i mean deeply problematic um i also and and it's kind of this like the way we're approaching this i think is also a lot more like equality versus equity mindset like the this is not just like a random you know recognition

[00:40:46] that we're talking about how nice it is that you know uh i don't know we live in a community that it like a broad theme right we're talking about groups that have felt disrespected by our system which brings me to the point of you know who what's included what's not we've certainly had Proclamations that have been passed by the board that have not been included on this list I accept the intention and the discussion around that the fact of the matter is you know at the end of the day certainly Holocaust remembrance is a nod to the Jewish community and You know we didn't include Caribbean immigrant

[00:41:23] But if we're going to stick to religion the only thing left out here that we have recognized is Muslim heritage and I don't understand The difficulty around that from start to now, but Regardless we have Caribbean immigrant Muslim and Jewish heritage all of which who have been approved by our board and are not on this list this is this is not placing intentionality around anyone but what does that mean does that mean once a board member is off the board that that will never come back or that certain board members if they don't bring it up again as a proclamation that that community doesn't matter to FCPS anymore I think that's part of the problem with not having a comprehensive list either we

[00:42:00] peg it to something where we're like okay these are gonna be the federally recognized list we're gonna pull up everything that is federal and we're gonna say this is what we recognize is that inclusive no we recognize that but we've got a peg it to something or maybe we say okay if 500 signatures of FCPS stakeholders come like come up to the board to submit it to the clerk there's a process and it's like or whatever number we're a huge system it could be 2000 it could be whatever of people who would like to see this doesn't have to be people who are of the identity just anyone who thinks this is a good idea submitted to the clerk that becomes a institutionalized recognition that is

[00:42:37] in this list otherwise it's not we have to have something like that because otherwise it's what we see is important who we know exists and who doesn't in our community and I'm mindful too that like you know I mean there are things that we're not even thinking about of the various proclamations we've passed certainly we've seen with our board proclamations that passed that have never existed even before this year and our system's been around for a long time and those people have been in our system for a long time so I mean I think we to be fair in that way um and i mentioned this before but we continue to celebrate holocaust remembrance in april everybody recognizes it in january i don't understand why we do that

[00:43:15] okay miss cohen all right i feel like we're devolving i i uh i haven't gone yet i just got to answer the question i didn't go yet um i uh i think look we're having the same exact conversation that we had when we've tried to do this like any number of times um so i i i would be in full support of everything should be a proclamation which is how the board of supervisors does it if we want to say everybody gets a minute and a half or a minute instead of the people who the

[00:43:53] makers um you know get there like i'm fine with setting a massive time limit because you can say plenty in a minute or a minute and a half. But I just want to be clear, like, this is the list that we were given. We worked with, at the time, the equity office. We worked with instruction.

[00:44:14] We worked with everybody to try to say, what are the things that are in our curriculum? The things that were in our curriculum is what we tied to recognitions. And then proclamations, people were able to bring whatever they wanted to bring. Holocaust remembrance, as a side note, about a whole lot more than just jewish people um and it is tied directly to the curriculum hopefully that curriculum continues to expand and so this list would continue to expand but nobody i'm not married i don't think any of us are married to any of that we just tried to use the framework i think the idea if we tie it to a federal list fine but i will just say this

[00:44:49] is the third time that this board is circling this list so fourth time so i mean clearly we don't have it figured out i want to be you know i want to recognize that people have strong feelings about this a lot of us it's why we ran for the board i get it um but i think that you know one opportunity that we have is if we would just tie it to um what the board of supervisors does that would probably make a lot more sense and if we do it in the you get pick pick three then any of the rest of us can talk about it in our board matters which in a perfect world would not come at

[00:45:26] midnight because we have self-policed ourselves to not do this where we're meeting until one o'clock in the morning. Okay we'll take a couple more comments and figure out how to move forward. Dr. Anderson? Thank you. I think both of you captured some of the things that I wanted to say which is one let's make a lot of proclamations. I think we we are down a very slippery slope if we're saying well I'm going to bring you know proclamation x and I'm only going to allow these three people to speak to it because they see the world in the way that I do. That is censorship in a way that I don't think we want to invite because we need to provide space for people who see it a little bit differently

[00:46:06] than what we're saying. And the proclamation presenter being the one who's selecting who the speakers are, super, super slow. I would be fine with everything is a proclamation. The maker of the motion and the seconder, they get 90 seconds and everybody else gets one minute. I don't have to speak to everything. We had three last time that took us hours. I only spoke to Dan's, but some of us spoke to every single one of them. That cannot be what happens. We might also want to consider the number of proclamations per meeting. I think three, four, five, it's just too much. It's

[00:46:42] just entirely too much. I see that to be a space for us to determine what we can do. We have two meetings a month, maybe two proclamations or whatever that new word is, two recognitions for the sake of being generic per meetings. We should be able to get what we have 11 months in which we meet. That's 22, you know, potential proclamations that we can do for the year. Let that be our list, whether it's tied to a federal list. I just worry because I think one of the things that Ms. Omesh said was very true. This is a place where we are making space for communities that are not seen.

