Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, October 12, 2023

Date: Thursday, October 12, 2023
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 4h 12m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2Lc7aSGY4I
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.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[00:02:47] This October 10th, 2023, regular school board meeting will come to order.

[00:03:57] Ms. Tolan has submitted a written request to attend virtually this. This is not it. Fourth wall comes down. It's scripted, everybody. Thank you, five.

[00:04:16] I have it. No. In order to comply with Section 2-23712D 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 12th, 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.

[00:04:53] Do I have a motion? Ms. Omesh, do I have a second? Ms. Corbett Sanders. All those in favor? Ms. Cohen, Ms. Omesh, Ms. Marin, Ms. Bukarski, Ms. Darnett-Koufax, Ms. McLaughlin, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Corbett Sanders, and myself.

[00:05:11] All those opposed?

[00:05:14] abstentions. The motion passes. I call on Miss Corbett Sanders for a motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move to grant in part the school reassignment appeal of a student who to confirm I'm missing part of the motion. I apologize. Hold on one moment. I will go get it. One. I apologize. All right. We'll take just a moment. Apologize everybody. I move to grant in part the school reassignment appeal of a student. Thank you. You're correct. All right. We're going to try this all over again.

[00:06:38] This never happened this October 12th 2023 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now again come to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the National Anthem by the West Springfield High School Orchestra students.

[00:07:00] I pledge allegiance.

[00:07:19] Mr. Fish may be recognized. Go ahead Miss Cohen. Thank you. I wanted to take the opportunity that during tonight's moment of silence, many of our board members would like to share our care and concern for the victims, their loved ones, and our entire Jewish community who are suffering from Saturday's vicious terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel.

[00:07:40] We further extend our care and concern for all civilians in Israel, Gaza, and the surrounding areas who may be impacted by the ensuing war. Additionally, we wish to reaffirm that anti-Semitism, hate, and Zionism, xenophobia have no place in our schools and will not be tolerated.

[00:10:11] I now call on Ms. Corbett-Sanders for a motion. Go ahead, Ms. O'Meish. Thank you. I wasn't expecting what seemed to be a sneak attack after we had discussed making sure we represent all children in the ways that we speak and when we speak.

[00:10:27] So it's disappointing that my colleagues would do that behind my back after conversations that I had with them in saying that a statement represents everybody's views but many are thinking about the incredible devastation and human suffering unfolding today in Israel and Palestine and we mourn the loss of hundreds of innocent civilians killed and homes destroyed this week alone and the thousands over the decades all of whom should have been prevented it might seem simple aggressors attacking families in a state seeking vengeance but we often sympathize with and humanize the side that we relate to and the side that looks more like us or

[00:11:07] that our biases guide us towards, but doing so obscures the root of the violence. Centuries of human history teach us that escalations happen when problems are ignored, realities are denied, and voices are censored, when one narrative dominates from the world stage all the way to our classrooms. We do our students no favors by calling for peace and being unwilling to back what peace requires. As the old civil rights adage goes, no justice, no peace. When we are unwilling to call out the global human rights organizations, what global human rights organizations have called an apartheid regime of occupation that has

[00:11:44] been violating international agreements year after year and killing thousands of innocent civilians over decades, we are lying to our children. When we don't give space to hear the Palestinian narrative, we buy into a rhetoric that negates not only the humanness of Palestinians but justifies the indiscriminate retaliation against the population.

[00:12:02] When we show inconsistent outrage that suggests some lives matter more, when Palestinian flags are banned and many in our classrooms are allowed to hold flags for others, when we shut school events down because they include stories of Palestinian students, when humanitarian campaigns by student governments in our system for Palestinian children are shut down because principals deem them controversial after parents complain that Palestinians are terrorists, When teachers are written up for teaching the full context, warned that it might threaten their position or are reprimanded for sharing a get to know me board with a Palestinian flag on it, then we allow only the occupier's narrative to exist and teach a filtered version

[00:12:42] of history that fosters dehumanization and hatred, allowing horrors to unfold in the darkness. After all, one-sidedness is what allowed the occupation to continue and it's what facilitated this humanitarian crisis and escalation today. Meanwhile, misinformation often often called atrocity propaganda as a phenomenon is flying around I'll let you continue, but please wrap it up as verified by statements taken back even by the White House and the Washington Post While many feel helpless we can act by advancing the very mission of FCPS and that's education To listen to multiple perspectives to familiarize ourselves and be truth seekers

[00:13:21] We're an institution dedicated to enlightening our young people Schools are where students must gain a vast set of perspectives, where they deserve to learn complex truths that equip them for the world they will inherit. If we actually seek to achieve the peace we all deserve and desire, let us not suppress narratives of the occupied.

[00:13:40] Let us support one another through this tough time by humanizing the other and holding space for those vast experiences. let us avoid these moments once and for all by preparing our children effectively for a world that so desperately needs just and informed leaders. And finally, I'm not naive enough to think that saying this is simple or won't subject me to hate or smears, but I also have the privilege of life and a voice, and for that I cannot justify my silence. Thank you, Ms. Amesh.

[00:14:13] Miss Corbett Sanders you have a motion and Miss Cohn will make available the statement that was read that has the support of 75% of this board after the meeting Miss Corbett Sanders thank you chair I move to grant in part the school reassignment appeal of a student who assaulted a staff member at school and to modify the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent is there a second I'll second Miss Merritt all those in favor Miss Corbett Sanders

[00:14:50] Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Pekarski, Ms. Omesh, Ms. Cohen, and myself, and Ms. Derenak-Koufax. Nope. All right, we're going to try that one more time since people are coming back to the table. All those in favor of the motion.

[00:15:07] Ms. Corbett-Sanders, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Pekarski, Ms. Omesh, and myself. All those opposed. Dr. Anderson, Ms. Derenak-Koufax, and Ms. Cohen. Any abstentions? Ms. Marin. The motion passes. Ms. Seismar-Hyzer and Ms. Kees-Gumar have submitted a written request to virtually attend this evening's meeting due to personal conflicts.

[00:15:30] All those in favor of approving Ms. Sizemoreheiser's request, please raise your hand. Ms. Cohen, Ms. Omeish, Ms. Marin, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Dr. Anderson, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Darnett Koufax, Ms. Pekarski, and myself. There were any abstention or opposition, any abstentions?

[00:15:50] Okay. Welcome Ms. Sizemoreheiser, if you could test your microphone. She may not be on. - She is not currently on. - All right, we will check in later. All those in favor of approving Ms. Keyes-Gamara's request, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Dr. Anderson, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Derenak-Koufax, Ms. Bukarski, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Omesh, Ms. Marin and myself, that's unanimous.

[00:16:18] Ms. Keys-Gamara, if you can test your microphone. - Hello, everybody. - We hear you loud and clear. All right, if you'd like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight, that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or the website at fcps.edu/schoolboard/boarddocs.

[00:16:44] Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on Channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu/tv/ch99. After reading tonight's proclamations, the board would like to invite those in support of the proclamations to join us for a photo.

[00:17:02] I call on Dr. Anderson for a proclamation. - Thank you. Whereas National Hispanic Heritage Month recognized on September 15th through October 15th across the United States in Fairfax County Public Schools to celebrate the histories, cultures, and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. And whereas this observation was started in 1968 as Hispanic Heritage Week under President Lyndon Johnson. In 1988

[00:17:40] President Ronald Reagan expanded the observation period to 30 days starting September 15th and ending on October 15th and enacted it into law. And whereas National Hispanic Heritage Month is a wonderful opportunity for our schools and community to celebrate various cultures and traditions and a tangible reinforcement of the school board's belief that our diversity is a strength that creates resilient open and innovative global citizens and whereas an FCPS one in four of our students is Hispanic is of Hispanic air heritage and

[00:18:20] boast ancestry from a variety of countries and cultures these cultures in turn enrich our own school community and whereas FCPS values its diversity and and acknowledges that all people contribute to the well-being of the community. FCPS is fortunate to have many groups whose members work with our Latino students, empowering them to be the next generation of leaders and professionals. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County

[00:18:53] School Board, on behalf of the students, educators, and families of Fairfax County Public Schools, does hereby proclaim October 2023 as National Hispanic Month and in Fairfax County Public Schools. The Fairfax County School Board encourages all to participate in programs and events taking place in our schools and community to learn about, celebrate and elevate this rich heritage.

[00:19:21] Is there a second? Yo, segundo. Miss Marin, Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your proclamation? Yes, I would. But first, I would like to thank the Fairfax County Hispanic Educators Association for inviting me to their celebration last week.

[00:19:41] I was there with Ms. Toland and had the opportunity to really spend some time with Dr. Ponce. And we were, I was very grateful and really it was just such a moment for me to partake in some of the food that was there. That just really brought me back to my childhood.

[00:19:58] I will not say what it is because I know I will not get the name correct. it was just so nice to connect because it also shows the tapestry of all of our cultures so that was a wonderful opportunity that i really wanted to highlight here this evening in our schools diversity is our strength and this month is our opportunity to amplify hispanic voices histories and contributions let's foster understanding appreciation and unity as we embrace the vibrant stories that shape our collective identity let us take this opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments, resilience, and talents of Hispanic and Latino students,

[00:20:37] educators, and families who enrich our schools. And of course, Dr. Ponce among us represents that by fostering an environment that embraces diversity and empower our students to become global citizens and appreciate the richness of different perspectives.

[00:20:54] May this month serve as an inspiration and a reminder for us to continue creating inclusive spaces where every student feels heard, seen, and valued, and I also encourage us to look beyond the things that we typically associate with diverse cultures, such as food and dances.

[00:21:15] Let's engage into their traditions, their cultures, their values, and let's also highlight and empower them to share those with us. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Marin, would you like to speak to your second? I'll just add that I'm so grateful that we get to celebrate this because of the beautiful diversity that we have among our students and staff and I do want to give a shout out to the Hispanic Educators Association and the Hispanic Leadership Alliance which does amazing work in building a network among educators and also providing very generous scholarships to our students in the spring and I try as hard as I can to get that information in our school so our students know about those resources.

[00:21:51] So thank you educators for all that you do. Thank you. Ms. Omesh. Thank you. I'm happy to follow and appreciate Dr. Anderson's remarks as well as Ms. Marin's. As many of my colleagues have mentioned, Spanish is actually our division's second most widely spoken language.

[00:22:11] In our recent census in this county, nearly a fifth of our population is Hispanic or Latino, and we should be proud of this growing diversity within our country and within our schools. I want to highlight that a number of our schools, and I don't know that we even realize this, are more than half majority-minority Hispanic or Latino, and in Braddock Elementary, for For example, 75% of the student population belongs to a Spanish-speaking family.

[00:22:37] Students have made virtual pen pals with Guatemalan students to share their learning, expanding our students' global understanding. And it's important to recognize, of course, that amongst this beautiful diversity we celebrate figures like Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, of course, as a student of the law, I appreciate her in particular, but even people like Dr. Julio Palmas who, surprisingly, invented the captcha that makes sure you're not a robot when you fill out forms and and so many others but of course that there was struggle as well President Herbert Herbert Hoover for example scapegoated Mexican Americans for the Great Depression and aboard deported approximately 2 million Americans of

[00:23:15] Mexican heritage to Mexico and in the 1970s Latina women were disproportionately targeted for and coerced into sterilization I bring up of course some of the harrowing history that maybe we're not taught to celebrate the triumph that the community has come through and of course to celebrate the Hispanic Heritage Month with so many in our system like my friend Dr. Manuel Gomez Portillo and so many others from organizations like Hispanic Educators Association, Lupe, the Leadership Alliance as Ms. Marin mentioned and others. So happy Hispanic Heritage Month to everyone. Thank you

[00:23:50] Ms. Omesh. Ms. Corbett Sanders. Yes. One of the beauties about our culture and our society here in Fairfax County is that so many of our families celebrate multiple identities and some of you may know that I have six Hispanic nieces nephews and grand nieces and sister-in-law but it's not a

[00:24:21] monolithic group the beauty of our Hispanic heritage is that people come from multiple locations around the world, not only the Central American and South American locations, but also in Europe. And each one has its own culture, celebrations, and holidays and recognitions.

[00:24:47] And so I'm just thrilled that we have recognized that and recognized that it takes more than just a week to to celebrate and to bring a light onto this culture and I also just want to take a point of privilege my grand-niece is celebrating our quinceanera on Saturday night so I'm looking forward to participating in that thank you thank you Miss Corbett Sanders seeing no others with their lights on we will go ahead and take the vote all those in favor of the proclamation Miss Cohen

[00:25:26] Miss Amesh Miss Marin Miss Bikarski Miss Darenette Koufax Miss McLaughlin Dr. Anderson, Ms. Corbett Sanders, and myself. Ms. Keys-Gamara, I can't see you on the screen, unfortunately. - I'm raising my hand. - Okay, and Ms. Keys-Gamara, that's everyone in attendance.

[00:25:44] The proclamation passes. I call on Ms. Cohen for a proclamation. - Whereas Indigenous Peoples' Day and Native American Heritage Month are recognized on the second Monday of October and throughout the month of November, respectively, across the United States and in Fairfax County public schools to honor and celebrate the history and accomplishments and contributions of people who were the first inhabitants of the United States.

[00:26:14] And whereas in 1990, Congress passed and President George W. Bush signed into law a joint resolution designating the month of November as the first National American Indian Heritage Month. In 2021, President Joe Biden was the first U.S. President to formally commemorate Indigenous Peoples' Day as a national holiday with a presidential proclamation.

[00:26:36] and whereas Indigenous Peoples Day and Native American Heritage Month are wonderful opportunities for our school and community to honor our nation's original inhabitants and their descendants, the invaluable contributions that Indigenous people have made to the arts, public service, military service, and other fields are integral to our nation, and whereas FCPS serves a diverse student population with many who embrace and celebrate their Indigenous family heritage.

[00:27:04] Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board does hereby proclaim October 9th, 2022 as Indigenous Peoples' Day and November as Native American Heritage Month in recognition and celebration of the many contributions of our nation's indigenous people to our school system, community, and country.

[00:27:26] - Thank you, Ms. Cohen. Is there a second, Ms. McLaughlin? Ms. Cohen, would you like to speak to your motion? - I feel really honored to have the opportunity to present this, it's maybe particularly poignant, in this moment in history. And instead of using my words, I just wanted to lift up the words of a few Native Americans who've given their perspective on this day. Mr. Irwin Morris says every day is Indigenous Peoples Day. Every time that the sun rises and we are still here is cause

[00:28:02] for celebration. Raven Carlson said we deserve more than just one day. We deserve the entire year and that's what we get. Every single day we are still here and thriving and that's what this day means. To show the rest of the world that wanted us dead so badly they didn't win. This day reminds them that they never will win. We are here and stronger than ever honoring our ancestors that came before us, those who thought they'd be their last generations. Thank you Ms. Cohen. Ms. McLaughlin

[00:28:35] would you like to speak to your second? I would and it's tough to follow Ms. Cohen's beautiful words just now, but I would like to specifically elevate a revered Native American in our history, Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe was an athlete that was highly regarded as one of our finest in the 20th century. His athletic achievements included two gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. He also played football, baseball, and basketball

[00:29:11] professionally and was inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame in 1963. Sadly, he suffered tremendous persecution as a Native American throughout his life, despite his athletic prowess. His Olympic medals were revoked in 1913 after it was discovered that he had played minor league baseball, which is against the Olympic rules at the time. In 1983, his medals were thankfully reinstated posthumously. He was a strong supporter of Native American rights and and strove to increase awareness and respect for his people's history and traditions.

[00:29:46] He was also a role model and a guide to other Native American athletes. James Thorpe continues to be celebrated today as a pioneering athlete and a Native American rights crusader. His legacy continues to inspire sportsmen and others from all walks of life to follow their dreams and to fight for what they believe in.

[00:30:07] It is an honor to uplift him this evening and I hope that we will always strive continue to better understand the countless indigenous people who have helped shape our nation and our world today thank you miss mclaughlin miss omesh thank you as we acknowledge indigenous people's day i am sure there are mixed feelings and i've um i know in the community we celebrate on the one hand but we recognize a very painful history and a reality that we live in today where essentially we've colonized a land and taken it from its people.

[00:30:46] There's no doubt so much beauty in the state capital of Richmond. There is a memorial that recognizes and celebrates the 11 state recognized tribes. And Virginia is actually home to over 125,000 Native Americans.

[00:31:02] But of course, I would challenge each of us to look beyond Jamestown and beyond the history that we've been taught. The numerous contributions from the advent of topical pain relief to even sports like the tools like the kayak and hopefully when we enjoy these benefits even like a hammock the next time we're enjoying it on a lazy sunday to recognize that these are real traditions that came from a people that were essentially eradicated in a genocide that killed over 12 million people in this country um and i i you know i have to say i was recently at the renwick gallery which i would highly encourage everybody to go to uh right in front of the

[00:31:41] white house where there's a lot of revival of native american art and an appreciation for the real feelings and experiences of people um to to reflect on you know i'm still deconstructing and reflecting on the pains of the colonial experience that ultimately resulted in that genocide and required dehumanization the narratives around what we're taught um and and uh thinking about just the the reality of what was and what could have been um and the u.s creating tropes about indian savages and barbarians who are inherently prone to violence at the time lessons for us to learn from today uh but certainly a heritage as well to celebrate um and to uplift and i hope that

[00:32:21] we can continue teaching truth in our schools um and and uh casting light on the realities of what these people experienced thank you miss omesh miss marron yes when we talk about an advocate for teaching truth this is the kind of truth that we talk about and um i have i appreciate I'm talking about Jim Thorpe, I recently read a biography about him, and I also read the Indigenous People's History of America, and they haunt me because I wondered, did I just not know that, or why don't I know that, and why isn't it deliberately taught?

[00:32:59] So this is what our charge has been to the superintendent, to be sure that we are learning about the robust history of people in North America and everywhere, certainly using resources like the Smithsonian. believe we do have partnerships that do that kind of work but it is imperative that we expand what has traditionally been taught and include the whole history the whole beautiful and sometimes ugly history for our students to know and learn from. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Marin no other lights on we will go ahead and take the vote. All those in favor of the proclamation please raise

[00:33:31] your hand. Ms. Corbett Sanders Dr. Anderson Ms. McLaughlin Ms. Derenak-Koufax Ms. Pekarski Ms. Marin, Ms. Amesh, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Keyes-Gamara, will you verbalize? We can't see you on the screen.

