Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Date: Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 3h 40m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4ZDxul85Qc
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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[00:00:13] Thank you, Mr. Fresh. I just want to take this opportunity to announce our new deputy clerk, Kevin Jackson, who is here with us. He is a former deputy clerk from the Planning Commission. And as you know, we also have Tara Petrovic, who is also our second deputy clerk, so we are now almost fully staffed.

[00:00:33] Yay. Congratulations. I think we all look forward to working with you both. In order to comply with section 2.2 slash 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 October 10, 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 during the closed meeting.

[00:01:08] Do I have a motion? Ms. Cohen, do I have a second? Ms. Omish, all those in favor? Ms. Cohen, Ms. Bukarski, Ms. Omish, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Darnak-Koufax, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Keyes-Gamara, and myself, all opposed?

[00:01:26] All right, that is unanimous for those who are here. And now, Ms. Toland has submitted a written request to attend virtually this afternoon for a personal reason.

[00:01:45] All those in favor of allowing Ms. Toland to participate virtually, raise your hand. Ms. Toland, sorry, Ms. Toland, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Bikarski, Ms. Omesh, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Keese Gamara, Ms. Darnak-Kofax, Ms. Corbett Sanders, and myself.

[00:02:04] Anybody against? All right, anybody abstaining? All right. Welcome, Ms. Toland. Do you want to try your microphone? Yes, thank you. Thank you, Ms. Toland.

[00:02:19] Can you hear me? We can hear you very clearly, Ms. Tolan. And with that, Ms. Tolan is actually going to get us started by setting the table for today. Ms. Tolan? Thank you, and thank you to everyone for your hard work already today.

[00:02:38] So today, we are placed, I'm hoping, for our last work session on our topic of strategic governance. We've had six on putting together our strategic plan, and we've had another four on executive expectations and board superintendent roles.

[00:02:59] So I'm hoping after today we can just move on to the implementation of our strategic plan and holding Dr. Reed accountable for accomplishing the goals that we have set forth under this plan. Any additional and very specific changes or updates that need to be made to our governance manual to support this?

[00:03:19] will be moved on to our governance committee, and they can work on that over the next several months. So for today, we've done, as we mentioned, a lot of work to set us up to have transparent monitoring of the superintendent and to ensure that the division is accomplishing the work that the board and the community has charged superintendent with, accomplishing through our strategic plan goals and our executive expectations.

[00:03:46] The goal of today is twofold: one, to make sure that we can use the tools that we have put together effectively, and close out our final discussion on how we're going to be monitoring this work at board meetings and how it will support us to hold the superintendent accountable and to perform the superintendent's full evaluation in June.

[00:04:13] For each of our monitoring reports, one for each executive expectation and one for each goal, board members will use their judgment to determine if the evidence Dr. Reed is providing for each of these is sufficient. Please note there are ongoing efforts around all of these measurements that will continue to hone in as we move forward with our strategic plan.

[00:04:38] As board members complete the full evaluation of Dr. Reed each June, notes that have been taken throughout the year can be referenced, and these various monitoring reports will be referenced, as well as just taking a picture of how the work has evolved over the whole year.

[00:04:56] And today we'll look at the connections quickly between the monitoring reports and the evaluation criteria that is given to us by the Virginia Department of Education. Our second objective is to review the existing language that we have in our governance manual related to board superintendent roles and determine if we have a census of the board to just keep the governance manual the way it is or to just reorganize the language that is already existing here or determine if we want to move forward with the governance committee to

[00:05:34] make any additional changes to the information that's in there. So we'll do this and we'll have presentation and then some discussion around the first item and then we'll as time is allowing us do a little bit of a breakout into small groups where we can discuss our the second objective for today for board members we'll be looking at two minute timelines on board comments as we move through each of these sections our strategic governance work this year has been an opportunity

[00:06:12] to refresh our existing governance language to make sure that we are in alignment with the strategic plan that we work so hard with the community to put in place and to just make sure that we have transparent monitoring and evaluation of the superintendent against that plan so thank you very much for everyone being here today and i will turn it over to marcy and dustin and to our vice chair mr frisch to move us through the meeting today thank you very much thank you mr holand um we now have um a written request from miss marron to participate in meetings

[00:06:50] today's meeting virtually uh for personal reasons um all those in favor of um letting miss marron participate virtually please raise your hand uh miss uh seismor heiser miss cohen Ms. Pokarski, Ms. Omash, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Dernick-Koufax, Ms. Kees-Gamara, Ms. McLaughlin, and myself. That's unanimous.

[00:07:10] Ms. Marin, will you test your microphone? Yes. Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you very much. Hello. And now I will turn it over to our presentation. Thank you, Ms. Tolan, and thank you, Mr. Frisch.

[00:07:29] We're going to begin by looking at the slide presentation that is in front of you. Ms. Tolan did a wonderful job of talking about the outcomes for today and we're going to jump right into the first one. If we can go to the next slide please. I would like to take a moment before we do that to orient you to some resources that are available. There's a yellow folder in front of you and that has many of the materials that we're going to be using as supports for the conversation today.

[00:07:59] The binders that we've been using throughout the process are also there if you would like to reference them at any point during this process. Next slide please. this first consensus point of looking at the tools and the resources that the board has available to them to monitor the superintendent we'll begin by looking at the connections between these resources our executive expectations and our goal reports to that superintendent evaluation one of the resources you could reference is the beige document which is a crosswalk between the

[00:08:31] state superintendent evaluation and some of these executive expectations and goal reports that you have available to you. You can see that these goal reports and EEs provide the board with evidence that the superintendent is working towards your expectations as a board, those strategic plan goals, and that the superintendent is working within the parameters set by the board, those executive expectations.

[00:08:54] This also provides a public and transparent accountability for the superintendent on an ongoing basis throughout the school year. On that beige crosswalk, you can see how the monitoring reports for the goals and the the EEs align with the eight evaluation standards that are currently in place to evaluate superintendents throughout the Commonwealth.

[00:09:16] As the board completes this annual evaluation each June, those monitoring reports for the EEs and the goal reports will be a way to collect information throughout the year to support the board in completing that evaluation. And individual board members will be able to reference their notes from the monitoring reports and the forms throughout the year to determine how the work has evolved and to inform your evaluation process.

[00:09:41] If we can go to the next slide, please. What we're gonna do on the next three slides is just provide an overview of some of the work that the board has been discussing regarding the executive expectations and the goal reports and what that will look like at some of your board meetings on Thursday evenings.

[00:09:59] And then following these three slides, there'll be an opportunity for some consensus and discussion. The first document that we're going to look at is the executive expectations monitoring report process. And the board had the ability and went through the first round of this on September 28th when you looked at executive expectation number two that Dr. Reed presented.

[00:10:21] The blue document that you have is a simple one pager of going over this process and explaining what steps the board will take during a regular meeting to provide the feedback following Dr. Reed's presentation.

[00:10:38] So she'll present an executive expectation. In two days, you'll receive a presentation on Thursday evening for executive expectation number one. Following Dr. Reed's presentation, the board members can ask clarifying questions and comments, and then a motion will be made for one of the options that you can see either on the screen or on your blue document.

[00:10:59] Following a second and a board discussion, there's a board vote, and then the board members will, in the moment at the meeting, have the opportunity to complete the full feedback form, and you can see a copy of that on the blue document. And then the board clerk will collect those feedback forms, and then all of that will be put together by the board clerk, and that's another resource that you can use as you complete your evaluation in June.

[00:11:25] We're gonna take a look, also, going to the next slide, at the executive expectations policy review process. And so this process, again, which we went through on September 28th, the board looked at it for executive expectation two is the board's opportunity to think about the EE and are there any changes or revisions that need to be made.

[00:11:48] This ensures that at least once a year, the board has the opportunity to update these expectations, but it can also be something that is made at any time throughout the year. And again, going through that process that is laid out on that green document, very similar.

[00:12:06] The board chair will offer the opportunity for comments and suggestions, and then one of two motions will be made. One is that the expectation stays in its current state, or following those comments and suggestions for revisions, it is referred to the governance manual, or excuse me, the governance committee to work on those recommended changes and bringing it back to the board at a future meeting.

[00:12:31] Following a discussion and a vote, one of those two steps would take place to conclude that policy review process. And then the final procedure that we wanna provide an overview on this morning is the goal report monitoring process.

[00:12:47] So if we can go to the next slide, please. And very similar to the executive expectation process for Dr. Reed's presentations to the board on your purple document. And all of these one-pagers are things that could be available to you on a Thursday evening, just as a support as we go through the process.

[00:13:09] This talks about what that monitoring report process will look like for the strategic plan goal reports. The first one that will be presented is goal three and that will be happening in November. Following a work session, Dr. Reed on a Thursday regular meeting will present a summary of that work session presentation and then the board will have the opportunity to make a motion for one of the options that you see on the screen.

[00:13:36] Following a second to that motion and a discussion and a vote, board members will have the opportunity to, again, complete that overview form to provide the feedback right there in the moment that you then have collected by the board clerk and will then, again, be another resource and reference for board members as the evaluation process is completed in June.

[00:14:01] So we've taken the opportunity to look at three of the procedures, provide a quick overview on those that support the board's monitoring of the superintendent performance through the executive expectations and the goal report process. And then I'll refer it to Mr. Frisch to lead the board in a discussion about this topic.

[00:14:24] - Thank you very much for that succinct presentation. I do wanna direct folks attention to the beige handout because I think it addresses some questions that people have asked about how this work connects to the state standards for the evaluation.

[00:14:42] And so this shows you where the, this is in your yellow folder. This shows you which goals and executive expectations align with which measures from the state. So that answers several of those questions.

[00:14:59] And then as Dustin mentioned, there are a number of handouts printed in various colors that help explain the different aspects of the process. So we can begin there and open the conversation.

[00:15:18] Anybody have any feedback they'd like to offer? Ms. Corbett Sanders. - Thank you very much, Chair Frisch. I am a little perplexed a bit and I'm glad we're having this conversation because we did talk about where we were going with policy governance versus executive limitations and strategic governance and when i look at this i think this requires a much more in-depth discussion

[00:15:55] rather than just a one-off hey everybody look see where we've got a crosswalk so i would hope that today we will have some of that um my other concern is regarding the process by which we are doing these executive expectations um where they are presented to us and to the public and that night we are expected to provide comments and then um according to some of the materials i read over the weekend um all of those comments would be used to inform the first drafting of the

[00:16:31] superintendent's evaluation which i think there's always room for informing how we think and i do think that it's important throughout the year to be reflective but when i look at thursday night's executive expectation that we are going to be discussing that's actually the capstone expectation because it is the crux which i have no doubt that dr reed will do exceedingly well on being that the superintendent shall not cause allow or fail to take reasonable measures to prevent any practice activity decision or organizational condition that is unlawful

[00:17:11] unethical unsafe disrespectful imprudent in violation of school board policy endangers the division's public image or credibility leaves the division unprepared for emergency situations or is a conflict of interest i believe that on thursday night she will make a compelling case that she is fully uh adherent to this but i think the time that this should be actually done is not a one and done it should be those are ongoing expectations and to have us agree to something on

[00:17:47] thursday night to influence what happens in six months from now or seven months and from now seems a bit ill-timed the second piece of it is for it to be presented to us in the public on thursday night and for us to immediately adopt it thursday night does not give time for the public to digest what's being presented and provide any insights they might have in to their individual board members for a magisterial district or at the the three at largest so at a minimum we shouldn't be

[00:18:20] adopting this the same night it's being presented the second piece is I'd like to know when we are going to talk about the samples that were sent to us over the weekend which are very detailed samples that essentially change our total approach to strategic governance everything from providing input to evaluations of team members to providing input or insights into particulars of a magisterial

[00:18:55] district and about how we would individually we would interact with the regional assistant superintendents whom up until this point have been the primary point of contact for school board members to address unique needs of individual areas so from my perspective I will be putting a motion on the table for us not to make any changes to the strategic governance manual until you have a new sitting board that we actually came together with some real progress as a

[00:19:30] as a community as a board and with superintendent but I think going this next step and up changing the whole strategic governance structure at this point is premature with eight of us moving off the board just to address a couple things there so the the executive expectations when we when we take that step shouldn't be seen as like locking you in in that moment for the rest of the year it's a the it is a snapshot that can be informed with

[00:20:05] everything that you experience from the yes I do not believe we in the past have ever had the chair directly respond to us and have a dialogue this way so I would like to just say if you could allow staff to answer Karen's questions all right go ahead so in in regards to I think you had a couple different questions miss corbett sanders um the first one with referencing the superintendent's evaluation

[00:20:40] i think as mr fish was starting to say that's a snapshot in time right so the board is looking at where she is at that point in time and using that information to inform where where the current where that current thinking is against that ee however as the arc of the year progresses you may see improvements you may see things that raise concern so it's one data point for the board to collect as a part of the evaluation sure ask a clarifying solution on that i'm a little confused because when

[00:21:15] you sent the samples to us when they were posted the samples actually state that all of these executive the feedback given at each meeting are going to be compiled to form this the draft superintendent's evaluation. And so I'm a little confused as to there's a difference between what the samples say, which do come out of, it looks like the Carver book of policy governance, which

[00:21:51] this board decided not to follow, and what you're saying. I mean, what you're saying, which is it's a tool for reflection for individual board members I don't think anybody finds any harm or any they actually find it as a useful tool to be having reflective pieces but that's not what is actually in the samples provided to us or I think so we're trying to bifurcate that decision point so the first decision point is just around the expect executive expectations and closing that out the

[00:22:28] second piece is getting into whether or not the board wants to look at the existing language in the governance manual in relation to some of those samples and make any changes. It's really hard to do that when you've already shown us the playbook of what the plan is. So I'm having a hard time understanding it and I would just suggest that we you know there are two things there too. The executive expectation for Thursday night which I fully support as an executive expectation. I would

[00:23:02] actually have moved it to the end of the year because it is the capstone. Did we do all of these things? Was the system managed in a way that was ethical and did not cause any reputational or financial risk? But getting that presented on Thursday night and voting on it on Thursday night is not how we typically do any voting. We usually have things presented as new

[00:23:32] business and then two weeks later vote on it thank you miss corbett sanders miss cohen and then dr anderson thanks um i guess two things you know i think as just speaking for myself as one of 12 um i'm i'm really in support of this evaluation process and how we did it i recognize potentially there may be some tweaks about the like 10 minutes during a meeting kind of thing like i i

[00:24:06] i absolutely hear what some of my colleagues are are saying and and it it needs to be really clearly outlined that to miss corbett sanders point that we're not married to that especially because we will be handing it we're in this transition period where we're going to be handing that to the next person whoever holds our seat which i think is a real benefit to them to walk in and get what our a snapshot of our perspective while we were there but to miss corbett sanders point making sure that they don't feel like they're tied to that because their experience may be altogether different

[00:24:41] in their six months of what this year looks like so i i hear what you're saying on that i think i think part of the heartburn and i i don't mean to speak for other people is that the process of of strategic governance manual changes would typically start in the governance committee with staff bringing to governance here's the here's the suggested changes then that being adopted in whole or picked apart or changed 15 times sometimes we do that um and then come back to the board so it's the it's a committee of the board recommending it to the board and so i do

[00:25:20] understand this feeling of like the the optics of this are that we are just being handed changes to the one thing that we is our you know provide presiding document and so i definitely absolutely understand how people are feeling that way so my and but i don't want our the people who come after us to be left in the middle of like a very fluid process i'm not sure that's fair to them either so my two cents would be if we could send this to governance as number one on its priority list

[00:25:57] and get this in a place where it could come back to the board if during the process it comes back while we're still here i think that's the conversation if the process isn't done until it's new people then that's the conversation too um but in the interim i certainly don't mind getting the the reports but it might be helpful to us to understand the thought behind when each expectation is being presented in kind of the whole picture just my if it's numerical i don't

[00:26:27] know if that logically makes as much sense thanks for the grace on extra time sorry dr anderson okay i'm sorry i just kind of want to start with kind of setting my expectations because i did come in a little bit later because i had to deal with something upstairs can you clarify mr frisch for what is our expectation for this period because i want to make sure i'm coming in in the right without objection i'd be happy to um oh well i'm asking you a direct question okay um the the first

[00:27:04] portion here is a discussion about uh what was presented so the process that leads towards the evaluation right the second portion is a discussion about um the governance manual and how it identifies the relationship between the superintendent and the school board uh whether which there's a couple different versions posted one has highlights that identifies the various uh elements uh and then there are uh there's a red line version that takes those highlighted pieces and kind of segments them out for better clarity i think i was asking is it just for us to peruse and to give feedback

[00:27:44] now or do we have a decision at the end of we will also be breaking up into well sorry the second half where we're talking about the governance manual uh with the superintendent school board relations will be breaking up into some smaller groups. As for the first half, we are discussing these things with an eye towards moving the ball forward and finishing this up so that we can focus on the executive expectations analysis and votes. Okay, thank you. That is very helpful in order for me to give my feedback. I do want to say I am in very, very tight alignment with what Ms. Cohen has

[00:28:23] just shared which is there is a sense that this does not belong to the staff to evac I'm sorry to revise this is a governance manual that is to be designed and revised by the board because we determine how we govern ourselves so I know it feels a little bit like we're fighting for territory but the delineations that the this these changes are trying to outline are being blurred the role of the board is to not have its governance manual be evaluated i'm sorry be revised by staff so i

[00:28:58] would love for these suggestions to be brought back to governance and have the body of the board kind of wrestle with it and then to get it back to the full body when it's ready having said that i do want to be in very very high support of what miss corbett sanders shared we are months away from a new board they might want to undo this whole entire thing i don't think we lose anything by waiting a little bit for them to actually have their stamp on in this conversation a little bit

[00:29:33] i i see space for us to just take a greater pause there um thirdly i am not sure that i have clarity as to when we did make this board decision to move forward on policy governance so that's a question that is still hanging out there for me um i don't see any issue with the executive expectations that we developed i think as was shared last time by miss uh mclaughlin we did really some good work there we wrestled with it we got it to a very good place and i want to receive the reports whether or not we change the timeline that's you know something for that's for a

[00:30:13] a different discussion, but I think those are very worthwhile and should very much be informing how we evaluate the superintendent, but it should not be the sole source of information by which that is done. Do I want it to be a surprise? No. I do want us to get clearer on what is it that we are looking for. I, for one, I would love to dig into some of the strategic goals that we have set Because I don't even know right now what the baseline is for us to determine whether or not adequate growth would have been made by the time we evaluate the superintendent.

