Coraggio Consulting Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, February 13, 2024 Date: Tuesday, February 13, 2024 Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia Length: 2h 7m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90cfUiG7iFA 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:00:37] to go ahead and get started when our budget vice chair comes back. So oh, there he is. So we are going to go ahead and get started. Just as an FYI, just to set the table a little bit. Yes, there is the lady of the hour. I just want to reiterate some of the things that I shared in the email sent to the school board last night. All of you should have the documents and I believe, Ms. Burden, you have copies of the fact sheets for us. [00:01:16] so if you wouldn't mind passing those out at this point that would be very helpful and everyone should have a copy of the presentation that has been posted so please be sure to highlight that i have sent to you all a link to the budget questions yet again i think it might be helpful to have that available and open during this conversation and again if you find that there is a budget inquiry that you're posing during this discussion that is not able to be answered by our wonderful staff or would require an [00:01:55] in-depth response please use that budget link your assistant whether it be a staff aide or EAA are also able to add questions on your behalf today thank you you so much we have two and a half two hours and 45 minutes we expect that the presentation by staff will take roughly 30 minutes and then we'll have opportunities for staff I'm sorry for the board to ask questions of staff and to speak to each other regarding this very important information this is the [00:02:34] this is one of the most important things that we do so this will be full three minutes for as many minutes as we can provide. So that will be the goal. Budget amendments, I want to share with you all. We are kind of going back, particularly the returning board members, we're going back to former practice of budget amendments, being able to be made at two stages. At this stage, if you'd like to offer a budget amendment which would increase the ask, you are free to do that. There's a link that has been shared with you [00:03:07] yesterday. So please know that those will increase the ask. Also, if you wanted to bring in a budget amendment to reduce the ask, that's also a possibility. I have thoughts about that, but it's a possibility. All of those amendments, please, we ask that you work with staff to craft language and to have submitted by the 20th because on our, at our meeting on the 22nd, we will be voting to adopt the budget and the advertised budget and whatever amendments will may be brought forward we will also have [00:03:45] another opportunity for amendments closer to may when we are about to adopt the budget at that point since we will be given what our dollars are it's really mostly to shift around dollars from pot a to pot b in lieu of adding to the ask so i hope that was fairly clear in the documents that that were sent yesterday. If you have any questions about that, please feel free to ask. [00:04:13] At this point, I'm going to ask everyone to lower their placards so that we can sufficiently track who is asking to speak. Seeing no clarifying questions from the group, Mr. McDaniel and I welcome you to this exciting work, and we will turn it over to our budget team. Dr. [00:04:34] Reed, do you have an opening statement? So Dr. Reed will speak, and then we will turn it over to Ms. Burden and Ms. Widginton. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. We are excited this afternoon to share more details about our budget plan, and we're thrilled that this budget plan is aligned with our equity, excellence, and opportunity commitments in our recent strategic plan. And at this point, I'll turn it over to Chief Operating Officer Marty Smith to get us going this afternoon. Thank you, you Mr. Smith and team. Okay well I'm excited to be here to talk about the budget today with the great budget team and I'm going to turn things over to our [00:05:13] chief financial officer Ms. Burton. Good afternoon. I'm just going to do a quick recap of what's in the superintendent's proposed budget and then the assistant budget director Matthew Norton will go over the staffing standards and how those standards and formulas are applied to the projected enrollment which you makes up the bulk of the allocations that are given to our schools. So on the first slide, basically this is just a budget summary. You know that the [00:05:52] school operating budget totals 3.8 billion, a net increase of about 300 million or 8.6 percent, and the county transfer request is an increase of 254 million or 10.5 percent over the 24 approved county transfer. On the revenue I do think that it's important for me to mention that the the amount of funding that we that we received in the governor's introduced budget was far less than we have seen historically in the first year of the biennium in 2020 the [00:06:28] increase to us was 70 million dollars and then in the first year of the 2022 biennium the increase from the state to us was 90 million dollars we right now we're projecting 42 million but one of the reasons why that number is as high as it is is because we assumed that the General Assembly will take some action and increase our revenue so we that number is higher than what you might see on the calculation templates and we remain optimistic that the General [00:07:04] Assembly will provide additional funding for K-12. The three categories for expenditures include of course the compensation adjustments at $164 million which is the compensation adjustment of six percent, some changes to our benefits, health care, and retirement rates, the ERFC legacy drop plan, the market cyclical review, and then of course base savings and again that totals 164. The required adjustments of course enrollment is is one piece of that but in the other items [00:07:39] are generally recurring items that were funded previously with one-time dollars like the 2% increase that the General Assembly approved very late in the process I think it was in September and we funded that with one-time funds because you know by September the budgets adopted we we already have you know are ready to go and so we have to get that into the next fiscal year by including it as a required adjustment and that totals 130.6 million and then the multi-year investments are plans that previous boards had approved that were being phased in across multiple years with the exception of the [00:08:18] inclusive preschool expansion and that 2.1 million is a placeholder it's my understanding that the model that we're using has not yet been developed and nor has where staffing would go what schools at this point in time. And then the multi-year investments total about seven million. Again historically we review enrollment and staffing at the very first school board work session because that's such a driver of our budget. That and compensation of course, which we review compensation at the work session next Tuesday. Recall that 90% of our [00:08:54] budget is salaries and benefits and 93% of the positions budgeted are school-based positions. Essentially enrollment projections are divided by the desired class sizes to determine the number of teachers that are needed. Many of the ratios are dictated by the Commonwealth in the Standards of Quality or SOQ and I think it's important that you know that all 134 school divisions in the Commonwealth fund more than what the SOQ requires. [00:09:25] the SOQ ratios are the bare minimum that one needs to operate a k-12 program we have our own staffing standards of course which comply with the SOQ we have over a hundred formal staffing standard formulas and you can find those online in the appendix of the budget document the purpose of staffing standards is to provide a base level of equity and consistency for personnel allocations it It provides predictability regarding budgetary planning. [00:09:55] It assures compliance with state standards and, of course, avoids favoritism. And now Matthew Norton, the Assistant Director of Budget, will review application of the staffing standards to the enrollment projections. Thank you, Ms. Burden, and good afternoon, School Board. What we'd like to do is start off with a chart that you can find in our budget documents, and we've kind of subsided it down to just these two most recent budget years, being the proposed upcoming and the budget that was prepared for this current school year. [00:10:24] And the whole idea here was just to give everyone a baseline of where we sit. You can see from this chart that our overall enrollment is up about 1% in the budget, while the data that we use to provide differentiated supports to students is up anywhere from 3.7% to 6.7%, depending on which data point you're looking at. [00:10:49] We're gonna unpack each of these various areas throughout the presentation, but I just wanted to kind of set the stage for where we sit as a division. The other thing I'd like to point out is that we have seen presentations at the state level provided to the General Assembly, the Senate and House Finance Committees, and we've even seen local school divisions that have just released their budgets in the last three weeks where they are seeing similar increases in student needs while enrollment is a little less pronounced. [00:11:23] As far as the $46.6 million that Ms. Burden previously mentioned, this is a chart showing the positions that are generated based on those changes, both the raw student number change and the change in the data that's used to provide those differentiated service needs. [00:11:42] And the important thing to point out here is that over 80% of that $46 million is devoted to those differentiated supports in this fiscal year, while less than 20% is actually based on that increase of students, and that increase is 1,749 students compared to the FY24 budget. [00:12:01] So again, breaking that $46.6 million down, you've got about $38 million for differentiated supports and about $8 million for the raw student change. We're going to start off just kind of reviewing the overall enrollment. [00:12:18] So the line chart you can see on the screen is the solid line is our projected enrollment year since FY 2019 going into FY 2025 and the small red X's are actual enrollment throughout that same period and then there's a section for this current year's enrollment that's a little bit different than the rest and that's because at this point we still have a revised number we haven't gotten our full actual enrollment yet we measure different things throughout the period of the entire school year to come to that figure I think there's a few important things to note [00:12:56] here. Pre-pandemic, we were hovering around 188,000 students, and when the pandemic hit during fiscal year 2021, we had already completed the enrollment projection for that year. That's the 189,837 students. So when that