[00:47:19] And for us to kind of, for the sake of time, cut that out, it's going to hurt us more than managing a meeting to end before 11. Mr. Fresh. Thank you. To Dr. Anderson's point, I think you have to limit the speakers because of exactly what you mentioned.

[00:47:41] Like, some people are very judicious with what they choose to speak on, and some people, you can write their names down on a piece of paper before the meeting begins, and you'll know who's going to speak on every single topic. And then you've got the chain reaction ones, too, where maybe only a couple people plan on speaking, but after you reach critical mass, everybody wants to speak.

[00:48:06] So I would be in favor, look, I don't think we can solve the issue of what's on which list here today, or else we're not going to actually finish what we came here to do. I would say that we should get consensus on sending the question of combining or changing the definition so that everything is the same thing or what have you, to peck, to get done, and ask that they get it done in the next two meetings.

[00:48:28] to bring it back to us. Secondarily, I would say that if we are willing to limit the number of the amount of time that people have to speak to one minute, I would be in favor of no restrictions on the number of people who speak to a, as currently constructed, a recognition, which currently don't have any speakers, right? As long as it's one minute each. And then secondary, Because I don't think that we will ever find ourselves in a position where people are choosing not to speak. It's just not going to happen.

[00:49:10] Okay, plenty of people don't and and we end up with the meetings that we have and secondarily when it comes to the proclamations I would actually be in favor of if you've making the proclamation you should be able to pick some people to speak for you It's one way of limiting the stuff and then you've got your time at the end of the meeting But we're not going to solve the actual item that we're discussing right now is how long the clerk's office has to get us the recognition language.

[00:49:42] I'm comfortable with saying that we need to have the language approved within 48 hours before the 48-hour mark before a meeting, which is what we're being asked to approve right now. The other questions about length of speakers, whether it's a recognition or a proclamation, I think we need to either have a discussion in PEC or pick that up at another work session.

[00:50:05] Ms. Dernikovics. I think we are coming to a consensus about putting resolutions, recognitions, proclamations, whatever we've called them over the past few years, all into one category.

[00:50:23] Where I think the one thing, the Board of Supervisors, they have much longer meetings than us. they have day-long meetings and I believe and maybe Miss Setlow if you can look into this I believe they also have proclamation days or meetings where that happens because that that that I know I've been to this and I don't know if they've changed them but I know through the years of my service on the board I've been to proclamation days where they spend the entire day doing that so that

[00:50:55] could be a possible solution. So if we put them all where we can speak, honor, and take pictures with, that's one thing, whatever we call that. Then how we do it, again, I've been in the chair seat four times, the math just doesn't work out. It just doesn't work out. You want to say that it does, even if you limit it to three people, and I do have a problem with the person picking those three people that is not something that we should do

[00:51:30] but if we all get to speak even a minute without the recognitions that's like 36 minutes you know alone without the proclamations without the pictures without that you're talking still again two hours and then you're getting you know crucial so so thinking for the next peck committee um proclamation days um proclamation afternoons um something because i don't i don't see a way um we have tried to solve this problem every which way and we've not been able to do it

[00:52:05] and we can't say it's not because we're judicious or we're trying to we we can't inhibit each other's ability to freely speak about the honor which we want to choose for our community but we also uh just historically starting a meeting at 7 30 do not have enough time even in two meetings months to get through all the honors that we want to so you know an idea for the next peck committee um they could start talking about it now should we have we could have some maybe what they do is they separate them and then here i go again if you separate

[00:52:44] them into tears well i got thursday night but i got a day so i i don't know how you know you could not feel um you want to make everyone feel included feel honored and um that has been a difficult problem to solve as we add to the honors and recognitions which is a good thing in our community thank you miss heismer heiser all right so about three years ago when dr anderson was chair she um she asked the board to look at this and laura jane and i looked at this We spent hours and hours looking at this list of the list that we've always done, working

[00:53:22] with the equity office, working with the instructional office, looking at what the federal government did, looking at trying not to have too many per month. We spent hours combining the list of staff recognitions into categories. Even with just those, we would probably have more than two per meeting, just doing the math.

[00:53:40] So if we wanted to add proclamations on top of that, limiting the number to two or three per meeting is literally impossible mathematically. So let's just, I just want to kind of level set some expectations here, right? We can send this back to PEC. We did that. We had two work sessions after we came up with this.

[00:53:58] We came to a consensus. We brought it to a vote. It was pulled from a vote. It was sent to governance. Governance came back. We voted on it again. We found some implementation concerns that we're looking at. We can look at that from PEC, but I'm going to tell you, there is no solution if we want to be perfect.

