Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Date: Tuesday, October 24, 2023
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 2h 49m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ZTBrnZk1I
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 2026-11-02. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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

[00:00:08] All right, we do have quorum in the room, so we're going to go ahead and get started. Seven. I will. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. We're right at seven.

[00:00:27] In order to comply with Section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia, it's necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on October 24, 2023, to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from the 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.

[00:00:51] Do you have a motion? Ms. Corbett Sanders seconded by Mr. Frisch. All those in favor? Everybody here? Awesome. All right, agenda item 2.02, call to order and announcements.

[00:01:07] Ms. Pokarski and Ms. Keys-Gamara have submitted written requests to virtually attend this afternoon's meeting due to a personal conflict. All those in favor of approving Ms. Pokarski's request, please raise your hand. Sorry, I should have said that. Ms. Pokarski is a medical request. Okay, thank you, thank you.

[00:01:23] Ms. Kees-Gamara is a personal request. Okay, and we have a written request from her to attend virtually, Ms. Bekarski? Yes, we have written requests from both of them. Okay, so all those in favor of approving Ms. Bekarski's request for a medical conflict, please raise your hand.

[00:01:44] That's everybody, all right, who's present? Nobody's opposed or abstaining since everyone says yes. And then all those in favor of approving Ms. Kees-Gamara's request for a personal conflict, please raise your hand. All right, that is everybody in attendance. can go ahead and get started. I know we have Mr. Malloy with us here today to go over the state and federal legislative program. I know that it's not typical that we do this before the election in an election year, but it made sense scheduling-wise. And of course, as colleagues will know, new business is going to be on November 9th. This will be posted. So it will

[00:02:21] still be after the election, and then we'll have our final action on November the 20th. So just look out for those dates. And so I also just want to point out that while we may not know what's ahead entirely on the state level, there are a bit of concerning pieces on the federal level that I know Mr.

[00:02:38] Molloy will speak to. So with that, I'll go ahead and give it to you, Mr. Molloy. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon, everybody. Bet you weren't expecting to see me here today, were you? So I'm pleased to bring to you the initial draft for your discussion here today of potential revisions to the board's legislative program. Every year the board goes through a process of revising and updating your legislative program to make sure that it stays up to date, reflects current issues, reflects issues that have, you know, issues that have gone

[00:03:14] by the wayside, issues that we anticipate may arise during the next, the coming year. This is the document that will be in place for the 2024 General Assembly session, which starts on January 10th this year and is a 60-day session.

[00:03:33] It's a long session because it's the first year of a biennial budget year. So it'll be a long session, the session will go into March. So this process is essentially your opportunity to look at the standing positions that you have on a variety of topics these are positions some of which have been in the program for many years some of which are new to the program but it's the one place where you kind of catalog your your statements on various issues that may come up during the general assembly session may come up in front of the

[00:04:11] board or Department of Education certainly novel issues will come up things that we don't anticipate, but this is just an opportunity and kind of a repository where you can have your standing positions on various things.

[00:04:27] So I think the most efficient way to go through this is you've got two documents in front of you. One is a chart of the changes that document the changes in every legislative position as you go through the document.

[00:04:44] And then the second is the actual language itself. So it's written the way you would write a code revision is you've got underlined for new language, you've got strikethrough for elimination of language, and we went through and highlighted every place within the program where there's a change one way or the other to make it easier to refer to.

[00:05:03] So probably the best way to walk through it is to just kind of look at the chart and if we need to refer to the actual language itself, we can go back and do that. Can you just share which one you'd like projected so that -- Yeah, the chart I think the chart is probably the best place to start and if we need to refer we need to flip over for the specific Wording we can do that. There we go. Thank you. Okay, so in this first section You you've actually seen this language a little bit before

[00:05:42] Because you annually adopt a joint position with the Board of Supervisors The Board of Supervisors has already had at least two legislative committee meetings at which this the particular language that's in the legislative the draft legislative program Has been discussed so it what's in here is now aligned with the recommendations and the changes That have been proposed by the Board of Supervisors the biggest changes in this position versus last year's position is the presence of a lot of references and and a number of data points and data references to

[00:06:20] Virginia's JLARC study on K-12 education funding. That's a watershed study. It updated a study from 20-plus years ago and really documents the state of Virginia's education funding formulas and how they relate to what local school divisions actually spend.

[00:06:42] Not to spoil the punchline, but it showed what we already knew and what you already We had language in about the legislative program on a number of issues, which is the state's funding formulas severely underestimate the actual cost of education in Virginia, which leaves the bulk of the effort on localities to make up the difference.

[00:07:09] So that's something that we've known for a while. We've been advocating on those issues, but the JLR report really helps to reinforce some of those pieces. So that's the biggest change that you'll see in that joint legislative priority position. As I said that position already referred to some of the some of the recommendations that JLARC was making in terms of eliminating some some changes that were made in the 2000 during the 2009 Great Recession including one you'll be familiar with of course is the support cap the funding cap that that limits the amount of money that the state reimburses

[00:07:49] localities for in terms of support positions, but those those references are all there. It's just that now you've got a lot more references to the JLARC study itself and some of its findings. If we move on, if we scroll down, I think it's the next change you're going to find is in position E under early childhood. This is one of those areas where we can actually delete a position because it's been achieved the the VPI so the Virginia preschool initiative now allows then their state funding available for three-year-olds to participate in VPI so

[00:08:27] that that language can go by the wayside and the other edit in that section is just a little bit of a clarification in terms of your position on state funding for for VPI you scroll down to item F these are mostly eliminating obsolete terms updating updating references making the position a little bit less specific there were some specific references to things like bring your own devices so so things that historically have been topics of conversation but may not necessarily be topics of conversation now so it eliminates those

[00:09:06] but it keeps the positions in which those references could be found okay next also item H is another one of the areas where we've deleted a position because its objective has been achieved there is an easier way to communicate English language learner assessment and and and enrollment data between school divisions so that's that's no longer an issue at the state level we can scroll all the way down to item S which is a special education position one one thing

[00:09:44] One thing that I can say in general that I could have prefaced with is that there are a number of positions in the legislative program, in your 2023 legislative program, that had specific references either to COVID, to COVID-related effects, or had a specific timeframe attached to them, specifically the '22, '23, and '24 graduating years.

[00:10:09] All of those positions, obviously, because we're now going to the '24, '25 school year, All of those positions go by the wayside because that advocacy was for a very specific cohort of students in a very specific time period. This is the first example of that under special education is there was language specifically about the graduating classes of 22, 23, and 24.

[00:10:31] So that language has been removed, but language has been added in its place that the issue is about transition services for for students who age out of of fcps and special education services and the additional language is now references advocacy for additional adult services okay now moving down to item t the next few are the ones where the bulk of the changes can be found so item t again we're deleting some references to obsolete issues testing

[00:11:10] flexibility during COVID, some references that we've made to asking about things like flexible test administration, but that language reappears in other pieces of the conversation.

[00:11:26] What's been added in this section, one is very specific advocacy for native language assessment, so not just for SOLs, but also for other assessments that are used at the the state level, to use content assessments that are actually done in a student's native language as opposed to an English language assessment. Obviously, that would give you a better read on a student's content knowledge as opposed to whether or not it's a comprehension

[00:12:02] issue. So that's one new expansion and one new position there. You previously had advocacy just to study it. But this actually just moves straight into advocating for that. And there are states that do it. California, Texas, I believe Florida do have native language versions of some assessments for their students. So Virginia wouldn't be setting a precedent in terms of doing something like that. A couple of other changes in that position, again related

[00:12:35] to some work that's happening at the state level on SOL assessments and testing redesign. First is about content standards and the language that's reflected here actually is very much similar to language that you used when you commented to the state on their history standards in terms of what you were looking for generically in terms of what an SOL content standard should look like. So that language carries over as a specific advocacy piece.

[00:13:11] And then the second new piece here kind of is a companion piece to native language testing. And that's advocating the use of plain language assessments or what they refer to as universal design when making assessments. Again, the concept is to simplify the language so that You are making sure that you are testing content knowledge as opposed to reading comprehension.

[00:13:37] There are separate assessments that measure reading comprehension and language comprehension. So this concept is when you design a test, it's supposed to get more directly at a student's ability to understand and show their knowledge of content pieces.

[00:13:56] And then the final change in that particular section is just an update in terminology. it has to do with standards of accreditation as you are aware, the Board of Education and the Department of Education are having an extended conversation about some fairly substantial changes to school accountability. One change which is being contemplated is to create a summative rating system at the state level so schools would be rated by a

[00:14:31] single whether it's a letter grade a star you know what what what they might add in is not clear yet but the concept is is to take all the wealth of data in terms of school performance and take it and sum it up in a single measure you had previous advocacy against that this just updates the terminology so that it matches the terminology that we're using at the state level right now we flip over to item you which is the standards of quality position this is where you start to see more references to the JLARC funding study and in fact one one

[00:15:11] thing that can drop out of this is advocacy for the JLARC study we had advocacy basically since the first JLARC study in 2002 to provide updates to it the state has finally gotten to the point where they've done that so that advocacy can fall by the wayside. Another change, the other change in this particular section has to do with your previous position which was advocacy to eliminate the support cap at the state level. JLARC's recommendation was to eliminate not just the support cap but to eliminate some other changes that were

[00:15:48] made during the 2009 Great Recession to help balance the budget at the state level which have stayed in place since that point and have every single year reduce the amount of funding that the state provides to school divisions or it underestimates the amount of funding that's needed at the local level so that's the other that's the other change in that position closely related is the next if we scroll down to item V which is the position under state education funding again a number of these changes are in the first section related to

[00:16:22] kind of the COVID specific positions that we had in place those again are have been rendered obsolete because time time has gone on and then the other changes pick up on specific language and specific structure of JLAC recommendations so you had a position on the linear weighted average linear linear weighted estimator which I promise I will not bore you of the details but suffice to say that the way the formulas at the state level are structured is underestimates the true average cost of things like teacher salaries so this

[00:17:01] advocacy is to move is to move to using true averages at the state level so that they're not underestimating local costs cost of competing is another subject that you've had advocacy for for a number of years that's the additional funding that's provided to Northern Virginia jurisdictions, basically to account for the differential wage market that we face in Northern Virginia versus the rest of the state.

[00:17:28] JLARC actually has a very comprehensive recommendation on that, which is actually a very substantial recommendation, which would be to eliminate the cost of competing factor, but replace it with a labor market index.

[00:17:44] the labor market index would apply across the state, so it wouldn't simply be a northern Virginia conversation about differential wage markets, but based on JLARC's estimations, a substantial amount of new funding would be available to northern Virginia if they were to switch over to a labor market index.

[00:18:03] So that's what this position gets at and why there's more words in there is we want to make sure that if they don't go down the road of the labor market index, that we continue to advocate for them fully restoring the existing cost of competing, which even now isn't fully funded, even though JLARC has found it to be insufficient. The General Assembly doesn't fully fund the cost of competing factor as it is right now, so we want to make sure that we keep that kind of two-level, the two-level reference. Item 22, most of that language has to do with

[00:18:37] study of the local composite index in in large part the jlark study did that but jlark did make a recommendation to move away from the local composite index and move towards something something referred to as a revenue capacity index that's a more direct measure of the ability of a locality to generate revenue as you're aware counties and cities have differential taxing authority so counties and cities have different ability to to raise revenue and obviously your your tax base and your commercial real estate base and other factors would would play into that as

[00:19:14] well but jailbark doesn't make that recommendation so we wanted to make sure that we reference that because you know local composite indexes is a perennial issue for for this board and then the last piece in that actually has to do specifically with uh governor's fund governor's school funding right now governor's school funding is provided on a per pupil basis but is capped at an enrollment of 1800 so we only receive governor's school funding up to 1800 students tj is the only school

[00:19:50] that is above the 1800 student threshold so we in in fairfax we are not receiving the same per pupil allocation at tj because our enrollment exceeds 1800 so this is just specific advocacy to to bring that per pupil funding up to an uncapped number.

[00:20:09] So, to reflect the true enrollment of that school. If we go down to item Y on student health and wellness, there's two relatively minor additions. These are really just kind of embellishments of existing positions, but the first is a specific reference to advocacy for additional community-based programs for both health and mental health issues.

[00:20:39] I know that the number of inpatient beds has been a conversation, so that references that. And then the other change is to your existing position on additional state reimbursement for school lunches and for school breakfast programs, specifically referencing expansion of universal free meals availability.

[00:21:01] As I'm hoping you're aware, the federal government We recently changed the threshold for the community eligibility provision for schools to have free lunch for the entire school population from 40% poverty within the school down to 25% poverty within the school.

[00:21:22] So that opens up the opportunity to include additional schools, but we want to make sure that the state reimbursement in the federal position, that's already covered, but we want to make sure reimbursement that the school divisions are receiving uh keep pace with that so that's what that that new language is intended to do a very minor change under item z student safety and that's just to uh we have traditionally asked for uh additional funding for for safety and security

[00:21:56] issues within our schools uh this is just asking for dedicated and ongoing safe uh funding most of of the funding that we receive for safety and security it's more grants based than anything. So it's potentially competitive grants. We may not receive the funding if we're not selected.