[00:30:51] The document is done in June, July. So I do want to make sure that I raise that here. I also agree with Ms. Corbett Sanders' assessment that we don't vote on things quickly. We present it and then we vote two weeks later.

[00:31:07] granted the vote that we took two weeks ago that wasn't anything that was of any significance and it was something that was already done back in july so but the rest of these um reports will be meeting so i would like to get that time to really be thoughtful and to really get get feedback because otherwise it's just ricardi anderson and not mason district because i'm there to represent them and they would not have had an opportunity to engage with me on this um issue so um i i

[00:31:36] I definitely would like to support the motion, and I don't know if you put in a motion, but the idea of having the governance committee begin this work and for us to really pivot into some of the other things that we know we still need to do. We have a policy that is outstanding. I don't know, is it 4240? I can't even remember the title. I would love for us to wrestle with that here because I know we don't have that time, and I would like for this to go to governance, but thank you.

[00:32:03] Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. McLaughlin, followed by Ms. Bukarski. Thank you. I do want to echo all of the concerns that have been raised by my colleagues here. I absolutely support this going to governance, and I do want to reiterate something that I'd said in one of our working retreats.

[00:32:25] You know, Dr. Reid, we spent extensive amount of time on these 13 executive expectations. And as someone who has valued them being in our strategic governance manual, to me, they are a clear guidepost for you and the board.

[00:32:42] I never envisioned that your team would create 13 reports and ask me to sign off, as others have said, in a point in time. I don't know how else to say it, you all, but from my more than decade of service, it's illogical.

[00:33:00] The bottom line is the monitoring goal reports, those are what I have watched superintendents bring, and that is from a year of assessment of how we are on the metrics, on the measures. The executive expectations are how we have clarity for the superintendent, the board, of what we expect from him or her or they over the course of a year and then when we do the evaluation we have the opportunity that for us to look at the monitoring reports and then any other things that have come up that we know

[00:33:38] from a year-long relationship with our superintendent and our board relationship with the superintendent to use them to help inform so you know Dr. Reed we often talk about how the leadership team and you all need to get to the business of operating the system i would like to take that that extra harness of work off of your team and you i don't think you need to be presenting 13 reports they are a snapshot in time and therefore i don't think they're meaningful i think they serve as a very as i said clear explanation for what we expect of

[00:34:17] you at the end of the year we can point to where we think that wasn't accomplished and I guess I'm out of time so the only thing Mr. Frisch I'll sneak in there is I stand by what I've said and what I thought this board was let's do the work and no more policy governance stuff and the carver model stuff that's that's for the next board to decide if they want to take up but we have a perfectly good strategic governance manual that we have refined and improved on and I don't

[00:34:50] understand how we landed here. Ms. Bikarski? Okay, thank you. I agree but disagree on some points. I appreciate and I think, I believe Dr. Reed's intention was to help us in this work because we do have limited time but at the same time I also agree that the optics of the board not being the who is directing this work is is a problem so I'm in support of punting

[00:35:27] this this back to the governance man committee of which I am a part and would be willing to do more meetings to try to get it finished because the second part of this is where I disagree I think it's very important it gets done before the end of the year so that when the new board comes in there is a structure upon which they can start their work this is not a forever this could be a flop this could be terrible I'm fine trying new things I you know

[00:36:02] maybe others are not but I think I really think it would be a gift to provide this to the new board if it doesn't work for them if they don't like it there is nothing that says they have to continue or that they can't make their decisions they can't go forward and change this or tweak this I just see it as something that would be helpful to them and and I think we have as we're hearing kind of a philosophical disagreement on that and we'll just have

[00:36:37] to see you know where the majority ends up with it but I definitely think this needs to go back to governance to be looked at and worked on and then tried to bring forth to the full board. Thank you, Ms. Bukarski. Ms. Seizmoorheiser, followed by Ms. Marin. There's clearly I have too much 12 water bottles and too many wires over here, so it's a trip wire. So anyway, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for all the work on this so far. I'd say I agree with my colleagues that I do think this should go to governance. I think it's a

[00:37:15] governance manuals are is our is our work and that's where this should come out of and I think there's so much here that we could do it pretty quickly in governance bring back to the board I also agree with Miss Cohen I understand that we want the next board to be able to sort of set their structures for themselves however I think setting a structure for them to walk into to have something to to work within to see does this even work for us is important I remember being a board member six months in saying I'm not sure I know how to evaluate the superintendent as well as I would like because I'm walking into six months of working with this and there wasn't the structure in place and I

[00:37:53] think having and I'm saying I would love to know what our previous board members thought in sort of conversations having a written voted on structure I think will just help the next board walking into a halfway through the fiscal year is difficult and I know many of the other board members did it too I do think while there were structures in place before, having a consistent public reporting where we see what our expectations are clearly in the governance manual and we see the reporting on the expectations, I don't think even voting on them means that there's not things that will change that will come to us afterwards.

[00:38:30] I believe that's just saying, all right, we accept this report for what it is in this moment in time. I do think in terms of voting that day, my understanding is we're getting the reports two weeks ahead of time which gives us time to read them and review them if we try to hear it and vote two weeks later I don't before get to all of them so I think in terms of that structure if we get them ahead of time there's time to do that community engagement so long story short I think it would be very beneficial to the board to give them this structure to walk into and then they can see how it works as they're getting their feet under the ground and then see if they want to tweak it or not but I think that's better and gives

[00:39:09] more consistency for what happened in the first half of the year to the second half of the year thank you miss sesmerheiser miss marron followed by miss darrenette koufax sure thank you and just before i start my time can you can you just remind me what my time is because i'll set my timer to be sure that i don't go over since i can't see the timer two minutes i'm sorry was it two did you say yes two minutes okay hold on let me just get this set please so i can do um the accurate just one second please thank you okay um great okay so um i just wanted to go over calendaring for a

[00:39:47] moment so december 4th is the last regular meeting of this school board so that means anything proposed for new business we need to go up by november when is it 20th so as far as governance getting to work on this prior uh that is going to be a major challenge governance was supposed to meet last week but unfortunately it needed to be cancelled because we didn't have quorum and the priority for our governance um as chair and talking with the clerk and in communicating just a tiny bit with members but hard to connect the priority um is to approve some long-standing

[00:40:23] no change memos that are going to need review and time to be in front of the full board so there's just no way to be able to for the governance to do anything in this year even if we didn't have have anything on our agenda. I think, too, that when I reflect back about ways that we've done monitoring or hearing work, these are the two that we have experienced on this board. One is the office giving reports. So we had meetings where all of the instruction and services division gave a report or finance or facilities. And there was criticism from some in the board that it wasn't thorough enough. And there was criticism from others that they already knew some things. So

[00:41:01] that's been tried and didn't work well for the board another one is the goal reports according to the past strategic plan and my recollection is that the timing would get thrown off and the information reported was obsolete so I'm very inclined to use the process being presented because what his works passed has not met the needs of the board because the work that's been done and is being encapsulated today as summarizes work that's been done for months of a a known best model. And also as one of the four people seeking to earn the election to this board, I want this in place. And I ask my colleagues to listen hard to those of us seeking to return

[00:41:39] who can see what the future is going to look like here. That could be your legacy to us. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Ms. Darnak-Koufax, followed by Ms. Keyes-Gamara. So there's obviously two different schools of thoughts here. A couple things I want to, and there's some room for compromise so first i want to say thank you to the staff who've worked hard on this i do appreciate that we we do appreciate um what you've put out there and

[00:42:12] dr reed um i understand your desire to get clarity on some things like your evaluation i i do want to say i think this will be a great gift to the new board the superintendent evaluation because this is hard because sometimes just mentally what you do is you figure out which one of the vdoe things we have to fit into. So thank you for that. With that said, I have to go with we as a board do determine how we govern ourselves. That's what the strategic governments was. I mean, it was put in place, I think, by earlier boards when I was first running, which was 12 years ago for this

[00:42:49] board. So I would support the opportunity for this to go back to governance, which is the way this process should be done for us i do have a question and a couple people talked about it but i kind of want to see my colleagues shake their heads yes or no and i realized there were there were some meetings i missed due to personal reasons but did we make a decision as a board to move forward with policy governance what's the understanding amongst my colleagues no okay okay well that's the

[00:43:26] consensus that i'm hearing i'm not asking for a vote here but the consensus but but it's already in place i couldn't raise my hand but i just want to say it's already in place um that's let's let miss they're not coming so there is disagreement on that um i think we as a board and i think going through governance to ensure that we understand that committee understands as the governance

[00:43:56] committee where we are on this topic. I think that's first and foremost. So, and I don't have a lot of time left in my time, but I do want to say I find it a little disconcerting the way, and I mentioned this at the board table, the way we are supposed to go and look at something and have a 10 minute recess and then evaluate something that will be on the superintendent's record.

[00:44:26] Look, it sometimes takes, maybe it's just me, but it takes me hours sometimes to evaluate former superintendents. And I get this is one markation in time, but I find it a little awkward. And so I would like that to be looked at by governance as well, unless we agreed to that.

[00:44:43] And I just think that that was awkward. If it was one thing like it was last week with one thing, but a complex ideas and the way it's presented, then take a 10-minute recess i find that awkward so that's all i have time for thank you mr not koufax miss keys gamara followed by miss omesh okay i've been sitting here trying to figure out how to say something that can possibly help um but i do think like there's there's not just two

[00:45:17] different schools of thought there's two different narratives of where we are and there was a presentation by the superintendent of the carter um how the carter board governance carver carver okay i'm renaming your school anyway um and we did not adopt that because we changed it to expectations and we also didn't follow his rules which would have required a third party to lead

[00:45:51] us in this discussion that's not happening and that's been my struggle for a couple of reasons i spent when i first got on this board i spent a lot of time going over the enabling statute because we are a dylan state rule and it says specifically what the board is responsible for and the board is responsible for hiring the superintendent policy and accountability is the way to summarize it when i receive from the superintendent's directed staff members

[00:46:27] read written portions of my governance manual it gives me more than heartburn i have to say that because i'm not figuring i'm not figuring out how we got there this is also it goes beyond heartburn because when i look at the heart of what we're looking at we are changing the delegated authority to the superintendent as written by her staff as directed by her oh that is hard for me to say

[00:46:57] and then we have this structure in these meetings that says sit down and fill out this form which looks a whole lot like homework being given to the board structure of this to me with my background and i'm sure there's others with similar background that disagree is a little bit beyond hard to swallow i don't know how to say to my constituents that i'm doing my job under this

[00:47:36] and to send it to governance which i think the folks who are the folks on governance melanie and who else these are all the people who agree these are the people so please don't interrupt miss kieskamara she's so i'm wrapping it up but i'm i'm telling you with my understanding of what the state statute says this delegated authority is being substantially addressed when we first started out it was we're making a few tweaks so it's okay these are not a few tweaks

[00:48:15] and i'm struggling with that because i don't know how to tell my constituents that we're doing our job as according to the state statute. Thank you, Ms. Kieskamara. Ms. Omeish followed by Ms. Tolan.

[00:48:33] Yeah, so I guess several times now in picking up the strategic governance work, we're finding ourselves in a place where, you know, folks aren't feeling like we're even on the same page about whether we're doing this, when we're doing it. So in my mind, I'm thinking back at the meeting we had in the cafeteria where there was discussion, this idea was presented, I guess there was opportunity to comment um and then we just move forward and i'm thinking perhaps it should have been an official vote um an opportunity to you know take it have some discussion um and i know a number of board members were not able to make that meeting um and then yeah to take an official vote so i'm

[00:49:11] maybe it makes sense to post something on thursday that's like are we doing this or not because then people can voice what their you know thoughts are about that if the majority move forward we move forward at that point at least the record is straight or i guess we have have to post it to new business I don't know how that works we can figure that out but whatever that there's a vote in an upcoming meeting that we're moving forward with this in the meantime I actually don't think the governance thing is the is the solution because we're going to end up in the same place where some people still have feelings and the governance piece doesn't reflect what everyone has to say about it and then we're going to have the conversation right here all over

[00:49:46] again with what the governance committee comes up with so that's I would rather us go somewhere today and figuring out, okay, you know, there are some questions, concerns about components of this, right? Like some people are like, oh, should Dr. Reed be the sole, you know, contact with staff or like whatever the pieces are, I think it's worth actually spending some time talking about it right now. Maybe we can see where we end up at the end of today's meeting based on that conversation, because I thought last time we started in a place where we're all like, no, and we ended up in a much more constructive, healthy place in the end, I thought, where people walked away feeling we had

[00:50:22] a good discussion so maybe we could also make the vote now I don't know if we want to vote on this but maybe it should be an official vote but either way let's start discussing our thoughts around this and then at the end of the meeting see where the board's at in terms of like what the next step will be I think that might be more constructive than you know we're kind of going in circles a little bit of like what we're doing and we're not actually doing anything anymore and I'm worried that that's going to actually postpone like delay this too far for us to salvage it for the next board which i think we all agree is a good idea so yeah that's my suggestion um i don't know if uh

[00:50:56] we can maybe get a consensus around that or if we can i mean i'd love to see like who's supportive of something like that we could start the conversation about the content we have and then at the end of the meeting pick up again what we do from here so you want to jump to the the governance manual portion about the board superintendent relations just to clarify yeah the language in here is limited like if you look at it it's not that much let's talk about our thoughts, reactions, responses to that. Just to clarify, that's the second portion of the discussion today. We haven't gotten there. I know people have gotten there. We haven't talked about

[00:51:35] it yet. Right, right. And that's what I think I'm trying to get us to talk about it so that we can determine the next steps later. But we're right now trying to figure out what are the next steps going to be in our process without even having a discussion about the content. Well, I think just to clarify, not everybody's participated yet, right? And literally when we have gotten to that point that's the next conversation so i think that's perfectly fine i mean that was the plan for today right is that the second half of this conversation would be about these changes and obviously we're going to want some clarity from the board about how to proceed after that

[00:52:11] yeah almost like if we can flip the conversation i think it might be more productive like we see where we land maybe we'll land in a place where we all have a sense of agreement if we don't we can determine a different next step at this point everybody but two people have spoken so we'd be flipping it before everybody's had a chance to chime in is that okay yeah ms tollen yes thank you um and i'm very happy to follow that portion of the conversation

[00:52:47] um i just wanted to clarify a couple of things um based on you know my understanding of the meetings that we've had to date um i did feel like after the um retreat that we had a couple times ago that we made a decision to not use the carver model or policy governance and that we were calling what we were doing strategic governance which is the um you know the wording that we've been using since then um so i think under strategic governance um we're just trying

[00:53:21] to figure out two things moving forward one and i'll is what we thought we would talk about in the second half of today is this look at the governance manual so the materials that were were given to the board to take a look at included background materials if we were going in different directions so as far as the governance manual is concerned we were looking at today do we want to leave the governance manual as is do we want to look at that red line the red line that came from

[00:53:58] staff was by no means staff interjecting new information or different information into the governance manual it was simply moving things into a section so it would be more transparent that these are all items around superintendent board roles the third option was what i'm hearing people want to do today is turn this portion over to the governance committee so that they can work on it and come back to the full board on any changes that we may make to the governance manual

[00:54:33] that's what the options for our next part of the discussion the other piece that we were starting to um you know just work on is and i'm hearing from people you know we've got goal reports coming up we have looking at the expectations do we want to do a form do we not want to do a form do we want to give people a longer time to fill out the form just so that that when you get to june and you're doing the evaluation of the superintendent you have some background information to go on i don't didn't understand that there was anything that said that those forms would you know be

[00:55:09] the first draft of the evaluation i view those forms as simply some background information when you get to june and you can think back to the discussion on various expectations and various goals so let me leave it at that thank you miss tollen i'll take my turn um i think one error i made in setting up where the conversation today was not addressing what miss omesh got to very quickly um which is what is the goal around that part of the discussion um for the most part the

[00:55:44] conversation is kind of stuck to the first part um but miss tollen's right you know in terms of the what we were envisioning as the second half there's like three options one of them we've identified a highlighted version of of the strategic governance manual that identifies all the areas that i that speak to the board and superintendent relationship one of the things that could be argued is that it's not transparent if it's disparate all over the document and that you can move those things into one place and so that red line version of that does that and then the third option if we don't if if we don't want to leave it how it is