[00:54:16] There just isn't. If we want to recognize all the communities that deservedly need recognition, especially those marginalized, I completely agree with that. If we want to make a consistent list, however we want to call it, the same thing. If we all want to speak or not want to speak, that is all mathematically impossible if we're going to have a meeting that doesn't start the work at 10 o'clock at night.

[00:54:37] So I'm just level setting here, right? You can send it back to PAC. There will not be a solution that will please all of these things that are needed. It's not possible, short of doing a separate day. That's it. And so, you know, and mine might be saying this strongly because I've spent two and a half years trying to figure this puzzle out that's not puzzleable, but we as a board have to decide what are our meetings for.

[00:54:59] Are our meetings for recognition of all the communities? In that case, we should level set the expectation that we will not be doing our work until 10 or 11 o'clock at night. Are our meetings for the business work? Then maybe we should do a separate proclamation day. We cannot do all of it in our meetings. And, you know, I do think -- I don't agree with picking people to speak.

[00:55:17] do think limiting speakers if we want to do in our meetings the only way to do it is to limit somehow picking limited speakers that's the only way to do it I also think we cannot do all the different groups and not expect five or six proclamations per meeting we did the math so I'll stop there Miss Amish okay I'm trying to think of creative ways to do this because I don't want to give up and I don't think we should one possibility and I'm naming things just we could do like a video that board members can be a part of you know like Like, it could be that for each of these, each new board, that's a four-year opportunity.

[00:55:53] Like, it's not inefficient. It's going to be, you know, used again, potentially, unless there's a pressing reason and someone can ask for that or whatever. But, you know, if there's a video each board member can give their piece, that can be limited. Even if it's, like, a three-minute video, which I guess is long, but it's still going to be shorter than everyone, you know, having that.

[00:56:13] That's a possible idea. At least board members can feel like they've said their piece, and anyone who wants to add significantly, like, feels very passionately can. I want to go back to this idea of, like, some kind of signature process. I really think that's a possible way of managing the collective interest and leaving the door open, too, for the things that we don't know about.

[00:56:32] Like, we are—so that's something. I also just—I think I get that some people are, you know, annoyed when people talk, but I want to reframe that. I think it's good when we have board members who are invested in each of these topics and each of these communities, and we represent everyone.

[00:56:50] It's not like, some people might feel certain topics are less important, but frankly, to me, all the cultural ones are equally important because at the end of the day, if we're claiming to be in these seats, we're representing the various communities, and we may have limited expertise on certain ones and personal experience with others, but I don't know.

[00:57:07] I don't think we should be leaning towards staying quiet is better and having that be a norm. I think we disagree on that premise to begin with. So maybe-- I don't know if we initiate a new working group. I'm personally not too in favor of doing it. I think given how much feeling there is in the room around it, it makes sense to have the board get to a place where we can agree.

[00:57:30] But perhaps considering some of these alternative ways of doing it, looking at how other folks have done it, or trying to be creative about how we do it as an option. Ms. Kellen.

[00:57:54] Look, I just want to say, I think I don't want to put this back on Peck, to be honest. I think it's unfair. I think we've tried to deal with this as a board in any number of ways. It sounds to me like we have consensus around turning these into proclamations. If that's true, then we don't need this vote on the 48 hours for resolutions.

[00:58:17] And maybe that's the starting place. It sounded like there was a lot of appetite for allowing everybody to speak still, but trying to limit that to a minute, I mean, we can also see how it goes. Look, it may not improve anything, but it sure is not going to get any worse than it is, would be my guess.

[00:58:38] And maybe also, if everybody's just doing a minute, you know, maybe it does inspire other people to feel like they don't need to speak because it's a quick thing. But I would not be in favor of sending it back to pack, though normally I would.

[00:58:54] I think it's unfair when we've tried to tackle this any number of times and in any number of ways. So I would love the opportunity. You guys may not feel like it's appropriate, and that's fine if you don't. But we have plenty of people here today to be able to make the decision to turn it into proclamations.

[00:59:15] I think we rarely have these opportunities to have these conversations. So I don't mean to derail this work because it is really important, but I think it speaks to a much larger thing. it feels like we actually have some consensus. Maybe we should capitalize on that. Thank you.

[00:59:32] I do have a couple other board members, but Ms. Setlow, please, we would like to hear your response to some of this. I think the one thing that I would note is that we do have a significant list of recognitions. So if we turn them all into proclamations where you have a limit on proclamations, then we either have to think about the limit or we have to think about the list.

[00:59:54] We already have groups who have reached out to us about the recognitions that are coming up in October because there are a number of them asking what day they're being recognized and who's coming and, you know, are they invited for pictures, et cetera.