[00:22:15] And the amounts are relatively small compared to the need locally. So this just expands that advocacy out to have a more dedicated and ongoing revenue source for those issues. Under student transportation, you already had a position on addressing barriers to recruiting and retaining bus drivers.

[00:22:39] This just adds specific reference to assistance for the cost of commercial driver's license training. That can be an expensive endeavor to undergo that sort of training. So this just asks for state support to help to reduce those costs.

[00:23:01] Under the teachers and instructional personnel, this is the other area where JLARC did a an extensive study, the month after they released their study on state funding, they released a study on teacher retention, and they had some strategies and some recommendations for ways that the state and localities could go about and try and improve recruitment and retention for teachers.

[00:23:27] As was the case with your funding position, your existing teachers and instructional personnel position already had a lot of what JLARC was recommending, but these changes really are intended to capture some of the specifics that JLR put forward.

[00:23:42] So the first one that they discussed at length in that report was the cost of going through a teacher preparation program, particularly if you're going to go through one through higher education. It's a cost is a significant barrier to potential applicants.

[00:24:00] So that's one point of advocacy. The other is that it's a rather byzantine process, it's rather complicated. So you had existing language about looking at the process itself and this just expands on that to say that when you look at the process you want to look towards simplifying the process and removing steps and potential barriers.

[00:24:26] One that wasn't related to the JLARC study but is related to work that we are doing on the Virginia Literacy Act and kind of retooling that is specific advocacy in a position you already had on what pre-service training should look like in programs.

[00:24:45] And this just added to the provision that you would want to see training that's aligned with the science of reading, which is aligned with the Virginia Literacy Act in those teacher preparation programs. So again, trying to address those pipeline issues.

[00:25:01] And then there are two new issues that are being included here. One is something that I know our staff has struggled with, again, in terms of the complications of the process of licensure, and this is really intending to get at the complication of somebody coming to us from another state, is to make sure that the state is being very explicit about what does and does not count towards licensure reciprocity from other states and And making that process much more clear so that if we have people who are coming in from other states, they know exactly what they need to do in terms of being eligible for a Virginia

[00:25:40] license. And then the final piece is JLARC had an extended discussion over the Virginia Communication and Literacy Assessment, which is one of many assessments that are used to determine the teachers that are on the pathway to being certified.

[00:25:59] Jailer had a number of different approaches, they didn't specify a single one, they talked about potentially eliminating the test altogether, they talked about potentially replacing the test, but then the third option that they proposed was to retain that assessment but then allow for a waiver process.

[00:26:19] So if somebody had fulfilled all of the other requirements and there would be a specific rubric on which you would make these determinations is if they had fulfilled all of the other requirements but were not able to get past the Virginia Communications and Literacy Assessment, there would be the opportunity for a potential waiver from that assessment requirement for those individual candidates.

[00:26:42] And that's where this language fell was within those three options. Staff felt that that was the place to start with the conversation. It may go in a different direction at the state level, but at least we have some reference to the VCLA going into the next General Assembly session.

[00:27:03] That completes all of the changes on the state-level legislative program. You also have a federal-level legislative program, which is less extensive. The issues and obviously our relationship between federal government and school operation and state government and school operation are very different.

[00:27:25] The only real change that we're recommending on the federal position has to do, again, with a COVID-related language. We're retaining the language about dedicating funding for remediation and learning recovery services, but eliminating the references to the COVID component of that.

[00:27:51] That's the only change at the federal level that we're proposing. Ms. Omesh did mention that if you've been anywhere in the vicinity of a newspaper or website, you know that things are going a little sideways at the federal level, to put it in that particular terminology.

[00:28:19] One thing that has been discussed, and this is particular to the House of Representatives, is in their discussions of appropriations for the upcoming federal fiscal year, the House of Representatives in particular has talked about some potentially draconian cuts in federal funding.

[00:28:45] In particular, one number that's been thrown around is a potential cut of 80% of Title I funding. The rationale that's used is that there was COVID funding, and we had that funding that was given to us during COVID, and some of it has remained unspent, although we still have until, I think, fiscal year '25 to spend the COVID funding down.

[00:29:14] But yeah, there are some very specific recommendations that could have some relatively serious consequences. By virtue of the way funding formulas work and how Fairfax kind of relates, we do not get a very large proportion of our budget from federal sources.

[00:29:37] It's a relatively small amount, but those relatively small amounts are important. They subsidize a number of important programs. So any cuts that are being contemplated at the federal level just have a ripple effect in terms of our budget, in terms of potential issues for programming, potential issues for teachers that are supported specifically by federal funds.

[00:30:02] So it's just something that we want to make sure that we're aware of and on top of. There is no crystal ball on the planet that can tell us what things might look like. We are rapidly approaching a second deadline for another potential government shutdown. And that has to do largely with the fact that they have not completed their work on appropriations bills.

[00:30:24] So we just don't know where things might land, but we do want to make sure that we're aware and that we can communicate the concerns that we would have about some of those potential issues.

[00:30:39] So that completes all of the recommended changes. I will tell you that there are a few things that are not in front of you. One is, and this is typically something you don't discuss until you get to your final action at the board table, is your priorities.

[00:30:57] This is a very large document. There's a lot of things in here, and this is important to maintain. But you have, over the last number of years, annually whittled this down into a specific set of state priorities and a specific set of federal priorities. That's something we'll be discussing between now and your final action.

[00:31:15] There's no recommendations about that yet here. And then the second thing that you don't see is that I'm working with communications on kind of updating the format of the legislative program a little bit. Just readability issues, making sure that it's a document that's user friendly, adding in some features, because we know most people are going to refer to this on the website, so including a little bit more in the way of features that allow for easier navigation.

[00:31:49] And then right now your legislative program has like two sentence reference to the FCPS strategic plan, which basically says we're working on it, because that was the state that we were in when when you adopted the 23 program obviously that's changed so we're going to want to incorporate some information from the strategic plan into the document so that's going to change the formatting of it a little bit as well but what just wanted to make you aware that those those two things were were in progress and on their way and you'll see them as we we move towards

[00:32:23] new business and final action all right thank you mr. Malloy and I know there was some talk of you know that there's been this letter about the title one piece that we need some data for from staff that was in the works I guess with the team before and has you know potentially still ongoing so I don't know if you had any updates on that or no updates on the letter there was a draft letter that referred specifically to IDEA it referred to the cuts and the the you know the impact that the cuts may have on FCPS but also reference

[00:33:01] specifically IDEA funding which is something that's been underfunded since since 1975, so that's a long ongoing priority of this board. - Okay, I'll pick that up in my time, but we have Mr. Frisch followed by Ms. Porter Sanders.

[00:33:20] - Thank you, and thank you Ms. Cohen and Ms. Omeish and Mr. Malloy for pulling this all together rather quickly. Along the lines of the comments about the strategic plan, you know, and this is something we talked about, is seeing each of these items connected to the strategic plan in a meaningful way.

[00:33:38] So I'll be looking forward to seeing that. Additionally, if we could look at, I guess it's section Z, Z11 in the actual, I guess quote unquote red line version.

[00:33:59] - Page 17? - That's right. Or actually it's the next page because it's number 11. - Okay. - It says the Fairfax County School Board opposes requiring the designation of officials to carry concealed handguns in schools. I presume what that means is that we oppose allowing people to carry weapons concealed on school grounds, right?

[00:34:21] It's that, but it's also the issue of in some states they have required there to be some teachers or other personnel. There are either requirements or allowances for them, for those personnel to be armed.

[00:34:39] So I think it's a little bit broader than that. We're against that. And the second question I have along those same lines, when we were adjusting our policy to prohibit firearms in non-instructional facilities one thing that we learned is that there are carve-outs in the prohibitions on school property about carrying guns and that people can bring guns in their cars onto school property if they're legally allowed to own the gun and that the car does not have to remain locked legislation to that end has been rejected before so i'll be when we do next steps i'll be bringing

[00:35:15] some of this up to specifically address that. Because even we went as far as we could with the new law changes, but there's some gaps that still need to be fixed. Finally, four, let's go to Section J, FOIA. So I think we need to include something in here specifically, echoing, specifically about the funding of the process. What is happening? I have a lot of resonance today.

[00:35:53] If we could, can we get some of my time back, and I'm going to use this microphone. Yeah, we're going to do three minutes, colleagues, so we'll just add a minute to your time. I'm not even watching the meeting on my computer.

[00:36:13] So I would like to see something in the FOIA section about, you know, accompanying changes with funding to pay for changes as they expand what we have to follow with FOIA.

[00:36:30] I also think that maybe something in here would be warranted about the equal application of FOIA laws across different levels of government. So if the state legislature is intent on us having a more expansive requirement for Freedom of Information Act, they should fall under the same purview so they can see what it's like in practice. And then finally, many school boards have five members. Some of us have more than that. And we all have the same requirement that two members meeting, more than two members meeting is a public meeting. I think that that should be

[00:37:07] put on a sliding scale of sorts based on the size of the board. And, you know, three or four people from a 12-person board, three or four people from a nine-person board, I think is completely reasonable you know and I think it would save large government bodies significant time and communicating information and working together that's it for me thank you so just just to your points mr. Frisch on the latter one the item eight in that section is specifically about that it's specifically about adjusting the threshold for open meetings based on the size of a board so there's we you

[00:37:46] already have specific advocacy about that and there have been legislation or or at least discussions about FOIA and other things in the last number of years and it's something we'll continue to pursue, but that last position that's intended to cover, I think, exactly what you're describing, and I'm happy to work with you.

[00:38:07] Items one, two, and five all kind of have a cost component to 'em, but if it's not explicit enough, we can make adjustments for sure. - And then the third part would be making sure that future considerations are made to bring all levels government under the same requirements all right thank you Miss Corbett Sanders followed by Ms. McLaughlin thank you and I'm glad to follow mr. Frisch I only have a couple of things I'd like to talk about one is under the AB for teachers and teacher retention if you go to your main slide one thing I think we

[00:38:46] might want to do is specifically address the I teach situation which the I teach as you know got adopted but they did not have the intentionality necessary to ensure that our teachers that get certified by the state are actually adequately prepared especially to teach our students with disabilities so I I know that the state is addressed I mean there's not her time please just stop

[00:39:22] her timer thank you yeah sorry I know you're fine we had a pause the the state is was looking at addressing that there's there they've been every board meeting in the last I think the last two or three board meetings they've made references to adjustments that will need to be made for I teach I'll work with staff to figure out exactly what sort of language we might want to add into that but that is something that's ongoing it's really in more in the purview of the board and Department of Education than of the General Assembly but it's certainly something that we can we can reference I actually think it is within

[00:40:00] I mean if the General Assembly can put obligations on us as a local governing body to make sure that we appropriately prepare our teachers and our students I think that the state body can also be held accountable for the same thing and I teach is a really disappointing example of where we did not as a state prioritize what should have been in I teach so I would appreciate something in there and then secondly when we get to the food services and this is really the

[00:40:37] federal level of dropping from 40% to 25% I think we also have to address that or disaggregate food service provision from our staffing formula because what What we know is that where food insecurity may be something that is not necessarily fully understood as to who is insecure for meals, we also know that we can't then automatically

[00:41:10] go into a staffing formula that will add additional costs. So if we could have some very clear language on disaggregating the two. And then I do think I very much appreciate Mr. Frisch raising Z-11 and would hope that we would actually modify Z-11 to be much more clear that it's non-law enforcement personnel not having guns or concealed, yeah.

[00:41:48] It does. But the problem is you can have an undercover person who would have it concealed. We're looking for a response.

[00:42:03] So to both points, to the first, JLARC actually has some recommendations on moving away from the use of free and reduced lunch as a measure of poverty. They had recommendations for changing that to a different metric, because as you're aware, once a school becomes a community eligibility provision school, they no longer collect free and reduced lunch data.

[00:42:30] So in some cases in Virginia, there are schools that are still receiving state funding based on free and reduced lunch numbers from a number of years ago, because that's the last date that's available for those schools. So JLIC had some specific recommendations, and we can turn that into a position for you.

[00:42:49] On the second, a relatively straightforward way to address that would simply just be to add the term non-law enforcement in front of officials, and that would clarify that position so we can make that change as well thank you ms mclaughlin followed by ms tolan so um a number of my colleagues know that um i'm passionate about making sure that we continue to provide the highest quality of food we can for our students michael and one of the things that we learned

[00:43:24] during covid from our cfo and the superintendent at the time was that about 50 of our operating costs for um our food nutritional services and the meals we provide our students comes from paid meals so can you um let me know because this advocacy is so important has dr reid's team worked with you on this type of language and how that might impact us because it's one thing to advocate for something

[00:44:00] that we know in theory is so important which is to increase access to food for for our students but i also want to make sure that we don't then um have an unintended effect on recognizing that at least in fairfax county the way that we have the most competitive wages and benefits for our food service workers and the highest quality food possible is the model on the paid meals because we can't do it by the federal government's reimbursement rate it's just not possible so are

[00:44:34] Are those conversations happening before we step out and start advocating for something at the state level? So I think the short answer is that the way your position is structured is that it's predicated on the state replacing the revenues. So the advocacy would be, and I think you're contemplating a scenario where the state were to require school divisions to provide free meals.