[00:33:47] Sorry. Ms. Keyes-Gamara. All opposed? Abstentions? It passes. Thank you. You can mute yourself now.

[00:34:08] Okay, great. Item 307, LGBTQIA History Month Proclamation. I call on Ms. Corbett Sanders for a proclamation. Thank you, Vice Chair. Whereas LGBTQIA History Month is recognized in October across the United States and in Fairfax County Public Schools to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions and experiences of too often overlooked or silenced LGBTQIA plus people, communities, and movements throughout our history.

[00:34:43] And whereas the special month was founded in 1994 by Missouri high school history teacher Rodney Wilson who chose October for the inaugural celebration to coincide with National Coming Out Day on October 14th and to commemorate the first march on Washington for LGBTQIA plus rights in October of 1979.

[00:35:06] And whereas the national PTA states that schools should be a safe, supportive, and respectful environment for all students and that LGBTQIA plus students are more likely than their peers to be bullied, feel unsafe in school, and skip school due to safety concerns and whereas students are involved in gender sexuality alliance gsa clubs at many middle and high schools throughout fairfax county public schools where they can network and socialize with each other and educate their communities through forums announcements and other activities and these clubs are an asset to our schools with

[00:35:41] research indicating that schools with gsas have better mental health outcomes for all students and whereas the fairfax county school board celebrates its richly diverse community of lgbt lgbtqia plus students families and staff recognizes the urgency of its charge to foster a school community where all feel valued supported and hopeful and advances policies that protect lgbtqia plus students and staff so they can live without fear of prejudice discrimination or violence now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board on behalf of the

[00:36:19] students educators and families of fairfax county public schools does hereby proclaim october 2023 as lgbtqia plus history month in fairfax county public schools and the fairfax county school board urges all to learn more about the many historic and contemporary contributions and experiences of this diverse community and to build a culture of inclusivity and equity not only during lgbtqia plus history month but throughout the entire year thank you miss corbett sanders is there a second

[00:36:55] i second miss bekarski miss corbett sanders would you like to speak to your mo your proclamation yes uh chair frisch our proclam our proclamations are a way of having our staff students and community members feel valued, seen, included, and hopeful. It is why we spend about an hour of every meeting talking about the important constituencies that this school system shares

[00:37:31] and serves. It is critical that we do this because so often our children don't feel like they have a voice or are seen by so many and oftentimes individual children or groups of children are politicized and we don't want to do that.

[00:37:52] We want to ensure that our community is safe and nurturing and welcoming and that's why we do these proclamations. It's also really important for our children and our staff and our allies to understand how many contributions members of the LGBTQIA community have made, not only here in Fairfax County or on this board, but also in our history.

[00:38:24] And so I wanted to just briefly give you three names to remember. One is Alan Turning, who played such an important role as the father of computer science and decoder whom without him we would have had an extended World War II. It was because of his decoding expertise and his work with computers that we were able to defeat Nazi Germany and end the Holocaust. We also had Barbara Giddings whom successfully led the charge to remove sexuality

[00:39:02] as a disorder from the American Psychiatric Association's designation list. So important because it's critical that we know that this is not a disorder. This is how people can be recognized as their authentic selves.

[00:39:18] And finally, we do want to remember Sally Ride, the first female astronaut whom also was a member of this community. So I ask all of my colleagues to share with me the importance of recognizing and including this month.

[00:39:41] - Thank you, Ms. Corbett Sanders. Ms. Pekarski, would you like to speak to your second? - Yes, of course, I think tonight is the night where we are showcasing many underrepresented groups of people that have often been forgotten in our history and not taught to our students.

[00:39:59] We are a very diverse school community, and our children should see themselves in our curriculum and should learn about people that are like them, and that's why I'm happy to second this motion tonight.

[00:40:16] And when I thought about what I wanted to share, really all I could think about was that we are now, in this point in time, writing our own chapter, in many ways in LGBTQ history.

[00:40:31] According to the ACLU, in the last few years, many states, including ours here in Virginia, have advanced a record number of bills to restrict rights for LGBTQIA+ youth. Threats of violence against this youth community are on the rise and intensifying, according to a briefing by the Department of Homeland Security in May, presented in May 2023.

[00:40:57] I share those concerns and the angst that many have. And today I had the honor of participating in an Oakton High School Candidates Day Forum where many people running for public office were able to come, talk to students, students were able to interact with us.

[00:41:18] And this was one of the main questions I was asked by our youth. This is on their mind. This is of concern. And that's why right now it is so very important that we elevate LGBTQIA history and the many, many contributions folks in this community have made to make this world a better place. And that continues. We are part of that. Thank you.

[00:41:48] Thank you, Ms. Pekarski. Ms. Omesh? Thank you. I'm happy to follow the sentiment of my colleagues in uplifting various minorities. Last meeting I pushed for us to expand our thinking around how we equitably secure representation for vulnerable students. We need to fight for kids in a way that's sustainable and by being thoughtful as leaders about how boundaries among various groups interact, we can honor all kids and secure their interests for the long run. Learning history is different from endorsement or celebration of its events and outcomes, which we know cannot be expected nor imposed. And with that in mind, it is critical to raise young leaders who have a

[00:42:26] deep understanding and awareness of the vast diversity of thought and expression that exists in our world. LGBTQ people and their struggles have been part of America's history and our collective story. Their fights for rights and inclusion over the last several years involved intergenerational struggles and have had broad impacts on how we view our world today.

[00:42:45] It's important to expose students to difference without a partiality for or against that makes them unsafe being themselves in the classroom. I'll be voting for this motion because this month has potential to promote tolerance through the visibility to do that. Thank you Ms. Omesh. Ms. Cohen.

[00:43:05] I wanted to take the opportunity to honor our the history that we get to make on this board and honor the gentleman who's acting as chair tonight. Carl Frisch was the first openly gay person on our board in Fairfax County the first openly gay elected official to be elected in this county yeah one of the first openly gay elected officials in all of Northern Virginia and in Virginia proper and I have to say as his

[00:43:41] colleagues we benefit every day from the insight that we get as on a personal note I would never have felt able to come out myself if Carl had not been an encouragement a support and someone who will always pick up the phone when any of us need help and guidance and in care and comfort so thank you and I feel awfully proud that this board had the opportunity to have a little part in our

[00:44:11] own LGBTQ history so thanks Mr. Frisch. Thank You Mrs. Cohen. Ms. McLaughlin. I know we are trying to avoid every board member speaking to every proclamation so I will just briefly say that as a very proud mother of my gay son I think that this is an extraordinarily important recognition that we are doing.

[00:44:42] We need for every child and our community to understand the tremendous contributions that our LGBTQIA community has brought to the history of this nation and when we have that opportunity as we talk about, whether it's women's history, black history, and this history. It is elevating the various heroes we've had over the centuries who have fought to what I believe continues to be a more perfect union every day that even the 12 of us have

[00:45:19] sat here and tried to do together over the last four years. So, Ms. Cohen, thank you for uplifting the fact that we are continuing to try and make our county and our country move forward in many positive ways, including the representation we have here tonight.

[00:45:38] - Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. Derenak-Koufax. - Yes, I too will be brief. I want to just say that this is work that we have done through the years to make sure our LGBTQIA+ students feel safe, secure, and supported. It's something that I've supported, this board to support it we are proud of our work and we want you to know that we will always be there for you and we will have your backs and we thank you for working together with us to ensure that this group of students feels as I said safe supported and secure

[00:46:18] in our schoolroom. Thank you Ms. Darinette Koufax. Seeing no other lights on I will take a moment to correct Ms. Cohen. I am the first LGBTQ school board member in Fairfax County that we know of, though I appreciate the sentiment.

[00:46:49] Whether or not we recognize it, history is happening every second of every day. And the history of LGBTQ people is complicated because we have always existed. Every religion, every culture, every race, every ethnicity, every way that you can divide a population, you will find queer people in it. Even people who divide themselves into a population that say there are no queer people. They're just not telling you. The question we have to ask

[00:47:23] ourselves is, are they silenced? Are their contributions recorded? Were they exterminated? Why don't we know about their contributions to our history? And I think a lot about the situation that we're in as a country. We protect our LGBTQIA kids in Fairfax County Public Schools, but that doesn't mean that they're not hearing the conversation happening beyond the walls of

[00:47:56] our schools from politicians who should know better than to bully children. And that has an impact. The year I was born in 1978, as the kids say, the late 1900s, there was a ballot measure in California where I was born to prohibit LGBTQ people from teaching in public schools and to prohibit anyone who supported them from working in public schools. It did not pass

[00:48:28] thankfully. But ballot measures like that passed all over the country. And so when we see work in Florida and in Richmond and elsewhere that says, hey, kiddos, don't tell anyone who you are. We will not keep you safe. In fact, we will make you less safe. A different kind of history is being made. And every single one of us has a choice of which side of that divide we're going to be on, which part of the history we're going to be on. Are we going to be the people that are praised in

[00:49:05] the history books or are we going to be the people that are looked at as being on the wrong side of history. I am grateful for every single person on this board who has worked to protect our LGBTQIA students because they haven't always had protection on this board. But this board and more recent boards have been there for them and we have to continue to be there for them as long as politicians look at polling and decide that picking on one group of kids is going to win them votes. To the Kids watching at home who are smart enough

[00:49:43] not to be here at this hour, we like to say you're seen, you're heard, whatever. We've got your back. And we wanna know when we're coming up short. So come use that microphone, flood our inboxes, contact us, let us know how we're doing.

[00:50:07] Thank you. I will call for the vote. All those in favor of the proclamation, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Omeish, Ms. Marin, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Dr. Anderson, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Dernot Koufax, Ms. Pekarski, Ms. Kees-Gumara in favor?

[00:50:34] Okay, and Ms. Kees-Gumara, all opposed? Any abstentions? The proclamation passes. All right. Number three, agenda item 3.08, school principals, administrators, and administrative assistance month proclamation.

[00:50:52] I call on Ms. Derenak-Koufax for the proclamation. - Thank you. Whereas the celebration of school principals, administrators, administrative assistance month honors elementary, middle, and high school leaders, and supports staff and recognizes their roles are essential in preparing students for success both during their pre-K through 12 years and beyond.

[00:51:15] And whereas principals serve a variety of critical roles, such as instructional leaders, community builders, assessment experts, budget analysts, facility managers, public relations experts, guardians of various legal, contractual, and policy mandates.

[00:51:32] They set the academic tone of their school by setting ambitious goals, enforcing rigorous standards, and maintaining high curriculum standards and expectations for all students. And whereas, dedicated and inspiring school administrators work collaboratively with students, families, teachers, and the community.

[00:51:53] Their leadership is second only to classroom instruction amongst all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school. And whereas the important work of office assistants and administrative assistants is central to any school, these assistants keep their office and school operations organized and efficient.

[00:52:14] Whereas these educational leaders and support staff are dedicated in supporting and educating our students, and it is through their perseverance and passion that FCPS Public Schools continues to produce career-ready students. Now for be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board recognizes October 2023 as school principals, administrators, and administrative assistance month and the importance of school leadership and support in ensuing every child has access to a high quality education. Thank you

[00:52:50] Ms. Darenette-Koufax. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Omeish. Ms. Darenette-Koufax would you like to speak to your proclamation? Yes thank you Vice Chair Frisch. I am thrilled to make this motion to honor all of our elementary, middle, and high school principals, administrators, and administrative assistants this month, not really just this month, but throughout the entire year.

[00:53:14] These professionals are true leaders. They are the backbone in each of our schools. Many times you see them out supporting students, walking the halls, welcoming parents, and attending after-hours events but what you may not see is the tremendous amount of work behind the scenes to help bring academic excellence to our students they're not just leaders they are organizers planners communicators and relationship builders each of their roles is unique principal administrators and our administrative assistants but together they are a team in our schools they mentor they motivate

[00:53:52] and they lead and build relationships between teachers parents and guardians they together as a team with the teachers set the vision for each of our individual schools so to all our principals administrators and administrative assistants we thank you we appreciate you and we know we could not do it without you your dedication and hard work is evident each and every day and our board is honored to take a moment this month to recognize all you do to keep FCPS strong for our students thank you mr. not kofax miss omash would

[00:54:28] you'd like to speak to your second yes and I want to thank all the principals administrators and administrative assistants in our system and a special shout out to those who have joined us tonight I'm going to read off your names and I'll ask you to stand for a royal wave and please and then in the end we'll give you all a round of applause but starting with our administrative assistants Esther Baca from Beachtree Sherry Suknanen from Braddock Clavaya Sa from Cameron Elementary and a Mac from Carl Sandburg Middle Brenda Meha from Mark Twain Middle, Carla Lobo from Sleepy Hollow Elementary, Brenda

[00:55:03] Meha from Twain Middle. Oh that was repeated, sorry. Bridget Louder from Beech Tree. So now we're in AP's, assistant principals. Holly Dowling from Braddock, Maureen Lopez from Braddock, Anaida Thomas from Braddock, Amanda Snyder from Cameron Elementary, Sean Frank from TJ, Thomas Jefferson, and our principals, Talia Clark from Beech Tree, Keisha Jackson from Braddock, Eric Johnson from Cameron Elementary, Zed Jemison from Fort Velvor Primary Elementary, Elizabeth Beattie from Haycock, Lindsey Kearns from Lake Braddock, Herman Middell from Langston

[00:55:40] Hughes, Elizabeth Watson from McNair, and Sonia Williams from Stone. Please stand up. If there are others that didn't RSVP or I don't have the list, please stand up and be recognized.

[00:56:09] I'm really glad that we actually expanded the proclamation language to include administrators and administrative assistants as well. Last year, yes, round of applause to all of you behind the scenes doing all that grunt work to make our schools run. Last year, I had talked about the history of principals starting from the beginning of the 20th century, but of course, I hadn't mentioned the piece with our administrative assistants, so let's do a take two.

[00:56:33] As schools grew from one-room schoolhouses into schools with multiple grades, the need arose for someone to manage the more complex organizations. This need was filled initially by teachers who continued to teach while also dealing with their school's management needs. These teachers were called principal teachers.

[00:56:50] And as schools grew, principal teachers became full-time administrators in most schools. Most principals soon stopped teaching because of the many demands their management responsibilities placed on their time. And as support staff grew, principals, which include an incredible team of APs, administrators and AAs who worked tirelessly to ensure that student needs are being met and that schools are operating smoothly.

[00:57:13] And we know very often they're friends of our students as well. The FCPS School Board is introducing this resolution to honor these heroes for their visionary leadership and tireless pursuit of success for each student. And we're proud to join when Governor Northam had declared Virginia Schools Principal Appreciation Week.

[00:57:30] And I'm also proud that FCPS were recognizing our outstanding principals and outstanding new principals at our FCPS Employee Awards Ceremony. With this resolution passage, FCPS is proud to celebrate October as national principals and principals, assistant principals and administrative assistants month thank you all so much for all that you do in our schools thank you miss omesh miss um marron i'd like to say that i really don't know how you do the jobs that you do you do so many different things in a day and i know i was just at lengths in this week and dr myzel you are a force in the cafeteria my own daughter comes home and tells me

[00:58:09] stories about you which shows that you are a presence and so i just i see your work and i advocate for your work and this board is deeply thankful so thank you for being here after your a long day in school. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Ms. Corbett Sanders. Thank you, and I'll be very brief. We often hear it takes a village, and when you look at this proclamation, it actually describes the village that makes our schools run. Without each and every one of you playing a part

[00:58:43] and being part of the three to succeed for our children, our schools would not be the excellent centers of our community that they are and so I very much appreciate you I thank you and cheer you on. Thank you Miss Corbett Sanders Dr. Anderson I would definitely be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to say first of all happy month to school principals administrators administrative assistants this is a wonderful opportunity to recognize you but I have to speak a little bit

[00:59:18] to my tribe you know the principals you're my folks so I just want to say thank you for all of your work. One of the things that Miss Diderot Colfax talked about in the proclamation were all of the roles that you play in our school divisions. But she forgot a couple, which is your chief social worker, you're the cheerleader, you're the lead teacher, you're the manager, you're the substitute teacher, you're the doer of all tasks that are undone or there's not somebody there to do it.

[00:59:48] And so I'm very appreciative of all of your efforts. Your job is challenging and you do it with a smile for a smile because that's what we get from our students and parents when they see you doing all of the things possible to advance their students so thank you as you work to advance my personal children and as you work to advance all of the children in fairfax county thank you dr anderson miss pekarski yeah i'm gonna give you all a a gift and i'll keep my comments short so you can get home after a very long day i will just say thank you we absolutely have the best of the

[01:00:27] best um i cannot find uh an easier way um to say it than just show you and and convey my deep appreciation and miss williams wonderful stone middle school principal you survived my own son who's now a freshman so i know you are a rock star thank you my praise uh miss uh cohen thanks very much uh i many of you know that um i grew up um as prince of the principal's kid

[01:01:03] um and she actually was my elementary school principal so i have to give a shout out to my favorite principal uh nancy hoffman um but i also wanted to say i know what you're she's pretty great But I know how much your families give.

[01:01:21] I know your spouses, your significant others. I know that the school becomes what you live and breathe. Whether you're the principal, the AP, the admin assistant, this is what you take home with you at night, and probably the first thing that you think about when you wake up.