[01:00:10] So, and prior to this conversation, I had already said, yes, we do, we have that. So, I'm fine making it all one. It would actually make it easier for the office. The question, though, is what are we doing with the list and what are we doing with the limit if we do turn it all into one?

[01:00:28] May I steal my 24 seconds back super fast? I was just going to argue that in Loudoun, I think they only do these one of the, maybe Ms. Burden or you could speak to it. I think they only do these one time of their two meetings of the month.

[01:00:45] And when they do, they limit, like, they wouldn't have academic matters. They wouldn't have, that academic matters would be once a month. superintendent might be once a month but they carve things out of the rest of their schedule to make sure that they have more time i think lee may correct me all right um miss keith camaro

[01:01:21] and then miss marin you're next thank you um i i agree we're not going to solve all of this but i do think that we can set up options for whoever's going to do it whether it's back a working group or whomever because i don't think that kind of guidance that we're hearing today has been given before at least not that i recall um i think one of the goals that i'm reaching for is the appearance of fairness um it as we've had the various categories i think it raised some

[01:01:55] questions about that for some people um i think we also need to look at how we're assigning these because when i've looked at previous years um it was it was heavy for some people and very light for others and how are we assigning these topics i think we need to look at that i think we need to set some rules i'm not saying we solve that today but i think the best we oh how it's not assigned

[01:02:26] anymore so let me just finish um i think that we have to to look at how people speak to these things with that principle of fairness in mind um the other thing is the sponsors i would not limit them to a minute i think those are the people that can have two to three minutes everybody else can have 90 seconds it does cut it off but at least each group feels as though they were given their their due and we weren't just rushing through that's my recommendation i'm not saying that's the way it

[01:03:04] should be but i think maybe elaine what we're we're looking at is perhaps uh the board giving some input as to what those parameters can be and then that may set up a discussion at a later time or provide some guidance for whoever's considering it um but i know i have had some concerns for quite some time uh so fair rotation assignments who gets what um i i do support either starting a meeting earlier what laura jane said or having a proclamation day those are all options we can

[01:03:39] consider so i think maybe today we've laid out those options i do agree everything should be a proclamation because that is one way that it looks like we're having something that could be considered unfair so maybe we're looking at laying out what those options are we can decide who's going to look at those things maybe we have consensus around the proclamations and then move on but overall my goal is the appearance of fairness and i don't think we've always had that

[01:04:08] miss marin yeah i wonder if we if this is an opportunity to think about how our votes carry our words because for me i think you know we spend so much time developing this content for me i think the proclamation or the whatever we're calling it is the meat of it so i don't always feel like i I need to then add on. We could just say the proclamation speaks for itself and no further comments. And then initially, then later, people could speak in their board matters or to other

[01:04:47] things as they come up. I would rather us spend the time talking about, when we have talked about a proclamation or something, talking about the policies that will codify what we are expressing in the proclamations. I think that we do put way too much weight on the proclamations. They're not policy. They're not directives. We could say it and the superintendent could actually do something different. So, you know, I'm willing to forgo that set of comments if we can just say the proclamations and the vote is your expression of support for that. And it's only one way that we

[01:05:24] show support. We show it through all the other things that we do at the board table and out in the community. So I don't think this has to be the be-all end-all. I do think it's got to be the correct and inclusive group of topics and people, but I think that our community would really appreciate it and let the words speak for themselves and then let's do the work of the policymaking to codify these words. Thanks. All right, so let me just throw out some ideas,

[01:05:56] okay, given everything. Also, keep in mind, as has been brought up here in the discussion, we did a lot of work on this you know over the last year and so someone brought up earlier whatever we come up with today is not going to be perfect right it's probably it's going to have to be revised um at some later point again and if we have you know we've got a whole new board coming on in january lots of new people um you know they may look at some of these things very differently

[01:06:30] too. So and that's perfectly fine. That's the reason for doing some of this. I do want to just throw it on the table. I just am cleaning my home office as a staffer came across an old meeting agenda from I think 2013 or something. So this is a couple boards ago and the agenda was exactly the same as the agenda that we have now. Although with some strategic governance thrown in there which we haven't had recently but it started out with the proclamations and recognitions I mean it's it's it is something that the board has been doing historically and not that I'm saying that that means that's the right way to

[01:07:09] do it just saying it's been going on for a long time it sounds to me like what we might be able to do is you know some of the things that Ms. Setlow has put forward here and that we had already you know looked at as a board these are really logistical items, what we're talking about today is sort of the big picture of what we're doing. Perhaps we could think about implementing and see if we have some consensus on some of these ideas here, the big-picture ideas that we're talking about, and give it a try. And, you know, it might not be