[00:45:04] There was the legislation last year that would have required all school divisions to provide free meals to all students Obviously that does have a fiscal component right because you have to replace the revenue that's coming into local school divisions based on paid meals So any advocacy on a program like that would be specifically predicated on the replacement of that revenue So I mean we have specific numbers in terms of what the overall revenues are to food and nutrition services But it would really depend on what the scope of the proposal would be as to how much it would cost

[00:45:43] FCPS and again our advocacy would be not to go down that road unless that revenue was specifically replaced Thank You mr. Malloy We did run the numbers when the secretary Vilsack visited Annandale Terrace Elementary School and the move from the 25 from the 40% and above to 25% and above meant that we had close to 40 of our schools now eligible that weren't previously eligible.

[00:46:11] However, Ms. Burden's staff also calculated the cost to the division, which is approximately $7.1 million, which we shared with Secretary Vilsack, who shared that the money was federally appropriated but sitting in Congress and hasn't been acted on. So, at this point, it would be a $7.1 million ask of our division to pick up all those schools for free lunch.

[00:46:35] Ms. Burden, do you want to comment further on that? Well, that's halfway correct. There you go. That was good. The $7 million impact is the impact on the school operating fund.

[00:46:47] The impact on food services is $5 million because those, when the federal government reimburses us for the CEP schools, they reimburse us at, even though 100% eat free, they reimburse us at something less than that, usually in the 80% range, which basically means we're eating the other 20% because they're not reimbursing us for 100%, even though they said 100% of these kids at this school can eat free.

[00:47:18] $7 million is the impact on the operating fund because that also changes that 40 schools' free and reduced percentage. So now they jump into a higher tier to get more classroom teachers.

[00:47:36] So it's $7 million on the operating side, $5 million on food services. So annually, it's about a $12 million impact between the two funds.

[00:47:47] So, again, to my colleagues, I think if I, looking at this, we need to really be very clear on what our advocacy is going to be, because if the General Assembly goes and makes some changes, and then suddenly we lose the ability to still have students pay who are not identified, then, I mean, Ms. Burden, am I correct?

[00:48:21] that the biggest challenge is even if we get 100% of federal compensation, that does not help the self-sustaining fund of food nutritional services because we do have higher costs for our employees and the food quality we serve. Well, with volume, things are easier. And just to give you some perspective, pre-COVID, post-COVID, we serve about 110,000 meals per day. During the free period,

[00:48:54] we were serving 160,000 meals per day. So you have 50,000 more kids eating, of which you're getting 50,000 more reimbursements for. That volume makes the expenditure side of the house a little easier to address respectfully that is not the information we got during covid the reason this school board had to give a 10 million dollar bailout to the food nutritional services and that was on top of fns bleeding out all of their

[00:49:32] reserves that loudoun county and prince william did not go through it was my understanding because the federal government even saying we're going to cover everything it doesn't and now as you just told us we're we'd be at a 12 million dollar commitment and and i will also add that my colleagues you may remember we heard from our families we heard from our kids that the portion and the quality of the food being served during covid was something i hope we never ever see happen again in this school division or anywhere else. So, Dr. Reed, I know that my time is up,

[00:50:12] but I will tell you this is not a simple process, and I feel like I've gotten some simple answers here, and I care and worry about the kids, and I don't think we have all the calculations we need. Well, if I could explain one of the things that you said, you know, a lot of it has to do with the point in time in which we knew something, and at the time that we asked the school operating fund to supplement was during the very first of the very three or four months of COVID when a decision was made to provide continuity of salary for those food services employees. And looking at the numbers then at that point in time, we knew we were going to be in trouble. And so we asked

[00:50:52] for a supplement. Three months later, the federal government said that it was all free for everybody and we began generating fund balance so that now we have a very healthy fund balance as a result of that. But we didn't know that at the time that we proposed the supplement to address the continuity of salaries.

[00:51:13] I know exactly what I was told about how we fund that program, number one. And number two, it doesn't excuse the fact that the quality of the food we serve for those kids for the entire time during COVID is well beyond what Ms. Burden just said, and the food never improved. So something was not happening for those kids to get quality food.

[00:51:32] If everyone gets the chance to speak, we'll have the chance for go-backs. Just one other thing I wanted to add to this conversation is something else to remember, and this is not specific to the food and nutrition piece of this. The board has a general standing position opposing unfunded mandates from both the state level and the federal level.

[00:51:55] That obviously would come into play in any conversation that we had about food and nutrition services. If there was a mandate that came down that you provide free meals to everybody, if there was a mandate that came down that didn't provide the specific funding for it, there are other places in the legislative program that would allow us to address that pretty directly.

[00:52:17] So I just wanted to remind you that there's that, you know, we get into very specific issue areas but then there are some general positions that are applicable across domains and that's one of them that about the unfunded mandates all right miss Tolan followed by dr. Anderson thank you a huge thank you to you mr. Malloy and our meeting managers today for stepping up and at the very last minute I'm preparing for today just for board members to know that we have not changed even though we have moved this up we haven't changed the the new

[00:52:54] business date or the final action date. So we all have plenty of time from today forward to have discussions around this on topic and get questions answered. I do want to make a comment on section I which is the sustainability environment section. You know we've done a pretty good job I think of keeping it pretty broad in our descriptions to kind of cover you know anything we're trying to do with our design and construction work and facilities and maintenance but I'm with the new chief it looks like you've already been coordinating with her but I do want to just say you know there have been some

[00:53:30] recent changes around solar panel installations etc so if you can please just make sure to check in one more time maybe with Jana Szymanski to make sure that we're covering everything that would be great I do I'm happy to follow Miss McLaughlin I was one super super excited when I heard the thresholds for CEP were changing because that impacts a number of my schools however when I was informed by Dr. Reed that that came with no money it was a little bit less exciting so I'm happy to see that we have you know something around that in

[00:54:05] both our federal legislation and in our state legislation again we don't need unfunded mandates or you know how many people think they're getting free lunch and then we get zero dollars you know to support it so appreciate the you know research and the I'm looking into the details on that. One thing I was curious about maybe talking about adding in or looking into and I'm not sure if it would follow under college and workforce readiness or educational technology.

[00:54:37] Ms. Pekarski and I have a forum discussion and we're looking at perhaps having with the board around AI and implementation of AI and planning for AI within the school district and this certainly is an issue well beyond Fairfax County so I'm just curious if it might make sense to have something in our you know legislative agenda that have the state look at some best practices some research some guidance to school districts around that

[00:55:11] topic certainly something that I can discuss with with our CIO at the state level they actually the The governor did issue an executive order regarding AI. I don't know if we've done an analysis in terms of what it does and does not restrict or what it does and does not kind of incentivize in terms of how school divisions make use, but there were some references to education in that.

[00:55:38] And then there were some kind of secondary requirements that the department and board of education look at some guidelines in terms of AI and how it interfaces with education. So it's certainly something that's being discussed at the state level, but I do think it would make sense to have a general statement and I can work with staff on that.

[00:55:59] - Okay, that'd be great, thank you. And just with my last few seconds, certainly, certainly support all of everything you've added in here based on that JLARC study. Thank you very much. - Thank you, Ms. Tolan. Dr. Anderson, followed by Ms. Marin.

[00:56:16] - Thank you, and thank you for this information. Just kind of a point as what you've noted on page one, which is a $6.6 billion that was spent across the Commonwealth in 2021.

[00:56:32] Do we know what FCPS spent above the SOQs in 21? So I actually can answer at least part of that is that the $6.6 billion is an aggregate number that was provided by JLARC. And JLARC did not provide division by division breakouts of what that number entails.

[00:56:53] It's possible that we could contact JLARC to see if they have, that they didn't provide a spreadsheet or a breakdown of how that works. What we do know, though, is we do know how much FCPS spends above what's referred to as required local effort.

[00:57:10] That's about $1.1 billion, I think, in January of '23. So the county was spending $1.1 billion above and beyond what was required by the SOQs. So it may not be an apples to apples comparison, but at least it's kind of the same concept in terms of what JLARC was measuring and in terms of what the required local effort shortfalls are.

[00:57:36] Thank you. I appreciate that. I want to speak to the FOIA issue that is on page 7, and maybe I missed it, but I thought we had talked about stressing the cost to the divisions with the new expanded FOIA and the lowered cost for requesters.

[00:57:57] I don't know if I see language that speaks to that increased burden on the divisions to procure materials with the current rate. So there's nothing specific to that that particular change, but again, and I think items 1 2 and 5 They both have references to cost But I think just based on your and mr. Frisch's comments We may want to go back and revisit and have a little bit more explicit language in terms of the increasing cost of FOIA compliance. Yes, thank you. I think that would be a great standalone component The other piece is the size, the meeting size.

[00:58:38] I think Ms. Fish also spoke to that. I would love for that language to be stronger as well. Talking about unfunded mandates, I know that you've given some examples as to what some of those are. It would be great if some of those examples were embedded because it's much easier.

[00:58:57] Because this document, as we've talked about, is a tool of communication from us to our representatives. So is there any way to highlight some of those unfunded mandates that we have just talked about just a little while ago?

[00:59:13] Just as examples. So I mean I certainly can work with communications and I think also with financial services because I think there were some sections in the financial services in the budget document itself that have it's not so much a catalog but there are listings of unfunded mandates.

[00:59:31] Again leveraging the fact that it's an electronic document we might be able to include some you know for specific examples see this one one reason that we don't have more in the way of specific examples or more in the way of advocacy language this is already a long document this is already 20 some pages the more we add in that's not specifically specifically the position you're taking and more the rationale for why you're taking the position then you balloon into not to name names but the Virginia School Boards Association's legislative program which is over 100 pages long, and we already have concerns that this document is too long to begin with.

[01:00:10] That doesn't mean that we can't do it, and I think there are some innovative ways that we can, but that's just by way of explanation of why we don't have more of that embedded in the document to begin with. Sure. I just think that it makes sense to communicate very specifically to our representatives what is it that we're talking about, because we don't want them to go searching for the data or the information.

[01:00:32] We want it to be readily available. The other thing that I don't know if I saw here, so please excuse me, the security section. I know we are trying to do some things with safety and security, not cyber security, which is very clear here. Is that outlined in terms of needing additional supports for that?

[01:00:51] Yeah, if you refer to Section Z under student safety on page 17, item 1, item 4, in particular, there's also some new references. if I remember correctly, on the need for additional funding for the new wrap-back program at the state level, which is going to allow us to get kind of real-time information about, you know, arrests or other employee misconduct, especially if they're, you know, within the division or across divisions.

[01:01:28] So there's specific advocacy in there for dedicated funding on that as well. So we have it in a few different places, and it's attached to kind of some specific issues and items. Thank you. One of the things that I also appreciated was the very pointed language regarding the LCI and the star ratings.

[01:01:47] Is there room for us to consider communicating that we also want for maybe some boundaries or parameters to be put in place for other institutions that use star ratings to evaluate our schools, which impact our student enrollment, such as great schools or niche.com? Is there space for us to ask that there be requirements that their evaluations be more comprehensive? So I'm looking for it, but I am fairly certain that you do have

[01:02:21] reference to two great schools in it may actually be under your federal it may be under your federal position but this is an issue that's come up in in prior years the challenges is is that it's it's an issue of regulating private companies and so there's a legislation has been introduced on this on this legislation has been introduced on this particular issue but it typically falls by the wayside because it runs into the issue of you're trying to regulate private entities

[01:02:58] and how they make use of data that's publicly available. That data use is very dangerous. The other thing that I want to add here is I appreciate the changes that I think you've talked about during my time with you as to this document that you'll be working with communications because I think we do need to make this a little bit more user-friendly because as it stands, it's just cumbersome, and there's some space to make some of those improvements.

[01:03:28] Thank you. All right, Ms. Marin, followed by Ms. Cohen. Yeah, I actually, that piqued my interest, too, about the re-combination of our data by third parties.

[01:03:43] Even just this weekend, I saw another comment on a local, you know, social media group. You know, I heard this about this school, and, you know, these ratings are really damaging, I think. So there was legislation introduced a few sessions ago that died, and I was just digging for it because I had advocated on that, but perhaps that could be, you know, excavated.

[01:04:03] The other thing I wanted to ask about, Mr. Malloy, was is there any language in here about background checks to the extent of can we support that the Department of Labor take this on? You know, just like the wrap-back program is something we support, but it would be, you know, run by the FBI and other law enforcement.

[01:04:24] You know, this is one of those things that, yes, we do employee background checks, but don't other industries in the state also do background checks? And, you know, given that we have 40,000 staff members, this is a pretty big burden, not to mention all the security things that we are trying to do.

[01:04:40] so you know is there any of any legs to try and say hey these are labor issues these are not education issues so if you if you look I think it's on page 19 under the teachers and instructional personnel you do have a general position asking for additional state funding resources and policies to facilitate and accelerate the process of conducting employee background checks so there is there is there's existing language that I think would be on point but obviously it could be made more more specific because it doesn't reference Department of Labor I think one issue that is to historically come up is the

[01:05:19] speed at which we receive background checks back from state police now that's probably going to change because as part of the whole reorganization of state police to be able to accommodate the rat back system they're changing over there and the reason it's taking as long as it is is the state is completely overhauling its systems and processes that hopefully will help to expedite the process of us receiving background check information back.