[00:56:21] and we don't want to move it move those items to one section of the governance manual because we want to edit it somehow is the third option sending it to governance or some other way and either way it'd be the board deciding what it wants to do i would also note that much of the work of the board is done by the superintendent and their operational staff there's rarely a policy that this board gets and that is again one of our primary responsibilities is the creation of policy that is not first drafted by the superintendent council and other operational staff um i can't

[00:56:55] think of an example of a policy created from whole cloth by the school board um so i think where the responsibility for us comes in is what do we do with what we're presented with and that's what we did with the operational expectations the executive expectations that's what we're doing here. So we've got some go-backs. We also have lunch scheduled for 1 p.m. So I'd like to get a consensus of the board if we'd like to go past 1 p.m. with go-backs or take a break from the go-backs and because we have most people have asked for a go-back. So if you'd like to break at 1 p.m. for

[00:57:34] lunch and come back to go-backs or if you'd like to go through lunch with go-backs those are the of options if you have another option please let me know yes yeah so obviously we started about an hour late today um and i think our goal um should be to get to the community schools conversation as quickly as we can um so what i'd like to do you know if people think that they need their go back

[00:58:11] because they've not said something that they want to say then we can do that we can also go right to the discussion of of this governance manual issue and how we're going to resolve that and hopefully we can wrap that up fairly quickly there seems to be broad consensus around the table about what the next step should be so if folks want to stay on schedule i would suggest that we spend we do lunch at one we come back and people use their time either to speak to either either topic they'll go back on the discussion thus far which many people have focused on the second aspect or what we should

[00:58:51] be doing as a board going forward with the governance manual suggested changes dr anderson those were two options option oh sorry okay so option one and again if there's another option please speak up option one we break at one for lunch and we come back for 30 minutes for people to speak to and we can use the go back list for people to speak to either what they wanted to say or what they want to say to moving forward on the governance manual potential changes and option two

[00:59:24] is that we um i'm not sure if there's another a clear option that covers anything and we'd just keep working and and push the the community schools conversation longer so yeah right so we can i think we can do this if we do so the first option raise your hand for the first option we do lunch now which gets us back five minutes early from lunch we speak we participate for 30 minutes as a group on the question at hand we try and make a decision about how to proceed

[00:59:59] and we move directly into the community schools conversation i see dr anderson miss sizemore heiser miss cohen miss carsey miss omesh miss corbett sanders miss darrenette koufax miss mclaughlin and myself opposed abstentions oh sorry miss tollen and miss marron will you verbalize which you were you in favor of that option one okay i'm in favor of option one thank you thank you and miss keese gamara are you abstaining okay so we're going to take a break now for lunch we

[01:00:36] will be back at 125 sharp couple slides really quickly just to show you um the context of of this portion about the governance manual and the superintendent school board relationship go ahead

[01:01:14] thank you mr frischer we can go to the next slide i know the board has already started to have some conversation around this um piece of the work we just wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to orient everyone to the materials um that were provided so just very briefly um there is language in the current strategic governance manual that gets at this notion of a board superintendent relations.

[01:01:38] And so we've got this content highlighted in the version you've got with the yellow document over it. You can see sort of starting on page 54 there, sorry, yes, starting on page 54 you'll see some specific policy language that's called out, but this language is sort of sprinkled throughout the strategic governance manual.

[01:01:59] If we can go to the next slide. What we've also provided is a red line version that pulls the existing language in the strategic governance manual and organizes it all together in this version. You have within your yellow folder a document that shows you exactly where the language came from that's in the red line version so you can see where that's pulled into in that specific area.

[01:02:25] So I know the board's interest at this point is sort of to talk through next steps so we're to hand that back over to Mr. Frisch and can answer any questions. I just turned myself off we're going to the go back list and just to give people an idea of the order we've got um Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Sizemore-Hyser, Ms. Pekarski, Ms. Marin, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Sizemore-Hyser, and I imagine everybody else is going to want to go back as well. Okay, Ms. Keyes-Gamara, all right so we'll start with Ms. Sizemore-Hyser, excuse me Ms. McLaughlin then Ms. Sizemore-Hyser.

[01:03:02] Thank you. First I want to thank Chair Toland for being very clear colleagues that we did not agree to move to policy governance. We agreed to stay with our strategic governance model and that we certainly see room for improving our strategic governance manual. So I'm on board with that. I'm also on board with what Mr. Frisch and Ms. Neal just talked about which is if we're taking only existed lang existing language and trying to bring it into you know collectively into one

[01:03:40] spot within the governance manual i'm also comfortable with that if there's any new language that staff has brought to us related to this that's the language i want to see because i think um consistently our goal and and desire as a board is taking very seriously our stewardship responsibilities. I have valued in my tenure providing input and thoughts and feedback to the

[01:04:12] superintendent when it comes to principal hires, leadership team hires. Those are, again, I hope the board ultimately serves as an asset to the superintendent and not an annoyance. And I think we have to be really mindful that depending on how it is articulated, it can look like we're

[01:04:32] viewed as an annoyance. And so anyway, so I guess my question would be, Mr. Frisch, to staff is in that red line version of the superintendent board relations, what if any language is newly created? Thank you for the question, Ms. McLaughlin. So the things that you're going to see that are different are the strategic plan goals have been updated. So they're labeled to our current strategic plan goals. So you'll see that in appendix I, it takes out the words ignite goals because that was the previous strategic plan. In the monitoring superintendent performance, again, the goal titles have been

[01:05:10] changed just to be updated to our current version of the goals. The only other changes you see in the redline version are there are topical naming conventions assigned to these. So it's all been organized with existing content, but it's just been provided with headers for clarity. Thank you.

[01:05:27] with what I saw is 18 seconds left. So, Dr. Reed, can you speak to perhaps why there is this concern or interpretation that you're going to, or that it is your desire to change the way you interface with the board on principal hires, leadership team, hiring decisions, or even just how the board interacts with your leadership team?

[01:05:59] I don't believe this language changes any of those topic areas. Thank you very much. I think that'll be an important part of our conversation, but I think that clarity is extremely important, that the language is more administrative cleanup than any operational strategic changes.

[01:06:23] Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. Sizemore-Hizer, followed by Ms. Bukarski. Thank you, and I appreciate Ms. McLaughlin's question because that was a lot of what I was going to ask about is it seems like a lot of what is here we already had before is just either reordering it in a way to get it all in the same place around superintendent relations, as well as updating it for our new strategic plan.

[01:06:45] Thank you, Megan, for those comments. In a conversation that Megan and I had, I think we talked about -- it's a fair concern. I hear the concern about if we have these executive expectation reports several months before the superintendent's evaluation, are they out of date, essentially, for the information we want to have, and so one thought that, you know, she and I were talking, and Megan and I don't mean to speak for you, so please correct me if I'm incorrect, but was maybe that we could have these reports, because I look at it as two purposes.

[01:07:15] One is, you know, a data point, some information as a background for the Estupendent Evaluation, and two, to help have consistent yearly reporting on what our expectations are, right, and those both dual purposes can exist.

[01:07:31] So perhaps, you know, in terms of the evaluation piece, if there's been a report, and I'm making up this number, that are six months or more old, right, there's a sort of just a quick update sent to the board before the evaluation. It doesn't have to be a whole full report, but just here's some of the things we've done since we had this monitoring report that is sent to the board, you know, before the evaluation to kind of give us an update, so then we have a more current picture as we go into the evaluation.

[01:07:59] Perhaps that's a good compromise for the concerns about the executive expectation reports being a little bit older. Also with the understanding that these yearly reports serve a dual purpose, which is a continual monitoring of the executive expectations so we can make sure that the superintendent and her staff are following the expectations this board has set.

[01:08:17] So those are my two cents around that. That might be a good way to sort of to maybe bridge the gap between the two concerns. And just thank you again, Megan, for lifting up that this is mostly sort of cleanup changes around the governance manual from what we had.

[01:08:33] Thank you, Ms. Sizemore Heiser, Ms. Bikarski, followed by Ms. Marin. I don't quite remember what I was going to say, but I do agree. I'm glad Ms. McLaughlin brought that up. And I think it was Ms. Dernot-Koufax who talked about having that short time in the meeting.

[01:08:53] I, too, was kind of like, this is weird. I don't know how this would work. and I had spoken to Dr. Reed this past regular school board meeting about it and the reply that I received was that we would be getting these well in advance of that meeting so it's not it's not something that we wouldn't have time to dig into and and give thought to I guess have something prepared if you need to you know depending how you like to work I guess so

[01:09:26] just wanted to make sure that others knew that. Thank you, Ms. Bukarski. Ms. Maron followed by Dr. Anderson. Ms. Maron, we can come back to you if you're not ready. Okay, we'll come back to Ms. Maron. Dr. Anderson followed by Ms. Corbett Sanders. Thank you. I'm glad that you raised this because one of the things that I know some of us are experiencing is there's lots of documents. So I want to be sure to go to the governance manual where I have things that are highlighted or rather the red line version.

[01:10:09] Page 53, rather, page 54, that's a new section. Marcy, can you confirm? 54, 55, 56, all the way to 58. Yes, so page 54 is a new section with language that was taken from the original governance manual, page 6.

[01:10:34] Page 55 is a new section with language taken from the current governance manual, page 34. Page 56 on the red line is a new section with language that was pulled from page 55 of the highlighted, the current strategic governance manual.

[01:10:52] Page 57 was existing language. Page 58 is existing language with some updated language pulled from other sections of the governance manual. Again, the current version of the governance manual. And none of these are related to the sample board, the BSRs, is that correct?

[01:11:09] That's correct. was information we're going to provide to just share with the board if you wanted to have a conversation about any additional potential revisions today so i would love if at all possible for us to go through the five pages that miss neil just highlighted and maybe give a year or nay so we could either move on or not move on or make those revisions so that's one two before i don't Let me just kind of run through all my lists, and you could chair away by putting it all in your notes.

[01:11:45] The second thing I would like to put forth is the feedback document. There's a lot there. I don't think it works for all of the things that we need to do. And if we're really going to be intentional and explicit about its purpose, I don't even see that it requires a vote.

[01:12:03] Because what we're saying here, and I've heard you say that, I've heard somebody else confirm it to Karen Corbett's question, Corbett Sanders' question is that it is not the all to be at all to the superintendent's evaluation. So, one, that language should exist somewhere, and two, it will remove the need for us to vote on it.

[01:12:25] It's informational to be utilized at a later time. I'm not sure how voting on it or not voting on it is going to be impactful. So that's the second thing that I would like to consider. Now I'd like to pause and then pick up my time.

[01:12:43] That does not exist. I just noticed it's at zero. So just to be clear, what Dr. Anderson has requested is that we take a consensus on the repositioning of current language as identified in the red line version, which has a red cover. Yes.

[01:13:01] Point of clarification on that, a red line version usually shows where it's struck from and where it's moved to. This does not do that. It actually just looks like it's all new text.

[01:13:14] Well, if you take the yellow, I'm sorry, but so I'm a little anxious that I've been told things, but I'm now having to go to the red line text and then the highlighted text and do the cross map. That's really makes it very difficult because we've just been told that it's a red line version. It's a partial red line version. It's only new text. Would it be possible to put up wherever it is that that language came up? Yes. Can we put up the gray document?

[01:13:48] on the slide. The gray document in your packet has uh precisely that information. Ms. Darna Koufax. Yes, can we speak on um the the if you're asking for a vote and I want to make sure if that's what you're saying, a consensus vote, I do want to speak to the red line version.

[01:14:08] We hadn't gotten that far yet, but that would be the intention. Let's not do the red line vote yet. I'm waiting for the document to go up. And Mr. Fish, while that's waiting, I know I ran out of of seconds, but if I could just throw this on while we're in dead silence. Could we make sure that the minutes really reflect where this board stands on policy governance? Because there continues to be misunderstandings. Are we doing it? Are we not doing it? What version? How are we using it to

[01:14:46] inform what we are doing? If that could just be clearly written down somewhere, that would be fantastic thank you all right so if you turn to page 50 54 we have our first

[01:15:22] red line piece moving this from I believe page six of the current version of the governance manual the request is that we provide consensus on this would anybody like to speak to it it's on if you look you've your red version it's on page 54 of your red version this so that's on the screen there it's coming

[01:15:55] page six of the current version of the that highlights it if you go to page six it's all right let me try and okay one second just so that we're all 100 clear the version with the red cover has the additions in red with under you know the under underlining because it's being moved this what document you see on the screen there tells you where that language comes from so in this case the stuff that you see on page 54 is coming from page six of the current governance manual which is

[01:16:34] in yellow this yellow cover here mr. Frisch I would add to in the red line version you can see the strikethrough on page six okay so in the red version the strikethrough is there dr. Anderson yes just two questions one of the differences that I see is that the title is now s1 can somebody tell me what s1 is we use the same naming conventions the board had selected prior to in there

[01:17:13] So there was an S-1. I think it was the intention was superintendent board roles or relationship. There was an S-1 and an S-2. So we use that S naming to get to the five that we have in there. And secondarily, the change, well, a language that was dropped from the original on page six is this manual clarifies the basis and the means for evaluating the performance of both the school system and the superintendent. Can somebody speak to why was that dropped?

[01:17:41] it just seems to be what we are aiming to do here so we let we retain that language in the redline version on page six I I'm not I don't see it it's still on page original page six yes dr. Anderson okay so you just move a portion of it that's correct okay thank you that's it for this one thank you will do miss Corbett Sanders followed by mr. Annette Koufax followed by miss Keith Gamara thank you and I do appreciate that on page six you do show the deletion of the board delegates so that language that moves to page 54 typically you should probably show where it goes but then when I look at 54 what has been

[01:18:21] deleted from the draft which isn't shown on this is as long as the superintendent uses a reasonable interpretation of the board's direction blah blah blah that whole section and so we're you know that's when I'm talking about a red line version should show a red line version and that whole paragraph is now missing similarly on s2 where you've retitled it to unity of control what s2 actually is is accountability and evaluation of the

[01:18:55] superintendent and yet again lots been deleted and not shown here so Miss Corbett Sanders I think the language you're looking for is that sitting on page 57 and 58 they just got bumped into later pages of the red line version Well, except you still don't have something that says accountability and evaluation.

[01:19:18] It just says accountability of the superintendent, and we're still missing huge portions of that. So then you get to superintendent monitoring and evaluation, and I presume that what you're trying to get to is what's on page 58 now, and it's on 55 there.

[01:19:45] You now make it as an s5, but you've added is that where you're saying? That whole section that's all new language the board will judge the overall success Is that all new language because what I'm trying to figure out I mean it's you'd like her to answer go ahead so page 58 the s 5 was the s2 you are correct miss Corbett Sanders in terms of the accountability sits under the red line version on page 56 and

[01:20:22] The monitoring and evaluation sits on page 58 and the language that's in the red text has either been revised or pulled from additional portions of the governance manual. So the revised parts are the goals, those pieces. The remainder of the language is either from the beginning that got pulled into one of the other pages.

[01:20:40] So this notion of the superintendent is accountable to board decisions, like that first line that struck through on red, you see that in the accountability of the superintendent section. so it's pulled out separately, it's not deleted. And then the red text that follows the goals is all content that was pulled in from other portions of the strategic governance manual, and those page numbers are on the gray document.

[01:21:04] - So there is actually new text here. What was presented was that it's just a restructuring of what was there, there's actually new text. Well, yes, there is, because I can read it. And I know it's not here, which is regarding the executive expectations language.

[01:21:22] And so I do think, you know, I appreciate what you're trying to do here. But we need to be very clear that there is new text here. The executive expectations language was adopted by the board when we updated the strategic governance manual when the board approved the executive expectations.

[01:21:41] So that language is in the current governance manual. Why is it redlined? Because it was pulled from another section of the governance manual. So I really appreciate what you're trying to do here.

[01:22:04] I think that there's lots of stuff that's been moved around, and it's not a traditional way of doing redlining where it shows where something might have been moved to someplace else versus just deleted. And I think that as a board, I would suggest rather than voting on each of these piece parts, that we actually have the governance manual, governance committee go through this and really make sure that until such time that all of this is verified and clarified, that we will use the existing governance manual as is.

[01:22:42] And my reasoning is, because there's not only this piece, but there's another section which was put into our folders today, which has some pretty dramatic changes to the way we do governance. And as Chair Toland said, we aren't doing this.

[01:23:01] So I'm a little confused why this was put in here. And so I just, I appreciate it, but I'm now going to have to go through line by line and find it in this other place. And that's a little bit disconcerting.

[01:23:19] Would you like Ms. Neal to explain why that was included in our packet? So we wanted to give the board some resources similar to when the board did the executive expectations conversation from some other districts. This is language pulled from other districts' governance work that the same districts we looked at with our executive expectations to determine if the board wanted to consider any other revisions beyond just organizing into a new red line to group this information together.