actual enrollment came in at 179,748, obviously it came in much lower than projected, but that projection had been done before we really knew the ramifications of the pandemic. Now you can see that even a year past that in FY22, we opted to hold student [00:13:33] enrollment high because at the time we really, it was unprecedented and we really did not know what to expect as far as student enrollment coming back from that pandemic. You can see that it remained low again in FY22 and that in FY23 is when we recognized in the budget a reduction of 11,000 plus students and a savings that I'll go over in a little bit later slide. But that's when we tried to right-size to this new paradigm of enrollment, you know, post-pandemic. You can actually see that we overcorrected a little bit to the tune of almost 2,000 students. And so we ended up with [00:14:10] a projection that was well under the almost 180,000 students that we had in fiscal year 2023. In fiscal year 2024, which is obviously the year that we're in the middle of, you can see that enrollment is very close to projection and so kudos to our facilities and planning office for the work they've done since the pandemic to try to get back on track and then you can see they have us projected for 181,701 students and that's the that student change from that 179,952 to the 181,701 that's the roughly eight million dollars of the 46.6 million is driven by that just raw [00:14:48] number and change in students. We're going to move on to the areas where we provide differentiated supports the students and talk about each of the three data points that that sort of drive those figures for this first one what we've done is we've shown that in FY 24 what the impact was and then we're showing what the impact is in the FY 25 budget so for free and reduced price meals which we use to provide needs-based staffing to schools we have nearly a six million dollar cost and again that's six million of that forty six point six million figure and I think [00:15:24] the big takeaway here is that we are at the point where now over 60% of our schools are qualifying for some form of needs-based staffing, which is 123 of our 193 schools that would provide needs-based staffing. That percentage increase, that 2 percentage point increase in the FRM rate compared to last year of 3.3%, it's a little bit less. But if you'll recall, for some of you at least. If you'll recall, a year ago, we were picking up a three-year change in FRM rates [00:15:57] because of the pause that was put in place by USDA during the pandemic. And so that's one reason for that slightly lower number in FY25. But you can still see that it's a fairly significant impact at $6 million. We just wanted to juxtapose here on this line chart the projected overall enrollment with the projected FRM numbers. And I think the takeaway here is sort of the bit below the graph. In the two-year period since we recognized that enrollment drop, we've seen a [00:16:37] 19.4% increase in the number of students eligible for free and reduced price meals, while we only have a 2.3% increase in our overall student population. So FRM growth is far outpacing our overall enrollment. And in fact, we've gotten to the point where we now have over one in three students who are eligible for free reduced price meals. And that's a stark change just in the time that I've been in the budget office. I believe when I first started in the budget office, we had fewer than one in four students. And so we've moved from fewer in one in four students to more [00:17:15] than one in three students just in my time here in the budget office. You might wonder, you know, How do we use this data or why is it important in the budget process? So for those of you who aren't familiar, we have what we call needs-based staffing where we provide a differentiated level to support schools based on sort of what I would call is their FRM band. [00:17:38] And by FRM band, I just mean what's the range of their free and reduced price meals eligibility. And the takeaway from this slide is that we've seen a shift in more and more schools qualifying for greater and greater levels of support based on those FRM bands. [00:17:54] So just to kind of distill one point of this, if you look at the 50 to 60 percent range for the elementary schools for free and reduced price meals, you can see that in FY24's budget, we had eight schools that were qualifying for that level of additional support. [00:18:10] And we've gone down to only four schools in that band. At the same time, we've gone for those schools that are 60 percent or above from 34 to 38. So basically, a net shift of four additional schools in that highest band for our elementary schools where we staff the most supports. [00:18:32] To try to give you an idea of sort of the amount of additional support that we provide, I just wanted to kind of give a quick example. So if we had a school that had 640 first through sixth graders that did not have an FRM rate that was under 20%, we would staff that school with 26 classroom teachers for first through sixth grade. [00:18:53] But if you take a school that has that same number of 640 students and they had 60% or more FRM eligibility, we would staff that school that has the same number of students with 32 teachers or six more classroom teachers than the similar school that just had no free and reduced price meals eligibility. [00:19:18] So that's like an average class size reduction of about 20% for the school with the greater needs. [00:19:28] Moving on to another