[01:05:50] So that at least is in part in progress, but it's historically been an issue that one of our bottlenecks is waiting for the state to get back to us as to their components of the -- Well, thank you for sharing that. I mean, I understand it, but it's also a workaround to a problem that's not ours.

[01:06:06] you know just thinking about the the comments I hear from residents about the need for more security is You know as the SRO the only thing that we can advocate for or can you know? What about making the case for additional, you know funds for personnel to use as we see fit or facilities Investments if you could just jog my memory if that's mentioned in here. Yeah, if under under

[01:06:31] Student safety let's see so item two that that's specifically SROs, but it also includes language about additional resources for Additional safety and security personnel in elementary schools not specifically referencing SROs So there is there is advocacy there There also is advocacy If you look at item 12 That that's specifically about the mandate to place SROs in all school. This is saying that locality should retain the

[01:07:10] Flexibility to do so and then and then I think just the general advocacy under item one item four would Would address additional personnel related to safety and and and also things like security vestibules and other things So thank you, and you know these are fine general statements I see that there's really not much of an update.

[01:07:30] So can you help us by providing the talking points we're going to need to make the case? You know, whether that's it's going to cost X amount of dollars to do certain upgrades or it would be X amount of dollars to do personnel because we had this in there and nothing much was able to get accomplished from that.

[01:07:46] So, you know, what are we going to do this time around that's going to be different? So that would be helpful. Yeah, I can work with staff for sure. Thank you. All right, Ms. Cohen followed by Ms. Kuzgamaro.

[01:07:58] Thanks very much. And thank you to my colleagues for everybody making time. I know in this crazy time to be able to meet with Michael. And I was able to join some of those meetings as well. So thanks very much for that. Just a couple of notes. A big one is Stella and I just had the opportunity to go down for an early education, early child care meeting that happened where I know it's going to shock you all, but it turns out the Chamber of Commerce actually believes now that if we could get our kids in preschool maybe we could do better in the workforce so um so just

[01:08:36] a note to all of us is that definitely getting the chamber they they had a huge presentation they want to be partners in pushing for money um in the budget so using our relationships that we have here to further those i think would be super helpful um another one about um kind of speaking to what Melanie was about dedicated and ongoing support for safety and security I was curious what kind of language Prince William Arlington the folks who are interested in potentially using the evolved system and or who are some of them already using um is there anything that we can no pun

[01:09:12] intended kind of go to school off their specific legislative language around getting you know budget dollars for those kinds of systems are you aware of any of that that's something we could research okay um another i was just going to mention the pipeline where we specifically mentioned about what we would like to be added in um we've talked i think at length as a board about sped training and ell training being added into the teacher pipeline um so the training

[01:09:44] process so I would love specific mention of that another is I I just wanted to go back and I may well have misunderstood it but I felt like there was language in there that was added that was essentially saying that we we didn't want folks to have to pass their prices praxis praxis exam to get licensed am I misunderstanding that no you're you're actually not misunderstanding that there was an extended discussion in the JLARC study about that particular assessment and whether

[01:10:22] or not, because apparently that assessment or the specific assessment, the Virginia communications and literacy assessment is relatively specific to Virginia. There aren't other states that use it. And they, in JLARC's view, when going through their analysis of the teacher pipeline, That was a hurdle for teachers to have to get past that wasn't the same as hurdles in other states.

[01:10:48] It's something that Virginia does that's different than most other states. They may use another assessment. And I think that's why JLARC didn't -- had multiple recommendations, eliminate it, replace it with another test that's more relevant, or allow for a waiver process.

[01:11:04] So you retain the test, but you allow for a waiver process. conversations with staff the waiver process seemed like the the way to go because the vast majority of candidates would pass but then it would allow for on an individualized basis to look at the totality of somebody's somebody's qualifications and if that's the only issue that's keeping them from moving forward perhaps to allow that there to be a waiver put in place for that but that's the that's the advocacy and again it's rooted in the jailer conversation yeah i guess i just as only one school member just worry a little bit about that

[01:11:42] i think we would want it just can be so specific with bill language we would want our staff to be able to weigh in um on specifically if we were going to support because i can absolutely see a world where someone puts a bill in essentially saying we are going to just you know waive this test all together and that really may not be in the best interest of our students in our school system and so i guess i'm a little nervous just the 12 of us about i don't know how prescriptive that language needs to be in in the in the program or if it's more about conversations going forward

[01:12:18] as you find individual bills that will be introduced um and you know another question last question i guess that i had um the ai piece was that a jlark study that you were referring to Like has he or it's just the executive order? Just the executive order. That's the only thing that's been done specifically about AI Nobody's really done a specific study about it yet I wondered if we might be able to add to advocate for a JLARC study a JLARC, you know, slash DOE how are just sending it to DOE, but some sort of study

[01:12:54] Around AI and and public education. Yeah I think as I mentioned I'll certainly work with the CIO's office and we'll come up with some language that we can bring them back to you all thanks so much miss keys gamara thank you get my calendar on i mean my um camera all right i really appreciate um my client my clients i'm sorry i made a job

[01:13:25] my colleagues comments um i am hoping uh mr mayor let me start with a question uh do you think there's a benefit to the school board um narrowing down their focus to perhaps the top three in our cover sheet explaining priorities yes so as I mentioned before one thing that's not reflected in this document that will be part of your final action agenda item will be a specific for lack of a better term one pager which identifies the

[01:14:02] board's priorities both on the state side and on the federal side I can tell you just based on conversations that I've had with board members on issues that the state priorities would be unsurprisingly would be related to funding would be related to teacher workforce issues would be related to school security possibly one or two others but those would be the big kind of the big topics that would fall under under that but yes that will definitely be part of the final agenda and the final document that you vote on okay

[01:14:36] Because in the conversations that I've had, certainly there's constantly been a request for that. I'd also like to add how we deal with the LCI. I think it's toward the end of the document as possibly one of those priorities.

[01:14:54] But certainly there's probably an overall heading of funding. But the LCI, I think, has been harming us for quite some time. And I'm wondering if that can be included in the priorities as well.

[01:15:12] And then, of course, my other concern would be universal pre-K. And I think Ms. Cohen just spoke to that. So, other than that, I appreciate the comments that my colleagues have given.

[01:15:28] But I didn't hear a lot of comments with respect to making sure these are in our top priorities. Because I know other legislators have been asking me for that. And so, I was hoping we could speak to that. Thank you.

[01:15:45] Thank you, and I agree with many of the points my colleagues have made, so I don't want to repeat some of them, but I do want to lift up something I think Ms. Marin said that when we have specific, when we have sort of more generic things, especially that have been in here year after year, but maybe the specific asks tied to those generic things have changed, that we do have some sort of talking points document on that, and so one of the things I wanted to lift up, and I think it's also a follow-up with what Ms. Marin was saying around security right like I know you mentioned we talk about SRO funding we talk about maybe

[01:16:23] school security staff for elementary schools but I'm wondering if there's a place to talk about funding for the staff it takes to maintain our security measures so for example our cyber security measures that we're doing the increased HR background checks that we're doing you know things that we have to anticipate in terms of cyber attacks and phishing attacks and things like that are we talking I mean those to me all fall within security do we have a space to talk about that specifically we we actually in in your existing legislative program you do have positions under instructional technology related specifically to the cost of cyber security you have position you have

[01:17:03] language specifically related to the cost of the background checks and the wrap-back program and everything under teachers instructional personnel so they're not under the school security position but they're their specific advocacy within other within the specific sections that deal with those topics. I do think there's space to have something in the school security section I mean because those are specific topics right like I'm thinking more broadly those are examples I'm giving of things that I know currently we've had to increase deal with school security right cyber security and our background checks but there may be other things that we need I mean I know for example even

[01:17:40] tracking down some more of these social media threats that you know that takes a lot of time and effort so I'm just wondering if there's something specific like more generic language you can put in around SRO's elementary school staff but also security personnel to address the the gamut of security needs we need as we've been looking at piloting weapons detection or even looking at some drug prevention programs I think those all sort of fall into I think it's important to lift it up within security itself is why I wanted to bring that up So if you look on page 17 under items Z1 and Z2, kind of the first position talks specifically

[01:18:16] about a supportive provision of and funding for safe and secure learning environments, securing physical facilities, addressing student mental health and wellness, educating students regarding safety internet and other instructional technologies, so there's -- and then it flows into the next position which is specifically about SROs.

[01:18:34] So I think there's space there that if that's not specific enough, if there's other language you need to add, that it would fit there. But it already, some of what you're talking about, the evolved system and the weapons detection or whatever, that I think would be covered under the securing physical facilities.

[01:18:50] I just think I want to lift up, I think to our state funders, what I'm trying to lift up the idea is that keeping schools safe and secure is much more complex in some ways. And that's the concept I'm trying to lift up, that there's a lot of complexity to it beyond SROs, beyond physical security. I mean, cybersecurity attacks, for example, are on the rise against school systems, and phishing attacks. These are all sort of, and I'm not sure how well that's reflected. That's the concept I'd like to lift up, and I know different pieces of it are there. So that's one thought that I had. And I don't know, when we talk about FOIA, I agree with my colleagues in terms of really flagging the increased cost and time that these FOIA requests take. But are we talking about whether we're asking

[01:19:30] for any updates in FOIA laws to take into account new reforms of communicating because it doesn't seem clear in terms of emails and text messages whether our FOIA laws have been looked at and revised in terms of the realities of that item j2 I think speaks to that because it speaks to electronic communication social media in terms of communications I mean that that's that's actually language has been in the legislative program for a a while. So it may not be completely state-of-the-art, but I did get a number of recommendations back from the CIO's office. And I guess I read that more in terms of, I did see J2, but I read

[01:20:08] that more in terms of flexibility for reporting timelines because there's so much more email and text messaging out there as opposed to looking at how FOIA interacts with those newer, not new any more methods of communication because i don't know when if the foyer required laws themselves are ever looked at to say how does open meeting requirements apply for email chains and text chains that's more what i was looking at than actually the cost of gathering that data okay you know so i just don't i know we've had conversations about how does foia and sunshine laws apply to different forms of communication but i wonder if there's space for us to ask the

[01:20:47] state to really look at that given how especially with covid and virtual workplaces how our communication standards and practices have changed so that's just a thought that I had and then I agree with miss Cohen I want to make sure there is special education English language learner and universal design of learning training required for both general education teachers and admins so I think that's an important piece and I think the state had something around that a few years ago but I don't remember for sure so I guess I guess two things. One is that the state did, when the state adopted most of the JLARC

[01:21:24] recommendations from their 2021, I think it was. Yeah, I may have the date wrong, but they did an extensive special education study and the General Assembly essentially took the recommendation section and turned it into a bill. So they put most of the recommendations into practice and one of the requirements was pre-service training and also, you also jogged my memory, It's something that I wanted to respond to Ms. Cohen on in terms of pre-service training.

[01:21:53] You already have in under item AB, you already have advocacy for specific training for pre-service teachers on classroom and behavioral management, the needs of students receiving special education services and of English learners.

[01:22:09] So there's already existing advocacy that you have within one of your positions for that kind of pre-service training. training and I have one more but I'll need to go back I know my time is up so thank you thank you and just a reminder to colleagues we have less than five minutes left and we still have a couple of folks and go back so anyways so Ms.

[01:22:28] Jarna Koufax followed by Ms. Cohen thank you and thank you Mr. Malloy for this always excellent work I do want to just say I really appreciate the synopsis I think it's an excellent synopsis about J Lark at the beginning and what was done and you know these are things we've known for a long time JLARC put them back out there again you put them in a nice distinct format right at the front of the document I think that's important I do have a question on page two thoughts

[01:23:03] behind the okay in the strikeout version thoughts behind taking out in imposing unfunded mandates I see the language but I do think there could still be some room to add unfunded mandates in there because that has happened a lot I just like your thinking on that it was the third bullet there yeah I'm trying to remember if that got moved elsewhere I didn't see it I mean I read it over a

[01:23:36] couple times actually but I didn't see it yeah you're you're correct I do not see that maybe we could just add it at that sentence you know funding divert funding from K through and toward non-public options or impose unfunded mandates on localities yeah so in since that's part of the joint position all it's a conversation that we'll have to have with the Board of Supervisors in terms of what you know what what they what they want to retain but that's certainly something that we can recommend to them okay colleagues are you

[01:24:13] okay with that okay all right thank you for that and then I guess this is kind of ancillary to this document but it came up in context so dr reed what is your intent right now i don't think i understand the intent right now about the 25 are we mandated to do it are we going to do it where where are we seems like some of my colleagues you're talking about the food food food you know we're not mandated to do it um however it could become so i think miss burden did share

[01:24:48] that the state could call that out as a requirement, in which case we would still be really at that $12 million delta. I think it's the right thing to do, and I would hope that our Commonwealth would support making sure that we don't have food insecurities and that our students are well-fed, because we know that's going to contribute to their ability to achieve in the classroom.