[01:23:47] Other districts that do policy governance? Same districts that we looked at for executive expectations. No, and none of the content that's sitting in that document with the pink cover is in the red line version. So I would ask that it be very clearly marked that this is not intended for adoption by this board, the pink, because somebody's going to pick this up and they're going to say, wow, look what they're planning on doing. And it would be

[01:24:23] misunderstood. So can we get agreement that that will be done? Would you like the PDF updated with a stamp or like, okay, that would be fine. All in favor? No, we can put like a watermark on it something making sure it's clear this is not ours all right so yes their board provides consensus all right so it is 10 till 2 when we need when we were hoping to transition to a conversation about

[01:24:58] community schools we also have a public hearing at 5 30 that we cannot start late i would like to suggest that we take consensus of the board at this point to send these suggested uh well to send this piece of the work to governance to report back to the committee to the to the board as a whole um and leave it at that and move on to the the um because we are not going we are not going to have time for everybody who wants to speak or ask questions and if we're going to be doing those when the governance committee comes back to us anyways i think that's probably the

[01:25:36] the fairest way of doing it miss keese camara people can't hear me that's unheard of anyway the only reason i'm raising my hand is because the comment i wanted to make i think goes more universally to how we move forward so if we just send it as is um then that comment won't be taken into account and it has to do with this form right here so i i wanted to hear what my colleagues had to say about this but i understand the time constraints but i do think that this might

[01:26:14] impact how the governance man governance committee move forward can we miss dr i was sorry can we pause on the form that is supposed to be utilized on thursday because i think it is interwoven with so many other things i am not ready to use that form on thursday because of the depth of what needs to happen plus the use of the form also assumes other agreements so i would suggest that we pause the form until we could really speak about it revise it if necessary or even utilize

[01:26:53] if we're going to use it at all but if we could pause for this thursday that would be great besides marheiser honestly i you know i respect the thought that you know we're still working on tweaking it but i don't see what the harman is having as an option available and if people don't want to do it they don't have to do it but but that's why i have my hand up well okay let me finish it was so i don't think there's any reason why we've as a board agreed to a strategic governance model with executive expectations we added language last time we voted on in the public meeting to add that language to the governance manual around the continuous monitoring and the

[01:27:33] report so i don't see what the harm is in having that available for board members who want to fill it out and want to practice this one this strategic governance model with executive expectations that we passed as a board and added to our governance manual last time and i actually personally think that as the more we do it the more we figure out what maybe want to tweak on these forms i don't want to tweak on these forms so i would respectfully say let's go ahead and have the forms and if people want to fill them out that's fine miss keese camara the reason i'm raising this concern is that i think fundamentally it changes how we look at the evaluation down the

[01:28:11] road so con to continue to use it without that discussion to me is is concerning because we've never been able to talk about what this means and i think that it changes some things that are so fundamental that i i do think there is harm in just letting people use it if they want to because there's still the question of how it's being used in the evaluation in the ultimate evaluation process we've never answered that first we're going to take a consensus on sending this portion of the

[01:28:46] governance manual edits or suggested edits to the governance committee all those in favor of sending this portion we'll return to that question in a second uh this portion of the work to the governance committee for consideration and expeditious reporting back to uh the full board all those in favor raise your hand dr anderson ms seismor heiser ms cohen ms pokarsky ms omesh Ms. Corbett Sanders, Ms. Darenette-Koufax, Ms. Keese-Gamara, and Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Tolan.

[01:29:18] All those against, please raise your hand. All those abstaining, with Ms. Marin away from the table. All right, so that's being sent back. As to the question of whether the form will be used or not, I think, yes, Ms. McLaughlin. I had my placard to speak to it, if I could. Let's get to question at hand first so that we're not doing it and then doing another round of speakers okay so i'm going to suggest that we're doing consensus right this is not a motion so i will when we get through the comments from board members the question will be do you want to uh send this

[01:29:58] type of the work to the governance committee or do you want to continue using the form um in the interim all right all right uh miss darinette koufax and then miss uh mclaughlin thank you at this point i think there is a great um deal of divergence on the usefulness and the comfortable uh if you're comfortable with it or not miss pokarski spoke to it i spoke to it i think um right now i i think the form should not be used by whomever wants to because if it choose if it

[01:30:35] if it ends up being something that the superintendent is formally evaluated on and only two or three people use it that's not an accurate assessment of what's being presented to the board and what is being voted on so at this point i would like to say that should go to the governance that that portion which is will be looked at it doesn't say um but on page uh 58 it does talk about the board vote and um i at this point um since many of us don't feel that that's what we're

[01:31:08] ready to do yet we push that to the governance manual as well and continue having conversations amongst ourselves to see whether or not this is something we're comfortable with but i don't think we should start that this thursday at all miss mclaughlin so this is why i do support sending the form as another part of the governance review because we're not real clear on what the form will be or not being how it'll be used however i have so a slightly different thought which is

[01:31:41] we've been told the form is just to help board members have contemporaneous notes and um and be able to reference it at the year end so in my mind if that is as it's been presented the case then it's just a form for people to take their own notes and so dr reed i think this is probably really important for you to weigh in because this does relate to your evaluation if board members want to voluntarily use the form because it's great to structure their note-taking on this ee for your year-end evaluation there's no harm there if it's that it's being collected by the

[01:32:21] clerk and is going to be used to as a draft on where the board saw your meeting the executive expectations i would think that would be problematic as ms um darin at kofax mentioned because you only have three people in there and that's not official either so i i perfectly supportive as ms sizner heiser said voluntarily if you want to use the form it collect your thoughts because in the end it is the year-end evaluation that each one of us fills out and as we were told

[01:32:56] it's to support board member efforts to review not to dictate what the board as a body is saying about the superintendent on that executive expectation in that point of time so i know this just all sounds very confusing but the bottom line is i think the using the form voluntarily for people uses their own notes and to keep it as such or they want the clerk to hold on to it just for their file for them to use on their evaluation but otherwise i i don't recommend if it's going into official documentation I don't think that's fair

[01:33:31] to dr. Reed and it also doesn't reflect than the full board which is what we want it to be mr. Frisch can you comment personally is the standing and chair did what I outlined makes sense I understood what you said all right miss Corbett Sanders followed by miss Cohen followed by miss tollen so I think we You should send the whole kit and caboodle to governance to use a technical term.

[01:34:05] And the reason I believe it's so important is twofold. One is, you know, we talk about the executive expectations at a regular board meeting. The board will vote on each of the monitoring reports presented by the superintendent finds the superintendent is not in compliance with one of the executive expectations.

[01:34:25] They'll present a corrective plan to the board at a subsequent meeting. The board will review each expectation annually at the time the monitoring report is presented for any revision. So it's a one and done as it's currently drafted. And I think that this whole process needs to be really discussed within governance and kind of noodle through it.

[01:34:46] Similarly, as I mentioned at the very beginning of this meeting, I do not feel comfortable with an executive expectation being presented to the board and then the board voting that night. And so I would hope that that would be part of the discussion in governance because there's an expectation of transparency that really is important for the community.

[01:35:11] And the community doesn't necessarily go on board docs, but they may be watching. And so I believe that we should just kind of have as new business the presentation and then the adoption two weeks later.

[01:35:28] but that would be something governance would have to noodle through. Ms. Cohen. Yeah, I mean, I guess my question, though, is that the framework kind of that either we set up or has been set up, I imagine we could argue about that, relies on some sort of check throughout the process.

[01:35:55] So if that's the case and we have not quite figured out what that looks like, my only concern is putting Dr. Reed and staff through the motions of doing these EE reports then with not a structure of like how they're going to be utilized. So I guess that would be my question. And I don't know, Dr. Reed, if you feel like waiting in here, but if this is, if we're not getting anywhere here, does it make sense then to pause the delivery of those reports until we figured out the structure with which they'll be

[01:36:31] dealt with? It's certainly an option. Yeah. I just, I don't know. I mean, I guess I put this to my colleagues as much as anybody else if we don't have a structure of what we're doing with those reports do we just take them in as we have goal reports in the past but then but normally we have work sessions on goal reports so it's a little you know and I don't know in terms of timing I put to you and Elaine it's going to make your lives an awful lot harder of then having to

[01:37:09] group multiple EEs on the same night but I feel like that's what we're setting it doesn't make sorry no no it's okay go ahead it doesn't make our lives more difficult it makes the entire board's life more difficult the number of times we've been asked why did a meeting go so long this would be another thing that extends a meeting so I'm not sure how to yeah I do I do think that to your question about pausing I really just don't think we can pause the work of this division right now I feel like we've put a calendar together calendar together to look at the departmental functions

[01:37:48] that form the pillars to the strategic plan and we must execute that work. And part of executing that work is receiving formative feedback in real time, not on everything at once, but on segments and chunks of this that are actionable by staff and reviewable by senior leadership and translatable for our principals and our staff in all of our departments across this division. So I think we've talked a lot about a system of schools or a school system we need a backbone for a school

[01:38:22] system and it has been in existence in this governance manual coming into the division it's not something we've been using in the last couple years and I think there's some processes that are frayed as a result of not looking at these departments closely or these functions closely and supporting them in ways that will enable us to reach the goals of this division so i think that's my feedback at this time to the question um that you're posed um at this time

[01:38:56] yeah i guess just then for me as one board member i mean i feel like whether i i understand the question about are we going to vote for it are we not you know i don't i don't know the answer to that but i feel like if we can't document some sort of feedback i think that's probably not super helpful um to staff and and to dr reid so just i don't know how you want to we're i don't know how you want to handle this but for for me i would propose that we still fill these things out and if people you know don't want to they don't have to but there's no way to get that continuous

[01:39:34] feedback especially since we're not doing these as work sessions so i'm not i'm not sure how to so maybe we take a vote on if we want to keep doing those or not i don't know be clear the vote is that we either don't use them for now and send the process to governance or we do use them for now and send the process to governance. So that's the choice that you speak to that everybody else I'm in the camp of use them. I will also point out that we are again over time it is seven after and we've got one two three four four people that want to speak. So Ms. Kees-Gamara you're next

[01:40:11] followed by Dr. Anderson. So I fully agree we want to move the system forward and I have been here when we receive those goal reports and even if you're sitting at the table everybody gives their comments etc and you get a consensus of where the board is and typically that has been direction for the superintendent when we when we have done those goal reports in the past. My ultimate objection to this is that it is essentially a pass fail structure right either you're you're

[01:40:47] complying or you're not complying essentially and it creates a dichotomy or a conflict when you have to get to that evaluation at the end because that's a whole different writing scale so that's fundamentally why i'm objecting one i don't think 10 minutes is enough handed me a piece of paper Okay. Feels a little bit like homework, but it really doesn't. This isn't going to, if I were, based on how I've done my evaluations in the past, this wouldn't guide me other than to remind me what I thought at that particular time.

[01:41:26] But what I normally do in my evaluation process is there are things that have happened throughout the year that I remember or I have notes of, and that's what I'm commenting on for the scale that the state has given us. I'm having problems with how this reconciles with what the state has given us.

[01:41:45] And so that's a big part of my objection to this. If people want to just give it to her and say that's what you want to do, you can do that. I won't be one of those people because I think this is a little bit disingenuous. I also think that it can mislead those people that are coming on the board to think, oh, to have to work to put that in the context of where that person was, right?

[01:42:10] And so, I hear you. I want to give the superintendent feedback. I just, I don't agree with this. I don't think that this is that full process that is really going to give her what she needs or our staff to move forward.

[01:42:26] So, you know, I do support making it part of how we move forward so we can make sure that feedback is healthy. But the discussion at the board table has always been feedback. I don't, I'm not sure why that doesn't work here.

[01:42:43] So that's my concern. Thank you, Ms. Kees-Gumar. Dr. Anderson, followed by Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, followed by Ms. Toland. I'll be super brief because I think Ms. Kees-Gumar pretty much captured some of my statements. Because we give feedback at all times.

[01:42:59] we're giving feedback now maybe capturing that feedback needs to be better um well it's recorded so it's captured um because that's what we'll do in those meetings I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water per se because I think we can get some real good information from those reports and I understand the urgency that the superintendent has shared which is this is helpful in terms of a formative so I do not want to not have those reports I just don't think the form is our only means of providing such feedback and until we clarify their purpose their content and structure I don't think we should be using them however if anybody else wants to use whatever we

[01:43:37] have right now they can use it but we also have to be mindful of what does that mean it's just notes for them in this given period it's not something to be moving forward because it may just be a couple of people I for one won't be using it this Thursday thank you Dr. Anderson Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, followed by Ms. Tolan.

[01:43:58] You know, I think it's interesting we're in this space where the conversation is about whether we want to use a form or not use a form to give feedback. You know, I know we've had many conversations in our retreats about goal setting with the superintendent, providing continuous feedback to the superintendent so she can make sure she's on the right track, and if she's not, she can course correct in real time.

[01:44:20] I personally think I hear what everybody's saying in terms of there's other feedback we give and certainly we do we make comments at the board table we make comments in work sessions we're constantly giving feedback on things staff are bringing us that doesn't stop any of those processes from happening but i do think there's a lot of value in giving and having our consistent executive expectations which we've set and giving consistent feedback to the superintendent of yes you are on track or no you are not on track it doesn't mean that she may not come off track in in the next few months or stay on track, but I think that feedback as an employee, I have a boss

[01:44:55] who gives me feedback. This is a project we're having you do, and yes, you're on track to get it done, or no, you're not, and then I can course correct in real time. I think that's just in some ways best HR practices to do for an employee, and I think especially for a superintendent, it's very public, it's very transparent in terms of the report she gives us, in terms of our comments, and it helps, especially in this year as we're transitioning to eight new board members, for them to have the written document of here's where the previous board members thought we were at in the first six months of the year before we had to evaluate them.

[01:45:30] It doesn't mean that they're very intelligent individuals. They will come in and review things and go through their own meetings and come to their own conclusion, but I think it's a helpful thing to have a document, and I don't know why we're, I guess, struggling with whether to use a form or not in addition to all the other things that we say. Thank you. Ms. Tolan? Yes, thank you. And thank you to Ms. Seismerheiser. I won't repeat what she said. I agree 100% with her sentiments. We've worked for months and months

[01:46:05] putting together strategic plan goals and executive expectations. And so what we're just talking about now is how do we make sure that those are actually being met over this time frame? i do want to remind the board as well that in june i believe we were given a draft calendar of when we would look at each executive expectation and when we would look at each goal the calendar taking us from you know the beginning of this school year through the end of the school year um so that you know this board would see some of the expectations and some of the goals

[01:46:40] and the next board would do that we do not have the luxury of just halting this work and not moving forward with these because it's not going to fit in the calendar so i think on thursday night we are going to have an executive expectation presented to us and dr reed's view of whether she's meeting that or not um i for one will be taking very good notes i will take it on that form um you know the dreams will seat will be held by someone else in the next um you know after january 1 and i want that person to have as much background information as possible

[01:47:16] As they move forward, when we get to June, the superintendent evaluation is an enormous task, and any background information notes etc that could feed into that would be extremely helpful. I do not see this as prescribing it as being a first draft for it. These are just point in time pieces of information that board members can reflect upon.

[01:47:44] as far as the ees miss mclaughlin you talked about it earlier the ees are you know in my mind they're less heavy than a than a goal for a goal we're going to have a work session and a discussion at a board meeting for each of the ees we will just be having a discussion at a meeting on a variety of topics that are very very important to the school district so whether we want to vote on it or not i guess we need to decide whether we're going to fill up the form or not we can leave to individuals and collect them and make a decision in the government's committee later i'm perfectly

[01:48:20] fine with that thank you miss tollen uh miss marron sure thank you um yeah i also i appreciate miss tollen thank you for reminding us about the timeline you know since june i know we've all spent a lot of you know our time and staff time trying to have really thoughtful discussions you know i i don't feel that it is gonna hamper my ability to do the job i think it's really gonna help with transparency and i don't see losing ground you know i am concerned that if we are to pause this work and we've had multiple days of retreats and massive amount of work i mean

[01:48:59] what did we say to the public that we've been spending all this time and resources and we're trying to be as transparent as we've ever been and yet we're not going to do this so i think we should have you know trust in the future colleagues that they'll be able to take this forward you know the last board left us a really good start you know and unfortunately covid derailed it but you know i feel like we've done this hard work and we don't have the answers and we're not going to have the answers and governance isn't able to um facilitate that discussion in a timely manner i think we make sure that we encourage the new board to watch this session watch these

[01:49:37] sessions and we you know do some great orientation and mr fresh and his tone have put together that survey so you know i think it really is our duty to move forward and continue to you know to trust that we will do this work transparently and keep improving it so i hope that we can move forward all right before we take a go back i want to take my turn um and i appreciate everybody's conversation today i think the one thing that's clear is that we're going to be having a conversation about what this process ends up looking like the question is whether or not we're going to allow

[01:50:13] the form to be used at the meeting um as basically repeating the process that we went through uh the previous week um miss darinette koufax i believe that dr reached continue with what she was going to do this thursday i do not think whether or wherever wherever or whatever we want to do with the form should impact that because we should not stop the work of this board and the system over this issue thank you just wanted to be clear about that all right now we're going to take the consensus of the board. Your first option will be removing the form from the process when we do the

[01:50:51] executive expectations while governance deals with it. Your second option is to continue as planned with the form being part of the process as governance deals with it. So the first option is to remove the form from the process while governance works on it. And your second option is to keep things as it was last time with the form being part of the process as governance works on it. Is everybody clear? All right. So if you would like to remove the form as part of the process while governance works on it, please raise your hand. Dr. Anderson, Ms. Daronak-Koufax,

[01:51:30] literally said it three times. Yes. All right. I'm going to do it one more time. Okay. So I need hands back up for this one. I need hands back up. I need hands back up. Thank you. Dr. Anderson, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Keese-Gamara, and Ms. McLaughlin.