[01:01:40] And I just want to say thank you to you, but also to your families. we know that your school becomes a big part of your family so thank you so much for your dedication and I would be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to my kids principal Miss Lindsay Kearns who is sitting in the back and her amazing EAA Miss Julie Moore who is incredible and also Miss Elgato who is our sub schools AA and who gets all of my phone calls when my children are sick

[01:02:14] so thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Cohen. Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. McLaughlin, go ahead. Okay, I just want to share with all of the principals, administrators, and administrative assistants who are here this evening just my deep appreciation as well. My father spent the vast majority of his educational career as a teacher in the classroom, and when he did get his certification to become

[01:02:48] an administrator uh he lasted about three years as a vice principal and uh suddenly decided that that the 12 12 months and the long hours um he was happier back in the classroom which is where he went back to so um i just wanted to kind of share that little uh levity of um how much as his daughter i truly appreciated um the challenges of what it was like as a class in the classroom teacher but also the countless hours that are required when you become a building administrator and

[01:03:23] those who support the building administrators. So thank you again for everything that you do to help manage and run our buildings. You know, today was a special honor for several of us to be with Principal Lindsey Kearns as Lake Braddock celebrated its 50th anniversary and she and her team were just remarkable from start to finish. And so I got to see personally today again how much work goes in behind the scenes for all that you do to create a really beautiful community for our students and staff. So my deepest appreciations to all of you. Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Seeing no

[01:04:01] other lights, we'll go ahead and take a vote. All those in favor of the proclamation, please raise your hand. Ms. Cohen, Ms. Amesh, Ms. Marin, Ms. Corbett Sanders, Dr. Anderson, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Dernack-Koufax, Ms. Pekarski, and myself. All the, and Ms. Kees-Gumara?

[01:04:19] - Kees-Gumara, yes. - And Ms. Kees-Gumara, all those opposed? Any abstentions? The motion passes. I've been advised by the parliamentarian that I've not been counting my own vote, with the exception of this most recent motion. So without objection, I would like the record to record that the chair voted yes on proclamations 3.05 through 3.08.

[01:04:45] Thank you. All right, Madam Clerk. Oh, I would like to invite those here in support of Hispanic Heritage Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo.

[01:05:04] And then the clerk will take over with the announcements.

[01:05:50] - Hispanic Heritage, if you're here in support of the Hispanic Heritage Proclamation,

[01:06:05] please join the board.

[01:06:58] I would like to invite those here in support of the Indigenous Peoples' Day and Native American Heritage Month proclamation please join the board for a photo. I would like to invite those here in support of the LGBTQIA

[01:07:36] History Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo. I would like to invite school

[01:08:42] principals, school administrators, and administrative assistants who are here in support of school principals, administrators, and administrative assistants month proclamation to please join the

[01:08:51] board for a photo. All right. Agenda item 401, community participation. The next order of business

[01:11:45] is community participation. We will we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening. Community members can sign up to provide comments at school board regular business meetings and public hearings on the school board website. At regular business meetings speakers may address any school related issue except those that have been scheduled for a public hearing such as the capital improvement program budget and boundaries. Comments targeting criticizing or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings. Complaints regarding school based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school officials speakers should not use personally identifiable information in connection with

[01:12:24] an individual student or school-based employee additionally speakers should be respectful and observe proper decorum in their statements avoiding profanity inappropriate gestures shouting and comments that run counter to the spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy which protects students and staff from discrimination based on age race sex color sexual orientation gender identity religion national origin marital status or disability speakers must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes direct their comments to the school board and should remain at the podium until concluding their remarks additionally only the speaker may stand at the podium they may not be joined by others speakers uh substitutions are

[01:13:02] not permitted a speaker may not yield their time to another individual at the conclusion of two minutes the microphone or video will be turned off school board members will be listening but not responding we ask audience members to be respectful of one another shouting or outbursts will not be tolerated audience members should hold their applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks and remain at their seats including when videotaping or taking photos we are grateful to those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation and i would like to encourage everyone including myself my phone went off during the meeting I apologize everybody should silence their phones madam clerk please call the

[01:13:40] speaker Giada Weatherup can I start hi my name is Giada Weatherup and I live in Sully District I'm a freshman at Chantilly High School and I'm here to talk about reducing climate change and FCPS first off I want to appreciate and acknowledge all that's already been done we already have eight up and running electric school buses and are planning to have 30 by the end of the semester sadly that's all that's been done to help reduce emissions so far as a high school student with anxiety I already have numerous worries about my future

[01:14:20] but in the past years I've started to worry about our climate change staying up late worrying about whether you'll be able to go outside in 50 years isn't exactly good when you have three tests the next day so I urge you please focus on school electric electrification electrification means no fossil fuels not just an electric school bus fleet in 12 years thank you Vicky Fishman

[01:14:47] Cindy Walsh Killian Kelly 14 months ago I stood here and shared the deplorable conditions of the Woodson baseball field it is very frustrating to say I have no good news to report only one of you took me up on my offer to visit the field two of you have been to Woodson but never looked at the baseball

[01:15:25] or softball fields my emails have been ignored this is FCPS facilities toured our field with a contractor our infield was only regraded because a contractor commented quote I'm surprised nobody has broken a leg at third base during our games you can hear rival teams exclaim things like this field is a is a bleep hole this is FCPS only the best for Woodson I guess the the press box still leaks near the wires it floods the dugouts are the original 1960s style they are smaller than current little league dugouts players

[01:16:03] and coaches do not fit inside the dugout it's unsafe our bleachers are terrible the bleachers are set on wood planks jury rigged to prevent them from being lopsided one false move by a spectator and everyone on the bleachers is now sitting slanted yep totally safe our fences are outdated too last season an errant ball hit a spectator on a head on the head it was someone who was coming there to take pictures of the players this is fcps safety is not a priority at woodson facilities claims it has no money for upgrades the newer schools have all been remodeled but we have not

[01:16:42] how is this equitable how do you have at least a million dollars or more to pay for everything involved with a new school name change explain to me the parents the students softball players and baseball players how they will never have and will not ever get what every other high school in the district has a field they can be proud of you pride yourselves on teaching and preaching equity

[01:17:08] but where's the equity towards woodson cheryl binkley we can build skyscrapers send people into space and develop artificial intelligence intelligence hold positions of power and have great wealth or fame but it is our stories that give meaning to what we do that that ask the all important questions about who we are and what does all our striving mean today people are telling us

[01:17:48] don't teach the stories, especially if they are from voices some don't understand. They are divisive, they're too graphic. Aeschylus plays that I have taught many times come to us from thousands of years ago and are foundational to Western literature.

[01:18:08] We have the story of Oedipus, the hero king, who unaware marries his mother and murders his father. It is a gory, sexually explicit story filled with broken taboos, a nightmare of a king so prideful that he destroys all he loves and ends wandering alone, self-blinded in the wilderness as his kingdom falls into chaos.

[01:18:32] If turned into a graphic novel, Oedipus is every bit as vividly explicit as the stories being banned today. Yet they have important messages for us both. Especially when those in power are tempted to the same fatal flaw as Oedipus, who refused to learn things.

[01:18:52] He rejected hearing Tiresias, who knew the things Oedipus did not want to hear. Aeschylus wrote 89 plays. We only have seven. The remainder were lost, burned in the Library of Alexandria, when the Christian Bishop Clement called Hypatia the librarian a "heretic and evil."

[01:19:16] inspiring his followers to kill her and burn the library. Gina, weather up. Hello. My daughter spoke to you earlier about electrifying the schools, something I fully agree with and urge the school system to do as quickly as possible.

[01:19:46] There are so many important issues that have been brought up tonight. Realities of the legacies of colonialism and racism and other awful-isms that are fabric of our lives, the reality and ticking clock of climate change, and the need for safer facilities. So why have I signed up to ask you to reconsider middle school start times?

[01:20:06] Because teaching our kids to listen to their bodies is a lesson that too many adults don't learn. By requiring middle school students to get on buses as early as 6.45 a.m., you're starting the habit of ignoring one's bodily needs early.

[01:20:23] And ignoring our body's needs takes a physical and a mental toll. I also ask this because it is very rare for any leadership body to be able to make one change - it may not be simple, it may not be easy - but one change that has such a profound impact on so many people and so many families.

[01:20:45] When we have gotten enough rest, and I speak as a parent of someone who just graduated from the middle school system, we are less stressed, we make better decisions, and we are more able to be kind to each other. say nothing of the research about better test grades please study how to change school start times along with the many other worthy things on your plates so that no one has to start class

[01:21:10] before 8 a.m. thank you michelle kate good evening i'm speaking to you as an individual tonight i wasn't planning on speaking but felt motivated to do so i wanted to say thank you to dr reed to principal amy goodloe for supporting our jewish students and all in our community who are impacted

[01:21:45] by the war in israel and gaza two of my children have friends whose friends were murdered or kidnapped this week one of them was mentioned by name on the radio when i was on my way here five members of a family of a woodson high school graduate are also being held hostage this is happening here to our community so thank you dr reed for your work with jcrc with the jewish community relations council and thank you to dr goodloe for her response to an antisemitic bias crime that occurred in the parking lot at Chantilly High School this week

[01:22:23] on Tuesday and has not received much if any press coverage. Now all three of my children have encountered anti-semitism in FCPS. Dr. Goodloe took action that is a model for how FCPS can respond to horrific situations by sharing with parents staff and students about terrible things that we wish could be brushed aside by setting a tone of firm condemnation of this act and the expectation of a caring supportive environment in our school by transparently sharing action steps that the administration and team are taking

[01:22:58] in response and by consulting with JCRC which modeled to our students to our staff and to our community a willingness to learn and to ask for help knowledge builds support understanding empathy compassion unity and action toward

[01:23:18] building an even stronger community thank you very much Maura Yazine thank you I will start to introduce myself I am a product of Fairfax County Public Schools and my son recently graduated as well so I think I know a little bit about Fairfax County Public Schools and what I'm hearing today

[01:23:57] is very biased and it's also a reflection of what's in our society and our media it's all about what's happening to israel which is a political term okay in my family it's called palestine okay let me tell you about my heritage i'm irish-american i grew up during the troubles okay and we're still fighting british occupation my husband is palestinian and also has syrian

[01:24:30] blood okay they are fighting american occupation okay as well as american assisted occupation of Israel. That's the reality that we look at, okay? And when we see that the mainstream media doesn't report the facts that we know, okay? It reminds me a lot of my childhood growing up, Irish-American, okay? When our family was called terrorists for supporting the IRA, the freedom fighters of the day, okay? Hamas are freedom fighters. Hezbollah are freedom fighters.

[01:25:10] they are fighting they are the indigenous people of that land and they are fighting the settler colonials the brutal settler colonial occupation of Palestine okay those are the facts from an indigenous person I have Native American and I have Irish American heritage okay think about that think about looking through these eyes at the world's affairs right now I am so ashamed of what's going on in this country.

[01:25:48] So ashamed. - Please play the video submitted by William DiDonna.

[01:26:04] - Hi, I'm William DiDonna. I'm a senior at Madison High School, and today I'm going to be addressing the school board on a critical issue I believe has been plaguing many students, especially at Madison, and I have heard throughout the entirety of Fairfax County Public Schools for the last couple of months.

[01:26:23] That issue is the issue of Chromebooks, which have been the common replacement for the old laptops that have been substituted out that were originally from Windows, but now are being used and replaced by another form of laptop in the Chromebooks.

[01:26:43] Now, these Chromebooks are, how would you say, unsatisfactory at best, and at worst, outright harmful to work productivity, and also general safety of the community. In this, I mean that not only are the Chromebooks incredibly slow, frustrating to use for students, have several key features missing, such as the right-click, and cannot do basic tasks that Windows computers can, but also they generate a humongous amount of e-waste in the fact that they have a very, very short lifespan as per technology goes.

[01:27:22] Now, the FTCPS School Board can very easily address this problem by stopping Chromebook initiatives at other schools instead of continuing on the path down that they're going on and use the old Windows laptops as substitutes as a stopgap until a better solution is found.

[01:27:37] I do understand that the Windows laptops are getting quite slow. However, they are not quite as problematic to many students as the Chromebooks are. And I believe that the Chromebooks are a problem that needs to be solved quickly or else they'll be ending up in a cycle where Chromebooks will have to be constantly replaced and psyched in and out.

[01:28:00] That is it. Thank you. Mr. Vice Chair, that is our last public speaker. Thank you, Madam Clerk. Agenda item 4.02, Academic Matters. Dr. Reed, will you now share Academic Matters?

[01:28:23] Thank you, Mr. Frisch.

[01:28:38] And it's really exciting this evening to be able to share the newly released SAT scores for our Virginia Commonwealth, fairfax county and our nation we're thrilled to have an opportunity to share these this evening so here we go and so i want to remind our board in our community that fairfax county public schools has outperformed sat global and state total mean scores every year since the new tests were

[01:29:11] implemented beginning with the class of 2018. additionally and we're feeling um additionally at this point for 2023 there is very little change it's single digit change from the class of 2022 signaling a stop to the slightly downward trend we've had in the last several years resulting from the pandemic in contrast both the state and global outcomes continue to drop more precipitously in double-digit drops so we're feeling like we're stabilizing and we'll continue to build

[01:29:45] up from here forward one of the things that we feel especially proud of is the number of students or the participation rate percentage of our students here in fairfax county one of the things that's very important to us and is outlined in our new strategic plan is excellence equity and opportunity and this board with its vision several years ago made sure that every student had the opportunity to participate in the SAT and the PSAT and compete for national merit opportunities

[01:30:21] as well as gain post-secondary access as a result of having the tests be accessible during the school day. And so as you look at the participation rates from class of 2018 through 2023, we continue to maintain a high rate of participation even though the commonwealth's participation has precipitously dropped over the last several years. I want to share that the overview of our PSAT and SAT school testing this year we want to share that there have been some glitches with the first year

[01:31:00] of digital psat testing and we our staff worked very hard this was not the fairfax county issue but rather college board had on their website they were experiencing some national issues in terms of offering this as a digital exam for the first time the psat administration was the first digital psat and the college board is planning to move forward with sat in the spring of 2024 being online we also sent a letter to the College Board and National

[01:31:35] Merit Dr. Presidio our chief academic officer outlining really our grave concerns and about opportunities for students given the delay and start time for some of the digital exams and we are going to be working with them to really try to bring those systems up to speed as we assess students across the county in this new digital manner, but we wanted to make sure that we registered our concerns on the day of the exam because we know how important this is for our students and families.

[01:32:09] And lastly, I just want to remind our community there are resources for families if they want to prepare for SAT exams or in the event that there was a problem or conflict with their online digital PSAT and they will be hearing more from their schools about that.

[01:32:25] But there are free materials online, tutor.com, Khan Academy, and collegeboardbluebook.app, which actually includes full-length practice exams. So a lot of opportunity, as well as College Board resources with SAT School Day and PSAT.

[01:32:42] So we know that individual student scores will be shared by College Board later this semester, and these resources continue to be available throughout the year. SO THAT IS ACADEMIC MATTERS THIS EVENING. THANK YOU, DR. REED.

[01:32:58] MS. BEKARSKI? THANK YOU, DR. REED, FOR THIS. I WAS JUST WONDERING HOW WIDELY IMPACTED WERE WE WITH THE GLITCHES? WERE STUDENTS ABLE TO COMPLETE THE TESTS OR NOT? WELL, THANK YOU, MS. BEKARSKI.

[01:33:13] THE STUDENTS WHO GOT TO START THE EXAM WERE ABLE TO COMPLETE IT. WHAT WE HAD WERE SOME SIGNIFICANT DELAYS IN THE START AT SOME SITES. Dr. Presidio, I know you and Ms. Klemenko and the team were monitoring this, Ms. Glazer. So if you have a comment, I would appreciate it.

[01:33:31] Oh, absolutely. And thank you for that question. And first of all, we want to apologize to the students and the families and also the teachers who were proctoring the test about those glitches. And as Dr. Reed mentioned, those were not on our end. They were on the college board's end. But nevertheless, many of our students did experience test disruption.

[01:33:49] we're in the process of collecting all of the numbers right now of students that were either unable to test or were unable to test successfully so earlier today principals started to submit their numbers to us as well as reaching out again to families and students via email to let them know that if they experienced test disruptions and had concerns that they need to report that so that we can have an accurate number so it's probably going to take us a few days to have the total number what i will report which is good news is the severity seems to be less significant than we feared yesterday many of the schools were able through you know diligence of the teachers

[01:34:26] to actually be able to complete the testing for the students so it's not as big of a disruption as we feared and we're in the process of getting the final numbers and we'll work with those individuals that were impacted on a makeup test okay thank you thank you miss pokarski dr anderson Thank you. Just going back to the second slide where you showed the performance of over the five years from Fairfax County.

[01:34:53] I just really want to spend a little bit of time here because I know there's a narrative in our community that our student performance on the SAT has been in heavy decline. And by looking at the numbers here, we are outperforming the Commonwealth because our students are at the average is 1181 this past year.

[01:35:14] 1185 the year before the highest we've had was in 2019 at 1218, but it definitely is creeping back up to that amount. So I really wanted to make sure that our community heard that we are still as strong as ever and performance in this area.

[01:35:34] I would, however, like to speak a little bit in terms of the participation. I've noticed the participation rate for FCPS was highest in 2018, and it is just on the decline.

[01:35:49] Generally bouncing up a little bit more from 2021. Just like to get your thoughts on to why you think this is, is it does the fact that many colleges are no longer requiring the SAT a factor? Or how do you believe that that has impacted our students participation in this assessment?

[01:36:10] Well, I think that the availability of the assessment, it looks like 2021 was when we first returned right to school. i'm thinking of that spring so i know a number of students perhaps didn't advantage themselves of that opportunity by 2022 our numbers are popping back up um and again our participation is slightly down as a percentage um i don't know dr presidio do you have thoughts on that i to me it feels like there are more universities and colleges that are test optional certainly

[01:36:47] so that is plausible yeah i think dr anderson and dr reed you've covered it really and this is something that we've looked at and considered for a while and we do believe that the biggest two the two biggest impacts in that slight downward trend are covid and then the fact that many colleges and universities are advertising that they're test optional now we continue to offer the sat available during school day testing for free for our students because we also know that you know when you have high scores on the sat that makes you more selective it gives you additional opportunities for scholarships so we still see value in the students taking the test

[01:37:24] whether or not they actually submit the scores obviously as an individual decision for the student and the family to make yeah i thank you dr presidio and i also want to just share the correlation that while our particip participation has stayed very high Compared to the Commonwealth our performance is actually staying high as well, and we're testing all students So I really think there's something to be said for all students and staying high and the Commonwealth having many fewer students and actually Not as high. No, thank you so much for pointing that out

[01:38:01] Another issue that I want to raise with you because I know you've been the recipient of maybe some of those inquiries But I know I've received a number from some of our high school teachers who are still asking Why is it that we're taking a full day to do this because we have some students who participate and the others are at home Particularly our ninth graders I would love to hear thoughts to maybe revisiting that as per some of the very cogent arguments that were made By those teachers who've emailed I think both of us So I can share a brief story, and then I'll ask Dr. Presidio to comment as well, because I know he was likely part of that original decision.