[01:25:12] Okay. Thank you for that. And then, Mr. Malloy, your portion of it, you said there may be other ways that factors that will go into figuring out the FRM status. So, can you share any of that with us?

[01:25:29] Yeah. So, I don't have the details at my fingertips, but JLARC did have a relatively extended discussion about replacing the use of free and reduced meals as a measure of student poverty and things like the at-risk add-on so in some of our existing funding streams they had a replacement in mind and I as I said off the top of my head I can't remember what it was but JLARC specifically advocated to replace the use of free and reduced meals as as that metric with with with an alternative and you know just based on the discussion here that's something that we

[01:26:05] can we can bring to the to the board table for you to add yeah I I think I I would support that because I do think it's a little bit simplified and doesn't always give a clear picture of what the school is, of what the school is seeing.

[01:26:24] And thank you again, Mr. Millon. Thank you, and apologies. I was thinking the meeting managers are next, but it's actually me. So just a few things in terms of what to elevate the priorities. I do want to thank you for catching the SOL piece and just speaking to the importance of that.

[01:26:44] I still can't believe that, you know, our accreditation is based on our students' performance. Our students' performance is based on, to the state, how they do on the SOLs. And we have kids taking exams that are not even in a language they can understand. So even if they're geniuses in math and in science and in, you know, history, they still won't be able to show that because they won't even understand the questions that are being asked.

[01:27:11] So I would like to continue elevating that and pushing for that to be on our priority list. I think the fact that other states have done it already shows that we're a little behind in that place. And I'm hopeful that we can really show the best of what our school is able to offer.

[01:27:27] And we owe it to these kids to let them prove what they're capable of. Not to say that the test is the metric, but at least in the ways that our state recognizes. I also wanted to bring up the school meals piece. I know how passionately folks have felt about that and how much it's impacted our families after we lost the federal funding.

[01:27:49] So I would be an advocate as well. I know it's in the program, but for it to be considered a priority, just so that it's, you know, not out of people's minds as we move away from COVID and people continue to be impacted by poverty and by all kinds of challenges that make it difficult without these school meals.

[01:28:08] And we all know when kids show up hungry, they're definitely not thinking about academics. So those would be two pieces that I'd like us to push up. And then the final one is related to the Title I package, specifically given the stark reality of the conversations going on in Congress.

[01:28:25] I think it sounds to me that our federal elected officials don't even know what Title I's about, thinking that it's, you know, conflating it with COVID money and thinking that it's the same thing. We don't need it anymore and all that. So despite it being a decades-long program. So I do want to just bring up again the conversation around getting the right data.

[01:28:48] Ms. Burden, I don't know, not putting you on the spot right now, hopefully, but if there's anything you can comment to the problem of potentially losing 80% or even just less than 80% of that money, what that would look like in terms of what we would no longer be able to do that we're currently doing in schools. Can you restate that? I'm not sure what your question is. Yeah, so we're looking at potential cuts to Title I on the federal level, up to even 80%, which is in conversation. That's been the extreme of it, but nonetheless. So I just, I guess I wanted, I'm asking you to make it more

[01:29:27] real and concrete for people, like what that actually would look like in our schools. So I can actually help with that. I do have some specific numbers if that's helpful. In part, I think the ANSWER IS ALSO AN INSTRUCTIONAL, IT'S NOT AS MUCH, IT'S FUNDING BUT IT'S ALSO INSTRUCTIONAL IMPACTS. FAIRFACS IN FY24 IS SCHEDULED TO RECEIVE ABOUT $35 MILLION IN TITLE I FUNDING.

[01:29:54] THAT SUPPORTS 267 POSITIONS IN OUR SCHOOLS, EVERYTHING FROM TEACHERS, SOCIAL WORKERS, LIAISONS, INSTRUCTIONAL COACHES, INTERVENTION TEACHERS. SO THAT FUNDING SUPPORTS THOSE SPECIFIC POSITIONS, BUT IT ALSO ALLOWS FOR ADDITIONAL INTERVENTION SERVICES, IT ALLOWS FOR ADDITIONAL AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAMS, IT ALLOWS FOR ADDITIONAL FAMILY ENGAGEMENT.

[01:30:21] SO THAT FUNDING IS ALL DIRECTED TOWARDS THOSE DIFFERENT USES. IF YOU LOSE THAT FUNDING, OBVIOUSLY, THEN IT BECOMES A QUESTION OF CAN YOU MAKE IT up locally or is there are those does those programs go with the wayside but those are the things that are specifically tied to title one in Fairfax we have 44 total schools that receive title title one funding 42 of them are elementary and two of them are middle schools so I think it gives you a little bit broader picture about you know what what title one supports and and you know from from that you can extrapolate if you were to lose 80% of your funding for that an awful lot of those services and those positions would

[01:30:58] no longer receive that specifically dedicated funding. Yeah. No, I appreciate that specific or the specificity. And what's sad too is our position for years now has been to increase Title I funding because we've already had a problem with it not being enough, right?

[01:31:17] Let alone talking about cutting it, which is insane. So there is, you know, there's been talk, I know Mr. McMilloy, we're trying to work on gathering some of that specific data from staff towards a potential letter that we can address to our federal representatives to just elevate that issue because I don't want it to fall under people's radar given everything that is going on on the hill which is all insane okay so that's my time I see we have two board two board members with their plaques placards up I want to make sure okay so I guess we can give everybody we're already over time so a

[01:31:54] a minute each. We can go ahead and start with Dr. Anderson followed by Ms. Corbett Sanders. I wondered why I had time left over before because I skipped a couple of items for some reason. One of them is the assessment piece. As we talked about this extensively during my time with you, I know that you have the language there for it to be plain language and obviously the language about giving it to a student's primary language, but I don't see any words, any verbiage that speaks to the that speaks to how tricky the questions are and just making that a little bit

[01:32:30] more a little bit easier i'll give you the example that i shared with you before on some sol items it just says select you know how many of these items you know fit our clothing but it doesn't say whether they're five items or six items or eight items and if a student doesn't select all them and in some cases it's every single answer then it's incorrect and that's not how we typically instruct students so i'd like to see a little bit more specificity there and is there also any way of speaking to transiency as one of the indicators since the frm may be something that is no longer

[01:33:06] applied transiency really impacts student achievement and performance is there room for us to consider that as a point of advocacy so uh on on both issues so on the first one I'm not a psychometrician, I'm not an expert on test design, but my understanding is that the concept of universal design and the concept of plain language assessment addresses some of those issues, that it does get into the actual construction of the assessment items in addition to the language that's used.

[01:33:36] So I think that that is kind of an umbrella term that covers that. I'm more than happy to have somebody with more instructional knowledge correct me on that, but I believe that that's the case. And then the second question was about the use of transiency.

[01:33:53] As I said, I need to go back and refer to the JLIC study and exactly what they recommend in terms of the replacement for free and reduced lunch as a metric. I don't know if it specifically calls out transiency, student mobility as an issue, but it's something that we can add in to the language as that gets developed.

[01:34:15] Thank you. And just one last thing. you also give us a listing of the potential title one impacts if that budget were to be cut i know we're talking about it here but having a listing of that would be very helpful okay is that do you want a response to that all right that was over your time but okay go ahead um i i would not be prepared to answer the specifics on that because that would that would be a division-wide uh discussion as to how to handle you know the reallocation of those funds

[01:34:48] sorry time um all right miss corbett sanders thank you and just kind of to remind people when i started uh when my kids started school it was i think 28 was title one and then it went up to 38 then it went to 45 then it went to 60. so you know um this cut at the federal level is draconian and we need to i fully support sending a letter from this board to the uh federal delegation i just

[01:35:21] wanted to address a couple things that I heard today from my colleagues regarding cyber one area in particular swatting we know that swatting continues to be on the increase we had some just recently I guess last week and this board actually chose not to support legislation on swatting and I would urge that maybe we revisit that under the cyber security to make sure that we address it at at the state and federal level the importance of this issue.

[01:35:57] And then finally on mobility, I do believe in the past we addressed the mobility issue and I would suggest we need to bring it back if we aren't doing it anymore. Thank you. - So specifically referencing swatting, I'll need to go back but there was legislation during the last General Assembly that addressed swatting at the state level in terms of additional penalties for people who made the falsified calls to 911.

[01:36:24] But I'll take a look and see exactly what the status of that legislation was. But I do believe something did pass last year that addressed it. Okay, thank you. With that, we do have a built-in break. I'm looking at you guys.

[01:36:39] Oh, we have one more. It's behind your water bottle, so I keep missing it. Ms. Sizemore-Huizer. I apologize for hiding it behind my water bottle. Just really quickly, one thing I wanted to lift up, and I'm not sure whether this is something for state or federal, But you and I talked a little bit about safety procedures for fire and other emergencies and what our procedures are for people with disabilities.

[01:37:05] Because right now, my understanding is what the best practice recommendation is, is that people who are mobility challenged are sort of, say, left behind in a safe spot or a designated spot while everyone else evacuates the building. And I'm wondering if there's room to ask for a study on whether some of those practices can be updated, as well as looking at trauma-informed practices for some of our drills, especially our lockdown drills.

[01:37:30] But I think it would be helpful from the state to look at those practices and see if there's some updates or some best practices we could look at or develop, you know, so certain people are just not left behind while everyone else evacuates. Are you looking for a response?

[01:37:46] I just... It's something I can get with staff about and we can bring forward language for you. Okay, just one thing I wanted to mention too, and I've actually talked to Dr. Reed about this, is my understanding is for people who are hard of hearing, there's lights that go off that say when there's a drill, but the lights are the same, whether it's a fire drill or a lockdown drill, but the protocol is very different for both.

[01:38:07] So even something as simple as distinguishing things like that. So I know my time is up. That's something I wanted to mention. Thank you, thank you. Okay, so it is 242. We were supposed to return at 245. I'm going to make it 250. Is that okay? Okay, so let's reconvene at 250 for the second part of our conversation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Malloy.

[01:38:32] all right let's get going the earlier we get going the sooner we'll be done we'll try that um let let's go ahead and get started we are continuing work on the proposed proclamation changes which we started in august so i just want to put out to board members that

[01:39:07] we have some time this afternoon um to work on this mainly because at a business meeting earlier this month we kind of promised to finish this up by the end of October. So we will talk about the list which is what we said we would do by the end of October and then we have a couple of open items that we had as part of our survey you know earlier this year and so we'll go through those survey results and see if we can come to some consensus on each of those items and then there

[01:39:42] were a couple of new items that came up so given the schedule that we're looking at for work sessions etc from now until the end of the calendar year this is it this is the only time that we have available to work on this topic so just keep that in mind you know as we have our discussion so we'll go ahead and we'll have a two-minute comment time for board members we will follow the similar format to what we did at our previous work session where our clerk Ms. Sutlow will take us through each item. You received a large set of

[01:40:21] documents as background for this in your Google folder. So we will start first of all with the list of proclamations. Ms. Petrovic is passing out the current version of the governance manual that pertains to this topic it lists the current proclamations that are on our annual agenda so that you can make sure that you have that current list in front of you what's passed out is what was approved so it's just it's the list of what we currently have they were

[01:41:01] basically moved over from recognitions to being proclamations can you remind us again on how many actual meeting regular business meetings we have so that we can kind of take the number of proclamations and divide it by business meetings we have about 22 generally yes we did that we did that little math problem yesterday so with 22 meetings and then miss Suttlow does this this list does not include the four additional ones that were does if you turn to the second

[01:41:38] page, which is labeled as page 70, under 7, you will have K, L, M, and N, and that's Immigrant Heritage Month, Caribbean Heritage Month, Muslim Heritage Month, and Jewish Heritage Month, which were added through Ms. Omash's amendment at the meeting on the 28th of September.