[01:51:54] What did I say? You get two votes. Okay. And for keeping the process current while governance, or as is, as governance works on this, please raise your hand. Ms. Seismar-Hyser, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Pekarski, Ms. Omeish, Ms. Marin, Ms. Tolan, and myself.

[01:52:16] So we will keep the process as is while governance works on it. What? No, she didn't. All right. moving on let's go ahead and take two minutes to transition to community schools um and i believe

[01:52:31] that's being held or run by dr anderson and miss mclaughlin i'm gonna get out of the seat all right

[01:57:19] folks we have only until 4 30 so we should go ahead and aim to start in one minute so if you could please finish up your conversations and join us at the table one two three four five six we need one more to take a seat i think i hope they're not going to the restaurant they're not all righty we are very excited to present to you this afternoon the community schools update and there

[01:57:55] is a portion where there is a decision to be made by the board and i will um defer now to the skipped founder to kind of walk us through this i know this is one of her last opportunities to have these very important discussions. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Ms. McLaughlin to set the stage for today and to welcome our guests.

[01:58:18] Good afternoon. Just a quick correction to the record. I'm just one of the original founding members on SKIPT. There is about 25 of us. Now, that actually was Ms. Strauss who started, yep, but the longevity was with my colleague Ms. Dernak-Koufax for many, many years.

[01:58:44] What I want to do right now is just help everybody understand, first of all, we have members of the county as well as FCPS staff with us here to walk us through the community schools where we are and to refresh everybody's memory you may recall that the board of supervisors um recognized that because the schools are our our property and buildings and responsibilities um that they

[01:59:15] deferred um two key decision points um for them not to take action until we first looked at it and um gave direction to the superintendent and that has to do with the framework for how we develop community schools here in Fairfax County in partnership with the county government.

[01:59:38] And number two, the site selection process because for those who are familiar with the existing community schools here in Fairfax County, those three were pilots. The funding was brought by outside organizations that asked us to pilot and they would provide the funding. And we're really, board members i hope you understand this is so important today that we no longer delay this this has been sitting for probably up to 18 months where the skipped and the board supervisors have

[02:00:12] been waiting on us so i want to turn it over now to dr presidio who has done a phenomenal job um under our direction from the board on getting more information to us if you can then introduce our amazing guests from the county government as well um along with fcps staff who've worked really hard on this including saray um then walk us through that and then board members will go to discussion and decision point um at uh in the conclusion and again we're looking to try and do this within a two-hour time frame thank you dr presidio all right well thank you very much ms

[02:00:50] mclaughlin so we're very excited to have the opportunity to talk about the community schools work with the board and with the public today. I think Ms. McLaughlin did a really good job talking a little bit about the history, but just a few things to add. First of all, I would just say, again, this of course is one of the strategic initiatives of SCIP, the Successful Child and Youth Policy Team, and it's a joint initiative, again, with the county and FCPS, so we're really excited to have our county partners here with us today.

[02:01:16] First we have Chris Leonard, the Deputy County Executive, and Marla Zemetski, who's from Neighborhood and Community Services. We work very, very closely with them on this initiative. We also have Saray Smalls, who's with us. She's in our DSS department, technically responsible for health services, but this is other duties as assigned.

[02:01:36] And she's done a fantastic job leading and guiding this initiative with the help and support from Susan Wagner from ISD. And Saray's gonna lead most of the presentation today, but there's just a little bit of background and context that I wanted to provide before we get started. The presentation outcomes, again, as Ms. McLaughlin said, two big things.

[02:01:55] One, we want to share the findings from the program evaluation that we did back in February, or excuse me, back in 2022, started in the summer of 2022 and was completed in December of 2022. We have shared that with the board, but we've not had an opportunity, we've only shared it in writing, we've not had an opportunity to discuss it, so this is our first opportunity to do that with you and with the public today.

[02:02:18] Secondly, and probably more importantly, is to use that evaluation to look at the updated recommendations that we have for the board today. Again, primarily related to roles and responsibilities of the county, of the school system, and our partnership with community organizations in the site selection process.

[02:02:36] And as Ms. McLaughlin mentioned, our goal today, what we're really asking the board, is for consensus on the program model or the framework for community schools, if you will, so that we can move forward with this initiative. And the next step in this initiative would be able to basically take this presentation to the Board of Supervisors.

[02:02:55] Once they endorse it, then we can start looking for additional funding opportunities to one, bolster the three community schools that we do have, and secondly, hopefully be able to expand down the line to other sites. So that's what we're looking at trying to accomplish today. And we're gonna try to do all this in 30 minutes or less.

[02:03:12] Just to start out with, to ground everybody in what a community school is, a definition or what we mean when we say community schools. We're really talking about a holistic approach to education that looks at supports for students academically, socially, emotionally, and looks at support for their health needs and services as well.

[02:03:30] And we've got four pillars, much like our strategic plan that we look at when we talk about community schools. The first is that we want all of these supports to be integrated. We don't want students to feel disjointed in the sense that they're getting academic services here, they're getting social services here. we really want an integrated approach.

[02:03:47] It's also very important that we're providing, you know, additive supports and resources, so extended learning time for students dealing with academic issues, or opportunities for students to get enrichment experiences that they might not be able to get financially otherwise if we didn't provide them at their site.

[02:04:04] And then the role of family and community partnerships is incredibly important, not just in the service delivery, but also in the leadership of the program. We really want to empower families to have a strong voice in defining and determining what services families and students need in the school and making sure that those services are what we're actually focusing on in our work in community schools. A few milestones to add to what Ms. McLaughlin kind of mentioned in terms of the timeline just real quickly looking back. We've actually been at this work for over five years now. This work started with an exploratory committee of administrators

[02:04:39] in FCPS and county officials back in 2017. In 2018, we had some opportunities for some community funders that came forward and offered to invest in these initiatives, the United Way, along with some additional funding that we received from the county. We were able to open two sites at Mount Vernon Woods and Whitman. And then the following year, we had an opportunity with some additional community funders, the community and schools, CBO, who had an opportunity to expand community schools to Glasgow Middle School. In February of that year, we really did a lot of work again in partnership with the county and the school staff to really try

[02:05:15] to articulate our framework and our model. And we were doing pretty well and we were about to get some momentum and bring that forward to the board for discussion. But of course, COVID hit and we didn't do anything for almost two years really on moving this particular initiative forward so in february of 2022 we had our last discussion as a board on this topic and at that time the board had a number of questions that you wanted us to bring back some additional information which we'll talk about that a little bit more today but primarily the discussion in february asked for us to do a program evaluation and we did a very comprehensive program evaluation

[02:05:53] that looked at pulling in quantitative data qualitative data looking at student test scores for example looking at student attendance rates grades but we also collected a lot of qualitative information in surveys and site interviews with the site coordinators with teachers administrators students and parents in the community schools to really get their impression of what was working and really maybe what could be improved or what might be missing from the initiative and saray led that entire process again in partnership with the county and did a fantastic job with that and we're going to be presenting those findings today what i want to really stress

[02:06:29] though is that that report that was issued in 2022 has continued to evolve right we published that in december of 2022 but we've continued to do work on the skipped to think about how we can even refine our framework so the presentation that you're going to get today are the most up-to-date recommendations we have about what should be included in our model again particularly as it pertains to the types of services the management and oversight and the partnerships between the county the school staff and the community organizations as well as the site selection process yes this this document is posted there's a number of documents there so you might have to

[02:07:08] work your way through them and maybe we can help you with that in just a second so I mentioned that project methodology again so I won't belabor that point in in the interest of time, and I'm not gonna go through all of the milestones on the project timeline, but you can see there have been a lot of different decision points and a lot of work that's happened on this initiative over the last several years.

[02:07:28] So we're very excited to share the findings, the recommendations with you today. And again, please keep in the back of your mind, our goal would be to reach consensus on this framework today. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Saray to walk us through the findings and the recommendations.

[02:07:45] - Thank you, Dr. Presidio, and good afternoon, everyone. In this section of the presentation, going to be reviewing the six evaluation methods and the associated key findings for this project report. First, we're going to start with our family survey. So, of course, given the community schools initiative, we thought it important to evaluate our families. I'm really here trying to determine the knowledge of and involvement with the community schools programs and services offered across those school sites. Here we had the opportunity to survey 3013 families. Those surveys were distributed to the students enrolling parents across those sites. We had a response

[02:08:24] rate of 22 percent. Overall we found that parents are satisfied with the community school. We also found that parents agree that this community schools initiative is helping their student feel connected to the school, helping them feel connected to the school. However we did note that knowledge of the specific community school programs and involvement with the various programs were low next we're moving to our staff survey so this survey was utilized to determine our school staff perceptions of the community school initiative at their school site 80 electronic

[02:09:00] surveys were distributed to identified staff of those we had a response rate of 61.3 percent here staff noted that community schools are helping families meet their basic needs they also agreed that community schools are essential for providing support for both physical social and emotional well-being but they did note some less than favorable impacts towards increased attendance increased student engagement in learning and improved student behavioral issues our staff are perceiving they're not really seeing changes in those areas they also offered

[02:09:36] less than favorable responses regarding the engagement with central office on this initiative noting the need for more training, clearer expectations and ongoing communication. Our staff are wanting to know how best to support this initiative at their school site. Next we have our site level survey. This survey was utilized to determine how the community school program operates at each school site. There was one survey distributed to each site to be completed by the administrator and the school site coordinator. This particular survey was developed in two parts. Part one was a survey only asking questions regarding meetings, asking questions

[02:10:16] regarding case management processes. We had 67 percent or two of our schools completed that survey and then part two of this site level survey included a review of programs and services wherein each school site was able to identify the programs and services offered in the 21-22 school year and all of our schools participated in that. In this particular survey we found that the programs and services reported were primarily reflective of Tier 1 supports. We also found that there was another need listed here for more

[02:10:50] central office coordination on this on this particular front. Next we rolled into structured interviews with our FCPS administrators and we wanted to get a better understanding of their perceptions of the community schools initiative. The The structured interviews include our principals, regional assistant superintendents, and magisterial board members connected to each of the schools that are currently active as community schools.

[02:11:18] We participated in one-hour interviews via Zoom, and we did have a 100% response rate there. Here, we're finding that our administrators are requesting a need for improved communication, including the successes and challenges to increase engagement and participation in the initiative.

[02:11:36] Next we had the opportunity to conduct informational interviews. Here we really wanted to see what are other divisions doing as it relates to community schools. We did provide outreach to 12 school divisions wherein we receive response from six for via an interview via zoom and to response via email. Our intention was completing these informational interviews specifically related to their site selection process. How are they determining which schools are becoming community schools in their division and what is their staffing model our

[02:12:12] findings here our school divisions are utilizing a variety of clearly defined metrics for their site selection process some of those metrics are connected to academic performance some are connected to socioeconomic status but they are in fact clearly defined also we found that the majority of the school divisions that we make contact with are employing their school site coordinator via a a community-based organization which is our current our current model here in FCPS we did kind of probe a little bit further to note what were the advantages and disadvantages of this

[02:12:48] staffing model advantages being our CBOs have extensive networks and understanding of the community needs that's one of the responses those other school divisions noted the disadvantage here is that that staffing model does rely extensively on continued funding by the CBO to support that position and then we also found them noting that sometimes staff in those positions may lack connection to the centrally provided resources offered by the school division and then lastly here as far as an evaluation method our school level data review we wanted

[02:13:23] to look to determine any long-term impact of this community school initiative and improving students successes at each school site from 2017 to 2022 the school level metrics that we considered are listed here. We looked into our SOL pass rates both for reading and math, chronic absenteeism, assets and protective factors as identified through the Fairfax County Youth Survey, and then we also took a peek into some other data sources that we had access to, including discipline incidences, immunization non-compliance. We also looked at the SEL

[02:14:00] screener and our family engagement survey. Overall, our finding here is that our initiative is still relatively new and has been inconsistently implemented. I think Dr. Presidio noted that with the impacts of COVID, but then also thinking about the time needed to rev up new programs. So our data has shown inconclusive to any impact of the community schools initiative at that time.

[02:14:25] Next, we want to roll into our proposed recommendations. As Dr. Presidio noted, these have been updated from the November 22 evaluation report shared with the board, partly due to continued collaboration and the need for continuous improvement.

[02:14:42] There are two key recommendations that we have that we will roll through. One is related to our Fairfax County Community Schools model. Here we have our defined roles and responsibilities for each organization that facilitates the community schools initiative, including FCPS, our county partners, and a lead CBO to be defined for each school site.

[02:15:03] For FCPS, too, that I want to bring attention to is really the direction, direct collaboration with the county on all aspects of the community schools program. That will be significant in this path forward. The other I want to call attention to is administration of the program.

[02:15:19] That would be a change from our current model, ensuring that we are managing our support staff. We have assessment and evaluation of the program that's standardized, then also the management of both internal and external communications which we'll discuss a little bit more in the upcoming slides for our county partners i'm i'm sorry um sorry for interrupting really quickly but i'm looking at this slide and at the very bottom where it says the lead cbo community-based organization that's never been my understanding that they're going to continue to be part of this framework so so that is an update can you provide some clarity absolutely

[02:15:58] So that is an update that we provided from the report that was distributed in December of last year. I think one of the changes we made is there was a bit of removal of the CBO in that report. We want to re-engage the CBO, not from a management of the site coordinator perspective, but more so from, as listed here in the slide, the service coordination and outreach.

[02:16:22] We note that our CBOs have really strong roots and connection to an understanding of the needs of our community, and we don't want to lose that. So we think it would be a great opportunity to have them continue to partner with our schools, but not in the process of employing the school site coordinator.

[02:16:39] Dr. Prisci, did you have anything you want to say? I mean, I think that was a good explanation. I wanted to make that clarification because I think the model you've got up there is creating some confusion for several of us on the board who are mindful of what the pilot model was and this is kind of looking like the pilot model so the distinction is really important that maybe part of it is that orange block this is lead cbo should be a lot smaller because their role is not for you know three equal parts and yeah i think that's a good comment i mean we

[02:17:18] definitely could work on a different infographic for that I mean I think for the purpose of the discussion in terms of the roles and responsibilities I would ask folks to look at the bullets on the left-hand side which really tried to explain the roles that those different organizations are going to have in this process and as Saray said this is very different than what we're doing now what we're doing now is the CBO basically is in charge of the entire community schools initiative and it looks different at different schools because we're working with different CBOs and we haven't had a model or a framework that really articulates the expectations of what students and families would receive in terms of services.

[02:17:55] This fixes that and this addresses that and it removes the CBO from that kind of level of authority but what it does is it says we still need to partner with the CBO because they're bringing a lot of supports and resources to the table and we don't want to lose those but we need the CBO to work within our larger FCPS framework And we need to have control at the FCPS level, as well as the county level, for managing and supervising this initiative.

[02:18:21] Yeah, I'm listening to board members sidebarring, and I will say that this is creating a lot of confusion, even when you talk about the bullets, the top one, administration of program, managing and support staff.

[02:18:39] I mean, almost every bullet up there just keeps referencing these CBOs, which makes it sound like we're just staying with the pilot model we've had, which has been a concern. It's very, very different, and I just want to be really clear that this model is very different than what we're doing now.

[02:18:56] So maybe in our discussion, if there's further questions, we certainly can dig into that. yeah i just i i totally appreciate that and i hope board members know this is not my typical way of interjecting as someone managing the meeting but seeing the reactivity around the table including my own understanding of a lot of our pre-meeting conversations this slide i think is presenting some challenges so we'll let you finish the presentation but um i want to tee up for you that there's going to need to be a lot more clarity about who we are hiring, who we are

[02:19:32] managing, and where the CBO's role is in this. No, I appreciate kind of the foreshadowing on that and I think some of those slides that we're going to get to here in just a second will help with that a little bit as well. So I do want to move on to the next slide where we're going to be really honing in on the FCPS roles and responsibilities and some of those changed recommendations, one related to our program support staff. One of the recommendations we have here is to identify a central office coordinator, partly due to the need to enhance coordination and management of all of our community schools across the initiative, so that person should be

[02:20:10] employed centrally by FCPS. Our hope here is that this individual will have the opportunity to develop standardized implementation plans for this initiative. I think we're missing the standardization across our our sites at this time. We also want to ensure that we're maintaining standard policy, maintaining our memorandum of understanding, also standardized training curriculum both for those site coordinators and for the staff associated with the community schools initiative per that staff survey that we facilitated. Professional development opportunities for those individuals and

[02:20:47] and then also that individual really helped with the ongoing networking among community school principals site coordinators regional assistant superintendents that are connected to the school sites identified to serve as community schools our second piece here is that school site specialist we updated the name a little bit to align with that of our fcps positions we do believe that that this person should be employed by FCPS.

[02:21:13] So that is a change from our current model. Partly due to the need for efficient hiring and job descriptions, qualifications, they'll also be connected to our FCPS compensation plan. We do wanna engage them in essential onboarding functions.

[02:21:29] They'll have access to student level data. And that last bullet is really salient for me is that shared common processes and outcomes aligned with our FCPS strategic plan and supporting collaboration with supervisors and colleagues.

[02:21:46] Next, in thinking about assessment and evaluation, we need standardized process things. Because our three schools are under three different models, there's no standardization. So as the program managers for this initiative, a change there is having FCPS managed, we would allow for standardization of assessment, those needs assessments being utilized to determine our action plans, what is to be done at that school site each year, and then also the utilization of quarterly reports and end of year evaluations.