[01:38:39] I can say that in a prior life and another opportunity, we had a young student who was actually a senior in their SAT fall senior exam get a perfect SAT score and had never taken the PSAT.

[01:38:53] But because that next year we did in school testing that particular student hadn't had transportation availability the year before to take the PSAT on the weekend and also missed out on the national merit competition opportunity because they weren't able to take the PSAT and had we not had the SAT in a school day wouldn't have demonstrated a perfect SAT score which then garnered scholarship money sufficient to enable them to attend university at no cost actually.

[01:39:23] so I think we see it as an excellence access opportunity and equitable access for our students Dr. Presidio do you want to share other thoughts maybe unique to Fairfax just real briefly because again I think you you covered it I mean again we've been approaching this really is an equity of access and opportunity issue for our students and being able to provide that school day testing we think is incredibly important and you know we did not reach that decision lightly because anytime you end up with a disrupted schedule or a different schedule in the school day we you know we understand how that can be frustrating for you know students

[01:40:00] families and teachers but the vast majority of the feedback that we've received from the community and our teachers is that they fully understand what we're doing and understand why it's important to do it and we certainly appreciate their patience and diligence and helping us to make this successful for our students thank you and my final question that i share with you very briefly earlier that I do want to go ahead and raise here is the teachers are required by college board to sign a contract to administer this assessment which states that they should not disparage the exam in any way so if teachers feel as if the exam is inequitable they're not allowed to say

[01:40:38] that I'm very curious in terms of one I know you were not aware of it but I want to raise it for awareness here and two to really question how can they hold our teachers accountable to a separate contract for the administration of this assessment yeah thank you Dr. Anderson and we are looking into that because that seems like a remarkably unreasonable expectation so I know Mr. Foster is working on that with Dr. Presidio's team I don't know if you have any kind of an update Dr. Presidio but we should have one shortly on that topic we don't have an update just yet but I would say

[01:41:14] just as a point of clarification that that particular language is only with respect to if an individual is using the college board trademark so it's only if they're purporting to represent the the college board in some way it's not personal comments that they would make if they're purposely um misrepresenting or um using that trademark trademark in an inappropriate way but nevertheless that is something that we've raised with the college board and mr foster and i are taking a look at that might be able to be done thank you i definitely think that needs a A LITTLE BIT MORE INVESTIGATION BECAUSE THE TEACHERS IN QUESTION WHO WERE I THINK SURPRISED

[01:41:53] BY THAT LANGUAGE HAD DECIDED TO NOT SIGN SAID CONTRACT SO THEY COULD NOT PROCTOR THE ASSESSMENT JUST THIS PAST WEEK I THINK WE OWE OUR TEACHERS AN EXPLANATION ON THIS ONE AND TO ENSURE THAT THEY'RE NOT UNWILLINGLY SIGNING OFF SOME RIGHTS THAT THEY MAY HAVE SO I WOULD APPRECIATE THE FOLLOW UP AS SOON AS YOU'RE ABLE YES MA'AM THANK YOU DR.

[01:42:15] Thank you so much and I'm happy to follow that and thinking about access and making sure all our kids are able to benefit from the wonderful resources we have and preparing them for the next step. I wanted to ask about that tutor.com piece.

[01:42:30] I know I brought this up at a previous Academic Matters and just our observation of trends and access. I don't know how much we track or what we track, but just to maximize that resource. And I know I think last time we spoke a little bit about thinking a little bit creatively and how we market it and how we make sure all the students all students are aware it's available because I think we were seeing at some point a shortage in use or, you know, so I don't know if we have updates on that or any information.

[01:42:59] I don't have the numbers off the top of my head, but I definitely can collect that information and send it out and share it with the board. And for the public that might be listening, the tutor.com resource is exceptional in terms of the support. It's free. It's available, you know, seven days a week.

[01:43:15] And we really do want our students to understand that it's available. They can get help in multiple languages. So it's a huge resource for them academically. And, of course, here we're highlighting that they can even get SAT and ACT prep there. so we'll continue to promote it and I appreciate you bringing it up yeah I mean you know for the public it took a lot to get here it took a lot to be able to get this contract and and provide free tutoring for every kid uh in pretty much every subject that they would need it for and it's just available through their sis so please take advantage of that um but I don't know Dr.

[01:43:48] Presidio if you don't have the exact numbers if you've observed trends or anything or if anything's changed improved and it's okay if that's not available either but yeah I'll have to get the numbers i don't want to misrepresent them thank you though yeah um dr reed i just want to make sure we're taking a look at that to just maximize i i cannot imagine how useful this is to families and no doubt the face-to-face is ideal but you know to prevent slipping and bridge those academic gaps and whatnot yeah i mean i don't think there's any a point at which we'll come and say it's being used to its full right you know benefit so anyway appreciate all your work thank you thank you thank Thank you, Ms. Omash.

[01:44:26] I'm going to take a turn really quickly, very quickly. Some time ago, you and I spoke about testing readiness and developing test-taking skills and strategies in our students. One way is presented in this proposal or in this presentation, Tutor.com, Khan Academy, College Board, Blue Book, App.

[01:44:50] That is very self-motivated, right? Like somebody has to seek it out. And we've removed barriers to access for the SAT, which is why our participation is so high. What can we do? And perhaps it's around the marketing of these materials, to Ms. Omash's point about Tutor.com.

[01:45:08] Perhaps it's around, at least initially, the marketing of these resources to students and their families. Sometimes it does take a nudge from a parent to get them to buckle down and get ready for the test. What more can we be doing to make these resources available and widely known that they're available?

[01:45:28] I didn't understand that answer. I think the clerk has got that under control. Sorry about that, Dr. Reid. No, that's fine. I, you know, I think we're exploring the possibility of also having a more robust landing page for tutoring resources and assessments in general.

[01:45:47] So I think, and as we work to develop an app, a division-wide app, we're going to be able to push information out because so many of our students and families actually utilize their information gathering from mobile devices, really. They're not sitting down as often, you know, at a desktop.

[01:46:02] computer so I think there are a variety of ways we can market that I think our staff in the schools have been excited about that and we're open to any ideas the public has as well so please email us if you have ideas but we do know that students who take time to prepare for these exams actually do improve their performance there are certain strategies that do enable and support increased achievement and there again we can at times see a gap in terms of students were able to access a Kaplan program or something that's more robust and test

[01:46:38] prep thank you dr. Reed we have no more lights so we will relieve you for a moment thank you agenda item 4.03 student representative matters I call on the screen thank you mr. fresh as many of you are aware that upcoming vote on the Woodson name change is on the agenda for this evening as a fellow student from Woodson, I want to express my gratitude for the chance to connect with student representatives from clubs, sport teams, and other organizations to discuss the name change. While WT Woodson may

[01:47:16] have made many contributions, it's essential to acknowledge that his influence didn't reach everyone. Woodson's historical support for segregation is recognized among students and it has led to a strong desire for a name change. During the segregation era, African Americans faced immense challenges and injustices in 2023 it is our duty to distance ourselves from any remnants of a segregationist mindset and uphold the principle that all individuals are equal following numerous student meetings it is clear that most students support the name change viewing it as a crucial step towards fostering a more inclusive environment by aligning with goal

[01:47:56] number two in our strategic plan which envisions every student will experience an equitable school and school community where student health and well-being are prioritized and student voice is centered. Our decision to proceed with the name change will serve as a testament to our dedication to achieving goal number two. Woodson's mission statement is to empower our community to reach their individual potential by creating a healthy environment of mutual respect, responsibility, equity, and inclusion. Moving towards the name change will help us create that healthy environment of inclusion and demonstrate our ongoing commitment to building a welcoming community.

[01:48:33] The renaming of W.T. Woodson represents a significant step towards justice and unity. It serves as a reminder that our present should not be constrained or defined by the past. A new school name would embody the strength of our community, our compassion, and a belief in our commitment to providing for each student irrespective of their background.

[01:48:53] It acts as a celebration of diversity and a pledge to honor the numerous voices that history silenced unjustly. Through the renaming, we began on a journey towards a brighter, more inclusive environment where the lessons of history bring us towards a more compassionate and understanding future.

[01:49:09] Lastly, I want to express my gratitude for the dedication and effort put into this matter by the school board, FCPS leadership, and our community. Thank you. Thank you very much. Agenda item 4.04, Superintendent Matters.

[01:49:25] I call on Dr. Reed. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. So just several items since last we met. I have had an opportunity to hold three more community conversations at Glasgow Middle School, Whitman Middle School, and Kilmer Middle School, and it's great to have a chance to hear from families and community members and staff at those events. We do have two more community conversations scheduled during the week of October 23rd, one at Madison High School on the 24th and Liberty Middle School on the 25th. Also had our first of two employee conversations

[01:50:00] last week at Stone Middle School and this week we had we were at Twain Middle School. It was great to hear from staff their concerns and excitement for the year and suggestions for us in improving and taking our game up. The next staff conversations will occur Monday the 16th at Hughes Middle School and Thursday the 19th at Langley High School. I encourage all students teachers and staff and all educators in whatever role in the division to come out and join us and share your experience ideas and thoughts want to mention that this week we were able to host u.s agriculture secretary tom

[01:50:38] vilsack at annandale terrace high school and it was a fabulous way to recognize national school lunch week and national farm to school month it was a great visit and we really appreciate the opportunity to connect with the staff at annandale terrace elementary school this morning we celebrated annandale high school the fact that we have all 198 of our schools with salad bars this year and i think we have one program yet we have to go but we know how important good food is to mental health as well as the academic achievement of our young students

[01:51:15] middle school cross country as well has been very exciting last saturday or a week ago saturday we were able to join in the excitement at several schools and i know a number of board members also attended we now have just over 2 000 middle schoolers running all over the county and which is fabulous actually um want to especially thank executive director bill curran and his staff including tom horn and christopher friend and all the middle school principals the staff the coaches everyone that's come out and the families that are cheering us on it's just really

[01:51:51] fabulous to see that excitement. Yesterday I had a chance also with 30 of our Mark Twain Middle School Tiger young girls and we had a chance to the girls participating in cross-country and some of our STEM club girls from Twain Middle School we were able to attend an event at the White House where First Lady Jill Biden honored 15 young women around the country who are leading change their local communities it's a great experience for our young tigers and they were really beaming and had a lot of excitement about community service as we left last week i also had an

[01:52:28] opportunity to attend a digital equity summit hosted by doc cox communications that had our county executive brian hill and several other members of our community talking about how important the equitable access to technology is, which is part of goal five here on our strategic plan, and also the opportunity to utilize the new federal dollars that the Commonwealth of Virginia has received. Lake Braddock Secondary School, I think, was mentioned earlier by Ms. McLaughlin.

[01:52:58] It was great to celebrate the 50th anniversary as it opened in 1973. And finally, just again, a big shout out to all of our principals and assistant principals as October is National Principal Month. And that's it. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Thank you, Dr. Reed. Agenda item 4.05, presentation on choosing to move forward with the W.T. Woodson High School renaming.

[01:53:23] I once again call on Dr. Reed. Okay, thank you. All right, we're going to take a five-minute

[01:54:12] recess. If board members could return to the dais, members could return to the dais, please.

[02:05:01] All right we'll try this again agenda item 4.05 presentation on choosing to move forward with the W.T. Woodson high school renaming I once again call on Dr.

[02:06:05] Reed. Thank you Mr. Frisch. This evening I'd like to review for our community the process and the feedback we have received to date. I want to remind our community that per policy 8170 we could go ahead and go to the next slide.

[02:06:21] Thank you. The school board may consider a change in the name of an existing school or facility to ensure an inclusive respectful learning environment is outlined in our adopted one Fairfax policy or when the board deems it appropriate want to remind the community also of our process and timeline and this is phase one essentially and you can walk through the dates want to remind our team that the process began in September with the request to consider a name change being presented to the school board.

[02:06:56] It was then posted as new business and feedback was begun in terms of being collected from the community about whether or not to rename W.T. Woodson High School using an online feedback form, holding a community meeting at Woodson earlier this month and then a public hearing on Tuesday of this week.

[02:07:15] That brings us to this evening with the school board vote and then my recommendation to the board in the second round of community engagement. During the phase one of this community engagement, you can see 1,415 responses were received through the online feedback form.

[02:07:33] At the Woodson community meeting, there were approximately 60 people who attended, and then we had eight speakers at Tuesday's public hearing. I want to share an overview of the online feedback, and I don't think I need to read it to each of you, But this illustrates the different roles of those who did provide feedback, again, reminding our community that we had 1,415 unique responses to this feedback form.

[02:08:03] So in looking at the support for renaming of all responses to the question of how likely are you to support renaming W.T. Woodson High School, 779 respondents said they were not likely to support this, while 587 respondents said they were very or somewhat likely to support the renaming process.

[02:08:31] When we look at this feedback by role, we have other alumni, parent, or caregiver for grand totals, but essentially this is a breakdown of the primary groups who responded and their level of support for this process.

[02:08:47] All of this is posted on BoardDocs if you want to take a closer look this evening. So for our preliminary feedback on the name suggestions, 454 respondents suggested support for the Carter G. Woodson name.

[02:09:04] And as you may recall, this was part of the forum topic and the co-sponsored initiated who initiated the name change process following the advocacy of current students and community members were considering renaming the school in honor of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, a nationally renowned scholar, author, educator, and journalist.

[02:09:23] He is universally considered the father of black history. And as we look at the preliminary data, again, 454 respondents supported the Carter G. Woodson name, 42 respondents supported simply removing the WT and leaving it Woodson, 163 had no suggestion 109 suggested no change and there were 369 discrete all-other-name suggestions as I had the opportunity to evaluate all of the feedback that we've

[02:10:00] received to date the following it would constitute my recommendation I think at this point I would suggest and my recommendation is to consider the following: Woodson High School, remove the WT or Carter G. Woodson High School and continue to seek input from the community during the second phase of public education, public engagement. So the process and timeline for phase two again between October 13th which is tomorrow and November 1 we'll have again

[02:10:37] an online feedback form open. There'll be another community hearing at Woodson High School a public hearing here on October 24th and then the board will take final action to rename the facility on November 9th to stay informed and stay engaged please visit the Woodson renaming web page for updates engagement opportunities sign up for a mailing list and a feedback form so again just to reiterate my superintendent I'm recommending the name

[02:11:10] WHOODSON HIGH SCHOOL REMOVING THE WT OR CARTER G WOODSON HIGH SCHOOL AND THAT THE BOARD CONTINUE TO SEEK INPUT DURING PHASE TWO OF PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT. THANK YOU, MR. FRISH. THANK YOU, DR. REED. ALL RIGHT, I AM GOING TO BE MAKING THE MOTION SO I'LL BE TURNING OVER THE GAVEL TO MS. PEKARSKI. AGENDA ITEM 5.01 PERFORMANCE REVIEW EXECUTIVE EXPECTATION NUMBER -- WHAT'S WRONG? IS THERE AN ISSUE? OH, THAT IS NOT ON THIS AGENDA. ARE WE TAKING -- YEAH.

[02:12:05] Okay. Agenda item 5.01, performance review, executive expectation number one, global executive expectations. The next order of business is a performance review for executive expectation number one, global executive expectations.

[02:12:24] As we noted at our September 28th regular meeting each year, the superintendent will provide a monitoring report for each of the 13 executive expectations detailed in the strategic governance manual. The board may discuss the superintendent's performance with regard to the executive expectation and we will vote to determine if the superintendent is in compliance with it.

[02:12:47] If the board finds that the superintendent is not in compliance with the executive expectation, the superintendent will provide the board with a corrective action plan at the next regular meeting. Please note that the board will also take a small recess while each school board member fills out a monitoring report with respect to the executive expectation.

[02:13:07] I'll now call on Dr. Reed for the presentation.

[02:13:18] Thank you, Ms. Pekarski. So executive expectation number one is really the bedrock of all the expectations. It's characterized as the global executive expectation. And it really essentially indicates that the superintendent should not cause, allow or fail to take reasonable measures to prevent any practice, activity, decision, or organizational condition that is unlawful and ethical, unsafe, disrespectful, imprudent, in violation of school board policy, endangers the division's public image or credibility, or leaves the division unprepared for emergency situations or as a conflict of interest.

[02:13:56] And, also, that the superintendent shall maintain a data-informed system focused on continuous improvement to implement and monitor efforts toward achieving the goals defined in the division's strategic plan and the priorities of the board's educational equity policy.

[02:14:12] So this evening, I'm certifying that the information contained in this report is true as of October 12th. And to the best of my knowledge, I believe I am in compliance with the board's expectation around global constraint. The indicators I've listed below and you have those in front of you essentially the indicators include reasonable measures to prevent any practice activity decision or organizational condition that's unlawful and ethical and safe disrespectful and prudent or in violation of school board policy which lists a number of HR background checks and professional development

[02:14:50] opportunities and the divisions public image or credibility again talks a little bit about our communications plan and the work we've done staying in connection with our internal audience and external audience as well as major incident response trainings active monitoring and so forth our emergency situations and preparedness we've updated our emergency manuals we've completed our annual video EDC JS safety audit all schools maintain a uniform crisis plan and classroom crisis management plans and under conflict of interest we've

[02:15:29] ensured the implementation of policy 4430 in regulation 4430 to comply with the uniform standards of conduct contained in the Virginia State and Local Government Conflict of Interest Act excuse me in terms of the data informed systems focused on continuous improvement we are creating a number of data dashboards several of which you saw last spring and more on the way we've We've also begun the baseline development of accountability metrics and leading indicators, which will provide an opportunity to monitor progress towards our strategic plan measures.