[01:41:59] Perfect. Thank you. I will turn it over to you. What we also have available, though, in the documents is a comparison chart between Fairfax County Public Schools, the Board of Supervisors, Arlington, and remind me the fourth one. The U.S., the federal, but federal, there's typically about 150 proclamations that President Biden has done during his term. Yes, he does about 180 a year he's done almost 500 over the last three yeah so basically where we are is with

[01:42:39] this list and then what we currently are talking about is each board member having the option to bring two correct items that brings us up to 60 divided by 22 so approximately three per board meeting? The current list that's in the governance manual, we have 36 annual proclamations. This does assume, however, that we only do one proclamation a year for a retiring or resigning leadership team member. And then when you add in the two per board member, then you get that additional 24 for the

[01:43:16] total of 60 that Ms. Toland just mentioned. The first question we're going to deal with is what is on the list of annually approved proclamations that don't count towards the school board members annual limit as I mentioned we have the 36 annual proclamations an outline question is whether we should include the citizen advisory committee member retirements and resignations on the annual list that was dealt with in the survey but we did not end up dealing with that question at

[01:43:51] the during our last work session we're basically trying to look at what is the list of items that if we say school board members each have two proclamations that they could bring throughout the year what is the list of items that would not be included in those two dr anderson yes hi thank

[01:44:29] you so much for giving us that quick math if we have 36 already here plus two per school board members that is 60 and if we are and i will advocate for including any retirements because those are things that just occur i don't think anybody should have to use that as part of their allotments but i would suggest if we are inclusive of all of the retirements whether they be leadership team or citizens advisory members and of course the audit committee groups that maybe we might consider having the board member what they can bring should be

[01:45:07] reduced from two to one so that we can just be inclusive of all of these so Christina was everything on here there I know the answer because at least the one that I read two weeks ago was not on here so I'm trying to figure out where the recognition and proclamations like did you go over everything that was on here like childhood cancer awareness month is not on here so these are the list of annual ones that are brought not

[01:45:47] ones that were brought by school board members separately using one of your two right so the childhood cancer you had to use one of your two i did but this was something that we have done for years i just chose to bring it up again but we have done that for years okay that's helpful to know what we went with and what's on that list that you're looking at is um the ones that are currently listed in the governance manual and so the childhood cancer awareness is not currently listed in the governance manual you did bring that up during the meeting when we were debating

[01:46:22] the amendment um but it was not added from my notes and from the motion no i didn't at 12 30 at night choose to add that. But if this is something that has, and I know, Christina, you're doing an excellent job. Historically, we have done. I chose to bring it up this year because I wanted to honor someone specifically from my district that was battling that childhood cancer. But that is something that we've done for years and years. So how can we get that back in

[01:46:56] this that's that's what I guess I'm asking how can I add that back in if I think that's something that should be done because it affects so many children in our community so I think that would be a motion to add it to the governance manual and I think that's part of the question is is this list comprehensive enough should there are there things that have been left out are there things that should not be on it that need to be taken off but keeping in mind that we are trying to think about how many proclamations we do a meeting right i have that so i guess um i'll work

[01:47:34] with you to include that that this should be one added to the governance manual childhood cancer awareness month all right let's put that on the list here we may even just go with the motion today for that may i ask a classification question this list here how is that different from the list that is on this document?

[01:47:58] Is this the most comprehensive of everything we've ever done? No. That document that you're holding, Dr. Anderson, is the proclamations from our governance manual then compared to proclamations that we found that were brought by the Board of Supervisors, by Arlington, by Loudon.

[01:48:25] We did reach out to Prince William in Montgomery County, but I don't believe we received responses from them. And then we know that the federal holidays as well. - Mr. Frisch.

[01:48:44] - Thank you. Part of me wonders what it would look like and I'd have a lot less heartburn over adding more and more and more proclamations if we removed them from the meetings and did monthly proclamation days where we got them all taken care of.

[01:49:01] It would shorten the meeting considerably. It would move everything up. It would move community participation up and we'd be able to not limit our participation the process or the number of proclamations that are brought but as it stands right now basically what we've done is we started with a restricted number and we're basically moving towards a bureaucratic way of adding everything back in that's been removed right so we went from having four each but now we're exempting anniversaries and retirements um and you know like miss darren at koufax i'm sure each one of us has a resolution or two that we've offered in the past that we

[01:49:39] we would like to see included on the annual calendar. But there is a there's a push and pull here, right? The more we add, the more it adds to the problem this was trying to fix. And I honestly think the only way to fix this problem is to not do this during regular meetings and to have a special day every month when we do it. I don't see any other way around it because we're not willing to limit the number of speakers and we're not willing to have a hard number on the number

[01:50:13] of proclamations. Both of those things are in conflict with the goal of an expeditious meeting where we can get to community participation and the business of the board early enough in the night for people to still be paying attention to us. Thanks. Ms. Calvert-Sanders. Thank you and I really appreciate you putting this together. I do think some things have been lost because during COVID certain things did not necessarily get recognized but I'm going through it and I can

[01:50:49] see a number of areas where you have um you know national board certified teachers we've always recognized them they're not on on our list um the uh human trafficking resolution we've always done that it's no longer on our list um a number of different places so what i think really needs to be done is almost to building on uh Mr. Frisch's idea because I don't I don't think it's appropriate

[01:51:23] for us to move everything into res into a single day every quarter or once a month or anything else because a if you're going to do it then we have to actually do something more um formal like having a reception which might be the way to do it but the other piece of it is um for many of our educators that are recognized in a number of these recognitions uh they really want to be able to be recognized in front of the board in a more formal structured process so um you know i i also

[01:51:59] think that we've got a certain amount of redundancy in different categories and i think that that is really what Ms. Cohen and Ms. Seizmerheiser initially tried to do, is get rid of the redundancy. And so I would be open to having a subset of this group to look at how you could get rid of some of the redundancy, and I would suggest that you bring it to the new board at your retreat in January to say these are the ones that we think are redundant and we want to kind of focus our activity.

[01:52:38] Ms. Karen Kees-Gamara. Thank you. I actually was hoping, and I had a comment a while ago, and I know I have to wait in the queue, but with respect to retirements, I'm wondering if we can have a time period, say quarterly, to acknowledge retirements. I also don't have an objection to a meeting perhaps maybe even once a month or every other month where we're doing these types of proclamations.

[01:53:15] I do think, I agree with Ms. Corbett Sanders that it may be helpful to have a group, a subset of the board to look at perhaps how we can group things together and minimize the amount of time we take from a meeting.

[01:53:33] I do understand the balance, All while I also am concerned about those groups within our community that often don't feel as though they are acknowledged or don't necessarily feel a part. I know that this is a way, let me say this in a more positive way, this is a way, proclamations can be a way to show our inclusiveness.

[01:54:00] On the other hand, I also understand how much time it takes, etc. And so I'm looking for that balance. I think the suggestions I have heard so far from Mr. Fish, Ms. Corbin-Sanders, may all be a part of the solution. But the one thing that I did want to add is we're always going to have some retirements and we may want to have a designated time period throughout the year, say two, three times, where we acknowledge all retirements at the same time.

[01:54:32] Thanks. Thank you. Ms. Cohen. yeah I think I mean we I think this comes down to trying to decide like what is our job here because I think we've we've tried to tackle this any number of ways and I there's only so much lipstick you can put on a pig like I just don't we're never going to as this group at least we are never going to come to an agreement on this because every time we get close we all blow it up

[01:55:07] for very reasonable reasons we just we can't we cannot agree on this so you know i i don't i don't want to pass anything to the next folks but i i i do agree with what karen said that i think maybe another body needs to own this and you guys need to decide to collectively what model looks best and how you're going to do it because we just cannot fit all the things in that we're trying to to fit in. We just can't. These meetings have gotten ridiculous. And I think they've been that way for a long time. I think when even when we were coming in, I remember some of the first

[01:55:44] guidance that we got was like these meetings last forever. And but we all value how important the proclamations are. I think like I would just say for myself, like we had late Braddock folks come for the 50th, but it's just the principal and the administrator, a couple of them. They're exhausted. It's 9 o'clock by the time that we recognize them. But then they had a 50th celebration where we brought the proclamation and they were so excited. So I don't know if there's a way that we could do twofold. And that's what Rush and I had suggested in the initial pass of this was that if people wanted to hold on to their proclamation to deliver at the school, what we could do is just

[01:56:24] a very quick vote. They could be on consent for that matter. So that the vote could happened so the proclamation actually happened but then we get to bring it um to it or i like your idea of another day i think we cannot we cannot have both we cannot and people are waiting until 9 30 to speak like this is just this doesn't make sense so i i'm a supporter of bifurcated some way i i don't know exactly what that looks like but this we're never going to agree on the number and priorities are always going to change unfortunately good you know bad things are going

[01:57:02] to happen and good things are going to happen that we want to recognize so it's just going to grow and grow and grow anyway sorry not very helpful thank you um miss heismerheiser probably miss mcclachlan i mean i don't have a ton to add to what miss cohen said i mean this was one of the first things that when we came on the board came up as a conversation about we need to streamline our meetings to some level laura jane and i spent a lot of time and we spent a lot of time with the board kind of trying to streamline we combined some of the different staff groups to try to streamline some of those we one of the things that we vote on as a board is not talking to the ones we do every year and letting the language of the actual recognition proclamation stand for itself because

[01:57:42] that is the joint board language but I know this board sort of wanted everybody to be able to speak to all of it so we've kind of gone then three years working to go right back to where we started in some ways and so I agree with Ms. Cohen, I don't think we're going to agree to this. I mean, like, I appreciate Mr. Neckofax about the childhood cancer, but the other one that we've done every year since I've been on is autism awareness, and it's not on the list either, right? So I think, yeah, no, but I think if we can just keep adding all these things, we're going to then have five, six, seven per meeting, and we're going to start our business of the meeting at 10. So I go back to what I asked last time. What do we collectively as a body look at the purpose of our meetings? Because if the purpose of our meetings

[01:58:21] is and I understand it's important to be inclusive and recognize our groups but if that's the primary purpose then yes let's add a bunch on here and we'll and we just make it clear that we're going to spend the first two or three hours doing proclamations to be inclusive and but then we can't also do all the business of the board and board matters and we just have to we we can't do all that or we're going to have staff here till one o'clock in the morning and I don't think we as a body have decided what the purpose of our meeting is and until we do that I think we're never going to get to a resolution on this so i i so i personally think that i like the idea of a separate day maybe i like the idea of doing school recognitions at the school so more the school

[01:59:00] community can participate and you know sports all of these events at the school so more of the school community can participate rather than at our board meeting um maybe that's a solution but i think at this point we just go with what we have here for the next two months and we take it up with a new board thank you miss mclaughlin yeah i think i missed one of the retreats where you guys started

[01:59:31] to take this up so i'll just add my thoughts on this one um first of all i really do think that there is a way for to what ms cohen said and i think many of us think to show some self-restraint It's a board of 12 people, and all 12 of us, I think, are very eloquent when we do speak.

[01:59:59] So the maker of the motion, the seconder of the motion, in general, that should be enough. If someone has a burning, passionate desire because it touches them deeply and personally, like at times I have spoken on LGBTQ when I wasn't a first or a second on it, you know, there's a little bit of grace.

[02:00:18] But what we have joked about through multiple terms is, you know, prior to all of us being together in the prior two terms, the joke was once a third board member spoke, maybe a fourth board member spoke, then everyone worried that the rest of the public was going, well, how come only those four spoke?

[02:00:39] Well, how come only those six? Well, what's wrong with the other six? And then it became six became 12. so when we said goodbye and honored the doing my math the eight board members who rolled off in december of 2019 we had two people speak for each of those eight board members that was it many of us could have said something about the others but we knew we'd be there all day so i guess lord jane i am a little more pollyanna and hoping that we the sitting board the eight of us

[02:01:17] rolling off can model it on December 14th when we only have two people speaking to each board member rolling off and then encourage the next sitting board to realize that you know again you have board matters you have newsletters things that we never had before and my time is up and I definitely would love to go back because I'd like to see us have some better things than what's being so far punted to.

[02:01:49] Dr. Anderson, did you want to go back? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't really specifically shed her. Yeah. I guess I just want to bring us back a little bit again to the purpose of some of these.

[02:02:05] The point is to create space and visibility, right? And it's not really about us as much as it is about those voices. So I've even been thinking, I mean, it is pretty cringe sometimes when we have like recognitions and resolutions and folks sometimes don't know what to say or like say the wrong thing or, you know.

[02:02:21] So I want to propose, and I don't want us to give up on what this could look like. Again, just suggesting this idea. Think of when we do the Month of the Military Child. Most recently when we did that, we had a short clip. It highlighted students, families, staff talking about why this means something to them, their families, how they experience it.

[02:02:42] I think that is a successful example of how we can do this. It was short, it was emotional, it was effective. it kind of brought it to why it matters and it centered who matters most, which are the kids and the staff and everyone experiencing it. So I want to propose definitely for these like cultural heritage ones, and then possibly also for like the honoring staff and volunteers, we should be like two minutes maybe for each one, or whatever it is that our staff can pull together, interviewing people within our community. And that can actually last like for a couple years before it gets like you know too old and then they renew it but you know when

[02:03:22] it's custodian and food nutrition appreciation month like I don't want us standing there being like we thank you janitors like no let's hear from them like what does it mean for you being a custodian or to a student what does a custodian mean to you and your school building right and let's celebrate them in that way I really think this is a way to move away from the problem of like I don't know 20 minutes per resolution and people not knowing what to say so and And saving this.

[02:03:48] And I think if we still think that's too much, Ricky's idea of removing one per board member is also an option. We could say each board member has one a year in addition to these ones that we've already determined. So I'd love to hear-- OK, I'm going to move.