[02:22:19] We've noted from our RAS, from members of this board, the need for more information regarding what's going on with community schools. So we hope that this particular recommendation will support that. Also communications. A big piece here is both internal and external.

[02:22:34] Internal to our staff, internal to this board, and external to our partners as well as our families as to what is going on with community schools, the initiative at the school site, where our success is, and where there may be some challenges and room for opportunity, for growth. The note here on our lead CBO, I think the board had noted some changes. We want to continue to identify a lead CBO for each school site that's identified for the community schools initiative, partly due to, we want to ensure that we're centering family voice and enhancing our outreach efforts.

[02:23:11] Here, we're looking at enhancing the outreach to underrepresented neighborhoods and populations within the school community. We're also giving consideration to bolstering family and community collaboration with our school site specialists and other key staff.

[02:23:27] So where the CBO may not continue to manage the program, we do think there is benefit to continue to collaborate with them. In this next section, we're gonna be touching on our site prioritization process. This process involves the utilization of clearly defined metrics from available data sources and should be completed annually across all school sites to determine prioritization.

[02:23:53] This process should occur prior to selection and is a five-step process. Step one being identifying our primary measures listed here step two identifying our secondary measures also listed on this slide in an effort to move forward i do want to get to step three once we've identified all of the measures listed for step one and step two we want to identify the list of 25 schools that have the greatest calculation of those met of those measures from there we want to consult with our regional uh our

[02:24:30] our school administrators, our regional assistant superintendents, and this board to say that here are the 25 schools based on these metrics. And we want to ensure that folks are aware of the expansion prior to the expansion, really to garner support for the initiative. Our thinking here is to determine readiness for the initiative.

[02:24:48] Are these school sites ready? Does the school feel like they're ready for this initiative prior to implementation? From there, given those considerations garnered feedback from the board and those administrators, FCPS in the county would then finalize the site selection prioritization. At that point, site selection is really dependent on two pieces. One, the identification of available funding and two, approval from the board prior to a school site being named a community school. This next section provides a sample of a site selection process. One of the things we

[02:25:27] did have the opportunity to complete this year is a submission of the Department of Education full-service community schools grant in August of 2023 in that grant process we did have to name two schools so we implemented the school prioritization process the site prioritization process in this grant I do want to give consideration to the fact that the grant specifically asked for title one school so in the next few slides you're only going to see names of title one schools the grant also required selection of two school sites and they did show preference for feeder schools so those were some of the

[02:26:05] reasons why you'll see the names you'll see on this next slide upon completing our site prioritization process which includes scoring and weighting of each metric we landed with total scores across our title one schools as listed here. Inevitably, Annandale Terrace and Poe Middle School were identified and named in the grant as they had high scores and were feeder schools into one another as Annandale feeds into Poe. What I did want to know is also a second sample, and this sample is in the event that the

[02:26:40] preference for a feeder pattern was removed from this particular grant. In that case, we would have looked primarily at the schools that had the highest scores which would have been hibla valley and woodley hills elementary here with the highest scores of 49 and 50 respectively and so again just the prioritization the selection process would ensure including connecting with the administrators in this board prior to implementation at that time i believe we're ready for board discussion questions and feedback great thank you board members because of our late start we thought

[02:27:18] we'd go with again trying with two minutes and then certainly a goal of go backs for those who need it and I do want to again draw the distinction here today we are extremely mindful that five years ago pilots were done because of outside organizations coming forward saying we've got funding we'd like to pilot this and Fairfax County schools and Fairfax County government had nothing Montgomery County is probably 20 years ahead of us on community schools is a national model that works. Staff has now shown us that through analysis and refinement,

[02:27:57] we're looking to improve the framework. As meeting managers, one of the things we talked about with Dr. Presidio is this is, if you can imagine, a skeleton. That's it. This is the bones. The meat is not there. That is for Dr. Reed, county executive, staff on both sides to continue to develop and refine this but i do hope that you can spend your questions asking both county and school staff where your concerns are but if we don't move forward which has been waiting already

[02:28:30] 18 months i don't know when we're ever going to make progress in something we know is the essence of one fairfax and the opportunity to ensure no matter what your zip code or background you have an opportunity to succeed um so with that um on the list so far i have um miss corbett sanders followed by ms cohen thank you as a board member who actually at the time was the board chair and got surprised when one of my um schools was they did a big launch of a uh community school at

[02:29:08] walt whitman and we were invited the day before for the launch and had not gotten any feedback on or the why. I'm glad we're at least being consulted. I do have a number of questions and I think in the form of constructive feedback, I would suggest that given from whence we came, where there was significant lack of information provided, where the CBOs have been given data and reports on a biannual basis for the past five years, those that have been supporting our schools, and none of that data has been shared with the school

[02:29:43] board members i think that in the spirit of transparency we do need to have a process that ensures that when things are happening in our schools such as this that there is a full debriefing uh and inclusion i did not know that two of my schools were actually um put forth in a grant this past summer and uh being uh on your page uh i forget what page it is um and i i am older so i do sometimes forget but i don't remember participating in a structured interview process

[02:30:21] that was put on this it may have been a hey we want to talk to you about this but it was never put forth as being this structured interview as somebody who five years ago had a conversation that did say, and I will need to go back, that I believed we should be doing that coordination in-house. I support the concept of coordinating in-house. I do think that what we need to see is comparison of the old model, the new model, what the cost of the old model was, what the cost of the new model is, and where that money's coming from would be very helpful

[02:30:59] to have additionally ensuring that there's some sort of reporting i do know that it's a bit disconcerting when the schools that were identified as community schools did not necessarily perform as well as that on the metrics that we thought were important so i'd like to know what are the new metrics that we're going to actually put out and how are we going to deal with that on a ongoing basis and I'm will not support something that says we just rolled to 25 schools without

[02:31:36] having gone back and tried to fix the model and maybe you know I don't mind expanding it but to go from 3 to 25 seems a bit of a stretch without having some more beta testing. So let me try to respond to a few of those comments and I appreciate your thinking on this. There was a lot there so I won't be able to touch on everything so certainly we can do some goal backs if we need to first of all I want to be clear we're not proposing that we expand to 25 schools what we wanted to I know I'm going to address it yeah what we wanted to do is give the community a sense of where the needs

[02:32:14] were across Fairfax County and if we just pulled out two or three schools and said these are the greatest needs then we're going to have folks in other areas of the county say well I have schools that are needy in my area too and where do they fall in the vulnerability index and where would they fall in our thinking as a school system about being able to participate in this initiative.

[02:32:33] So we wanted something that was big enough in size, robust enough in size, that could be representative of the entire county, but we also wanted something that would really rank our schools in terms of the need that they have and would inform the process of making those selections. We will not expand this initiative unless we have a secure funding source.

[02:32:52] So we're not proposing to expand to any schools at this time, and we don't have a secure funding source and we don't have a secure funding source because we don't have a board approved and county approved model and until we can get that we can't start looking at additional funding opportunities so that's why it's critical that there's consensus both with this board and the county board ultimately on what the model is so we're not looking to expand to 25 schools we're not looking to expand anytime soon until we have a secure funding source but what we are trying to do is make sure that the board is comfortable with the site selection process understands your role in that process and you would have the final say

[02:33:29] and authority over selecting those final sites. Now we did have an opportunity to apply for a grant that occurred over the summer when the board was on summer recess so we shared that information electronically in email to let folks know that we were going to apply for that. And again if we received those funds we wouldn't have to take the grant if the board didn't approve it but we didn't want an opportunity potentially if the board would support it and if we were able to get 2.5 million dollars we didn't want that opportunity to go by so we haven't committed ourselves to anything but we are trying to do our due diligence and make sure when we see resources and opportunities

[02:34:06] that we're exploring those opportunities so i'll i'll leave it there because you had a lot of other great points we could maybe come back to um and some go backs if you'd like to miss garbage i know you had about three other questions can you quickly at least share two more that i think could be answered at this juncture i think the comparative analysis between the old model and what you're planning on is really critical because i don't know what i'm approving and what i'm not approving um i don't know how you approve something if you don't have some general cost estimate so i would like to have a better understanding of the cost estimate and then um in that

[02:34:44] prioritization score, which is how you identify 25 schools, it's not quite clear how each of those criteria are ranked. And I don't expect you getting all of this answered today, but those are the types of things that we should really.

[02:35:03] Yeah, I think we can answer most of those today. So let me start, and Saray will help me with some of them. First of all, we were trying to keep the formal presentation brief. We didn't do a slide-by-side analysis of all of the different components of our current model and the proposed new model.

[02:35:19] But to be totally honest with you, and we have, obviously, the 79-page evaluation that was performed. We've got the 30-page guidelines for implementations of the community schools framework that gets that information in a lot more details. But to be totally honest with you, we don't have a model for community schools right now.

[02:35:35] We have three community schools that have three different models because we're working with three different community-based organizations. And that timeline that I showed, and we could go back and pull the slide up if we wanted to, we brought those schools on board before we had a board-approved and county-approved model.

[02:35:54] So we brought those schools on board because the community came to us and there were opportunities to try to bring in additional resources. It wasn't the best way to do it, but it's how we did it, and we're trying to fix that now with the adoption of a new model. So what I would say for comparative analysis is look more at what we're proposing in terms of the process and the model now is contained in these slides and in the document for implementing schools. The other thing I would say is we also want there to be some flexibility.

[02:36:23] So one of those four pillars that we mentioned is parent and community engagement. So while one school and one community may identify that they need certain services if we ask them, another school may prioritize something else. And I'm going to give you kind of a non-example because I think all community schools would probably want both of these things.

[02:36:42] But in one school, the community might want more on attendance support for students, right? We see chronic absenteeism. That's an issue in our community. It's an issue nationally. One school might want to focus more on that and support more attendance support for students based on parental feedback.

[02:37:00] Another school might say we need more after-school enrichment opportunities because our students don't have access to things that students in other parts of the county have. Now, I think both probably would be present in our model, but we're trying in our model to leave some flexibility for the parents to come forward and say these are the areas that we really want to focus on in our work.

[02:37:19] And through our site selection process and the implementation of an MOU, an agreement with a community-based organization, we would prioritize those components that the community said are most needed. Our model is comprehensive. Again, it's academics, social, emotional, and health services. Those are the four components that we're looking at, primary components that we're looking at in our community schools model. Again, the degree to which a school could access or prioritize, the degree to which a school might choose to prioritize in some of those areas, we do want to leave some flexibility for the community to engage in that discussion. Do you want to add anything?

[02:37:58] I also wanted to respond to the scoring and weights associated with the metrics identified for the site prioritization process. One of the documents provided to the board for this session is the site prioritization process document that includes scoring and weights and multipliers across each metric.

[02:38:18] So that's how we came up with those numbers.

[02:38:29] It should be attached as a PDF in board docs when shared with the board. Is that incorrect? Which document? I'm sorry. called site prioritization process? - Yes, you should have that. - As a PDF. - It's this one? - My apologies, yeah, the link in the presentation.

[02:38:45] - The presentation isn't gonna work as this. - There's an additional attachment in BoardDocs. It looks like this. - Sorry about that. - Dr. Presidio, can you speak to the other part of Ms. Corbett Sanders' question, which is the cost? We understand that we didn't have a full model in place, so we can't have a comparison chart, but if you could give any ideas in terms of what does it cost currently, and what could it cost in the future outside of the staffing that you've actually outlined here?

[02:39:15] And that one is a little bit harder to answer directly other than to say it's going to vary on a couple different factors. And first, let me say there's very little FCPS investment in this initiative right now. It's largely funded with some funds that we receive from the county and some grants that our CBOs are bringing forward.

[02:39:32] So we're really not investing much FCPS funding in it right now. The grant that again so he really led that process to develop the grant in a short time period over the summer we're looking at like over a million dollars per school in terms of an investment that we think would be significant enough to really influence the types of tutoring services, enrichment services, attendant services, health services again that would make a difference for students. So the cost will be driven basically on how much service we're able to provide right and that's really going to be dependent on what types of funding opportunities we see we're going to look at grant opportunities we're going to look at partnerships

[02:40:10] with nonprofits and ultimately hopefully you know when the board feels very comfortable in the model that we have and that it's working in partnership with the county we can look at some of our local funds from county and fcps dollars but we're not at that point just yet yeah for before we call miss cohen to be the next speaker i just want to make sure that i reiterate is that giving consensus or permission here will open up the opportunity to develop mous to put some other things forward so a lot of these things are not fully fleshed out at present but will be if and when consensus

[02:40:47] is provided miss cohen yeah i i really appreciate this presentation i think it's super exciting and i love the idea that we're going to have a more unified model so that schools know what to expect and we have a little bit more fidelity and so the community i think to your point that's exactly right they should know what services to expect and how they're going to be delivered and i think that this is fantastic um my one question when i was looking at the prioritization document that you had um just in the in the presentation you know i think we have i'm just gonna use braddock

[02:41:23] elementary school we i know we have some schools who for years have been asking to become community schools so braddock i saw is scored very high using the components that you use also even in the feeder which i i guess i didn't understand um in the presentation it highlighted i'm scrolling sorry um it highlighted annandale terrace and poe as they were because they fed but braddock elementary school with the same points also exclusively feeds poe unless there are students who have chosen to go to Canterbury Woods for AAP in sixth grade and then those kids have the

[02:42:02] opportunity to go to Frost. So I guess my question was why isn't Braddock Elementary School green? It's a great question. Thank you. So it was interesting when we went through the grant process we saw that both Annandale Terrace Elementary, Braddock Elementary, Lynnbrook Elementary, and Forestdale all feeding into Poe had the same score. So my colleague and I, Susan, we went through and rescored their scores. So basically looking to see who had the the weightiest 45 of those

[02:42:36] schools is the best way I could explain it. And of those Annandale Terrace 45 score was heavier across the metrics that we were looking at. So I do think you bring up a good point for this prioritization process. We may end up with schools that have similar or the same weights.

[02:42:55] How do we decide which school is selected over another. I do think the prioritization process helps with setting the stage of who's on the list. And then that consultation with the school admin with the RAS with you all will help to further define and determine who's selected. And just to add briefly to that a couple things. One, a lot of these schools are really close, right? Like there's like 1012 schools between a 44 and a 46. So there's a lot of schools that are really close. The challenge that we had this summer to apply be competitive in that grant is we needed a feeder pattern and we only had a few days to figure out

[02:43:30] what were the right schools when we decided to apply for it. So ultimately even now with this grant the board has final authority to say no you didn't pick the right school. So if the board felt like we didn't pick the right school we could always make an adjustment or a change and with what we're proposing the board will always have the final say before we select a school to become the community school. And I guess what I would just say too is I think if you have schools that are primed and ready, I know this is a big adjustment for schools, some of them. Some of them have, and I guess that's one thing I'd say about Braddock, have the system already in place

[02:44:07] working with community partners and really interacting with all kinds of needs of the community not just the school community the larger school community so I certainly would hope that as you go through Dr. Reed that this is that that coordinating with the principals if you had a principal I'm not dissing Annandale Terrace at all I don't know them so sorry Annandale Terrace but like if you have a principal in a system that is more poised and ready to go I hope that that will

[02:44:42] weight them a little stronger. That's all I'll say. Thank you, Ms. Cohen. Ms. Dernot-Koufax followed by Ms. Tolan. Thank you and thank you for this report. Dr. Presidio, as you know, I was, you may not remember this, but I was the chair of SCIPT. Oh, you know, you know. So I'm not going to go down that road, but just for conversation for this, you know, I was the chair of SCIPT when I was told at a meeting that these things were started and they were coming to two schools in my district.

[02:45:14] That was done, I remember having a sidebar with the United Way outside as we were uncertain, and there was a lot of negativity around the start of this program, where the school system was and where the county was, and how we got there.

[02:45:42] So I appreciate, Ms. McLaughlin, your desire and everyone else's desire to say that this is the way to go if we truly want to be one Fairfax. And in my heart, I believe that. But everything that's occurred over the last five years has disproved that.

[02:46:03] One of the schools was extremely successful. That was due particularly to the principal's support of that school. The other two, I would say, I can tell you honestly, with extreme candid conversations, for those closest to these models, they have expressed deep concern about what had transpired.

[02:46:24] So I preface everything I'm saying from that lens and asking a couple questions. Where will the RASs have authority in this new process?

[02:46:40] Well, before I answer that, let me just say a couple things. And I'm not one to pass the buck, but I am going to say I was not on SCIPPT at that time when we made those decisions. So I was not involved with the initiative, but I'm very familiar with what you're talking about, and I think you're articulating one of the major concerns that led to the study that we did back in 2022 to say we've got to have a better site selection process, and we've got to have better communication, and the board needs to have final authority before we select a site, so we've included all of those things. Additionally, county

[02:47:15] and school staff have had conversations, very frank and candid conversations about that. Chris and i've had good conversations about it and we know that you know we were moving pretty fast when we brought those schools on board and we need to move more deliberately and slower in the future which is kind of what we've mapped out here so i think everybody was trying to do some good things with bringing those programs on board but i do think we've moved too fast and i think we've been able to correct our process so we don't make those same mistakes in the future additionally i would say you you're absolutely right and we saw in the program evaluation that we did and the content that that Serae just provided, there's a lot of support in the schools for community schools,

[02:47:53] but there's also some of the concerns that you're raising. And the two primary concerns, two of the biggest concerns, I would say, when we talk about administrative staff, whether it's regions or principals in the building, RAS or principals, one is that there's not been oversight of the community-based organizations.