data point that we use to provide differentiated services we're going to go over English for speakers of other languages services. Here you can see that the cost impact in our FY25 budget of $7.7 million is significantly lower than the impact in our FY24 budget. We have a little less than half as many additional services projected for next year and so that's the sort of big reason for that drop in the budgetary impact. [00:20:01] And what I will say is that we're going to have another chart right after this that digs into this a little bit more. But our most significant level of growth, as far as the projections go, is at the middle school level. And it's at the middle school level for our level one English language learner services. [00:20:18] And those level one there is the greatest level of support that we provide. Again, we're going to revisit a line chart here and similar to the way we did for free and reduced price meals, Except, obviously, this time we're juxtaposing with English for Speakers of Other Languages services. [00:20:38] And while the line chart looks a little bit similar to FRM, we are obviously outpacing overall growth with ESOL growth. But it's not quite as pronounced as in the FRM category. [00:20:53] So we only have a 12.9% increase. And I say only. But we only have a 12.9% increase compared to our 2.3% overall increase. Whereas FRM, you know, we were nearly at 20% in the last two years. This is the chart that I was sort of hinting at two slides ago. [00:21:14] This is a breakdown of our ESOL services by level, with level one being the most intensive supports. And I think the huge takeaway here is that you can see that our largest areas of growth are in level one and level two at, you know, nearly 7% and then 8%. [00:21:34] But if you look across our school levels, you can see in middle school that we've just had a drastic increase in the number of level one ESOL services being provided at 39.2%. Some of that is obviously a catch up for probably students that showed up this year, but it is the place where we have the largest growth. [00:21:57] And finally, moving on to the third data point that we use to provide those differentiated supports to schools, we have our special education services. You can see that the figures from last year and this year are fairly similar, if not slightly higher in FY25. [00:22:15] We have about the same number of students projected to receive special education services. But we've seen pretty vast growth in our preschool special education population since the pandemic. And so we have a slightly higher cost in FY25, and that slightly higher cost is driven almost exclusively by additional preschool classrooms related to special education. [00:22:44] Again, we're going to juxtapose the special education enrollment against the overall enrollment. Again, a little bit less pronounced than the previous two, but still a 10.7% increase as compared to two years ago when we sort of bottomed out in overall enrollment from the pandemic. [00:23:03] And so obviously still fairly rapid growth, even though it's not at the same level as the prior two data points. Finally, I just wanted to take the opportunity to sort of put together a three-year history. [00:23:19] For those of you who are on the board last year, you would have seen a similar presentation to this that had FY23 and 24. And so we wanted to sort of revisit that, but then also provide the impact in FY25. And the other thing that we wanted to do by putting all of this together was to kind of show the three-year net impact. [00:23:35] And so you can see that the projected enrollment change, which is that very first line, is that we have 7,098 fewer students than had been projected in FY22. And that's the $11,000 drop and then the $2,400 increase and the $1,700 increase. [00:23:52] The result of those 7,000 fewer students is a $44 million savings in the budget. However, that $44 million savings from fewer students has been more than offset by those differentiated supports that we provide to students based on those data points that I've gone over. [00:24:12] And so you can see the $31 million, the $20 million, and the $15 million, or roughly $67 million or so, is offsetting the $44 million in savings so that our sort of three-year net cost of all these data points is that $23.6 million. [00:24:29] And so we felt that it was important to sort of break that all out and provide that detail and give you an opportunity to sort of mull it over. So at this point, I'd like to turn things back over to Ms. Burden for a few other. [00:24:46] Dr. Anderson mentioned the budget question process. The budget questions can be submitted using the Google form link. It asks that you identify priority one, two, or three. Some of you all are just sending budget questions to me. [00:25:03] That is completely fine, but I'm going to just turn around and send them to your aid need to submit them in the budget database, the budget question database, and they can do that for you. Or you can do it yourself, but it is also your aides have access so that they can enter them on your behalf. And then this is just what it looks like. And Dr. Anderson talked about submitting budget amendments. You know, if you need costing, you know, you need to get that to us so that we can do that. If you need help with the language, we can [00:25:37] help you with that too and we need that you know as far in advance of February 22nd that we can although we are used to costing things at the last minute on the fly so if you