[01:07:46] perfect, and then the discussion has to continue. So things like, why do we have proclamations and recognitions? Let's make it all one list. Let's treat them all similarly let's have time limits on speakers I don't wasn't really hearing that we wanted to as a majority limit the number of speakers or two speakers so I don't know maybe I can kind of go down through each of these things and see if there's a general consensus on them and then we can look at some of the

[01:08:21] logistical items here that we might be able to finish up today is that making sense so can i just see if we have um general consensus on first of all making them all one list go ahead point of clarification before you do that we have a capstone at the beginning that says there are only three proclamations we are now adding 20 more at least no i'm yes we are if we are

[01:08:59] changing the recognitions to proclamations then what we have to do is address that limitation of three per board member because the numbers don't add up or two okay two per board member i mean we these don't add up and so what we need to do is i mean what you're talking about is a restructuring of the whole thing i think that given that we are supposed to only be doing this for a short period of time more i think we're going until 12 on this um i would opt for having kind of going through

[01:09:36] the more structural things of like what we did at the very beginning of this meeting but as far as adopting a wholesale moving everything into proclamations that really does take another conversation that is more in depth one of the things that i would suggest is maybe we we have a second work session per month which people are looking at as being challenging as far as content what you could do there are a couple good options that came up tonight or today one is the whole

[01:10:10] concept of having the superintendent and the matters and academic matters alternating those because those are two new pieces the second piece is to look at maybe using our work session schedule and saying one work session per month will be for proclamations um but then of course you have that appearance of fairness of what is done at a at that session versus at the board table or the regularly scheduled board meeting so before you can adopt this you you've got to

[01:10:46] look at all the implications before we can just wholesale say these are now proclamation so just a point of clarification i think our bigger issue with work session agendas is not that we don't have enough stuff for the second work session that we have too many topics for the so you know originally we had tried to hopefully only have one work session

[01:11:19] per month and I have found that that's really really difficult so let's exercise for hyzer for the record there is no such thing as a point of clarification of parliamentary procedure just so that we can well you've you've asked it before too so I know I'm just saying like so but whatever before we can make a vote i'm confused what it means by changing them all to proclamations does that mean we're still keeping the two limit and then board members have to bring all of this list as part of their two or is this list is just we're just calling it a proclamation but we're leaving this list separate from the ones that board members bring that's what i'm not that's why before i vote i want

[01:11:58] a better understanding yeah that's like what does that mean by changes just changing the name or changing the procedure by which these are brought we do have an annual list already that has five different items on it that are considered annual do not add to the count what we could do at this point is add everything that are on the recognition list to the list of annual that would not count towards proclamation that was the idea behind that list in the first place was it was a list that was annual that wasn't counted as proclamations then there was the five that were like the piper ashley the laura piper ashley scholarship and then if board members wanted to bring anything that they

[01:12:37] wanted to that's what that too that was the purpose behind this so is it just changing the name so they're all called the same that's what i'm confused by because that's how this was set up to begin with was three lists the heritage month staff ones the piper ashley the ones at the end of the year and two per board members again i don't i'm not tied married to this that's just i'm just trying to understand when we're changing it what are we changing yeah i don't want this to confusing so I think that this is gonna take this is gonna take yeah it's gonna

[01:13:13] take more discussion and more work so we can either decide that we want to put this forward we can add some additional work session time to our next work session or we can see what we have consensus on here today and then move forward from there. Mr. Frisch, I think you had a couple of ideas too after listening. Yeah, so what's

[01:13:48] clear is that it's all right, you can have your two minutes before I have two minutes. Go ahead, after you, after you. My point was going to be that we've agendized a meeting where we're making decisions about a number of things. I think we can make decisions on those things and keep track of the things that we want further discussion on so that we can have further discussion. The stuff that we're deciding on today is really about making it easier for the clerk's office to do this process.

[01:14:23] That's it. That's all. Dr. Anderson. I'm just trying to get to the place where we already heard some consensus. I just want to go back to that list where you were trying to go down and say let's agree on this because I think we heard a lot of comments. I definitely heard comments in the room that one, we would not be limiting speakers. So I think we have consensus around that i also think we have consensus about limiting the time um you had mentioned something i mentioned something if we could at least get that checked off then we could be accomplished at least in some

[01:15:01] of these ways i also support this not going back to peck because we're only going to get right back here so that's not going to be a fruitful use of time um if these recognitions and if the sole idea of these recognitions is just so that people have an opportunity to speak to it i don't see and i don't see a problem with it being read by the superintendent so long as everybody gets a chance to speak to it for whatever the time that we allow i'm just putting that out for um for consideration and the only the other piece and i'm glad that you raised this karen is who does

[01:15:40] get to present these recognitions um i think it should be randomized in a way um alphabetical if somebody doesn't want it and moves to the next person and you know it counts as your one because one of the things that I think each of us is very concerned with is if we're not present because we represent some sort of constituency that that constituency is no longer important enough to be recognized at the school board and I think that also does not really serve us so I employ you please Ms. Toland go down that list for consensus so we can at least give some feedback and make this last

[01:16:16] a little bit more productive. - Ms. Amesh, do you wanna speak? - Yeah, building off of what Rachna said, I think the piece with anything heritage history related probably should end up on the list of what doesn't count towards anyone's thing, and I support a random process.