[02:48:12] This model, as we're proposing it, fixes that. So there's a central coordinator and a site coordinator who has oversight as to what the community-based organization's role and responsibilities are and what the services that they provide are going to be, which will be spelled out in MOUs or MOAs.

[02:48:30] - And that will be somebody in your office? - That's what we're proposing. - That's what I thought. I just wanted clarity. - That's what we're proposing, yeah. Again, we're here sharing our proposals with the board, but that's what we're proposing, to be able to help with that oversight. And the region assistant superintendents are critical in working with the building principals in that regard.

[02:48:49] Dr. Ponce is here with us for this work session, he's listening as well, and I can assure you that the region assistant superintendents and principals, that would be one of the things that we would be working with is to make sure they're comfortable with what we're doing in the school, and they understand that they have the supervision and oversight of what we're delivering.

[02:49:06] Correct, because they have the most insight for that overall region and for the schools in that region, and they were left out of that process before. So thank you for speaking about CBOs and they will not have oversight.

[02:49:25] How will the Opportunity Neighborhood, and this is probably the county side, how will the Opportunity Neighborhood organization dovetail with this? Because I think they should. So, again, Chris Leonard with the county, and I was on skip for the last 10 years.

[02:49:45] And I was here in February of 22, so I just got done dealing with some of the wounds. from that discussion so so i appreciate you chris certainly let me just tell you that the last 18 months have been really positive moving forward to make sure that we don't make those mistakes we made before the uh before 2022. from opportunity neighborhoods standpoint all of the opportunity neighborhoods are built on a backbone organization from our cpos that's why a lot of this work will will dovetail very nicely into the work because it's not like we've got, we are very blessed in Fairfax County

[02:50:25] with a bevy of very quality community-based organizations. However, it's not like we've got multiple within each area and a lot of times we're dealing with the same backbone organizations. So the folks that we're working with in our opportunity neighborhoods are gonna be the same ones that we're working with in this effort, And it's going to be something why it's really important to include them as part of this is because that will be a part of the piece that we're looking to try to make sure that we can fund and help with from the county perspective when we go and talk to our board.

[02:51:01] When you see the box on that one infographic that I know will change, but the one infographic and you see the county, you might as well overlay the CBO with the county because we are nothing with our human services system. We are nothing without our CBOs.

[02:51:18] So that's why it's important for them to play a role. Now, the role that they've been playing for the last six years, I think we all agree, that needs to change. that's why this proposed model is so important because we can start to build upon what probably should have been the case when we started this effort six years ago thank you i i think that's very important because that was a critical missing piece and it was supposed to be one of the foundational pieces because i have been on this board 12 years so you know i was here as miss mclaughlin said you know originally going to the board of supervisors and saying we need something

[02:51:55] like skipped with you and ensuring that this happens and and what i don't want to happen is i don't want you to have that bitter pill that i have because we did something that was for all the right reasons that turned out so not right so um i i thank you for your thoughtfulness of this i i still i may have more questions but thank you just encourage you to uh break that rearview mirror and let's just let's just focus on the positive going forward but but but your points are very well taken and i think it's it's it's led to our lessons learned over the last 18 months thank you

[02:52:31] i do appreciate and i do appreciate you thank you miss tollen thank you um yes um i'm excited to talk about this because i do believe that wraparound services are needed now here more than ever for so many of our students and i think this is an avenue to potentially provide that i know i just see my principals and staff at the schools doing heroic efforts to try to provide

[02:53:07] services to the students that they have and they desperately need help so like this kind of was saying you know thinking of braddock elementary and their readiness to move into a program like this as i've said many times i have several schools in heaven that could really really benefit from this um so you know i'm excited that we have people from the county here um you know how do we do this as a county-wide initiative because that's what we really need to do um i really appreciate it um you know chris you're talking about who is the cbo that was super helpful for

[02:53:43] me because um you know we have an opportunity neighborhood in herndon and i just see the incredible work these people do or we have you know our neighborhood school readiness program we've got so many incredible services that are there well how do we bring those to our school and so i'm kind of curious um and you don't need to answer this right now but could the cbo actually maybe be someone that's working at a a pyramid level versus you know and of course would work with each school but it could be the same um cbo for an entire pyramid for example or you know for an area of the county because that's kind of how our opportunity neighborhoods

[02:54:22] are you know put together um one other comment i wanted to make just looking at the report that you guys provided thank you so much for all of that um this kind of gets to page 11 in that overall report has a whole section on collaborative leadership and you know really gets to using existing collaborative collaborative leadership structures and i think that's what we're talking about here too with who's the cbo and how do we incorporate opportunity neighborhoods etc um the other comment i wanted to make on the report on page 11 we talk about required staff members um to be involved in thinking about putting this together and um i really want to

[02:55:01] make sure that fcps staff like our parent liaisons and our we have so many incredible programs here and they're kind of scattered across the county are for example our parent literacy programs you know people involved in those programs really are on the ground and understand what our students and families need so they need to be at the table in this discussion um this truly is a budget conversation um you know as we move forward as to you know how we're going to meet the goals of our strategic plan are we going to use some of these methods are we going to use

[02:55:38] other methods are we fitting different things together um this should be a priority item in our discussion of budgets. Ms. Toland I'm sorry if you can write your time well over. Okay okay I'll save my next one. You'll be put on a go back Ms. Toland. Thank you. Dr. Presidio I know this is one of the things we discussed earlier regarding the role of parent liaisons into this process.

[02:56:04] Can you speak to that? I know there's hope that we can take advantage of any overlaps but you also raise some i think reasonable concerns regarding that yeah no i appreciate that and dr anderson i had some good conversation on this same topic in our meeting manager meeting and the role of the parent liaison or the family liaison is critically critically important in this initiative right sometimes those are the folks in the school who best know the student and family needs have that trusted relationship not with just that individual student or family but perhaps that part of the community that they're representing so they're critically important where i think we

[02:56:41] to be a little careful is we don't want to put too much responsibility on them for delivering additional services they already have full-time jobs or half-time jobs in the schools where they're not yet full-time so this is really about adding additional staff capacity whether it's through cbo's or fcps staff whatever the case may be it's about adding additional capacity to do more than what we're able to do with our existing family liaisons now but they're incredibly important to be part of that leadership team and provide insight and direction and support to this initiative so i appreciate you dr anderson and miss tolan for pointing that out thank you i do

[02:57:19] not see any other board members so i will take my turn then miss mclaughlin will have her turn oh miss sizemore heiser please go ahead thank you and i don't want to belabor many of the points that have been shared and i think um to mr not koufax's point i think some of the lessons learned from the past 12 years can really go into, I agree with, you know, kind of being future-focused, but I think taking some of those lessons learned from the past 12 years, right, and really looking being intentional, and I think you all are doing that about how to build out this program so it's consistent, so it's really meeting the needs of the schools that need it the most and building out from there. And, you know, I do think there's also value in looking at, I know you said there's a

[02:57:58] strong 45 or a strong 46, I don't mean, you know, but I do think there's also value in making sure there's there's that these programs are in different parts of the county as identified by schools because you know families i don't know if there's open for families to be able to get some of these resources if their kids don't go to that school like if there's a possibility almost as a community center for resources that starts with that school's population but is accessible to others who may need it i know so many times i hear from principals that they're like that one that they're like that first stop for families right like honestly public school is often where people first encounter

[02:58:33] government and so families who are coming in to register their kids they they trust their principles which is a great testament to our principles right but they're i hear from principals people are asking me about this resource and that resource and i wonder you know if this if it's across in different parts of the county some could even say well there's a community school here there's some resources there even if it's not their school might be helpful to all of our principals even as we're concentrating on particular schools to build this model so that's the first thing the The other thing I'd love to see built into this, and maybe it's not where it belongs, but I'm going to throw this out anyway, is a little more coordination with the county

[02:59:10] in terms of that soft handoff transition services to county services for special ed kids, because so often that's called going off that cliff. And so I think there's some room even for families to put some of that in there too as we're looking at county resources, so what they currently need now, but also what we need going into the future.

[02:59:28] But I'm excited to see this, but just some thoughts into how we can make it accessible, even beyond the schools where they're placed. - Ms. Sizemoreheiser, I wanted to offer a response to your first question about community schools, right, and its intention. I think our current model, community schools, is serving the community of those participating or attending the school, right?

[02:59:48] But in conversation with our project team, we've noted, is there opportunity to also provide service to those that live, maybe live in that area, but aren't attending that school, right? So doing exactly what you're noting. I think that's something that we'd need to discuss a little bit further, a matter of how to evaluate those individuals or track changes in their discipline status changes in their sol rates we may not see the impacts just at that school site but i do think that

[03:00:15] there is opportunity to consider that model as far as serving the larger community mr fresh thank you so i appreciate very much that we are bringing potentially some structure and formality to this process i think many of the schools that you envision us getting to this point with are already doing a patchwork approach to meet the needs of their kids i think of graham road which

[03:00:51] does a tremendous job and would be further helped by by this i also want to point out you know that this is an alignment with our strategic plan particularly the third pillar of helping to create a vibrant home school and community partnerships um and goals two and four for safe supported included and empowered school communities and equitable access and opportunity so i'm supportive uh obviously i think there are some outstanding questions just like there would

[03:01:25] be on anything of this uh size and scope um particularly around cost and such but um i you know i've i've heard our skipped representatives talking about this for a long time in terms of the need to really you know zero in on this and it's quite a legacy to be leaving for the school system so and I appreciate all the work the staff has done. Thank you. Ms. Bukarski. Thank you. Yeah I was also on Skip talking about this around the time that you started so it's great to actually see this come to where it is

[03:02:00] today and give it some structure and ability to move forward. I mean you know I don't have any general issues with this. I think it looks fine. It's been thoughtful. I have some questions when we start to differentiate between the 45 and 45 and 45.

[03:02:19] So I think that is where, you know, some of the more difficult conversations will come down to it. And, you know, I think we will have to take those as they come because I'm not quite sure that there's any other particular data point that you put in there.

[03:02:41] I mean, we've got great need. There's no way around it. So, yeah, thank you for your work. Thank you, Ms. Bukarski. I will take my turn, and then Ms. McLaughlin will take hers, and then we will go to go-backs, and I do believe we have a couple already. I think the general theme of the conversation here today is how do we, one, have the structure so that we have that increased accountability and so that we have that increased transparency so that we could really see the impact of this work in which there's significant investment.

[03:03:12] But I want to dig a little bit more in the survey that was provided. On slide 9, you talked about 3,000 electronic surveys were distributed to students enrolling parents. Can you speak exactly as to who does that represent across these three schools?

[03:03:30] Dr. Anderson, are you asking specifically about background, race, ethnicity? No, not really. In terms of are they parents whose students were recipient of this work? Because just full disclosure, I'm a parent in one of these schools. And unfortunately, I cannot tell you at all what that means to my child's experience. So maybe we were not the targeted group to participate in this survey. And that's why I want to have that confirmation.

[03:04:00] So that survey did go out to all of the families, not just those that were noted as participants. Unfortunately, we don't know who's noted as participants, hence it being distributed to everybody at the school, at those schools. And so that's where we also see in the results, a lot of folks didn't have awareness or knowledge of the initiative in our, in our findings.

[03:04:24] And that is a significant point that I do want to underscore, because again, as a parent in one of these schools, not having robust information in terms of how it could be beneficial, not just to my child, maybe to others, maybe not my child at all, it's a bit of a disappointment.

[03:04:41] But I also want to speak to how this data is presented. Is it possible for this to be disaggregated? And I offer this because we have three schools that are funded differently and organized by different groups. So maybe one group is particularly more successful than another regarding this perception data. Is it possible for this to be provided by school per se? Because we also have a middle school versus two elementary schools. There are differences there that we could capture.

[03:05:12] and really make more sense of the experience when the data is provided in a more granular level. So I do believe that in the project report specifically, the results are shared by school.

[03:05:28] But in our presentation today, I want to make notes specifically in the project findings, the data analysis portion, there should be differentiation of charts and graphs that show Whitman versus Mount Vernon Woods versus Glasgow, but in our write-up specifically, we do give more of an inclusive response to those findings across all school sites. Thank you. But if more is needed, we can provide it. I will take a look at that.

[03:05:56] I'll put myself on a go back and go to Ms. McLaughlin. Great, thank you. First of all, I want to join the chorus from Ms. Darinette Koufax being a member at the time, it was she and I, along with the two Board of Supervisors, including at the time Chairman McKay, that we were all blindsided and not knowing that we were going to pilot and start those. So the pain is real, but I really appreciate, Chris, that what you're saying is we want to absolutely honor, recognize, and learn from

[03:06:31] those lessons but we've got to be forward thinking or we'll we'll never make make this opportunity to move toward community schools and it is a nationally recognized model for success in closing gaps and opportunities for kids it's just that simple um you know the other thing i would say is because chris and i have worked now on two different initiatives and ms corbett sanders was part of one of those as well and that's the stadium bathrooms and the synthetic turf fields for our challenged communities who could not afford to get them on their own and it was through

[03:07:09] a commitment of funds from fcps and the county board of supervisors that we could collaborative collaboratively move forward and i believe that this is a similar model um and so i do hope that we can embrace what this opportunity is here for today.

[03:07:27] The other thing is, Dr. Persidi, I know you were being asked about cost. I would just caution that as of now, the key cost we're looking at is a site coordinator at the school. That's the cost. So it's not a million dollars right now.

[03:07:43] What, depending on county services we bring in, community-based services and supports we bring in, FCPS already offers these services. So that's the million dollar price tag. I think Dr. Presidio, we'd probably want to walk back a little bit and be able to bring that back to the board. I've only got a second left, so I'll be doing my go back. But so certainly Dr. Presidio, being able to flesh out a little bit more, it is the central office position, the site coordinator. It is recognizing the pilot. And one other thing I'll say to Ms. Corbett Sanders' concern, and it's where I

[03:08:21] feel passionately. Without question, we go to our three pilots and we fix and model them on the new model. So I never thought we would leave them behind or leave them as is. I'll take my go back as well, but Dr. Presidio, if you want to comment on anything I said, or also Mr. Leonard, since you know I'm really big on the county partnering and dollars. Kristen has been great to work with on this initiative for sure. So again, we're not at that point yet of looking for new resources.

[03:08:53] And I think your points are well taken about the budget and the different budget factors that go into it. What I was referencing was the grant that we applied for, right? And in that particular grant, we were really looking at a significant level of services for students, right? So you can just imagine like the more after school activities that you have, the more students that you can serve, the more money that you need to be able to do that to pay for those services.

[03:09:16] So a lot of the costs will be driven by how much service we're actually able to provide to students and families, whether it's academics, whether it's social-emotional counseling services, whether it's health services. A lot of the cost factors would be driven by how much service we can provide. But you're absolutely right.

[03:09:31] We already provide a level of service. Mr. Frisch pointed that out as well. And really, the first step would be in that coordinator position that you mentioned to make sure that we're consistently implementing the model from site to site. Thank you, Ms. Quibbett-Sanders, followed by Ms. Toland.

[03:09:50] Thank you. On that last point, I would say that we should also be looking at what barriers we have to actually achieving what we're trying to roll out. For example, I know that there's been significant hiccups in rolling out tutoring services, one-on-one tutoring services at one of those community schools.

[03:10:09] and I would hope that we would do everything in our power to look at what is currently in place and how we should make it easier for people to actually provide those services. Similarly, page 50 and 52, it talks about the hiring of people.

[03:10:27] And I note that it does not include anybody from the chief of schools or the RASs in that process. And it seems like since they're the ones who are being held accountable for what happens in those schools, I don't know how we don't have them listed as part of that hiring process.

[03:10:46] Third, on page 47 of your document, there seems to be an interchange between the terminology of memorandum of understanding and charter.

[03:11:01] First off, we are not rolling out charter schools, it's my understanding, so I don't know why we have that language in there is that leftover from a previous draft of this report but it is quite disconcerting given where this school system is right now and if we are rolling out charters please let the board know so that we can make an informed decision of it but along those lines it has as the signatories on the mou um let me see what it says it will um include the

[03:11:38] opportunity neighborhood core team technical assistance from them as their support um skipped and owen and uh the on teams um and that it will be signed um with an advisory committee you know So what I'm having a hard time understanding, and I would like a clear definition of what do you perceive those MOUs to have in them, what is not going to be in them, and who are the signatories to them, and where's the approval process?

[03:12:14] So a couple things I would say. I appreciate all those points. One thing to note, I think the document that you're looking at is the 2022 program evaluation, And as I mentioned, some things have shifted and changed since then to what we're recommending now in that smaller document, which is the guidelines for implementing community schools.

[03:12:35] So you're pointing out things that may need to be even be corrected in our current thinking, which I appreciate. So the first one that you pointed out was who would be involved in the hiring process and in the selection process. You know, at the time in 2022, we did not have a chief of school.

[03:12:52] So, you know, we'll have to work with Dr. Ponce and figure out whether that would be him or whether it would be the region assistant superintendent, but we definitely want to include them in that decision-making process as we talked about earlier. Secondly, and I want to be really clear for the community that might be listening, when we use the term charter there, we're talking about the type of document that would initiate services for a new program.