[02:04:03] I'm going to move to have that be a process moving forward. We can work with staff to develop videos for each of the cultural heritage ones, as well as the annual proclamations honoring staff and volunteers in a way that centers student and staff experience for that to be how we do these we don't have time to talk about this again though right as a board let me keep it this way and see where it lands and then yeah so there's a second we could

[02:04:35] do okay so you've got a motion on the table dr anderson has seconded it dr anderson do you want to speak yeah i actually think there's something there i i love that idea and it it doesn't have to be everything maybe it's just a subset of that but i would like for us to explore this a little

[02:05:12] bit to see what is possible it would be so powerful to really hear students speak about these different jobs that we um that we honor or even the heritage month doing something outside of just reading and then that's it maybe there's not a whole lot of conversation with it i i just think it's an interesting idea and i'd like to see what's possible okay uh yes motion i am intrigued by the idea and i love the fact that you were actually thinking

[02:05:51] out of the box on how to solve this problem where i'm having a hard time is i don't know how which ones are going to be done how it's going to be how much staff time it requires how much financially it requires a bunch of other things so i would be supportive of having staff come back to us with a plan maybe this is something that miss youngblood hall's organization could do where they would look at it and say okay this is how we could these are the things we think we could do but if it means that we're taking hundreds of hours of staff time then i i don't know how i

[02:06:31] support that at a time when we know that we're going into tough budget years and so i would urge that rather than saying this is where we're going with it that we modify your proposal to be request staff to come back with a plan on how which ones they think they could operationalize and what the costs would be and um what the timing would be i don't i'm not recognized so i won't respond would you be okay with that adjustment uh yeah i mean i i guess i'm just being mindful that like

[02:07:08] every meeting we almost have one or two videos that are like in live in real time being created to share the strategic plan and academic matters but yes i mean definitely we should be resource conscious i think this is also being resource conscious though in a different way but yeah yeah thank you miss tollen we also have student videographers who might be able to put together some of these bodies of work that wouldn't require our adult staff time precisely why we need a plan before we adopt something without any structure i'm happy to work with lisa to figure this out

[02:07:48] or to work with Dr. Reed's team when we were researching this Arlington actually does quick powerpoints they don't do videos but they do do quick powerpoints recognizing people they limit each one to about two to three minutes so there are different ways to do it that would streamline it but also allow for us to share opinions and share feedback my motion would be for you to come to us with a plan that would adopt some of this and then we could make an informed decision

[02:08:20] Okay, we have Ms. McLaughlin. Would you like to speak to this motion? Just being mindful, again, that you're going to have a brand new board in January, so when we talk about whether we vote this in, I think I like the idea that from the start of today's conversation, what best recommendations can we provide to the next board based on our four years of experience together, and then the new board can decide what they want to do.

[02:08:59] do with this. Like, we don't have that much time left, and I honestly, I'm fully supportive and totally appreciate the original motion. I'm more supportive of the modified one, that you have to have a plan first, and I'll be perfectly honest, you all have heard me rail about the money we spend on the infomercials. They're perfectly nice, but every time I think that that money could go to a teacher in the classroom, it just drives me crazy. So I think that using student videographers is like a fantastic idea. These students want ways to learn real life skills and go on to university

[02:09:38] or into the industry. And so I really love your thinking on that one, Dr. Reed, and that's the direction I would go with this. But in terms of what we have on the table, I really do want to see Dr. Reed, you and the team, along with our clerk, Ms. Setlow, offering to help with this.

[02:10:00] Draft something up, and then maybe what we do for this sitting board is we just see the list of recommended suggestions for the next board. But I wouldn't spend any more work session or business meeting time fleshing this out other than, you know, these are our recommendations.

[02:10:18] Thank you. Ms. Turner-Koufax. Yes. You know, these are school board recognitions. So people were frustrated that school board members were speaking to them. and now we wanna add a video devised by students to talk about what school board members think.

[02:10:40] That does not make sense to me. We cannot allow what our board represents on each of these issues to be, while it's a great opportunity for students, we should provide our students with opportunities to do, maybe they can do a life in the day of the school board member or something like that, but not speak or develop videos to what, we as a board want to what our values are and what we want to put out to the community i do not think that's appropriate i would not be supporting this um i do not think we should vote on this right now

[02:11:18] as miss mclaughlin and a couple other and miss cohen you have said it probably best we have tried and tried and we have not come to a conclusion on this um you know where we are today send that over to the new board and say this is where we are miss uh setlow i would like though some of the other ones like miss sizemore heiser said i would say the board also mentioned these these were not approved by the board but they have been done in the past and i would like that list compiled and

[02:11:49] then give that to the new board miss kohen yeah i i mean i like the idea that if we're if we're it comes down to exactly what you said is our goal to lift up other communities is that the goal of these resolutions or is it for us to get to speak to them and i don't i don't i don't know that we've decided on that i i tend to err on your side that i think the idea of having actual

[02:12:25] employees like who get to talk about it i mean i'll just say like 10 of us passed up doing the indigenous people's resolution it wound up coming to me a second time and i think the huge piece of it is just because we know how important it is and we just don't have the the storytelling on this side of the table for something that's so important maybe 10 is an overstatement but um i think you know for me i passed it up because i thought hey there's got to be somebody who has

[02:12:58] more bona fides in this than i do um and so i do to your point i think the only way i could deal with it was just to read statements by native people about what the day meant because i don't i don't i don't have a lot to add i wish i did i don't and i think you're right that we find ourselves sometimes scrambling and sometimes making mishaps when we speak because we feel like we need to fill an area so i i like the idea of that if if if you feel dr reed like there is

[02:13:33] a way to have bandwidth that is um because all of that means more work for for somebody else on the team because even the videos we get for the board member christina and the chair and vice chair have to view them ahead of time like it is i know it's creating like that's creating more work but the idea that it would stop us from speaking about everything and then if someone wanted to speak in board matters boy they still could but we would lift up the voices of our actual employees students families and maybe it is sometimes board members who have a direct

[02:14:07] connection to it i i really like that idea um but i to your i also understand um your points that that maybe that's for another board i don't know the right answer it's amazing was rational yeah haven't spoken yet thank you so I really like this idea of a video I think it's creative unfortunately I think where we are right now as a board without getting I mean I worry about the workload on just managing for this I mean it's three

[02:14:47] or four videos of meeting right if we're doing three proclamations a meeting that's six a month so the logistics so even if it's students doing it the logistics of getting students to do it they're busy they might have a mention they might have an exam like then what happens if a student isn't able to do it for good reasons and when then we have two that have videos and one that doesn't like I just think of all of those pieces and I think we need to have a much better plan on how these are going to actually get done so I'd hate to do is have videos for some and not others right like that would be terrible so I love the idea I don't think I'm ready to vote for it without really

[02:15:23] getting some idea of how the logistics would work because I don't want to put in something that then fails because we don't have the bandwidth to get it done. The other piece, I do, I'm just going to be honest about here, I do worry a little bit about the look that it has. Let me ask a question. So if we did these videos, it is the understanding those are in lieu of board members speaking, right? It would just be the video. I think it's not a great look for us to basically have four years of speaking to all these things and tell a new board, you guys can't. Like, I think that's not maybe the best message to send. I think that should be up to the new board to decide how they want to recognize these proclamations, because

[02:16:02] that's a pretty big change right and whereas this process that we've had in place with recognitions we've done for this whole year so it's not something that we're imposing on somebody else but this would essentially impose this on another board and I just don't think that's a great idea I think it would be great to look into what the process could look like and then when the new board starts we can this is an option saying here's what it will look like here's some like Arlington does these powerpoints I think that would be great I just don't feel comfortable telling eight people who haven't been doing this you guys can't speak but we couldn't stop ourselves from doing it all right

[02:16:41] mr. Frisch I think this is an elegant idea for dealing with a complicated problem and I think you did accept the idea that a plan could be brought back right and so I would be in favor of voting for a motion to bring that plan back I don't know when they're gonna be able to finish that plan and perhaps it is something that lands with the the next board in a work session because going to have a couple things like this that we have to deal with i'm sure um i've lost my train

[02:17:14] of thought give me one second tick tick tick um so yeah come back with a plan but i am you know i think it is good to elevate the voices of our students and our staff particularly around the heritage months particularly around school anniversaries particularly around the different kind of staff recognitions i don't think we would be doing this for all 60 proclamations like certainly not the ones that we're bringing individually not for the retirements um you know

[02:17:49] i think when when the clerk comes back to us with a plan that they coordinate with staff on i think it should give us options of things to consider um and you know with proper planning all things are possible um and uh you know it may sound like a lot of videos to us um but to the people who do it it might not seem like as much because they could probably film more than one at of time um and edit them uh in conjunction with each other um so i would be in favor of the motion as uh refined um and i hope uh that we can get a good report back so that we can move that forward

[02:18:27] um with the new board okay let's uh so i just want to clarify karen's thing wasn't seconded but i mean i was saying i wanted to consider this before moving on to this other idea i think it's going to create more work to tell staff to go back do their research come up with a plan come to the board the board's going to discuss it again board's going to say maybe yes no you know like whatever they're going to we're going to decide or they're going to decide and then then is the work that we

[02:19:02] already could have just done now so i just want us to keep that in mind um i also i mean i just wanted to clarify i think some of the logistics that folks are concerned about can be addressed right so for example we can say we don't have to start this video idea until say January 1st or whatever or like some date into the future that way staff have some lead time you know even for those months that are like April or whatever we would start planning now right like we would say okay these are the things that we'd like to develop knowing that we're developing it this year but it can probably survive for like you know four years or like it can be reused in future

[02:19:42] years. So once there's the work put in now, there wouldn't have to be work put in in the following years necessarily in the same way. And I think, you know, if we still want to have a board piece to it, I think we can definitely provide feedback. Like maybe one of us wants to say, hey, make sure you capture like this kind of thing. Or I have a really compelling story in my district. Someone emailed me, like, check this out. Maybe this is a good lead. And before that video goes public, just like we review the resolution language, we could take a look at that video. And if a board member has a concern or an objection or whatever, you know, there's always room for working around

[02:20:19] that too or with that. So I think I just wanted to lend voice to some of the ways that we can think through logistics. I think, you know, it's one way to also kill it and say that like, oh, there are too many logistical challenges. But no, I think we should lean in. It's an option. We've been circling the drain. I think rather than creating more work for ourselves up front, Let's try it. We can put a date into the future to allow staff that space to develop something.

[02:20:45] And then again, it's more efficient in years to come because they won't have to do that work every year. Only every few years when it's kind of, you know, outdated. But anyway, just some thoughts and remind my colleagues it'd be nice if we respect one another while we're talking.

[02:21:03] Thank you. Ms. Seisbrerheiser. Well, I was going to second Ms. Corbett-Sanders' amended motion, but just with the caveat, if you're willing to accept it, that this plan we brought to the next board as opposed to this board, because I think by the time the plan comes in, it's going to be November or December, and we're basically putting in something for the next board at that point, right? So it's already end of October, right? So if we could meet to do this, we wouldn't be implementing it for us, essentially. So I think that would be my, if you're okay with that, then I'll second your motion to have a plan be brought back, and that could be part of the board's retreat or whatever to discuss how we want to do proclamations or whoever's on the board.

[02:21:44] Okay, so we now have an amendment. Who would like to speak to this amendment? I move for the board to direct the superintendent and the clerk to work together to develop a plan on how we might be able to operationalize the recommendations of Ms. Omash in having some of the recognitions, especially those that are heritage-related,

[02:22:19] to be videos rather than spoken to by individual board members. That plan shall be brought back to the board for action in January for the new board to take action. Or that plan shall be brought back in January for the new board to take action.

[02:22:42] Does anyone want to speak to that? Mr. Koufax. All right. So I'm pretty clear on this. We have citizen participation where students can come and talk to us.

[02:23:02] And we always prioritize them. WE HAVE HAD MANY TIMES WHERE WE HAVE A RECOGNITION WORDS ON PAPER THAT WE HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO, YOU KNOW, GET OUR ARMS AROUND OR GET IN A PLACE, AND IT SOMETIMES HAD TO BE PUT OFF.