[01:16:39] I know, I've had questions 'cause I haven't read too many of them, but I also think it's really awkward when we have the person of that identity having to read that, otherwise, you know, it doesn't exist. But also awkward when, and I won't forget, When Arab American heritage was brought and I wasn't allowed to read it, that also was very insulting.

[01:16:58] So I don't know. I think that having a random process-- and I would say at the beginning of doing the resolutions and recognitions process, saying that, saying that the school board is proud to represent so many cultures and heritages, we engage in a random process by which a member speaks on our behalf, or something like that.

[01:17:25] Not in those words, but to suggest that we're all behind what we're talking about, and it's not a specific thing. I think that's important, because I'm sure the community has questions, too, of why does something come, and who gets to speak on it, and why. But if we do that, then I think we have to go back to that full list of heritage history month type of recognitions, and leave room for the possibility that there are probably some and many that we haven't recognized ever, and if those come up as proclamations, then those would not be considered amongst the two for any board member either.

[01:18:03] I'm thinking, immigrant heritage was an obvious one, Muslim, Jewish, Caribbean, those all have not been included on this list, so I don't know if they're in the mental notes of every board member, but those should also be added to this shall not be, and maybe we don't even include a list. Maybe we just say, you know, history and heritage celebrations of particular groups or cultures will not be included.

[01:18:27] I don't know how we word that, because that's pretty prickly. But that might be the best way to get around this, is to say that those, just like the awards and retirements, will not be considered. So then maybe that poses a question to us of what is considered. I guess like specific school recognitions or something.

[01:18:44] I mean, I don't know. But I just wanted to put that out there to be broad about in anticipation of what we've also missed. Thank you. Okay, so let me try this again.

[01:19:03] And some of these things that perhaps we can get some consensus on today. And then there are a number of items, the list, exactly how we're going to do the, you know, the limit on, you know, who's bringing what forward.

[01:19:20] Those are going to take some additional discussion. it sounds like we can have some consensus on combining these right not having separate proclamations everything's a proclamation we have some consensus on okay you want me to just go one at a time that's probably a good idea okay so can we have some consensus on that can i see a show of hands of those that would agree to combine proclamations and recognitions just into proclamations

[01:19:52] okay so one two three four five six seven yes yes absolutely okay i believe now that we're combining if we're combining these we are we are agreeing on the having the work done around the wording etc 48 hours in advance we still have consensus on that the 48 hours or five six seven

[01:20:30] eight or for either yeah we did yes for both of them second piece or the next piece not limiting speakers but saying that the if someone brings the motion or seconds the motion that those people would have two minutes to speak and other people would have one minute to speak is there consensus

[01:21:03] on that all right so it would be two minutes for the mover what about the seconder i said two for book the okay mover and the seconder two two and one um so for two two and one one two three four

[01:21:26] five six seven and again we can see how it works um okay so this is kind of an important one because one of the things that we had in this document here today to take a look at was who was speaking to to recognitions we had in the governance manual that the recognitions were being read by the superintendent so we've had some discussion that the

[01:22:05] record whether we call this a recognition or a proclamation this is a board statement so that is probably not appropriate for the superintendent to be reading this so we've had discussion today about the fact that it would be random we have our randomizer we can put you know our knees into the randomizer that we use for you know speakers at the meeting and come up with a list we don't have to randomize I'm not thinking randomizing every single one we put it

[01:22:42] in and we come up with the list and then you know just the way we're sitting so whatever comes up the next one is dr. Anderson the next one is miss Cohen the next one is Ms. Elmache. If Ms. Cohen feels like it's a topic that she doesn't, you know, is not the best person to speak to it, she can turn it down and we just keep going down the list, okay?

[01:23:06] Then what happens? Does the next proclamation go back to the person who said no thank you or does it eventually cycle back to them? Go all the way through before they get their choice? Okay, I just wanted to be clear that that's how it has to be written because clarity matters. Ms. Corbett-Sanders?

[01:23:26] What you've just described is not a randomizer. It's actually a wheel. It is a and it's something that we used to have was a wheel and the wheel worked not only for proclamations. The wheel also worked for the management of work sessions and things like that. And so then there is never a question of somebody getting more proclamations than others or somebody getting more work sessions.

[01:23:54] So I would not call it a randomizer. I would call it a wheel cycling through every board member. I appreciate that. I was talking about using the randomizer to initially set the list. Otherwise, you know, we talked about for meeting managers doing it alphabetical by magisterial districts.