[02:16:05] The school improvement plans have been aligned, as well as we are also developing department and improvement plans for our pillar work, initiated the development of these department plans as they did not previously exist, and initiated the development of an annual research and program evaluation agenda that's aligned with strategic plan priorities.

[02:16:28] I also want to mention that there is a data form system that's focused on continuous improvement toward achieving the priorities of the board's educational equity policy. We did pass that in June 26 of 2023. So that work around benchmarking data is occurring right now.

[02:16:46] So I think in terms of EE1 at this time, it's a year or it's been several months of building the structures and systems for which we'll be able to in future expectations share our measurements as well as our goal presentations.

[02:17:02] So that's the EE1 presentation, Mr. Frisch and Ms. Pekarski. Thank you, Dr. Reed. At this time, I'll invite board members to ask any questions or provide comment. I see we're starting with Ms. Marin. Hi, thank you, Dr. Reed.

[02:17:18] So this is the first real go around, right? It appears so. Okay. So in that vein, so my question is you just provided a lot of oral examples. Is there a place where those things will be written and linked both for the public and obviously for the board?

[02:17:33] I think in future executive expectations they will be, but we certainly can hyperlink them. I believe the regulations are hyperlinked. So those are they are online right now and those are available. So I guess, you know, what you're giving us is your word.

[02:17:52] And I just think that we owe it to the community to leave that record of the evidence. So that's where I'm just a little unclear. Okay. So it's not just the regulation, but like you said, we have these reports now that we've never had. So how do we get to that?

[02:18:10] So we can certainly link to those items or provide those as attachments moving forward. But I'm certainly thinking about when we get really into the operations of the school division especially we have instructional reports I do think and knowing us we're going to want to know where is all that proof right so yeah okay well I look forward to seeing how that can evolve yeah I think EE1 is so global that there tends to not be quite as much like how do I say data centric examples but many of the others are going to have very specific data points but to your

[02:18:47] point we can add more to this I think for sure and is it correct then so in the future when we go through all the EE is the that kind of data and information will be uploaded at least a week in advance correct actually our hope is 10 days in advance for the board and then posted with the board materials for the public right so when you're presenting it to us we will have already seen it then we're going to hear it and then ask other questions and then go and do this although I know the board is going to take another look at that form sure that's the flow okay that's correct yes saying it and reinforcing it okay right NO, OUR COMMITMENT IS TO GET IT TO YOU TEN DAYS IN ADVANCE AND THEN IT'S POSTED PUBLICLY FRIDAY WHEN WE POST BOARD MEETINGS. GREAT. THANK YOU.

[02:19:25] THANK YOU, MS. MARIN. MS. CORBETT SANDERS. YES. THANK YOU SO MUCH, DR. REED, FOR PROVIDING THIS BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE EXECUTIVE EXPECTATION, YOUR GLOBAL EXECUTIVE EXPECTATION. I ACTUALLY MENTIONED THIS THE OTHER not the other day and I mentioned it again today because this really is a capstone expectation right this is not an expectation that is one and done and

[02:20:00] it's not an expectation that frankly providing an update to us in the beginning of the fiscal calendar when we actually will give an evaluation on this at the end of the year it seems out of context and so I would actually suggest that this is a nice update but that this global expectation in the future not be presented at the beginning of the year but at the end of the year because it when you look at what the metrics are for this expectation

[02:20:38] it's premature for anybody to think that they can give a full evaluation or OR EVEN PROVIDE FEEDBACK ON SOMETHING THAT IS SUCH A SHORT TIME FRAME. THANK YOU, MS. CORBETT SANDERS, AND I THINK IN PART, A NUMBER OF THESE SYSTEMS, THEY'LL BE IN PLACE BY NEXT YEAR, SO WE'LL HAVE A LOOK BACK, A YEAR-LONG LOOK BACK, BUT THEY'RE NOT CURRENTLY IN PLACE, SO I THINK, TO YOUR POINT, TIMING IS EVERYTHING.

[02:21:11] So based on that, may I make a suggestion and a motion tonight that we have you come back to the board at the end of the fiscal year, perhaps in June, with an update on your global expectation one, because it really is your capstone and not something that sets it.

[02:21:37] I mean, it sets the tone. It's almost like the beginning and the end, but it's really something that has to be evaluated as part of a total body of work. Okay. A motion has been made. Is there a second?

[02:21:53] Second. Okay. A motion has been made, seconded. Ms. Corbett-Sanders, do you want to speak to this? Well, I think I have spoken to it. I don't believe that it's, you know, I think it's just something that would provide for a fuller conversation

[02:22:09] GIVEN THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS. OKAY DR. ANDERSON YEAH JUST VERY BRIEFLY JUST SPEAKING OF TIMING I THINK ESPECIALLY IN THIS POSITION THAT WE ARE WHERE WE WILL HAVE A BOARD CHANGE OVER IT WILL BE HARD TO BRING THAT INFORMATION ALONG IN A VERY IN A ROBUST WAY SO IF WE HAD THE INFORMATION AT THE END OF THE YEAR IT WOULD ALLOW THE WHO WHATEVER IS THE BOARD THAT IS WITH US TO SEE THE CONTINUITY AND TO SEE THE GROWTH THROUGHOUT THE YEAR BUT I THINK MISS CORPETT STANDERS

[02:22:41] really captured it very well yeah thank you I I guess I I can understand the point people are making I on a similar but different vein I know there was some angst around like committing to a position in terms of deciding whether there's compliance or not I've certainly been talked to ad nauseum about the concerns and I I mean I came to see that you know I mean our board does have a tendency to kind of disrespect there are different working styles and dismiss

[02:23:21] minority opinions on the board so I want to find a way where we can all feel like this is something workable this is a good idea and that we create some space for those minority perspectives that might feel our current process has some issues so I in my thinking and and conversations this morning was stolen a potential way forward is to decide and colleagues can shoot this down you know it's it's a potential solution that we make this form optional and we we choose not to move forward with a vote understanding that this is a public record this is something that i mean it's ultimately

[02:24:00] going to governance and governance going to decide how to move forward but in the interim that this serve as a public record we provide our feedback to you it gives you something to work with and be responsive to we're going to indicate obviously where we think you are in compliance not in in compliance whatever um and then at the end of the year with the new board you know you you're able to have more robust conversations where all this evidence has been prepared and there's commentary available but board members can also choose to opt out of that that's really on them i would prefer to make sure my you know perspectives are articulated so you're able to respond but some people are just uncomfortable also documenting that and that's fine but that's

[02:24:37] their choice of how they choose to represent and be a board member so um i guess what i what i'm trying to in explaining that to my colleagues I really think this is a little bit of room here to be respectful of how people want to do this differently and the working styles while still accomplishing the goal of having Dr. Reed speak to us of having her have a basis for this accountability where she feels it's actually quantitative and there's actually you know material that we're evaluating her on but perhaps not cornering folks who feel this will corner them as we saw in the work session I mean we were a pretty divided

[02:25:09] House that day. So I would like to move that we decide to move forward having this be an optional form as a matter of our process and that we not take a vote but that board members can indicate their position on their form if they so choose. Okay Ms. Omesh I'd like to ask the parliamentarian is this motion germane to the main motion? Whether it's germane it sounds like it's a new MAIN MOTION YEAH AND YOU CAN'T HAVE ANOTHER MAIN MOTION WHILE A MAIN MOTION IS PENDING

[02:25:47] OKAY I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE SOMETHING WAS OFF THANK YOU OKAY SO MISS OMESH IF WE COULD JUST HOLD ON TO THAT FOR A MINUTE WE'RE GOING TO SPEAK TO THIS MOTION THAT MISS CORBETT SANDERS HAS PUT FORWARD AND SECONDED BY DR. ANDERSON I DO NOT SEE ANYONE ELSE WHO WOULD LIKE TO SPEAK TO IT SO I THINK WE'RE GOING TO GO AHEAD AND TAKE THE VOTE UM AND THE THIS IS UM FOR THE MOTION FOR DR. REED TO COME BACK AT THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR TO PROVIDE AN UPDATE ON EXECUTIVE

[02:26:22] EXPECTATION NUMBER ONE GLOBAL EXPECTATIONS UH ALL THOSE IN FAVOR PLEASE RAISE YOUR HANDS

[02:26:30] THOSE OPPOSED? OKAY. THAT MOTION PASSES WITH EVERYONE AT THE TABLE HERE TODAY EXCEPT FOR MISS TOLAN AND MISS SIZEMORE HEISER. OKAY. NOW I WILL CALL ON MISS HOMESH FOR THE NEW MOTION. OKAY. I MOVE TO REVISE OUR

[02:27:05] PROCESS TO HAVE OUR FORMS BE OPTIONAL PER BOARD MEMBER WHILE BEING PUBLIC RECORD FOR THOSE WHO SUBMIT IT AND ELIMINATING THE MANDATORY VOTE ON EACH COMPONENT. IS THERE A SECOND TO THAT MOTION? I'LL SECOND. OKAY. MS. OMESH, YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO THIS ANYMORE? AS I SAID, I REALLY WAS TRYING TO BE INTENTIONAL IN REALIZING THAT WE WERE WE COULD HAVE BEEN REALLY SIX TO SIX, SEVEN TO FIVE, WHATEVER, AT THE WORK SESSION IN DETERMINING HOW WE WANT TO MOVE FORWARD. I THINK DR. REED needs clarity from us, she needs you know year-long conversations around the

[02:27:41] accountability piece so that we're ensuring that that we're not being arbitrary at the end of the year and that we're being fair to her to give her the opportunity to put things forward. As a board we have a duty to the community to hold her accountable obviously and to base that off of real information and facts but also to be able to do that in a way that we answer to the community about how we do it as individual board members and so in the spirit this really came out of wanting to just be respectful of different working styles to get to lend some credence to those who spoke very passionately I mean we have some people who feel extremely strongly that the way we're moving forward isn't ideal and so I don't

[02:28:19] think there's anything wrong with coming to a middle ground giving some sense of respect to the idea that maybe for those of us who didn't feel as strongly there's something we're missing and so to attempt to bring us together and develop a process that factors in the various considerations that were raised at the work session I think this can move us forward while still accomplishing all the goals we've been intending to achieve with the previously articulated process.

[02:28:44] Dr. Anderson speak to your second. No, I think Miss Omez has captured it. And we talked about this fairly lengthily on Tuesday. We did miss man. What has interested me in this model from the outset is that it is a renowned board leadership program.

[02:29:04] I urge my colleagues to join me in my humility in adopting a system as it is presented to us whole to see how it before we start picking it apart and making our own changes I'm perfectly happy to revisit it but I do think we need to give this a shot this is what dr. Reed has recommended it's what has been tried and true I really am it's difficult to do this kind of last-minute changing at the board table I

[02:29:36] hope that we can I don't support this motion thank you miss Marin I do not see any other lights are there okay actually I take that back mr. Frisch would like to speak to this okay yeah miss keys Camara why don't you go ahead sorry we can't hear you very well so please speak up is this better yep that's better

[02:30:13] okay so I am very concerned and I will state my continuing of objection to this proposal the essence of my concern i'm hearing an echo so it's i i'm stopping i'm i'm sorry miss kisgamara you're fine okay um first i need to state that there seems that continues to be

[02:30:52] statements that the board adopted the proposal is mr carver which is being referred to as the gold standard the board did not adopt that and the chair clarified that at our last meeting on juesday i have significant concerns regarding the how we have a structure of balance checks and balances for this board i understand that different people believe that this may provide

[02:31:32] greater transparency. However, the proposal before us offers an opportunity for us to receive a report, which I am happy to receive, but it does not provide a full and meaningful opportunity for discussion that it is to be included in the evaluation process, which is mandated that we discussed in july the document that has been proposed is past fail what is required of us by

[02:32:08] the state has many more levels and much more in-depth conversation we as a board have not discussed how those will be reconciled for that reason as well as my concern about the checks and balances that are central to how we govern in this nation and it is reflective in every area that whether it is federal state local or on the school board as a board member it is our job to make sure that we are hearing the concerns of our constituents and that we are holding the

[02:32:44] superintendent accountable that means those discussions that i just mentioned need to take place and until we do i cannot and will not support this process and to be given a document that we have not discussed as to how it will fit into the whole of the process of the evaluation is inappropriate in my opinion and does not respect the balance of government that i have learned is important to our democracy so i i will support this as an alternative but in any case i cannot

[02:33:21] participate in something that does not respect that balance of government and allows me to represent constituent concern thank you okay um mr frisch a couple things one many of the arguments about this this process have been centered around whether or not the superintendent's office prepares work for us the school board would not function if the superintendent and the leadership team did not prepare work for us what we do with that work is what is critical much of what we get for the

[02:34:01] superintendent's evaluation is prepared by the superintendent and then what we do with that is what matters at the work session the board took a consensus vote to look at these things in more detail because we wanted it to be deliberative this we've decided we've discussed over and over again that doing it like this is not deliberative it's certainly not deliberative for our two colleagues who are not here tonight if this is truly what five or six people of our board want to do tonight i invite them to wait until the next meeting to make this motion when everybody

[02:34:38] can participate that would be more deliberative everybody would be here to discuss it this is a transparent process it it deliberately takes segments of the superintendent's responsibilities brings them before the public for consideration asks the board to participate in the review of the superintendent's abilities and accomplishments or lack thereof on many different pieces of their

[02:35:09] job in front of the cameras in front of the public i think that is refreshing we didn't do that with previous superintendent when i was on the board maybe we've done it in the past before that but i'll be voting against this that doesn't mean i wouldn't support something like this down the road but doing it here right now people can decide whether or not they want to take this action when the full board is not here for a more deliberative process fairness says we wait

[02:35:49] and continue what the board decided when all of us were there i believe all of us were there at the work session minus one at the work session on tuesday who was missing when we voted to put this TO GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE. EVERYBODY WAS THERE.

[02:36:05] SO I WOULD ENCOURAGE US TO WAIT ON THIS UNTIL EVERYBODY'S BACK. MR. FRISH, AM I HEARING YOU MAKE A MOTION TO POSTPONE THIS VOTE UNTIL WE HAVE THE WHOLE BOARD BACK TOGETHER? I THINK IT'S POSTPONE INDEFINITELY. INDEFINITELY. WELL, NO, POSTPONE UNTIL A TIME CERTAIN. THAT'S AN OKAY MOTION WITHOUT A DATE, MR. PARLIAMENTARIAN? UNTIL THE NEXT BOARD MEETING.

[02:36:29] YEAH, IT CAN'T BE TO POSTPONE TO A CERTAIN TIME, YOU WOULD HAVE TO POSTPONE IT TO THE MOST THE NEXT MEETING. IS THERE A SECOND TO THAT? SECONDED BY MS. COHEN DO YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO THAT? I THINK YOU HAVE. I'VE JUST SPOKEN TO IT. I'LL LET MS. COHEN SPEAK TO IT. MS. COHEN. I THINK WE JUST VOTED ON THIS IN THE WORK SESSION SO I'M NOT 100% SURE WHY WE'RE REVISITING IT. I WILL SAY I THINK IN THE WAY THAT OUR SYSTEM IS SET UP THAT WE HAVE ALL 12 PEOPLE ON THE BOARD UP FOR ELECTION. EVERY FOUR YEARS WE HAVE EIGHT PEOPLE

[02:37:07] who are not returning and so to me I see this as a gift to be able to give folks who are going to come after us some record of our interactions with you and our thoughts on the job you're doing and I think it is very unfair to you for us to walk away and not have given the people who will come after us some understanding of the kind of superintendent we have thought you were while we were here the kind of job that we think we're doing so you're taking the time

[02:37:44] to prepare each of these pieces each of these executive expectations reporting on them at every meeting and we are responding to it I mean this document is response is someone in compliance are they making adequate progress towards compliance or not in compliance this is not you know the Ten Commandments this is like our opinion of how you're doing something so I remain clearly frustrated because to me if we had walked in as eight new people last time and and been given this

[02:38:24] opportunity I think it would have been a lot easier and it would have been a lot fairer to the four people who were left who had to work tirelessly to try to get us to understand how to evaluate the superintendent when we'd been there six months by the way three of those during covid um so i'm highly supportive of this process i agree with miss marron for goodness sakes could we give something a try and then if it doesn't work i'm so happy to revisit it but let's at least give it a try thank you miss cohen i need school board members to turn off your lights please and

[02:39:00] ONLY TURN THEM BACK ON IF YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO THIS POSTPONEMENT MOTION. OKAY. MS. MCLACHLAN. I DO APPRECIATE THE SENTIMENT OF MR. FRISH'S REQUEST BUT SINCE WE'VE COME BACK IN AUGUST AT OUR BOARD MEETINGS, TONIGHT WE HAVE TWO MISSING BOARD MEMBERS, WE HAVE TEN OF US HERE BECAUSE MS.