[02:23:23] I see where to what I want to lean into is board member voice. I will not be on this board, but I board member voice will be obscured and it will be taken over by a video. It will be another form of citizen participation. No one will get the recognition from this board because it will be a video supplanting a board member's own comments or own words or even the voice to hear the recognition read and finally on this I see the it would be very very

[02:24:02] difficult if there were students who took a long time in putting together a video and then something came up where board members objected and it is it is more than minor logistics it is taking away the voice of the board it is it is another piece of citizen participation and I don't know where the board recognition comes in if you do this so I'll be voting against it but those are my regions dr. Anderson yes very quickly I appreciate what you've shared I did

[02:24:41] want to hear more but I think you've made some valid points I think there are some areas where we can have that a compromise I would say the staff appreciation speaking to principals custodians I mean I think that really lends itself to kids really providing some voice so I would like to see if there's some space to maybe separate those recognitions oops from the heritage recognitions just want to put that out in the conversation the other thing is I know that we're running short of time and there are some things that are going to have to move on to the next board but I also want to be

[02:25:20] clear we're making a lot of decisions for the next board so it's either we do it or we don't so i i struggle with the conversation that this is not going to impact us but will impact future people that has been that's what's been going on for many months so that just really i was struggling with that so i wanted to state that okay miss sizemarheiser your placard is subject

[02:25:50] okay miss mclaughlin yeah um i i'm far more i think where tammy's concerns are um and as i shared i think we can certainly have and recommend to the next board uh some um ego discipline i mean the bottom line is the board of supervisors are the elected body to the county we're the elected body to the school division and they manage the ability to speak as the elected

[02:26:25] officials on these important proclamations and recognition. So I still stand by let's create a menu of options for the next board to consider. We can always share with them our individual thoughts as well. But it does concern me about the fact that we're already a board that is kept to a time clock which our board of supervisors do not in fact so i have they do i haven't seen it

[02:27:00] um yeah they don't need it well that's another issue but the bottom line is that is what we do and i think it served a purpose but um this just kind of goes down to the next level of to i think what Ms. Darienk-Koufax said, if we're not speaking at our very own business meeting to the board honoring whatever proclamation it is, and let's face it, our track record on board matters, and this is not going to get fixed, they get eliminated probably 75%, if not now,

[02:27:37] close to 90% of the time. So I think where I stand with this one is if Dr. Reed would like to look into this, she can. I'm not sure that I even want to direct her. I do worry about what Tammy said as well, that what happens when we don't use the video, and then, like, yikes, that's not good. So I think this is a little too premature to go with this one here. So I'm not ready to

[02:28:10] support it. Okay, thank you. Okay, so let me just make a couple of comments, and then we'll have some ideas about how to where to go from here based on everything i've been hearing um so um you know i understand the power of the the videos i i don't think as um i think dr anderson was saying that we would use this for every single one of these i think that if we're going to have a plan but you were saying we wouldn't we would pick certain ones which i agree with you completely so part of that plan would have to be which ones would this be appropriate for which ones would it not be

[02:28:47] appropriate for you know so I would have I would have to see that so at this point we've got our amended motion I guess on the table substitute motion so we need to vote on that so I would like to take that vote and then I have a couple of ideas about how maybe where we go from here so besides we're heiser so I just wanted to clarify to make sure that the amendment that we're voting on is just for staff to bring a plan to the new board it's not implementing this video process at all

[02:29:22] just okay yeah and that would all be part of it exactly but so just to clarify would the plan be for me to bring back multiple options or just the plan for the video option i think it's multiple options okay so it could be non-video options it would be multiple options on how we could move forward okay okay so if we could take a vote those in favor of having this activity this plan

[02:29:58] put together and present it um sometime after january um those in the affirmative okay so we have dr anderson miss omache mr frisch himself miss cohen um miss karen covert sanders and miss Sizemore Heiser okay so that is seven people so that motion passes anyone

[02:30:27] opposed Mr. Koufax and who's abstaining is Michael Acklin and Miss Marin thank you okay that motion passes um now we have there our original motion correct we need to do we have that we voted on the amended motion substitute I'm sorry thank you um so just given the conversation that has occurred what I What I would like to do is perhaps ask Ms. Setlow.

[02:31:03] We have a number of items around proclamations that need some decisions, including the list. At this point in time, we've had a couple of things float around. One, you know, have a small subset of this group work on ideas.

[02:31:19] I could perhaps propose that, but given where we are with two months left and just how we've had such a hard time scheduling even our committee meetings I don't know how realistic it is to have a group assigned to do this and actually be able to get something done so what I might propose is that we take a look at the list of items I would ask Ms. Sutlow which of these are super important that you feel like you might want to have a decision on now maybe the frames versus no frames something like that that might be something that affects what we do in the

[02:31:58] next two months but I think any of these bigger picture items I would like to table for the next board I would actually just take it down to the formatting of the proclamation and whether we're using frames or not just so that we can start procuring as necessary but I think the rest of the issues that are on the list would be better left for a new board because those issues were the most complicated based on the survey and so i don't know that we want to get into those complicated decisions um at this point and if we're asking to leave things to the next board it makes sense for the more complicated decisions to be dealt with with the next board

[02:32:38] okay do i see any objections to doing that miss cover sanders miss setlow's question was let's just decide whether or not we want to put the proclamations in frames or not and i would be happy to make a motion that we put our proclamations in frames when it's focused on an individual or a group that has a place to hang a frame because it's kind of embarrassing what we do compared to

[02:33:11] what the House of Delegates or the Senate or the Board of Supervisors does, which they all put them in frames. Okay, so we did a little, I'm going to let you take it from here. We did a little research in the school board office on just what that might look like the cost associated with it there's some examples if you go down to the bottom of the document of some very low cost options and then the staff did do several

[02:33:47] versions of formatting that we could just take a quick look at starting with the formatting we just have three options that we put together they are

[02:34:11] also in your google folder click on that link not clicking we just pull it up from the pdf then so this is our current design and then we have three other designs that we recommend it design one this

[02:34:43] is the closest to the board of supervisors option two is just a little bit different in how we center it and then option three is just a different way that we would do it so those are the three options that we recommend it miss marron i just wanted to um share some like summary thoughts also with

[02:35:22] my governance chair head on so we have four more regular meetings left one is this thursday the last one is december 4th which means anything we want to work on we'd have to have posted by november 20th that's the week after we're at vsba and that's the week after the election i appreciate the proclamations that's that's neat to see those options and i also appreciate miss setlow your team's organizing of decision making i think when i consider how many meetings are left i wonder if our board could commit to back mapping what we intend to make decisions on

[02:36:00] so that by december 4th the things we want to make decisions on have been acted on whether it's the proclamation format or the number of proclamations or other things that we've been discussing, I think that that would be, we'd feel like we were making a dent in the things on a specific list. So I don't know if that's something that the chair and vice chair could consider. We could certainly talk about it at governance, although governance has quite a number of things on its plate for when we meet next week on Halloween, including policies that are no change and policies that the superintendent has followed up on with us, like the calendar

[02:36:36] policy that we asked for and the trauma-informed draft policy then we have manual some manual updates we'd also talked about other school board office processes so I don't know if governance is the place to maybe we all we have this meeting on Tuesday get back to the board and say these are the things we think in terms of governance are needed we can add in what the school board office needs so that we feel like we're leaving the next board in a good position and we've tied up all the things that we want to tie up so I offer

[02:37:06] that for your consideration yeah okay so these are very specific logistics okay so you know that can be very easily implemented all right just this the formatting or do we want to give people a frame or not all right so we can simply you know I may suggest maybe we do a survey or if someone would like to propose just choosing one of these um designs that's perfectly fine as well we can move forward

[02:37:44] miss mclaughlin so the survey design i mean the proclamation design through a survey i have no problem with that is tiny things like what goes in a frame or what goes into the little folder i mean that again is just an operational cost of being responsible or not tiny again as that might be but i will say having been the recipient sometimes of some things on these beautiful plaques i didn't need them in a big beautiful plaque they're not going to go on my wall and

[02:38:22] i'm thinking about we're a fiscally i mean an ecologically environmentally conscious board i don't want to create a plaque that's going to go in a landfill at some point in time so i think if we're something like the Laura Ashley Piper Award, leadership team members who have given service to the system, you know, for a period of time, board members who are closing out one term, two terms, three terms, those are things that you give a plaque to. But otherwise, especially, I know Ms.

[02:38:58] Corbett Sanders drew this point of, if it's just going to an organization, again, how do we decide which organization has a wall to hang it on? Or if it's the proclamation we give them every single year because it's our way of honoring that group, that organization. So I think unless it's going to honor an actual individual for some sort of achievement or accomplishment or, you know, individualized appreciation, then I think given this incredible yellow list here, it should just be a certificate in the folder that we give. So I actually think it's kind of a bigger decision

[02:39:36] than just going into a survey and none of us talked about. So that's kind of my, and then to Ms. Marin's point, I think back mapping, what are the most mission critical decisions we can help guide the next board on?

[02:39:51] Let's figure out when those decisions have to be made and then like when they have to be voted on and then how we're gonna address them and some we just may not get to. But I love the idea of giving them suggestions.

[02:40:09] - Okay, is there anyone, Dr. Anderson? - I'm so sorry, I'm trying to figure out why can't we just vote on one of these three quickly? - We can. - Is that, okay. And I do agree with what Megan had said. If we have the item going, the proclamation going to an individual, I think we need to make it as nice as possible.

[02:40:30] The retiring, everything that she said, I agreed with in terms of that. But I'm hoping we could just knock this out. This is not a thing. - Perfect, perfect. Ms. Amash. Do we have the option of whoever wants one can request it framed?

[02:40:46] Otherwise, I don't know, Christina, what your thoughts are on that. So currently for Laura Ashley Piper, School Board Character, they actually do have very nice plaques that we order specifically for them, and they are special. We do do them annually, but we have money set aside for that.

[02:41:05] Where we traditionally go is right now for all the other ones. We do them in the little blue folders. We costed them out. They're $8.60 for a pack of six. They come out to about $1.20. There are cheap frames we can get on Amazon that are a little black.

[02:41:21] They are harder cardboard, but they technically are a frame that are about $2.80. We also have ones from the Dollar Tree that are like $1.25 that we could get that are not, they look kind of cheap.

[02:41:38] We're trying to be cost effective. When we looked up the really nice frames that we would typically do for things like Laura Ashley Piper and such, we're talking $30 a frame. When you have 60 proclamations, we're talking $1,800 in frames alone. And I don't know that we want to spend $1,800 on frames.

[02:41:57] Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think, thank you for being so detailed in your answer. I mean, I think, yeah, for the ones that are like individual awards, it makes sense, obviously. for the other ones I mean we could have like a request type of thing because with the cultural recognitions and whatnot it just you know I mean it doesn't make sense like who's the one person who's going to get it so maybe we can have a compromise and go that direction I also just want to express my gratitude to you for coming up with these options you know I'm fine with you know when we vote on whichever one I'm fine with one of those but I just want to also remind colleagues

[02:42:34] how many people were saying let's not postpone without consideration this is the best gift we give the next board on all of these pieces there's a reason why everyone said that before but anyway that's all thanks miss carver sanders thank you um i understand the frames for individual awards but i also think that when a state championship team gets recognized by us it should go in a frame

[02:43:06] so they can hang it up in their school, in their honor hall or whatever they call it. And I know that I happen to have gone to a school that no longer has its name on its building because when they merged two schools, they changed the name.

[02:43:33] And one school had all of these beautiful plaques that are still in the school, and the other school didn't have any plaques because of the difference between the schools so i would urge that you know having a plaque or recognition as a team which is only for state awards that we should be putting these in a nice frame and i'm just looking at amazon prime right now and you can get um a six pack of nice frames wooden ones for 20.99 so we're talking three dollars

[02:44:13] and change plus the 10 cents it costs to print off something i mean come on folks we are a 3.2 billion dollar entity we can celebrate our people thank you mr frisch i'd like to seek consensus on adopting this particular design for one reason i like the proclamation font and the seal but i feel like if you do the one that has the seal centered you lose a lot of page space that might

[02:44:48] be required in a longer proclamation and then secondarily i'd like to add i'd like to seek consensus on um offering framed versions to individuals receiving um recognition to sports and schools sports teams being recognized schools with anniversaries and retirements i'll second that i just like to speak for three minutes to my motion i'm just kidding that's it

[02:45:25] yes let's vote on that motion we're voting on design number one i'd like to call the question on the design vote and please don't object provision of frames together okay all those in favor okay that is unanimous okay so i believe with no objection the remainder of these questions

[02:46:00] and work on our previous motion etc will be taken to the next board correct mr kofax miss setlow i just want to confirm that you will add those that we have done at least this year and the ones that that Ms. Seismerheiser and I recommend it as a list to the list of those for the new board to consider?

[02:46:24] - Yes, so we can go back in the list to be considered and we can look at past years of proclamations that have been done annually. - Okay. - And we'll work with staff aides and EAAs to make sure that we have the full list. - Thank you.

[02:46:39] - Ms. Seismerheiser, just a clarifying question. So that means at this point, the process that's still in place is what's in our current governance manual nothing's going to change between now and the end of the this board term correct and i would add this board has done a lot of work on this i mean we had significant changes to our governance manual just a couple weeks ago so we have moved forward um but a lot of the questions that are left are a little bit more difficult and so it's good to turn it over to the next people dr anderson yes two

[02:47:14] things. One, Ms. Setlow, could you provide a list of what is still outstanding? Because I think I'm a little bit confused in terms of what did we settle and what is still outstanding. And two, I want to make sure I'm clear on what Ms. Dernot-Koufax said. Are we bringing back all proclamations that we've done or keeping it to this list that you provided? And if so, how many does that entail?

[02:47:38] So my understanding is we're going to stick with what's already in the governance manual for the time being what I will be bringing back Mr. Nat Koufax's request to the next board is a list of proclamations That are annually occurring that are also not in the governance manual for them to consider whether they want those to be added into the governance manual That is correct and part of this is because we have done some of those many many years They just weren't in the governance manual which is where this team is

[02:48:09] on the on governance started looking at it from there so thank you okay seeing no other board members that would like to comment i think we are set to adjourn this meeting and then um i know there are at least seven of us that will be at luther jackson at is it 5 30. the hearing begins at 5 30. currently we only have five witnesses signed up we do have five speakers sorry five speakers we do I'm used to witnesses from my other world five speakers we do

[02:48:45] have five slots that are always open for public hearings so people could sign up but we begin at 5:30 at Luther Jackson we're offering a small snack but dinner will not be provided since it's so few speakers thank you and I would like to also extend a thank you to our deputy clerks for surveying and putting together are these charts of information for us for today. I appreciate it. And I appreciate everybody's time today. Thank you very much.

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