have something at the last minute go ahead and send it to us we'll do our best and then the budget calendar is included just to give you so that you have it with with these documents the next work sessions on February 20th compensation is what we'll be bringing to you and then we have a public hearing tonight of course and and we'll also have that on the 20th if uh if needed although [00:26:14] we haven't needed that as long as i've been here so six years um and then you all adopt on the 22nd that's it i thank you very much miss burden and team as we look for placards to go up regarding the questions i just want to reiterate a couple of things um we could cut out the middleman and have you and your assistant put in your budget questions as miss um burden just shared and so we are going to go ahead and get started um obviously we have the document that was just [00:26:49] shared with us today we have the documents from last thursday in which i asked you all to hold on to your questions so this is the time to bring all of that in um we will be timing everyone at three minutes to start and that's going to be our approach from here until 4 30. um we will start with Mr. Frisch followed by Ms. Marin. Thank you Dr. Anderson and thank you Ms. Burden and team and Dr. Anderson and Mr. McDaniel for their work as our budget chair and vice chair. You know I think we've all agreed as a board that our number one priority is defending the ability to offer a [00:27:25] quality public education in Fairfax County and so it is heartening to see a superintendent budget that leans so fully into compensation for our staff because we know that retention and recruitment are essential to our ability to offer that quality public education and to remain competitive. [00:27:42] And, you know, so in my humble opinion, I don't think now is the time for amendments to this budget. Obviously, I'll wait to hear from my colleagues about what they think. You know, I think conversations around changes can certainly be had before we adopt a final budget later this year. [00:28:00] But in terms of what we take to the Board of Supervisors, I think this is a great place to start because it makes clear that we're focused entirely we're going all in on compensation to remain competitive and to make sure that we're doing everything we can to recruit and retain our great world-class educators to that end I have a question how does this ask compare regionally well I can tell you that Loudon's County transfer request and their budget request are both higher [00:28:38] than what we've requested this is actually in your fact sheet which you just got like a minute ago it's on page 66 and yeah loudons overall budget changes 9.4 compared to our 8.6 looks like Manassas Park 8.9 percent Prince William eight and a half percent Alexandria 3.9 percent Arlington's [00:29:13] budget's not out yet that'll be released on february 29th boss church 6.8 percent and then on the local transfer it ranges from 11.3 percent for loudon then prince william at 10.6 percent and then we're third at 10.5 percent so we're roughly in the middle or so to say um that's good to hear i mean in addition to leaning fully into um compensation um i i noticed that we're not embarking on any new programming here other than continuing to move forward with the things that [00:29:51] we've set out to do. At the risk of asking a rhetorical question with an easy answer, is that a decision designed to show the importance of our focus on retention and recruitment? I think it's absolutely designed to show that importance to provide a world-class education. We need to have world-class staff and to maintain and recruit world-class staff. We have to pay a fair salary. And honestly, as Ms. Burden just shared with our regional asks, we're not ahead of those asks. We're slightly behind in those asks, and we're already behind in the salary. So what [00:30:31] we're really trying to do is keep up with our regional colleagues, because when you have a smaller and smaller pool of applicants, it's more and more difficult to both recruit and retain retain our staff. So not rhetorical. It's really an important point. I'm glad you raised it. [00:30:48] Thank you. And we do have educators who drive in from West Virginia to teach in our school system because they can't afford to live here. You know, I think we all know that we need to pay our educators and staff more. And to your point about the salary implications here, this is not, you know, leapfrogging us to the head of the pack. This is just keeping us in the in the fight to make sure that we can continue hiring quality people and maintaining the folks we have. Which brings me to JLARC. And I don't want to miss any opportunity that we're talking about the budget to remind our taxpayers watching at home that according to the Joint Legislative Review [00:31:25] Committee, which is bipartisan, public education in the Commonwealth of Virginia is shortchanged to the tune of more than $1,900 per student, and for Fairfax County, what that means is that we get less per student than places like West Virginia and Kentucky, and for Fairfax County, that alone accounts for $350 million in funding that we would be getting every year if we were just averaging what the neighboring states had. That doesn't even count if they would straighten out the funding formulas for staffing which they underfund in this in the Commonwealth by [00:32:03] seven billion dollars statewide so we need to continue to press our legislators in Richmond to do the right