[01:24:19] We can set the list any way we want to. So if we want to just start a list. Yes. And we'll just sprinkle you guys in there. All right, so we'll set the list. We move down the list. Dr. Anderson.

[01:24:37] I just want to have clarity because I don't want us to belabor the point. So we are going to use what process to set up the wheel. And thank you for, I was thinking about the same thing, that it wouldn't necessarily be random. But since we're going with the language of the wheel, what process is going to be utilized to set the wheel?

[01:24:56] A randomized thing or the magisterial districts, which kind of makes the at-larges a little funky there. Okay. Okay. Alphabetical by last name. Oh, my middle name.

[01:25:17] Okay. Okay. So, this is what we're voting on. We're going to get two things combined in here, okay, people? One, a board member will bring all of these forward, okay?

[01:25:35] And the person bringing it forward, we will have an alphabetical list by board member's last name, okay? and if someone passes it will pass on to the next person we can keep going down the list with the wheel will just continuously go around okay can we have some consensus on that four five six seven eight nine all right sorry so right now we have that they may exchange so we're taking away the ability to

[01:26:15] exchange okay okay and we will do I guess the same thing for the who seconds the item we'll just go with the next person just continued on the yes so you

[01:26:51] have pairs all the time is what you're saying mm-hmm okay so we will do for the seconder we will do a reverse order alphabetical list and move it the same way Elaine okay so I think I was hoping to maybe deal with the limit on numbers and things like that but i think there's a lot of nuances to that and i don't want to get that

[01:27:31] i think it could be confusing so i would reserve maybe that we could miss cohen you got a good idea on that one oh i was just going to ask christina had initially said that the ones that had been resolutions i mean recognitions if we just threw those into the same category as the the other the other ones that don't count towards your limit then we'd still be in the same point process where like all of those like you know muslim heritage month wouldn't count against me because it's also lake braddock's 50th anniversary or whatever i i feel like everybody's head was nodding

[01:28:10] i don't know what you think about that i'm fine with that can we have consensus on that miss cohen sure that the the ones that we just transferred into being proclamations would be in the same category as all the proclamations that don't currently count against you so all of those heritage months all of the those wouldn't count against you would that mean that we're bringing in some of the proclamations that are not on this list like um i know miss

[01:28:45] omesh has mentioned it multiple times the muslim american heritage month the caribbean heritage month immigrant good immigrant harriet are those being brought into the fold i mean that's why i'm saying i think there's a lot of nuances to this and that perhaps um that may be our next topic at the work session um you know when we discuss this next time because i think there's a lot of ins and outs to exactly how that would work so let's leave that one um for our next discussion some of the

[01:29:21] it's we have like one minute left um i have been in line before oh i'm sorry please i i had a question about um whether we would be doing the disclaimer thing in advance of just explaining the public how this process happens yeah yeah i think especially as we move forward and you know we're making these changes we'll we should definitely explain that and the time limits for example sure just like we do before public participation or yes great idea for that can we just get a

[01:29:59] consensus vote on adding something like that to our script explain yeah okay so we've got everyone that's here it's nine people for that okay let me just do it this way with the one minute that we have left miss sutlow is there one maybe of these items that is very logistical that would help you out significantly that we could get some consensus on there were just a few that were easy hopefully

[01:30:37] to deal with number four clarifying magisterial member for student character and laura ashley piper awards that it's who represents the district in which the student resides um if we could just get a consensus on the for those two all right do we have consensus that the person who does the scholarship award is the magisterial representation of where the student lives and in at large member would second that one okay so we've got one two three four five six seven

[01:31:14] on that one um the next one is that we're inviting individuals associated well there'll be now proclamation so i'm assuming all of our proclamation rules will roll over to recognitions um so that is number five is that we invite people to attend the meeting and have a photo so is there consensus around for these various items that people that care about it are invited to the meeting and they're available we are available to take a photo with them sorry i have a question about that just in better understanding like who how like that's always been an issue

[01:31:53] for which proclamation who gets invited which organizations which individuals that that's a consistency and equity issue i don't know how we resolve it okay so let's say we are inviting people exactly how the invitations are extended and who we're going to have to have further discussion we'll put that on our yeah i want to flag that especially the who but we're in favor of inviting

[01:32:21] people and taking photos with them okay miss sentlow anything else um sorry it's the next one is the annual proclamations that we are requiring approval of that language so at least 40 hours we would actually go back to the language mr fish proposed and it would just include including the annually occurring proclamations we would add in so the language would change too all right um

[01:33:01] okay i think we have um consensus for the 48 hours for any type of thing that we're bringing forward whether it's the annual proclamation proclamation etc okay okay we had who reads um oh here's the simple one when does the school board members count reset if we're doing um you know a limited