[02:39:26] CORBETT STANDERS OR MS. KEEZ-GAMARA IS PARTICIPATING. I THINK THAT WE'VE BEEN MISSING AT LEAST ONE OR TWO BOARD MEMBERS AT EACH BUSINESS meeting so I don't feel that tonight is unusual in making a decision among the ten of us you know the other thing is that you know I'll speak to the other motion if this one fails but I'll just say this on why my rationale to not vote to postpone I think there are things such as piloting it's something that I have been a champion of since I first joined this board that and when you're

[02:40:06] trying something new and you haven't tested it out yet, in fairness to Dr. Reed and to the board and to the public, you do something that hasn't been tested and it could end up being worse. So I'm all for trying something new. And I think that the prior motion that's being asked to postpone, Again, if this one fails and we get a chance to speak to the other motion on the table, I think there is some merit for piloting and looking at a way to say there can be a win-win

[02:40:45] here. But the mandatory piece, and I do think that at the work session there were a number of us because we felt this was still too rushed, we agreed to send it to governance. THAT'S THE CASE THEN I LOVE THE IDEA OF THE PRIOR MOTION THAT'S ON THE TABLE SO I'M I WILL NOT SUPPORT POSTPONING TONIGHT OKAY THANK YOU DR. ANDERSON FOLLOWED BY MS. CORBETT SANDERS THANK YOU I THINK VERY SIMILARLY TO WHAT MS. MCLACHLAN SAID I WILL NOT BE SUPPORTING THIS MOTION BECAUSE WE'VE MADE A LOT OF DECISIONS WITH LESS THAN THE FULL COMPLEMENT OF THE BOARD

[02:41:22] I REMEMBER THE RETREAT WORK AROUND THE STRATEGIC PLAN SOMETHING THAT WE CONSIDERED TO BE MOST PARAMOUNT TO THE PROGRESS OF THIS DIVISION. AND WE DID NOT ALWAYS HAVE 12 PEOPLE THERE TO MAKE REALLY SUBSTANTIVE DECISIONS. SO IT'S UNFORTUNATE THAT WE'RE HERE. BUT I DON'T THINK IT'S A I DON'T THINK WE'VE HAD ANY PRECEDENT THAT WE DON'T MAKE MAJOR DECISIONS OR ANY DECISIONS WITHOUT THE FULL COMPLEMENT OF THE BOARD. SO I'M NOT GOING TO BE SUPPORTING THIS MOTION. THANK YOU. JUST A POINT OF CLARIFICATION. IF WE ARE TO ADOPT THIS MOTION

[02:42:02] TO POSTPONE. ARE WE THEN POSTPONING ANY VOTE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS TONIGHT? SO WE'RE POSTPONING MS. OMESH'S MOTION AND WE'RE POSTPONING THE SUBSEQUENT VOTE ON THIS DOCUMENT OR ON THIS EXECUTIVE EXPECTATION. NO. THIS IS JUST FOR THE QUESTION AT HAND, WHICH WAS MS. OMESH'S MOTION,

[02:42:35] as i understand it correct so i guess my other question is as it is now the um forms are optional

[02:42:49] or are they not okay all right okay it seems like they're optional so so the vote the forms are optional is what you're saying so it's it's the because right now the motion says to revise our

[02:43:28] PROCESS AND FORMS WILL BE OPTIONAL I THINK THIS WENT A LITTLE BIT FURTHER AND INCLUDED THE VOTE AS WELL DO I UNDERSTAND THAT CORRECTLY BECAUSE I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT WHAT YOU SAID MISS OMESH IS ACTUALLY CAPTURED IN THIS MOTION CAN YOU SEE CAN I ACTUALLY ASK FOR A CLARIFICATION ON WHAT THE VOTE WAS ON TUESDAY VERSUS THIS VOTE WE We can ask our clerk to please pull that up and let us know exactly what we voted on two

[02:44:07] days ago, which seems like a year ago. In the meantime, Ms. Omesh, please check the motion and if it's not correct, please let me know so that we have everything documented properly.

[02:44:27] We also need Mr. Frisch's motion on the screen as well. I think it's fine, but we need to remove while the governance committee is considering the EE process. By default, whatever they bring will be adopted.

[02:44:43] don't want it to be contingent in the motion okay what was voted on at the work session with regard to the form there was two options one was to remove the form from the process while the governance committee deals with it the second option was to keep the form while the governance committee deals with it and it was that with an understanding that the board members did not have to

[02:45:21] fill out the form if they did not so wish so the form would be passed out and and then it would be collected by myself, but board members did not have to fill it out. In fact, at the last meeting, a board member did not fill out the form for EE number two.

[02:45:39] Okay, so it is optional. Okay, Ms. Corbett-Sanders, is that it? I was just trying to get clarity on where we're at. I didn't mean that negatively. Point of order. If it could be restated, the portion we voted on, that was the 7-5.

[02:45:58] Clerk, can you re-read the exact motion that was voted on on Tuesday? At some point, my recollection was Mr. Frisch literally said, do we require the form or not? And we vote. It was removing the form from the process while the governance committee deals with it, was option one.

[02:46:19] And then the second option, because there was two votes, and the second option was keeping the form while the governance committee deals with it, but with the understanding that the form does not have to be filled out by all the school board members. Thank you. All right. Let's keep going down the list. Oh, wait. Ms. Omesh, it was your turn next.

[02:46:39] Yeah. I mean, obviously this goes beyond that. So this is a different piece. But I guess I just want to ask my colleagues to first presume positive intent and second to actually listen to what I'm saying. Because what I was presenting before is let's adopt this model. I think it's really exciting. I'm really proud of Dr. Reed for bringing this to us and helping us get ourselves together in a way that is effective in working with her what I'm saying is let's meet those objectives while not imposing on colleagues things that they don't feel comfortable with the vote is a key component yes I don't mean to interrupt you but can you speak specifically to the postponement yeah

[02:47:16] motion right now I'm getting there okay all right okay just listen to what I'm saying okay so what I'm what I'm trying to say is by doing that what I'm what I'm trying what I've been trying to do is gather the interests involved this serves the reasons why we cared about the model it serves the reasons why people have been concerned it serves the reasons why Dr. Reed feels this is a good idea and so that's why I don't want to postpone this because actually where this originated is in the work session it was a seven five vote right to maintain this process I was amongst the seven there was further conversation I saw the merits of number

[02:47:52] one giving that respects and respect and deference to colleagues number two being more deliberative because if we end up voting for things early in the year, we don't know what's going to change, we don't know how things will adapt. By the time we come to the end, where we're talking about the overall superintendent evaluation, and we look back and we're like, oh, the majority of the board saw Dr. Reid in compliance on everything.

[02:48:14] How would it make any sense that at that time, should our perspective change, God forbid, and I know she's going to be great, but for any superintendent into the future, how would it make sense for us to then change that? It gives more weight to the majority over the dissenting voices.

[02:48:29] and it doesn't give us the opportunity to potentially course correct down the line when we made premature decisions in the in the beginning that's what those are merits of what i thought to be a process where we don't have to do the vote where it sinks it in it's a record it's it's you know that that's what it is while at the same time having the ability to indicate your vote on a form that serves as a public record so we're serving all the interests involved here and if we don't do that i could always withdraw my vote from the work session this is where i was trying to be thoughtful here which puts us at a 6-6 vote and then ultimately

[02:49:05] puts us in a place where we have no process so that's where i'm trying to come to a place where we're like okay this is an alternative process it works it makes hopefully everyone happy because we're still following the model and doing what we want but not imposing the components that felt disconcerting to some members and made them feel they're not fulfilling their school board accountability role um rather than sabotaging the whole thing ending up at a six six with no process and and having to have a vote we need to deal with today that's where i came that's how i came here so i really think it's a good idea guys i'm not trying to be biased in any way and i don't have a weird intention behind it which i feel people are responding to without listening to my words

[02:49:44] and i hope we can support this okay i didn't necessarily hear anything about the postponement motion so i'm saying don't post okay i'm saying don't postpone it's fine don't postpone so that we could support my motion. I did get that, but okay, Ms. Cohen. Ms. Setlow, can you just help jog our memories? I know we're getting late here, but my understanding was after we voted to make the form optional, I then posed the question, should we then stop these presentations

[02:50:21] and stop the process while governance goes back? And the resounding conversation in the room was no that is my recollection from from what occurred so I I guess my confusion is that if the form is

[02:50:58] already mandatory and we already as a group decided that we weren't going to have the process stop I guess I am confused about why we wouldn't vote to see if you were in compliance or not since I think I feel like that seems to be a key piece of this strategic governance model is you knowing at each interval if you have met it or not. So to me, the postponement is appropriate because it does not

[02:51:35] sound to me like we have a clear understanding of what we've already agreed to. So I obviously will support the postponement. Thank you. Okay, Ms. Marin, did you mean to have it? I did. I did. i just am asking to call the question on this motion i'm pardon madam chair i can't i can't make it clear that i have a question because i was just confused by what was just said what did she

[02:52:08] i can't understand you miss keys gamara please say it again it was my understanding i i didn't understand at least i was confused by i believe that was miss cohen that just spoke right is that correct okay I was I was confused by her statement of the fact okay I'd like to resume my turn right I'd like to miss Marin has called the question I've

[02:52:42] called the question and I know I can't I don't isn't per Roberts rules when the question is called we take a vote yes thank you miss keys Gamara oh I'm gonna turn it over to our parliamentarian. Just make sure that you have a... Well, I'm not going to vote to close to...

[02:53:01] Alright, that sounded like a subject, my chair. I'm not going to vote to call the question. Okay. Okay, I under... Okay, thank you so... Can I just clarify? All we're doing is some people are trying to convince other people. So this is... Okay, Miss... This has really got to stop. I call the question. You don't speak to the question. I call the question. I'm not voting to close the question. Okay, Miss Keyes-Gamara, Miss Keyes-Gamara, Miss Keyes-Gamara, I just, I just need you for just a second to hold on.

[02:53:29] um miss marron has asked that we call the question is there a second to calling the question of postponement that's been seconded all those in favor miss cohen miss marron mr frisch miss pekarski and miss keys gamara you are voting against all those against uh miss corbett sand on calling the question miss corbett sanders dr anderson miss mclaughlin mr not koufax and miss keys gamara and miss elmesh we're going to continue debating the point of whether or not we should

[02:54:07] postpone this motion until the next time we are all together and with that turn off your lights let's start over but before we start over i'll actually take my turn um i think but pardon me miss pekarski miss keys gamara i had i had asked for a clarification because the the statement that miss cohen made was confusing to me okay and i i'm sorry i'm on the phone i don't have a way to

[02:54:40] raise my hand yeah that's okay i i we did not understand what your clarification was so i think can i can i go why don't you go ahead and ask your question then i believe miss cohen just said that when we voted the document filling out the document was mandatory that was not my understanding no you misunderstood miss keese kamara she did not say that let me give you the other keep going

[02:55:20] you the other part that i misunderstood okay there was also a statement i thought that we wanted to we we decided whether to continue the process or not of getting these reports i didn't think anyone objected to getting the report you're right so you're correct that is the recollection of a couple of people and our board clerk and miss Cohen she was just asking for clarification so you're correct okay I'm good now thank you okay

[02:55:59] okay great where are we okay I'm gonna speak to the postponement I I am in favor of the postponement I do find it frustrating that we just had a work session on this we had plenty of time during the regular day regular working hours to talk about this I thought we had come to an understanding and to be bombarded right here and that is the right of anybody to change their mind but it just makes it so unbelievably difficult to move forward so I would

[02:56:36] like us to take our time to discuss this to have our chair here to have miss keys Gamara understanding us in person not on the phone from a seismor hyzer to also come because we are just we are just not functioning as efficiently as I believe we need to be should be so we should do this in a more effective holistic way and I will speak to the other motion whenever we get to it I I also see Ms. Dernot-Koufax wants to speak, and then Ms. Corbett Sanders.

[02:57:14] So, Ms. Bukarski, I agree with much of what you had stated, but if you recall, it was such a sticky work session. We couldn't even agree whether or not we developed a strategic governance model. Our chair said we didn't. Several people said we did.

[02:57:34] But I believe Ms. Cohen was absolutely correct in saying, and the chair, the clerk's notes also indicated, the preliminary minutes indicated, that what we agreed to was the form is here, but not everybody wanted to use the form.

[02:57:55] But Dr. Reed clearly stated during the work session she did not want to stop the work of the board. And so for that reason, we wanted her to provide us with her, you know, executive expectation tonight.

[02:58:13] All of these motions are confusing, I think, to all of us where we started. I thought at least we were clear on Thursday that those who want to use the form can use the form. those who don't do not have to but this will not stop the work of dr reid so i guess i am still perplexed i mean obviously i can read this is pretty simple language but i'm perplexed about why we're going down this road okay well do you want her to come back again for your motion do

[02:58:51] you want her to come back again or do you want her not to update this now that that one already that That one already passed. Now we're just talking about the postponement to the Obramesh motion.

[02:59:08] Whether or not we want to postpone the motion, the second motion. Correct. To revise our process so the forms will be optional. And that part is moot because they already are optional.

[02:59:30] I see Ms. Omesh shaking her head. Can you clarify, please? I appreciate Ms. Omesh, but I would like to hear from our clerk again. I'm sorry, Mr. Neckliffex, could you please repeat? What was stated in the work session about the forms?

[02:59:50] Were they optional or not? And what was the vote? There were two options given. One, removing the form from the process while the governance committee deals with it.

[03:00:08] The individuals who voted for that were Ms. O'Mesh, Ms. Keyes-Gamaro, yourself, Mrs. Corbett-Sanders, and Ms. McLaughlin. the second option was to keep the form while the governance committee deals with it but with the understanding that all school board members do not have to fill it out that option was voted for by Ms. Sizemoreheiser, Ms. Cohen, Ms. Bukarski, Ms. Omesh, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Marin, and Ms. Tolan

[03:00:35] an option to have the consensus so that is what we went with. Are you done Mr. Narcalfax? I am done thank you okay Mr. Frisch all right here's my recollection which tracks closely and I believe if we go back and watch the video, God help us all, you'll see that I repeated the motion over and over and over again to make sure that we had clarity. The first option was as read, you know,

[03:01:12] that we would continue the process without the form and that the governance committee would figure out what to do with the form. The second option was the opposite. Well, kind of. We would continue the process and we would use the form, which would be optional. I also said in that moment, People are like, well, does that mean that things continue?

[03:01:31] And that's why the motions are more specific, because then we went a step further, because initially we were just talking about the form, and then I said, okay, because people started to ask questions from their seats, what about the process? And that's when I said, okay, option one is to continue the process, the process that we're all sitting here right now in, without the form.

[03:01:53] Option two was to continue the process with the form as optional, Well, and both of them while governance committee figures out the path forward. So both motions included language that said we would continue the process.

[03:02:10] I would just like to continue the process while we figure out what to do. And I don't think that we're making our best decisions right now at this dais. - Okay, thank you, Mr. Frisch. I think that was very well explained as to what happened.

[03:02:27] I still see a lot of lights. I will give folks a second to reconsider maybe whether they would like to still speak to their postponement vote. But it'd be great to just kind of see where people are. Okay, I will go to Ms. McLaughlin.

[03:02:46] - Mr. Frisch, I really do appreciate you trying to walk through again what was a complicated work session for sure. And what I see here on the motion on the table from Ms. Omesh and Dr. Anderson is the second component that it's a mandatory vote.

[03:03:06] these executive expectations. In the end, you know, I've said to Dr. Reed, this is what she's proposed, that she feels is going to help us as a board and help her. In the end, the reality is that eight of us are not going to be here with her, not even for, you know, the final year in review. And so as a result, I just hope in the end what we can be doing

[03:03:40] is in the time we have with dr reed we give her constructive feedback and i for one um oh so as a result with the postponing of this if that's going to get us out of this quagmire for tonight then yes i vote to postpone that's where i was getting thank you and let's just move on thank you mclaughlin dr reed as fun as a front row seat is please feel free to go back to your seat if you would like don't feel obligated to stand there are we done we're not done but i if

[03:04:17] you it's going to be a while i think we've got some more names feel free anyway um dr anderson followed by miss corbin sanders i i will be very brief um one my recollection was not that the form was mandatory so i'm glad to have received this clarification two i was not my name was not read off from the votes that you read off miss setlow i think miss omesh's name was mentioned twice whether that was just an error or what the record actually shows i would like for that to be addressed um and three i i'd like to think that this whole conversation began because miss omesh

[03:04:56] wanted to change her vote i think that was the long and short of it and obviously we're in this COMPLICATED PLACE AS I SAID BEFORE I KNOW THIS IS NOT THE PUSPOMENT BUT I WON'T SPEAK AGAIN I WANT TO HAVE THE REPORTS I WANT TO HAVE THE FEEDBACK I DON'T THINK THESE VOTES ARE NECESSARY BECAUSE THEY'RE NOT NECESSARILY BINDING AND THE FORM I DON'T BELIEVE REFLECTS WHAT I THINK THE FULL BOARD THE FULL COMPLEMENT ON THE BOARD BELIEVES IT CAN UM IT CAN UM BE AS HELPFUL TO YOU

[03:05:27] or to the division thank you miss corbett sanders so we now know that the first phrase to revise our process so the forms will be optional we don't need that but the second phrase about the mandatory vote i do want to remind my colleagues and this is why um you know i i believe our best work is done when we have conversations with each other and when we have a full discussion and so if postponing allows for that full discussion i would support it but the reason i

[03:06:07] i do want to bring somebody bring this to people's attention no vote is mandatory everyone at this board table has the option of voting yes no or abstaining and if they believe that their vote does not they do not have enough information or they don't know how their vote will be used OR THE MATERIALS WILL BE USED AS A RESULT OF THEIR VOTE, THEN THEY CAN UBSTAIN.

[03:06:38] AND SO I WILL SUPPORT A POSTPONEMENT. THANK YOU. MS. OMESH, DID YOU NEED TO SPEAK AGAIN? I WANTED TO JUST SAY I THINK WE'RE TRYING TO MAKE THIS CONFUSING WHEN IT'S REALLY NOT.

[03:06:53] WE PROVIDE FEEDBACK TO THE SUPERINTENDENT. WE TAKE NOTES ON IT. YES. WE PROVIDE FEEDBACK TO THE SUPERINTENDENT. WE TAKE NOTES ON IT. IT BECOMES PUBLIC RECORD. she has the chance to work on it respond to it we discuss it later the point i made earlier was that when we take votes this is this is more macro than just a board member not doesn't feel comfortable when we end up taking a vote majority you could have seven five every time and that's not reflective of a board perspective okay you end up seven five every time for like every meeting every like component when we come to discuss superintendent compliance at the end of the year

[03:07:29] and we want to do an evaluation and we look back and we're like oh the board majority found the superintendent compliance in fact flying colors on everything what position does that put the five people who might actually want to find her not in compliance and this is really not about dr reed actually i'm thinking more philosophically here like what is a good decision to make here that there's no way that those five people are not going to be coerced into like going with all of that in addition how does it make sense for us to find the superintendent in compliance on any of these standards like a month into the year or two months into the year when

[03:08:07] we're evaluating her on her year's performance that that's where the whole idea of having a vote doesn't make sense and it didn't make sense to a lot of people at the work session and I think that's what this is not about just abstaining we all know that that's always still the coercion of the majority that's gonna be at play there and everyone's gonna feel bad and then you know whoever abstains is gonna look it's gonna be it's shameful because you're abstaining from something that's your duty how do you abstain from a accountability to the superintendent. You can't do that. So again, let's be thoughtful about what's actually constructive here. And we don't need to postpone this. It really feels like this is where

[03:08:44] good ideas come to die. Because I suggested something that will meet what everyone is articulating matters and will move us forward. But we're just, I don't know, we just want to say no because no. I mean, I still don't understand why that's not a beneficial piece. And again, we still have our notes on the record that will provide her that feedback. And let me just remind everyone the really stupid part in all of this is if this fails and I'll just be like okay I want to withdraw my vote from the last meeting withdraw my vote we're a 6/6 we don't have a process and we don't have a process we're gonna now move into this executive expectation thing with no determined process so

[03:09:21] what we're gonna do we can't vote tonight on that but this is the problem I've been I told you guys I've put a lot of thought into trying to avoid so we could just pick something that is good for everyone and move forward all right Madam Chair, may I make, Madam Chair, I have one last comment.