thing for us. Good timing. Ms. Marin then Mr. Moon. Yes thank you I'm I'm also really pleased to see the budget focus on our staff because our public education system won't work without our incredible educators and operational staff and all the people that make learning possible so I do want to point out a few things and I'd like to ask for some further information for after today so we see that there's a rate change in the [00:32:40] benefits that are part of our staff's compensation package this year it's 24.1 million so those are costs that are completely out of our control correct that are due to health insurance costs or other things yes I think it's important to note that steady increase I can't recall which year but I know there was a year where it was also a very large increase, and the public should understand that it's the private companies that are driving up the costs of these benefits that we want to offer our staff. [00:33:09] In that same line, I'd like to, Ms. Burton, you mentioned the state, what they provide us year over year. You mentioned 70 million, then 90 million, and the projection of 42 million. I think it's important for us to have that data so, again, we can show the trend. So if that's something that we could have, that would be helpful. [00:33:26] I'd love to educate the public and our policymakers about that. I want to ask a question about students in free and reduced meals and how Title I is calculated at this time. So the students that were using student eligibility for FRM, however, we now have schools that are using the CEP, the Community Eligibility Provision. [00:33:56] if we have a school that uses the CEP to be distinguished as Title I, how are we actually knowing what kids are FRM because we're not asking them to declare that they're FRM? We don't. We're prohibited from requesting that students or parents fill out the FRM if it is a CEP school. At the CEP school all All of those kids can eat free, and the calculation of their FRM rate is based on a multiplier, [00:34:36] and so they all end up being somewhere in the 80% range as a result, which ultimately means that 100% are eating free, but we can only seek reimbursement for the 80-some percent that is their number using the multiplier that the USDA puts forward of those that are, of the percentage of those that are directly certified, which means they apply through some state program to be eligible for free and reduced. So what I, well thank you, what I want to get at again in the vein of educating the public, when we say we have 66,000 [00:35:14] students that are eligible for FRM, and that's a proxy for living in poverty, I want to make sure that we're stating that accurately and in a clear way, and it's hard to explain to people all the different levels of you know title one and CEP so we're saying sixty six thousand are eligible for FRM regardless of the fact that some of the schools are CEP designated let me see if I can do the explanation any justice so the sixty six thousand is a combination of FRM rates and then an assumption of a [00:35:52] specific rate at the CEP schools that assumed rate at the CEP schools is like a proxy for the FRM rate, and it might range anywhere from 100%. And based on the way the USDA does things, they could actually end up with a number above 100% because they take the number of direct certified students and they multiply by 1.6. So if the number of direct certified students is above a certain point, then that multiplier is going to push the number above 100%, which obviously doesn't make a lot of sense. And so I know that kind of muddles the point you're trying to get at. But I think what you said before you started to kind of get into all the nuances of it is just that we have 66,000 students who are, I don't know if living in poverty [00:36:31] is exactly the right way to put it, but I think a simple statement like that is what that 66,000 number is representing. - Thank you very much. I also want to lift up that this budget continues to make investments that the community wants, and I hope that we can communicate that more athletics. [00:36:49] We've got the continued investment in athletic trainers who also, by the way, will have Narcan on hand, and the proposal to add boys volleyball and girls wrestling in high schools. It also, the budget continues to invest in stipends for our music and performing arts teachers. [00:37:06] So I just, you know, when I look at the messages that we talk about with the budget, let's be sure to raise up that these are continued investments, not necessarily new. My, that's it right now, thank you. [00:37:21] - Thank you, Ms. Maren. Mr. Moon? - Thank you, Dr. Anderson, just a few questions. Thank you for the presentation. One thing I shouldn't be surprised, and I'm not surprised how good you are in making a presentation at the school board work sessions. [00:37:38] With that said, since I had been away from the school board the last four years, then I'm going to ask you what the practice has been during the last four years related to a county executive's presentation of advertised budget. [00:37:56] just include our budget as is or does county executive come out with his own commentaries on our request and when he makes a recommendation for potential range of tax rate how does he normally reflect our request in his recommendations? Well it's kind of a mixed bag I mean I do know that the county executive does not use the superintendent's proposed number in his advertised nor does he use [00:38:34] the advertised