[01:33:34] number um most people voted for from the last meeting in the summer wait from the first meeting in the fall until the last meeting in summer that that would be the calendar year within which the numbers would be counted do we have consensus on that three four five seven eight nine all right um another one would be gifting but we may want to hold off um another one we could actually deal

[01:34:12] with that would be easy is that it would be 48 business hours in advance of a meeting rather 48 hours or occurrence when a meeting is because we do have some meetings that occur on a monday and so it would actually be that thursday because what's happening right now is that it's that saturday and not everybody is able to approve on the saturday so we would say 48 business hours karen i'm sorry using the term 48 business hours actually makes it five days six business days so

[01:34:49] you need to clarify that it is two full calendar days prior to a meeting or two full week weekdays prior to a meeting but if you do 48 business hours then there is actually a very a recognized term which that makes it six days two business days would work okay we can change that to two business

[01:35:18] days no it's not a a term that is thank you okay so consensus on two business days one two three four five six seven eight nine ten people ten people okay um one other question is about the hard copy format and proclamation warning to be like the board of supervisors so if this is how

[01:35:56] the board of supervisors looks if you go up that's how ours currently looks it does have a seal in the middle but it is a little bit different and so i don't know if this is something that we want to discuss or if we want to wait on this miss corvett sanders did you have a comment i actually um i think when they're non-standard proclamations so proclamations made by individual board members to recognize a specific issue then in those instances i do believe you know the look is fine but what we should be doing is doing what the board of supervisors does which is put it in

[01:36:36] a nice wooden frame because those the proclamations are typically one-offs in many ways um and so that i think is more more professional it doesn't matter what but handing them a um handing them folder just isn't very nice this key's coming up proclamations identified and made by board members for something specific quickly i i just would like for people to feel like they were treated special when they come that i won't use the word wimpy if i was going to receive that i might think that

[01:37:13] was a little it's like a little tiny dime anyway um maybe we need to have just folks look at some options as to how and bring it back to us and we could choose right so we don't necessarily have to look like the board of supervisors but we do want something a little more than a little more than well okay we will look at some options on that one miss amish yeah i i thought also the distinction maybe between i find it always awkward when sometimes we have the cultural heritage type ones and then people are coming up because they just support the idea or they're you know they're

[01:37:48] they identify with it, and then we have like a proclamation to hand, and it's kind of like no one is representing it. Right, so it's different than like a business that we're honoring, and you give it to the executive director, or so I think some consideration needs to be given to that, and then the second piece, I think a way of mitigating some of this is making it available publicly, too. We take pictures, and we have proclamations, and they're not really posted.

[01:38:14] Maybe in the agenda item, they could be posted on board docs, so that anyone can, you know, print it yeah it can be made available and the picture I mean I don't know but I think it has to be requested right Christina people have to request like the photo or a print of the official proclamation right I don't believe so well I built from my understanding pictures are sent if they know who to send them to right the problem is is when they don't know who to send them to so like when mr. Amanoff was was recognized my understanding is he'll get a picture, but otherwise, if it's to a different group, they don't always necessarily know where

[01:38:53] to do it. Yeah, I think that that's something if we make that available. We can pay more attention to that. I think that goes well with the discussion of who's invited and, you know, keeping track of all of that. Okay, so we would like to stop. Ms. Setlow, are you good? I think the rest will require more yes the conversation I want to thank everyone for a good discussion and we still came to consensus on lots of logistical things in order to move some of these forward I just want to see is everyone okay if we take time tomorrow

[01:39:27] morning in our post chairs to outline list all of these things that we came to agreement on and then hopefully be able to vote on that on Thursday evening so we can move forward with just those pieces and then we will put for these items that we have not come you know then we have decided or big items we'll put those on the agenda for an subsequent work session is that okay with everybody can I clarify that if I could if you could just please also if it would be possible to provide where you're flagging further conversation because I think as we've gone through some of these we're like wait this component or

[01:40:07] you know so if you can just include those two I'd appreciate that yeah you got it that's going um will that just be on the consent agenda then because we've already we've already voted on everything yeah and we'll circulate it just in case you know we we make a mistake or whatever we'll send it around tomorrow so people can take a look at it and be like oops oops you know here's an item so otherwise we'll put it on the consent agenda but also if you weren't here like i just want to be clear when it's circulated tomorrow unless it is like an a mistake i don't

[01:40:42] want any of us to re-litigate like this is what we've agreed to right we're not okay thank you thank you okay so um we i would like to break now we have 20 minutes for lunch we do have two sizable topics for closed um and i because we're intending to have clothes in this room right here we're actually going to be up in 50 55 for closed and okay is our lunch up there lunch will be up there as well so if everybody could move up there lunch is ready to go and then we will do closed in that room as well yes okay thank you items for closed

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