[03:09:38] Okay, go ahead. Here's my problem. And Ms. Corbett Sanders gave a scenario that I have to respectfully disagree with. If we vote, that vote counts.

[03:09:59] Even if we abstain, it is counted as not voting, which as if we're not sitting here, as if we're not participating in this meeting. And so let's say, because I don't feel comfortable sending a message about compliance and not understanding how that's going to be reconciled with the final evaluation, which is not set up in the same, with the same standards as the form that we're being asked to fill out.

[03:10:35] So let's say I abstain. In July, the board members will look at Karen Keyes-Gamara abstain, and therefore her vote isn't counted. And it passes because I abstain. But at the same time, I don't want to oppose it. But my true objection is that the understanding I need to truly participate isn't here.

[03:11:05] That's the reason I do not want to postpone it, because I do think we need to have those genuine conversations so that our participation here is actually meaningful. As it stands, our vote doesn't mean what it needs to mean, because that understanding hasn't been derived.

[03:11:29] We have not had those conversations. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to ask our parliamentarian, because Ms. Omesh mentioned possibly withdrawing her vote from the work session. Could you please clarify, can she do that?

[03:11:52] No. Once a meeting is finished, all the votes that have been taken there are final. Only within the course of a meeting can you sometimes go back, reconsider, or change a vote. After that, the only response is to, say, move to rescind or amend something previously adopted, do something to change things going forward.

[03:12:15] But that would be a new vote. You can't withdraw a vote that was already taken. Thank you. I appreciate that. So that means that if we vote to postpone this, we will go back to the process of the night, which is what we had agreed upon at our work session.

[03:12:30] And we will take this up at another time at the next meeting. Point of order, Ms. Bukarski. Okay. I'd like to understand this better because, number one, Mr. Morgan, we talked extensively yesterday and arrived at a different conclusion. Excuse me, this is not a point of order. Thank you, Ms. Merne.

[03:12:46] No, no, this has been done at previous meetings, so I would like to pull the record on those if that's how we're going to proceed. Okay, Ms. Omesh. We have our parliamentarian by Robert's rules. He is the final, well, okay, I'll take that back, whatever, but please, please go ahead, Mr. Morgan.

[03:13:06] and and replied to miss omesh's concerns that this has been done before I believe that the what the member is referring to is our instances where a member wished to change his or her vote in the course of a meeting and a motion to suspend the rules was used as a shortcut for reconsidering reopening revoting but those cases were within the course of the meeting itself when it was still possible to reconsider the vote on a pending on a motion that has been voted

[03:13:44] on all right with that we're going to take the we're going to take the vote on whether or not we should postpone this motion on the screen in front of you by miss Omesh all those in favor of postponement raise your hands hi miss Ms. Maren, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Darinette Koufax, Ms. McLaughlin, Ms. Corbett Sanders, and me.

[03:14:16] All those against. Ms. O'MESH. I vote against. Dr. Anderson, Ms. Keyes-Gamara. The motion to postpone passes. We're not going to go back to our regularly scheduled program. I just have to figure out where that is.

[03:14:35] Okay. Mr. Frisch, I will call on you for a motion. Thank you. I move that based on the information provided, the board finds the superintendent has reasonably interpreted the provisions of the relevant executive expectation and is in compliance with the emergency superintendent that is and is in compliance with EE2 as outlined in the strategic governance manual, EE1 as outlined in the strategic governance manual, which is the global expectation, executive expectation. The words are literally appearing on my screen.

[03:15:13] we will do better with this uh i hope all right i'm going to read one more time i move that based on the information provided the board finds the superintendent has reasonably interpreted the provisions of the relevant executive expectation and is in compliance with the global executive expectation ee1 as outlined in the strategic governance manual is there a second miss mclaughlin mr frisch would you like to speak to this yes if we didn't think that you were in compliance on this one of a couple things can happen we can say that you're not in compliance in which case you would

[03:15:49] have to come back to us with a corrective action memo where you identify for the board how you are going to get yourself into compliance and get the school division into compliance the alternative to this scenario is that you take feedback from 12 board members and try to make sense of it yourself with no consensus from the board on what it is that you're supposed to approve improve or you know, move on to. If I had a manager, if I had 12 managers, and they would not say for certain

[03:16:26] what they wanted me to do on my job, I could not perform for them. Conversely, if they said, based on the report that you've brought us, we think you're doing a great job in one, two, three, and four, and we think that you need to improve on number five, and then your 12 managers said, we agree, you'd have very clear direction on how to proceed.

[03:16:55] If we just spoke to, if my 12 managers just spoke to me all at once, maybe they took their turn speaking to me, I would have no way of making sense of what it is I'm supposed to do or whose opinion has weight. Ultimately, it is a majority of the board that's going to make a decision.

[03:17:14] And so I do think that these votes are binding in a sense. They're binding in the moment, right? If we say that you're not in compliance, then you have to come back and then we decide whether you're in compliance. So they're at least temporarily binding. But there's not a single person on this dais who is going to go to the superintendent's evaluation at the end of this process looking at EE1, for example, and not have opinions about how the superintendent has performed on EE1 throughout the year.

[03:17:44] It is a snapshot in time. And how the superintendent corrects courses when we ask them to is what we judge them on when we do our performance evaluation. I want to be held accountable for holding the superintendent accountable in a clear and precise way.

[03:18:08] No one can function without that kind of management. No one. It doesn't have to be the Carvers. Pick up any management book, any management book. The only one that will tell you that that's not the case is the one that says, I don't want to be managed is the title.

[03:18:29] I don't think that book actually exists. But in terms of EE1, back out of my little scenario, This is as Miss Corbett Sanders said you know the big one and I think that these these issues are so big that the way that you prove that you are in compliance is by setting up the structures to measure these huge things and I will be looking at how those things evolve over the year ahead into your performance evaluation. Today I'm more than comfortable voting that you're in compliance.

[03:19:05] THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS. MARIN, FOLLOWED BY DR. ANDERSON. I MOVED TO LIMIT TO ONE MINUTE. I'M CONFUSED. I WAS THE SECONDER. I'M SORRY. I'M SORRY. YES. NO. YOU'RE RIGHT. I WILL.

[03:19:23] I'M SORRY, MS. MARIN. I'VE GOT TO CALL ON MY SECONDER. THAT'S OKAY. YES. SECOND TO THE MOTION. YOU KNOW, I DO BELIEVE THAT IT IS DIFFICULT TO TRY SOMETHING VERY NEW. AND I THINK THIS has high potential for success. But we talked a lot at the work sessions about maybe some concerns, and that's why it's going back to governance. But at this point in time, the majority of the board did agree that we would proceed and continue to try and do the work. And so I'm seconding the

[03:19:59] motion because I want to respect what the majority of the board decided at that work session. you know Dr. Reed you know how much I value and trust your leadership you also know that I'm such a big data girl that I am struggling a little bit even though we know it's a snapshot in time I you know for tonight I need to think about how I want to proceed with this one so I want for the public to know that there is no question that when it comes to having faith and confidence

[03:20:32] IN YOU AS A LEADER THAT IS WITHOUT QUESTION AND I DO HOPE THAT WE WILL GET THIS IRONED OUT SO THAT WE CAN HELP EVERYBODY BE A LITTLE MORE EFFICIENT WITH THEIR TIME TONIGHT AND GOING FORWARD.

[03:20:47] SO I APPRECIATE THE MOTION, MR. FRESH. OKAY. GREAT. MS. MAYOR. I MOVE TO LIMIT DEBATE TO ONE MINUTE. OKAY. IS THERE A SECOND TO LIMIT DEBATE TO ONE MINUTE? MS. COHEN WOULD ALSO LIKE TO LIMIT DEBATE TO ONE MINUTE FOR EACH BOARD MEMBER IS THAT MR.

[03:21:08] MORGAN THE PROCESS HERE YES IF THAT WAS HER INTENT ONE MINUTE PER BOARD MEMBER THEN YOU WOULD JUST HAVE A TO SHE WANTS TO SAY SAME TOTAL THOUGH ONE MINUTE TOTAL PER MEMBER OKAY REMEMBER ARE YOU SECONDING THAT MISS COHEN OKAY WE NEED TWO THIRDS CORRECT NO DEBATE SO ALL THOSE IN FAVOR TO ONE MINUTE FOR EACH SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER PLEASE RAISE YOUR HANDS THAT IS MISS COHEN MISS MARIN um all those opposed miss omech mr frisch miss mckarsky mr kofax miss mclaughlin dr anderson

[03:21:47] miss corbett sanders uh miss keys gamara okay miss keys gamara i'm opposed okay that um that fails and we will go back to our list of folks who'd like to speak and i have dr anderson thank you i think we just spent a lot of time talking about how important this work is AND HAVING SUCH A LIMITED DEBATE JUST REALLY FLIES IN THE FACE OF THAT BUT I DO HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS UM AND I JUST WANT TO SAY AS I SHARED BEFORE I DO HAVE LIKE SOME CONCERNS ABOUT THE PROCESS BUT I WANT THESE REPORTS AND I DO I DO WANT TO ENGAGE IN THIS DISCUSSION

[03:22:25] UM I DO WANT TO ECHO WHAT HAS BEEN SHARED A LITTLE BIT BY BOTH MS MARIN AND MS MCLACHLAN WHICH IS It would be helpful to have some samples and I see some spaces where maybe that oh, I see some some areas where that could that might be feasible.

[03:22:44] For example, on page two, you talked about meant as the evidence, mandatory trainings and professional development for staff members assigned and monitored, you know, et cetera. It'll be great just to have a few examples of some of those trainings that speak to this global expectation.

[03:23:01] i have a question about the sip plans i can't find the page yes i think this is on page four you talked about the sip plans being aligned and aligning processes can you speak to the relationship of the sip plan as it relates to principals teachers um lt and all the way up to you how do you see or how are you going to align that so that the work is trickling down to the very people who need to conduct it.

[03:23:33] So thank you, Dr. Anderson. It's actually an iterative process, so it trickles up and down. We have a team that includes our strategic planning group, as well as our regional assistant superintendents, our chief of schools, our chief equity officer and chief academic officer that have put together a team to work on the school improvement and innovation plans.

[03:23:55] We required goal three as a goal that every school in the division responded to. And then schools could pick another goal to be responsive to. So what we know is that everyone's going to be working. I think it's goal three. Was that right, Marcy?

[03:24:12] OK, everyone's responding to goal three. So, for example, our elementary schools across the entire 141 schools are working on making sure our third graders are readers. We're looking at the eighth grade algebra data point at middle school and robust course taking patterns at high school.

[03:24:28] and they can pick another goal to be responsive to so um those are turned in to from the teachers and principals work on those at the school site and then those are turned into their razes who review those and then at senior leadership we look at those for patterns for resource and support um thank you for that i i think i i may not have asked my question very clearly but thank you for REITERATING THAT EVERY SORRY WAS THERE OH OKAY THANK YOU YOUR SPEAKER'S STILL ON MS. KEES GAMAH

[03:25:11] OH I'M SORRY THIS CANNOT COUNT WITH MY TIME OKAY UM AND TALK ABOUT GOAL THREE BEING THE READING GOAL I I GUESS THE GRANULAR QUESTION THAT I WANTED TO ASK DOES THIS SHOW UP ALSO IN THE TEACHERS GOAL SETTING BECAUSE I KNOW THEY HAVE TO CONDUCT THAT WITH THEIR PRINCIPALS AT THE START OF THE YEAR If that's the school's goal, is it trickled out to the individual teachers work?

[03:25:43] Because, again, at the end of the day, that's where the rubber meets the road. That's the question that I wanted to raise. I have not reviewed teacher goals at this point. I do know that our collaborative teams at the elementary are working on our literacy at the elementary. So I don't know that we're reviewing teacher goals at this point.

[03:26:03] But that is certainly as we roll out a brand new strategic plan, a brand new planning process, an aligned data dashboard all those pieces will be um added in so i don't think we're able to start with everything in perfect place you know two months into this okay so that would be a potential next step yes ma'am okay thank you um the other question that i wanted to ask i'm glad you brought up data dashboards i know you have been working with mr sethe to develop some is how could we get that embedded here so that we get a sense of that as a measure because that is

[03:26:40] a second part of this EE I think we'll have to take a look at those and look at how publicly facing the different data dashboards and I don't think it make sense to you know put a data dashboard here but maybe some parts maybe sure snapshots from that dashboard just to give an example of the kind of information you're collecting or even a list of the kind of information that YOU'RE COLLECTING AND WATCHING ON A REGULAR BASIS AND THEN YOU COULD JUST SOURCE IT YOU KNOW DATA

[03:27:13] DASHBOARD NUMBER ONE I KNOW YOU HAVE SEVERAL CORRECT OKAY THANK YOU OKAY MISS CORBETT SANDERS SO I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE MORE CLARITY AND ACTUALLY ONE OF THE QUESTIONS THAT SOMEBODY RAISED WITH ME EARLIER TODAY WAS A TEACHER WHO SAID THAT THEY HAD BEEN TOLD THAT AS A RESULT OF THIS NEW PROCESS THEY DID NOT NEED TO PUT IN INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT GOALS IN THEIR OWN PLANS

[03:27:48] And I promise to raise that today tonight because I know that that is not the intent. And we obviously want teachers to have their own personal goals and their objectives as a result of what new process. They the principal at a local level told them that they were not that they were changing the whole process as a result of our strategic plan AND OUR NEW SIPP PROCESS THAT THERE WOULD NOT BE THOSE INDIVIDUAL GOALS OR DEVELOPMENT GOALS FOR INDIVIDUALS IN THEIR OWN PLANS.

[03:28:23] AND SO I WOULD WANT TO EXPLORE THAT A LITTLE FURTHER, MAYBE OFFLINE, BUT THE GOAL IS REALLY TO ALIGN OUR GOALS BECAUSE IF WE HAVE A PARTICULAR GOAL THE SCHOOL IS WORKING ON, FOR EXAMPLE, AND EVERYBODY HAS A DIFFERENT GOAL THAN THAT, WE'RE NOT GOING TO ACHIEVE the goal right so there has to be an alignment of the work but how that plays out in the classroom by classroom level I think would be a good conversation to have well ideally they all there's a line that goes from the overall

[03:28:56] strategic plan to the individual school set and then the school sip will adopt for example I know literacy is a common goal across the system so then each individual teacher may have as part of their development plan something tied to that literacy piece that would be my guess as to how that plays out but I would want to go back and check that as I mentioned earlier I we haven't looked at the the teacher goal setting yet at this point we've been retooling some of

[03:29:33] our evaluation practices here recently so I would just urge that you know some SORT OF COMMUNICATION, GET OUT TO TEACHERS ON THAT. I WILL NOT, AND I DON'T THINK THIS IS ANY SURPRISE, I WILL NOT BE VOTING ON THIS TONIGHT.

[03:29:50] I WILL BE ABSTAINING BECAUSE I DO THINK, AS I MENTIONED EARLIER THIS EVENING, THAT THIS IS SOMETHING THAT BECAUSE IT'S THE CAPSTONE OF THE EXECUTIVE EXPECTATIONS, IT'S SOMETHING THAT REALLY SHOULD COME LATER IN THE YEAR.