budget that is adopted by the school board although i think that he uses those numbers what the superintendent proposed and what the board ultimately approved as kind of a guideline for what he would put in his budget but as far as just drop an air number into their budget no that that that doesn't happen at all so i'm going to send in a budget question related to that so that i could have a better understanding when you engage county executive or county board members from the county board of supervisors so i'm sure that my staff aide is taking a copious notes and [00:39:12] second has to do with a compensation increase of six percent when i look at the compensation when i compare the compensation of our teachers in order to raise our competitiveness in recruiting and maintaining our teachers in noldown virginia i generally want to take a look at what the loudon and prince william county because they are relatively larger than other school districts such as arlington even alexandria or first church and and for a masters with a master's degree in [00:39:47] step one uh we are below uh both a loudon and prince william and with just bachelor's degree I believe that we are we are below Loudoun but above Prince William but my understanding also is that both Loudoun and Prince William the Loudoun which has already approved the advertised budget they have an advertised budget and Prince William only has a proposed budget both school districts also have similar percentage of compensation increase for their teachers 6.1% and 5.9% [00:40:27] percent hours fits right in between you know six percent how will you be able to raise our competitiveness if everybody raises at the same rate well everybody's not raising at the same rate the other divisions and you're right at the masters the way we participants right now in the current year we rank seven of eight divisions on master step one which is you know we typically try to hire new teachers that have master's degrees so we kind of concentrate on that lane of the of the scale and again we rank seven of eight we rank a little [00:41:06] bit better with the bachelors but again we do have a preference for masters so we concentrate on that the other divisions are proposing steps plus MSA which are a little around six percent or more and steps are movement on the scale but MSA improves your scale and so our you may have noticed that our PowerPoint says that we're proposing a six percent compensation increase and we [00:41:40] would like to apply that as an MSA in total without step increases in the largest step increases we have are four percent our step increases typically range around 2% so those employees that are at those steps that are the the highest at 4% with a 6% MSA they lose nothing it is the same as if they were getting a step plus two because that would be for their step increase and then normally we would do a 2% COLA so the 6% was chosen because that [00:42:17] keeps everybody whole as far as if we did us if we did the traditional step plus MSA but because we're doing a 6% compensation increase as an MSA that is applied to the schedules which then propels us to the top of the list as far as the comparison among neighboring jurisdictions when we first spoke to the superintendent about this we thought it would take us two years to move to the top of the scale and that's important because when our recruiters go out to universities and colleges to find teachers. I'm sorry to say 22, 23 year old [00:42:54] teachers do not care about pensions. They do not care about anything except for how much money are you going to give me and there is great benefit in being able to say we pay the most in Northern Virginia. We do have, we have looked at the fiscal 25 proposed salary increases of the surrounding divisions. Of course Arlington and Manassas City don't yet have their their proposals out on the street but the others that do have continued with a step plus MSA and if we do this 6% right now based on their proposed budgets the other divisions which could change you know who knows what their school board amendments are [00:43:34] going to be this would push us to number one in the master's line just one year [00:43:42] Thank you. As a follow-up to that, then I just want to clarify whether I'm understanding you correctly. If you apply a 6% and a 6% to raising the scale using the MSA rather than step plus MSA, if step one's current scale, teachers on the step one, next year they will go to step two, so they will have a step plus another 6%? [00:44:16] no no step increases the people on step one next year will remain on step one and new teachers will be on step one so yes we will have people with one year experience on step one and people who are heading into their second year on on step one at that part but but we have that in a variety of places in our salary skills we have another step which i don't remember which one it is there's two actually nine and ten and then there's another where you have people with one [00:44:51] year experience difference that are on the same step as well as you're probably aware that the placement caps that historically had been used by all of the divisions were all eliminated and but and so that too it puts people on different steps with the same amount of experience we still think this is the right thing to do six percent we want to propel ourselves to the top in recruiting new teachers i'm sure that i'll have a chance to discuss this in the further in the future my time is up i will absolutely put you on