[03:13:14] We are not talking about charter schools. So again, to be very clear for everybody in the community, We are not talking about charter school applications here. We are talking about legal documents and agreements about what will be provided from the different entities that are part of this partnership, whether it's the county, whether it's FCPS, whether it's the community-based organization.

[03:13:37] And to the point that you're making of actually drafting the MOUs, we're not at that point yet and you raised some really good points that we need to consider when we get to that point. And obviously, we'd be working with legal staff at both the county and FCPS to draft those agreements. But the meat of the agreement would be roles and responsibilities.

[03:13:55] For example, what services would we be asking the community-based organization to provide? What support would we be providing? Who is playing what role? It would be those types of things that we would really memorialize in that type of agreement. But we're not at the point of drafting those yet.

[03:14:10] So the question is, where's the evaluation and the approval process? because when you're talking about the expenditure of over a million dollars in many cases, when you add all these things together and the commitment of resources, then that should come before the school board as a responsible party that will either approve or not.

[03:14:35] And so there should be some drafting in there because-- - That absolutely will happen. As I mentioned though, we're not asking at this point or recommending that we expand to any new schools. So we've not drafted any MOUs for new agreements. But as I mentioned, any new site selection and any new agreement would come before the board and would require board approval before we entered into that agreement and ultimately chose that particular site.

[03:15:01] So that would come to the board. Thank you, Dr. Presidio. I'm so sorry. We'll try to see if we can get you a third in after we finish this round. Ms. Tolan and then me. There you go. All right, thanks. A couple of other points I just wanted to bring up.

[03:15:19] I support the site prioritization process that you put together. I appreciated the waiting, et cetera. It was very thoughtful. And then when you showed how it was applied this summer, I think it was kind of a reality check.

[03:15:36] And that schools that might expect to show up showed up within the top 25. the only thing i i appreciate all this but and i appreciate the look at the feeder patterns but i only saw one middle school even show up on the site selection process so that might make that you know feeder pattern more difficult so i'd like to hear a little more about that and then also one thing that has not come up at all today is what about facilities and facility capacity in taking a look at implementing this I know some of the things we've talked about at

[03:16:13] different points of time have been co-location of some amenities that families might need like an eye doctor or you know a clinic or even if we're talking about after school programs you know those all require space and places so I would like to hear how that might fit into choices no thank you you miss stolen the the first question that you had was around the middle schools on that chart and remember that chart is basically an academic exercise to just kind of sample and model

[03:16:46] how that site selection criteria would play out if we use title one schools and we only have a couple title one middle schools in the division so that's why we're not seeing more middle schools there because we do have a number of middle schools that probably would meet a lot of this criteria if they were title one schools so that's the first thing and your second point about facilities is definitely a major factor that we need to look at in the final selection process um again depending particularly on what types of services we're going to be provided in the community school so there are some things that we can do um i think that facilities would not be a

[03:17:23] barrier to so after school tutoring programs enrichment programs those types of things that you know similar to what we might offer in our middle school after school program we don't need a lot of dedicated space for that but if you start talking about things like dental clinics or you know health clinics or things like that facilities obviously would be a major factor that we would need to look at. The only other point I wanted to make was you know Herman is a good example where the middle school is located kind of in the center of the town and so back to this idea of you know

[03:17:58] the CBOs and how that might work you know many of our families live very close to the middle school even though the kids may attend elementary school middle school high school families might have kids in all three locations so i would like that you know to be something you might think about as far as how we could efficiently provide services for families within communities and you know using that opportunity neighborhood framework as well no that's that's a great point we definitely can do that so thank you thank you you manage your time very well you had one second left

[03:18:36] my next question is regarding the site prioritization process and it's just very quick i am very grateful for this form because it shows which factors are weighted more than others and you have your primary factors your secondary factors and most of them it's pretty easy the number is what it is school attendance and free and reduced meals but can you speak a little bit to the ones that are not necessarily sourced from us such as the vulnerability index which is coming from the Fairfax County Index, as well as the student connectedness and the low rates of family

[03:19:14] engagement. I'm very curious to hear more in terms of how that's calculated. Anyone? Go in once.

[03:19:30] Oh, we're coming. We're just pulling up the paperwork. Excuse me. I wanted to be able to know which characteristics are identified within that vulnerability index. I have them here. I'll read them for the record. School facilities, school attendance area households without a vehicle populations of color populations without health insurance medium household income burdened renter households population who speaks English less than well and population with low education attainment are all considered in that vulnerability index so it is a multi-tiered measure that's not just specific to the school site but that

[03:20:09] that specified area did you want to add I'll just add that the index is is utilized by the Health and Human Services system to target resources before let's say before COVID we were we were trying to distribute resources in more of a equal fashion and obviously with our adoption of one Fairfax I know So both boards adopted that trying to just develop.

[03:20:37] - Your mic on. - Yeah, I think it's on. I've never been told I don't have a big mouth. Wow, thank you, first of all. But I believe that the vulnerability index is core to our one Fairfax targeting of resources.

[03:20:55] And frankly, it's one of the things when we were going over this presentation, I was most intrigued by because I believe that what we're trying to do here community schools especially with site selection and i'm going to stay out of it because i'm county i get that but with site selection i think that is core to our one fairfax mission to target resources where they're most needed and i completely agree with what was said earlier we have a lot of need in the county but we target the resources to where it's most needed and that's what that vulnerability vulnerability index is all about dr anderson i also wanted to give comment

[03:21:32] to the student connectedness and the low rates of family engagement both of those are facilitated through surveys that we process here in fcps so that student connectedness is related back to our fairfax county youth survey specifically looking at those students that are reporting having two or fewer assets and protective factors so we've used the three to succeed model we know that if students are noting that they've got three quality folks that they can connect with they're more likely to succeed academically and socially and so we're seeing that as a metric of consideration they need more connectedness to the school and to their community with the low rates of family engagement

[03:22:10] we were there are a number of items in that family engagement survey that fcps provides we were specifically looking for rates of agreement as it relates to collaboration with the community one noted there i receive enough information about community services that help families that's a specific item we were looking at in that family engagement survey that's provided to all school sites thank you for that that is very helpful but for the low rates of family engagement i wonder how many of our families are not engaging by completing the survey in the first place and i know you can only capture what you can capture but it is definitely

[03:22:46] are wondering um thank you okay uh i will take my go back um i i guess what i would ask mr leonard what has been your sense in talking with either the county chairman or the county executive um you know their sort of more macro level viewpoint on proceeding with um this investment and community services part of the community schools so it hasn't been recent but i will say

[03:23:24] that over the last let's say 18 months the the message is completely consistent because of the missteps in the past rear repair that we are completely hands off to the extent of moving forward until this board adopts a consensus that this is the model that we want to pursue once we get to that point then we can start engaging broader um to uh to certainly our our board of supervisors as well but that that is uh uh in lieu of the uh or in recognition of the missteps that have been made in the last probably five years i would say we wanted the um hands off

[03:24:03] from the county perspective to the extent that we've been able to partner and i will say these these two individuals are gold and they're and the collaboration that we've had with the county has been just wonderful so you should know that as well with with the staff that are working on this but we're certain and we're clear crystal that we're not moving forward from from our perspective until this board acts and makes make sure that this board is comfortable with the model thank you um i know when i think about the various partnerships we have with the county government

[03:24:42] to serve our children and families we can look at the school age after school care program run by the county but it is co-located in our schools when we have looked at our our support and funding on our school nurses which they became school nurses instead of clinic aids again through county investment the school resource officers another program supported and brought into our schools through our county partnership when I think about also our commitment through the JET the joint environmental task force these are all

[03:25:19] examples of where the school board the board supervisors and the governing bodies have recognized that collectively when we can do this coordinated effort to serve our populations, we do better for our families and our residents.

[03:25:38] And so I do very much appreciate anyone who's ever watched my term on the board. I ask very targeted questions, trust but verify. I can love an idea, but I don't like the design or the execution, and I will speak very strongly for that.

[03:25:59] So, yes, ha ha. So I really do want to say to my colleagues, even when I have pushed back on them, I value that we want to vet this. What I still hope, however, is that we will come out of this work session recognizing that this is just another step forward.

[03:26:17] We are not signing off here and forever forward, and there will be budget implications that will absolutely be under the two board's authorities in purview. But this has been 18 months, and I hope that we can allow this to be moving forward.

[03:26:38] So with that, I believe, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, you had one more go back, and I don't see anybody else at this time, so then we'll talk about next steps. So I'm glad you used the term trust but verify, because that is precisely, and Chris, you know where I'm coming from on this, having dealt with how the last set was rolled out.

[03:27:00] And I would like to understand better from you all how we can verify that you're actually going to continue not only working together, but that you're going to include this board in your decision making and that there will be funding that follows it because we're hearing that it's going to be a tough budget year.

[03:27:18] So all of a sudden, if we're rolling out things and then we don't have funds to follow it, that causes a little bit of angst for me because we'll be cutting something else. And so I'd like to better understand that. I would also like to understand, and I would suggest, Mr. or Dr. Presidio, that you might want to look at your fall of 23 document.

[03:27:40] It uses the exact same terminology. It was not just a mistake in 22. And so it should be updated to remove any reference to establishing charters and not having some sort of board oversight.

[03:27:57] So when you're talking about an MOU, it needs to have a clear recognition that this board needs to be part of that process. And I, you know, I'm a big believer. I ran in support of community, you know, wraparound services in our schools.

[03:28:14] I believe that we are better together, but we just need to do it the right way. And we have to have clear metrics that if it's not working, what do we have? How do we adjust? And then the other piece of it is, what happens when the schools change over time?

[03:28:30] The risk measures change. Are we, you know, is there a sunset clause for community schools, or are we keeping them in perpetuity? So, again, a lot of good questions. I appreciate that. I think, you know, what I would say on the first point that you made about collaboration is, as Chris has mentioned, the collaboration has been really strong.

[03:28:53] I have no reason to think that that would change. I think we have the assurance that this is one of the strategic initiatives of the SCIPP, right? And as long as that's true and as long as that's the case, there's oversight from both boards as well as a lot of involvement from community-based organizations and leaders on this initiative.

[03:29:12] So I'm very sure, I mean, I feel very confident that that collaboration will continue. The evaluation, as we mentioned in the report, will do annual evaluations to share information with both boards about the current successes and challenges of the community schools initiatives and based on those conversations we can take direction from both boards about improvements that we might need to make that's part of the answer well i mean it's i mean i can say ditto i think the the coordination through skipped is really important here because it's one of the five core initiatives that that

[03:29:51] the expectation from our skip members which again includes not just a third county a third schools but also a third to community and the community will hold us accountable for those initiatives and driving us forward there as well so um i i have no i have no qualms saying that this is a an initiative that that coordination and collaboration will remain strong um i can't speak to our board until we get this in front of our board in terms of talking about funding opportunities and what they'd like to see but but i know i'm eager for that conversation because

[03:30:26] We're also committed to this. I think we're all we need to get back to where forget not forgetting learning, but always remembering those outcomes that we're all trying to achieve with regards to the wraparound services for these kids and their families, the kids and their families. And I think this model is really is really strong to be able to make sure that we've we've implemented our lessons learned, and we're ready to to move forward.

[03:30:54] So my concern is that we actually don't fully have a chart that says these are the lessons learned and this is what we're going to correct. And so if as a next step you all would provide that to the boards, I think that's critical. The second piece is, you know, a confirmation somewhere that there's that loop back beyond skip because skip is not a decision-making body.

[03:31:18] The two boards are the decision-making bodies. So I would just ensure, ask for those to be addressed. And then you didn't answer the last piece, which is, is there a sunset mechanism? Is there something that you say, okay, over time, we're not going to do this at this school anymore.

[03:31:36] I think that's a great point. That was kind of implicit in what I was trying to say is that through that annual review process and taking feedback from the boards, if we were seeing, right, and I think it would take some time for us to get to that point, we're certainly not there now, that in the most vulnerable communities in Fairfax County that that had shifted and changed and we had had such an impact there that those services weren't necessary, absolutely, that could be part of the discussion with the boards.

[03:32:01] Thank you, Dr. Wait, they didn't correct, they didn't answer the one question regarding. Correcting the document so that it doesn't have a charter with a capital C. Yeah, we're happy to do that. And includes a reference to the approval by the boards. Yes, by the boards.

[03:32:17] I think there are a number of. That's, yes, that's in there, but we'll triple check. I think there are a number of things that Dr. Presidio and team should be taking away from this conversation. because I think there was a lot of discussion in terms of accountability, the role of the regional superintendents, the annual review.

[03:32:33] Well, Susan's got like seven pages of our takeaways in her notes here. Super. So maybe that can just be incorporated and updated documents are provided to us, because I think people just don't want to speak into the ether, but actually want to see the action. So we appreciate that so much. Ms. McLaughlin, do you want to take us through the consensus?

[03:32:53] yes um before i do i i did want to invite our superintendent to just have some remarks before we go to next steps thank you miss mclaughlin and i i do know the power of um community right learning happens best in community we've said that i've said it since i arrived and the power of community schools when done well and systemic um and accountable uh is a powerful force for good for our young people. And I think we've also heard from our staff that wraparound supports

[03:33:27] would be helpful as well in terms of the student experience. And we really need to have a strong partnership with our county partners because so many of the needs of our students and families go so far beyond the classroom. So I'm looking forward to supporting a new iteration of community schools with a focus and, you know, being able to celebrate successes moving forward.

[03:33:59] So I appreciate staff, Saray, I appreciate you shouldering so much of this and Sloan as well. This is, it's hard too when you're presenting a concept that maybe hasn't gone as well as we might have hoped. And I think it's fair to say we would agree with that. So I think this is a chance for a reset and we don't get many of those chances. So I hope we're able to make the most of them. So thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Thank you, Dr. Reed. And, you know, again, I do, I do want to

[03:34:36] just again reiterate to the board as a body, as someone who's been on skip throughout, we humbly recognize that it is the two elected boards that have authority. The skip is not an authority. It is a policy team it's in its name but we recognize that all we can do is make recommendations to the two boards and so duly noted on that Ms. Corbett-Sanders with that if we go to the slide where we just again framed out for the board maybe it was the first slide just the the overall ask

[03:35:16] which is as Dr. Presidio said that we would like to have consensus of the board and support of the program model roles and responsibilities for the partnering organizations and number two the process for site prioritization and selection again this has been a public meeting a recorded meeting a lot has been committed to and explained so this is not a speak now and forever hold your peace but we do I hope have an opportunity here to green light to the next step let this get brought to the board

[03:35:52] supervisors so board members i'm going to break it up into two pieces and i would like for you to vote in showing consensus support number one on the community schools program model that you support what has been presented and discussed going forward to the board of supervisors for our future engagement and i see ms corbett standards you have a question with amendments or

[03:36:22] with those qualifications that we discussed today you know i i guess what i would say is uh if you want to outline to dr presidio exactly what you view as this is this has to be changed or i'm not giving it support yeah i heard some technical edits probably most importantly the authority of the board and the charter component that we need to revise and we're happy to do that okay great um

[03:36:55] yes miss darneko facts um when do you anticipate that the board of supervisors will review this does anybody know i'm not in charge of them no i know but i just thought in the conversations like this would come as part of the um as part of the health and human services committee okay um and we i don't know when the first one is in 2024 uh we only have one more and it's next tuesday uh it this won't be on that so it's a little bit down the road next in the new year right all right thank you 2024 definitely um again the question from ms corbett sanders was

[03:37:35] why now then it's because we've already waited 18 months they've been waiting on us for 18 months we have our board calendar the chair and vice chair have said it so if you don't want to vote for it don't vote for it but at this point i i have fought to get this on our work sessions for a year and a half so we're here i hope people can feel comfortable to send this forward it doesn't stop any individual board member from talking with Dr. Presidio, Saray, who have been, again, very collaborative in saying, you know, that they want to hear from board members. Yes, Ms. Corbett-Sanders.

[03:38:12] My question is that before it goes to the Board of Supervisors, those amendments, those corrections that we talked about today will be made. Those corrections will be made this week. Before it goes to the Board of Supervisors. Well, in advance, before it goes to the Board of Supervisors. That's what I'm trying to understand. Yes, thank you.

[03:38:29] Okay, my colleagues, if you could please raise your hand if you can support for, number one, the program model to be forwarded on to the Board of Supervisors with a green light from the school board. I have Mr. Frisch, Ms. Seizmerheiser, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Bukarski, myself, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. Dernack-Koufax, and Ms. Tolan, who are present at the meeting.

[03:38:58] Ms. Marin is away from the table, and Ms. Kees-Gumara is not here, and neither is Ms. Omish. I just said present. So Unimanis for everybody is present and participating. Number two, for the process for site prioritization and selection, please raise your hand if you can be supportive of that.

[03:39:17] I have Ms. Tolan, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Seizmerheiser, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Prakarski, myself, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, and Ms. Darienak-Fofax. Again, unanimous for all who are present and participating in the meeting.

[03:39:36] So there we have it. I want to thank our county partners for coming here today and helping to answer board questions. And I want to especially thank you for the more than five-year journey we have had in trying to develop community schools.

[03:39:53] And Dr. Presidio and Saray and all of your staff who've worked on this, thank you, all three of you, for being present. and the work you've done behind the scenes. I look forward to the few remaining months I have to continue to champion our community schools.

[03:40:10] So with that, we're done, colleagues.

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