[03:30:06] BUT I DO APPRECIATE THIS REPORT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS. CORBET SANDERS. I DON'T SEE ANYONE ELSE WISHING TO SPEAK. SO WITH THAT, I'M GOING TO GO AHEAD AND CALL. THANK YOU, DR. REED. THE REPORT IS THOROUGH AND I APPRECIATED HAVING LINKS TO EVERYTHING AND WELL-DOCUMENTED REPORTING OF YOUR PROGRESS. THE ONLY THING THAT I WAS LEFT THINKING ABOUT WAS KIND OF WANTING A BIT MORE OF A WALK THROUGH OF WHAT WAS AND what became over the course of this year your work I don't know if you can provide a bit of a

[03:30:46] narrative of that I think it would just be helpful because obviously there were things that existed before and I have no doubt you've added value so I just want to be able to highlight what that was okay let me start I'll just pick a couple examples from each section Ms. Omish the requirement of background checks for all new hires current employees and volunteers we previously were not requiring background checks of current employees we had previously only required them of new employees so this is a check-in on our system to require that and maintain the data which has

[03:31:24] created quite a workload actually for our human resources department Dr. Wilson has a team we've ordered mobile fingerprinting so that we're able to go out to schools as well we had several staff make that suggestion and we're able to have the team deployed because we want to make sure we have all staff on a cycle of background checks to avoid any circumstances that might in any way have our students or staff or families not safe we've also worked with if I think about looking at

[03:32:00] communication plans major incidents response trainings under public image or credibility I think those things were all in place I think we're making a concerted effort to be out in the community quite a bit to have that back and forth in the total of 87 community meetings last year to make sure we're engaging with our community was very important the emergency situations the updating of the red notebooks the uniform crisis plans and classroom crisis management plans are very important as well as the safety audit which has just been completed which I know the board is going to be taking a look at here in the next month

[03:32:39] or so the data dashboards are really pretty key quite honestly and to dr. Anderson's point I think finding a way to include a snapshot of those will be important but we didn't previously have data dashboards on a number of topics I think they were known at the school level but not at the division level so our ability to look across the entire division is critical as we look at allocating resources and providing supports as well as bringing the work to scale because otherwise we end up with work that's not necessarily up to scale what's also new is that our departments have goals that will connect to the

[03:33:18] strategic plan goal and they have to provide and submit plans which is not previously at least wasn't done in the last couple years in the leading indicator work so that we can look at what is the data point for example graduation rate on time graduation rates important but a leading indicator is really how our ninth graders are doing so trying to make sure we're looking at research to identify if we want to make sure we have a great graduation rate we have to make sure we have a great ninth grade credit completion rate and so forth so those are pieces were being more explicit and transparent with departments and the

[03:33:56] division about so those are a few examples thank you so much for for that outline I'm wondering if if any of these you would attribute kind of to ongoing work that I guess like came to fruition around this time and then also if there are things that you planted the seeds for maybe that still haven't you know I think we're looking at a number of I think making sure that there's alignment from the boardroom to the classroom is really critical looking at needs-based

[03:34:31] resource allocation and I think more transparent way perhaps we've looked at after-school programming for example in terms of equitable access making sure we have that access science Olympiad math Olympiad so forth and those are data dashboards that we are now working on developing because we are large but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have information about what's going on in all quarters but to your other point a lot of this work has been in place or and I think the pandemic disrupted some of those structures and we're just now in

[03:35:10] the place of kind of finishing some of those pieces of work which I think eliminates that feel of you know how they construct bridges and overpasses on freeways but sometimes like they go nowhere until they're finished so I think what we're trying to do is finish some of those so the off-ramps and on reps get done yeah no I really appreciate that I think it'll be exciting to see how that comes up throughout the year and then we'll be able to more comprehensively evaluate that component when the superintendent evaluation comes around and I'm still I'm still contemplating I think the

[03:35:46] I think a vote on this is a little bit premature I don't take that to mean any indication of anything about where you are I'm very happy to hear about all of these and I think they're enough ACTUALLY HAVE A SIGN TO PROBABLY LEAD US DOWN COMPLIANCE BY THE END AND PERHAPS EVEN MORE THAN COMPLIANCE BUT I THINK IN JUST TRYING TO BE INTELLECTUALLY HONEST AND HAVE INTEGRITY TO MYSELF IN MAKING THIS DECISION AND NOT KNOWING THE FUTURE I PROBABLY WILL ALSO ABSTAIN BUT I AGAIN WANT TO CLARIFY THAT THAT'S NOT A STATEMENT EITHER WAY I REALLY APPRECIATE ALL THE WORK YOU'VE

[03:36:20] PUT INTO THIS YEAH THE STAFF HAS DONE QUITE A BIT YEAH OKAY AND NOW WITH THAT I'M GOING TO CALL for the vote on the motion which is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hands miss cohen mr frisch miss merritt um and myself all those opposed all those abstaining

[03:36:52] miss omesh miss mclaughlin miss um they're not koufax dr anderson uh miss corbett sanders do you WISH TO VOTE MS. KEYS-GAMARA, OKAY, WITH MS. KEYS-GAMARA AWAY FROM THE PHONE.

[03:37:13] SO THAT MOTION PASSES, BECAUSE EVERYBODY UPSTAINED. THANK YOU, DR. REED. THANK YOU TO MY COLLEAGUES. I ACTUALLY HAVE A QUESTION. I THINK QUORUM IS REQUIRED FOR A VOTE, RIGHT? LIKE YOU NEED THE NUMBER FOR QUORUM TO HAVE A VOTE.

[03:37:29] WE HAVE QUORUM. NO, NO, NO, EVERYONE UPSTAINED. SO IF YOU HAD FOUR PEOPLE VOTING -- MR. MORGAN, IS THAT A THING? I don't think so. No, you don't need a full quorum to actually vote. You just need a quorum present.

[03:37:45] So the vote is whoever voted. OK. So that motion did pass. Thank you, Dr. Reed. Thank you, colleagues. While it has been a hot minute since I was your chair, you all do know how to keep it fun. And with that, Mr. Frisch. All right. The board will now take a 10-minute recess and take a few minutes to complete the document at their-- if they choose to.

[03:38:09] and turn it into the clerk we will reconvene in 10 minutes but Chris tell her I couldn't vote

[03:46:25] I was muted she had me muted so when you were calling me I couldn't speak the clerk had me

[03:47:02] muted so when you were calling me I couldn't speak yes if board members could return to their seats

[03:48:28] board members please return to your seats board members please return to your seats before we

[03:49:18] begin i'd like to ask for uh without objection to allow miss keys gamara to cast her vote miss keys gamara for the executive expectation miss keys gamara are you unmuted she didn't miss keys gamara can you hear us all right she's unmuted miss keys gamara when you cast your vote can you hear me yes okay so i'm sorry i wasn't able to speak i you you did speak we we had the vote are Are you voting yes, no, or abstaining?

[03:49:58] Well, I couldn't do any of that because I was muted. I understand. I'm asking you to provide your vote, and then we'll move on with the rest of the agenda. My vote is my continuing objection because we actually do not.

[03:50:18] Ms. Kees-Gamara, we've already had the discussion on the motion. There's no objection to you casting your vote. Sir, I could not speak because I was muted. Everybody spoke.

[03:50:36] This is short. - I did not speak to the actual motion. I did not speak with respect to the executive expectation where people commented- - I understand.

[03:50:55] - On what Dr. Reid- - With, without objection, we'll let Ms. Kees-Gumara have a minute to speak and to cast her vote. - Thank you. I am, I want to clearly state my continuing objection due to things that I've already explained, especially not understanding how we have in compliance here, and a totally different standard for everybody else in FTPS, as well as the state objective. I can abstain, but I want to clearly understand, understood that the reason

[03:51:32] I'm abstaining is I'm not saying that she's not in compliance, but I don't think it's appropriate at this time. Thank you. And we do not have a majority because Ms. Amesh already told you she is ready to change the vote thank you all right the parliamentary has already dealt with that miss keese gamara has registered her opinion as an pardon me i understand the parliamentarian's explanation but it is different what this board understands that that person who voted that made

[03:52:07] this pass has expressed something different thank you we understand that thank you miss keese gamara uh can you can the clerk record her abstention it's a recorded thank you all right one second the next order of the next order of business is the policy review for executive expectation one global executive expectation as noted at our september 28th meeting each year the the board will review each of the 13 executive expectations at the time the monitoring report is provided to determine if any revisions are needed moving forward the board may also review

[03:52:46] any of the executive expectations at any time a change is needed at this time board members may provide comments on executive expectation one global executive expectations to determine if any revisions are needed at this time i now invite board members who would like to suggest revisions to executive expectation one to make comments miss amesh your lights on okay seeing no lights uh if there are no further comments or discussion i now call on miss marin for the motion i move that

[03:53:24] the school board maintain executive expectation one global executive expectation as it is currently

[03:53:30] detailed in the Strategic Governance Manual. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Omeish. Ms. Marin, would you like to speak to your motion? No, thank you. Ms. Omeish. I guess I just wanted to be clear that the names were randomly assigned here. I guess we're going on a cycle of like what motions are presented. So that's why I seconded. But obviously, I know that there's work that needs to be done in the governance committee to look at this. We've all agreed on the executive expectations. I think that's a good place that we're at.

[03:54:07] but procedurally there's more to be resolved thank you Miss Amesh all right we will move on to a vote all those in favor of maintaining the current executive expectation let me actually read what it says on the screen I will now call on a vote on the motion which is on the screen all those in favor please raise your hand Miss Cohen Miss Amesh Miss Marin Miss Corbett Sanders Dr. Anderson Miss McLaughlin Miss Darnett Koufax Miss Pekarski Miss Keeskemar are you would you like to announce your vote I'm gonna abstain I

[03:54:47] actually I'm sorry okay and I will vote in favor so that is everyone present voting in favor and miss Keeskemarra abstaining all right agenda item 7 0 1 action item choosing to move forward with WT Woodson high school renaming I call on miss McLaughlin for a motion I move that the board vote to proceed with the name change for W.T.

[03:55:15] Woodson High School. Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Ms. Omeish. Ms. McLaughlin, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, my colleagues. I do want to share with you that I deeply appreciate the fact that approximately 1,400 members of our community, from alumni to parents and guardians to students and staff and community did go online to share their feedback about this decision.

[03:55:51] Looking at the two key stakeholders, it was roughly about the two largest groups were basically our alumni and our parent guardian community. When you break out where the feedback was in support of the name change, about 27% of our alumni considered supporting of this change, 59% of those respondents who identified as families and guardians, and 54% of the category that included our

[03:56:30] students and staff and community members. As I have shared during the forum topic, as I've shared in our public discussions, and as I shared during the community meeting where we had about 60 people come, I recognize that one of the great strengths about Woodson High School is the immense amount of pride that the community feels for it,

[03:57:01] as well as its 60-year reputation of high academic excellence and the immense community engagement and as I also have shared numerous occasions I certainly do not take lightly this vote before us tonight as a two-generation Woodson family a resident homeowner I continue to hold

[03:57:32] incredible pride for the school and to be a part of this community but I also hope that in our community conversations with each other and having spoken with leaders of our athletic boosters with our PTSO leaders with our student leaders that there has been quite an understanding that as we identified those historical documents about where former superintendent Woodson stood on the issue of segregation

[03:58:11] versus integration of our schools. It's simply time that we recognize that as a board and a body, we know how important it is to have names on a building that can inspire all students and our staff in our community. And so I now hear the bell going off on me, which, wow, okay. So I guess what I would say is I will need to go back. But in the meantime, my colleagues, I do hope that in light of the feedback when

[03:58:49] we look at where the community is, I think it's understandable that it's always difficult for change. And I do believe that in my go back, I can talk a little bit more on why I still believe proceeding with the name change is the right thing to do.

[03:59:06] Thank you, Ms. McLaughlin. Ms. Omeish? Yeah, I'm happy to follow Ms. McLaughlin. And I do want to thank her for all the work she's put into this up to this point I know she's spent many many hours gathering consensus in the community and attending various functions as well on our behalf so obviously I'm excited that we're here I think it took listening to students and it's always the power of students that you know awakens our consciences as well to make sure that we do this and I think it's just symbolic you know we spoke to this a little bit during forum, but that perhaps we can say the mistake of W.T. Woodson

[03:59:45] was being complicit when systems around him were unjust, and by doing so he maintained the status quo, which meant he was an actor in the oppression, even though it might not seem active, depending on how you look at the past. But, and I think that that's the statement we're making today, right?

[04:00:02] That being complicit isn't okay. That when segregation, oppression of all forms is happening around us and we maintain that status quo, that that's not good enough. And I think that it's symbolic that we're deciding now to not maintain that status quo by making this change.

[04:00:19] And I think that speaks to the legacy of this decision and will hopefully be a step in the right direction. And I say that also wanting to say that I think it's also important for us to hold space for people who may be confused or unsettled by this decision too.

[04:00:35] I think people carry emotional attachments to the names of the schools they went to, and I know we heard some dissenters who came forward, and I wanna make sure that the message is loud and clear, that you haven't been ignored and I hope not dismissed, but we're certainly listening to as many people as we can and hopefully making decisions that have the far future in mind as well.

[04:00:59] So, you know, it's just important to me to say that I think we tend to lean into a righteous corner that is dismissive of those who have different perspectives, even if that is something we feel strongly about. So I'm looking forward to leading this.

[04:01:15] I feel really bad that Ms. Karim is not here. I know she wanted to stick around for this. She is a Woodson student and has been leading a lot of the student voice in this, but hopefully we'll get to hear from her as well in the coming weeks and months, and I know that we still have to hear from the community about the name choices and whatnot, which we saw some of in the presentation today but again just want to thank my colleagues for their collaboration on this and miss mclaughlin i know you've been putting in a lot of this and hope to continue working with you on it thank you for mentioning our student rep miss uh omesh she said on her way out that she would like to have been here but she has some academics she has to focus on in the

[04:01:51] morning and can't do her best work if she's not rested so um we have no other lights so i'm going to take a turn since i represent a good portion of uh the community um and say uh you know the process is designed to be deliberative right it's two phases each one of them engages the community each one of them has a public hearing and obviously the website is open and the way in which Miss McLaughlin has approached this has been collaborative as well believe the forum was sponsored by half the board right several of us have students there plus the at-larges Miss Amash I believe

[04:02:25] your brother went to Woodson so both both and so the board has lots of connections to the school and half the board took the first step in in moving this process forward so that the community could be engaged so I look forward to the next phase which I think you'll be talking about a little bit in your your go back so I will segue to that and let you have your go back miss McLaughlin thank you mr. fish I do want to just give a little more context especially for the community who may be watching that as Dr. Reed in her presentation having

[04:03:05] captured the community feedback that we have received to date so again there's going to be another full 28 days that the community will again now be able to provide feedback should we decide at this time to vote to change the name so it is a two-part process. I do want to just add a little bit more that in some of the comments section that we received that respondents were concerned about what the cost might be. They were

[04:03:41] concerned that as alumni they have a very strong connection to the existing name and that for especially a number of our earlier alums where Mr. Woodson was a very frequent presence having retired but being a member of the community he was often at many sporting events and so he was personally known by some of the older alumni who just remember their positive interactions with him and so I really appreciate Ms. Amish you capturing the sensitivity that I think we

[04:04:21] all feel for our alumni and you know without question that is what we have continued to to keep in mind and listen to and interestingly in terms of the feedback to date the highest number of support we've seen is for the name Carter G Woodson with more than 450 people strongly saying support for that name the next closest one was to just call it Woodson High School simply call it Woodson High School and that was 42 people and then after that there was

[04:04:57] only about five names where they got four to nine votes and beyond that then there was about 300 individual singleton suggestions so lots of different thoughts that people had but this as I said was meant to just again help the community know where the board was coming from and so I do hope that with great humility and sensitivity that our board will unanimously support this first stage of the process to vote to rename Woodson High School and

[04:05:37] that again with care and deliberation we will then begin and embark on the next phase thank you Ms. McLaughlin seeing no other lights we will go ahead and take the vote I will call for a vote on the motion which is on the screen all those in favor raise your hand Ms. Cohen Ms. Omeish Ms.

[04:06:02] Corbett Sanders Dr. Anderson Ms. McLaughlin Ms. Darenette Koufax Ms. Pekarski Ms. Marin and myself miss kees gamara she she's unmuted she can miss keesamara will you cast your vote i'm supporting the motion but i tried to raise my hand can you see that yes i didn't know you could do that would

[04:06:32] you like to speak nope i'm good oh okay understand thank you thank you um actually mr frish i'm sorry point of privilege miss kareem did send me her remarks i don't know if it's worth reading them on her behalf but she felt strongly about this okay well no abstention sorry okay all right that's - That's fine.

[04:06:55] - So the vote was everyone at the meeting and Ms. Kieskamara voting in the affirmative. No abstentions, no opposition. Ms. Omesh? - Okay, so this is the student rep, Ms. Karim. I'm just the messenger. As many of you are aware, the upcoming vote on the Woodson name change is on the agenda for this evening.

[04:07:14] As a fellow student from Woodson, I want to express my gratitude for the chance to connect with student representatives from clubs, sports teams, and other organizations to discuss the name change. While W.T. Woodson may have made contributions, it's essential to acknowledge his influence didn't reach everyone. Woodson's historical support for segregation is recognized among students and it has led to a strong desire for a name change. During the segregation era, African Americans faced immense challenges and injustices. In 2023, it is our collective duty to distance ourselves from any remnants of a segregationist mindset and uphold the principle

[04:07:49] that all individuals are equal. Following numerous student meetings, it is clear that most students support the name change viewing it as a crucial step towards fostering a more inclusive environment by aligning with goal number two in our strategic plan which envisions every student will experience an equitable school community where student health and well-being are prioritized and student voice is centered our decision to proceed with the name change will serve as a testament to our dedication to achieving goal number two Woodson's mission statement is to empower community our community to reach their individual potential by

[04:08:26] creating a healthy environment of mutual respect, responsibility, equity, and inclusion. Moving towards the name change will help us create that healthy environment of inclusion and demonstrate our ongoing commitment to building a welcoming community. The potential of renaming our WT Woodson represents a significant step towards justice and unity. It serves as a reminder that our presence should not be constrained or defined by the past, and a new school name would embody the strength of our community, our compassion, and a belief in our commitment to providing for each student irrespective of their background.

[04:08:54] It acts as a celebration of diversity and a pledge to honor the numerous voices that history silenced unjustly. Through the renaming, we begin on a journey towards a brighter, more inclusive environment where the lessons of history bring us towards a more compassionate and understanding future.

[04:09:13] Lastly, I want to express my gratitude for the dedication and effort put into this matter by school board members, FCPS leadership, and our community. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Amesh. Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure, Roberts Rules, provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion.

[04:09:33] Many items listed have gone through board review, and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. The consent agenda has been posted on the screen.

[04:09:50] Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Hearing none, no objection. The consent agenda is approved. Agenda item nine, new business. The following items are new business agenda items. There will not be a vote on these items this evening, but action is scheduled for a future meeting. The new business items are on the screen. There are no, I will call on Ms. Darenak Koufax for an audit committee report. Thank you. The audit committee was held October 4th. At this meeting we welcome two new citizen members Mr. O'Keefe and Ms. Krishnan. We reviewed the Office

[04:10:29] of the Auditor General's team's roles and responsibilities. We reviewed our continuous monitoring report of our ESSER III funds and we reviewed for the first time the employee evaluation process audit which evaluated existing processes, evaluated the process, how the process is managed at the department's offices and schools and benchmark processes used by other districts to identify best practices and we were given the quarterly status of what uh where we are with our audit recommendations to my colleagues i provided the details of you to this meeting

[04:11:07] in the email on october 5th and particularly with the employee evaluation process i think you should find that interesting thank you thank you miss darin koufax agenda item 11 is board matters without objection we would like to not have board matters this evening no objection the meeting is adjourned too late

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Coraggio Consulting · aguyonx.com