the go back we have time i i don't [00:45:28] see any placards this is a very strange feeling what is happening here okay here we are uh miss dexit followed by miss um seismohizer hi uh thank you for the presentation uh my question is uh regarding the enrollment and there is additional ask for 46.6 million dollars and as we are seeing then the enrollment dropped and it's you know kind of stabilized now and i was just trying to understand the the breakdown of this 46 million dollars uh with the current enrollment projected [00:46:04] too far so i think the slide that i uh wrapped up on is probably the the easiest place to to see the the question. If you pop over to the FY25 column in this chart, you can see that 46.6 million down at the bottom, and you can see that the breakdown is those four numbers directly above that. And so [00:46:39] the approximately 8 million that's related to 1,749 additional students is one piece of it, And then the other, again, about $38 million is spread across those three areas. The main reason for those costs is the additional staff members that we have in special education classrooms providing ESOL services or the additional staff that it takes to lower class size at schools with higher levels of FRM. [00:47:15] And so that's the primary driver, but it's certainly not the only thing. So my follow-up question would be that we did have a drop of 10,000 students over from 2021 to 24. And those 10,000 students obviously caused less. [00:47:36] Did we have teachers to cover them? We still have those teachers employed, I believe. So, I think the piece that you're asking about is that in the column FY23, we have the 11,229 student drop that we had coming out of FY22. [00:47:59] That generated, that number of students generated that $68 million in savings. And then in that same year, we had a little bit of savings due to a reduction in the number of students receiving ESOL services and special education services. However, since that time, you know, we've grown by, you know, nearly 4,000 students, so that our net student change is more like 7,100 lower. [00:48:26] And the breakdown of the rest of those numbers there sort of shows that the cost increases that we had related to being able to provide those differentiated supports outweighed the savings that we got from the decrease in the number of students. [00:48:42] Yeah, I mean, I just wanted to say that you can see in fiscal 23, we acknowledged the loss of enrollment of 11,229 students and took an $88 million cut in our budget to recognize that. [00:49:02] That was 917 positions, but we are so large, we did not riff teachers, we didn't have to put anybody on the street. We were able to absorb those positions within our existing budget, just due to the number of teachers that turn over every year. [00:49:20] Yeah, that's what I was trying to understand, is that we didn't lose any teachers because of that drop, and we were able to reassign them and did a savings of $80 million. dollars and that's the reason now we are from that baseline we're increasing it slowly back up and that's that's numbers so yeah i'm clear on that and i did see a lot of drops and the this number the requested ask is like 7.75.9 is all reducing from the prior year is it or is it [00:49:52] increasing from um so all those numbers the 7.8 the 5.9 the 7.7 those are all increases Thank you and I appreciate the presentation and really walking us through why the differences [00:50:28] in enrollment and different demographics of our students have increased, led to increased costs. I think that's really important to mention. I also wanted to kind of mention a little bit that, you know, I think it's a really good question. You know, our enrollments sort of plateaued. Why do we need more money? [00:50:43] I think that's the basic question we need to have answered, right? And I've had some people talk to me about, you know, in 15 years ago when we had some enrollment plateau we didn't need more money and what's the difference right and so I think one of the things I wanted to lift up is that we are in a very different competitive environment for staffing than we were 15 years ago right our staffing shortages across the country it's not unique to Fairfax are dire especially in some hard-to-need positions and I mean basic supply and demand right our supply is low therefore we have to do something to to recruit the best in the brightest because that's what I think our taxpayers and our families want in Fairfax County and indeed I've often heard mentioned by [00:51:22] everybody strong schools lead to a strong economy and we can't have strong schools without excellent teachers so I think that's one thing that's really important to lift up is that difference I also think I want to lift up the difference in demographics from 15 years ago to now you know we and you walked us through it really well that we have significantly higher percentage of our students that are free and reduced price meal students special education students, English language learners, and there's more wraparound services. [00:51:49] The other thing I want to mention is I do think in 15 years, there's been a difference of expectation on education systems, on public education, right? We're expected to educate our students, there's a lot better understanding of mental health needs, there's a lot more mental health needs and better understanding the impact that has on learning, a lot higher expectations on family engagement, and all of those have impacts on our budget because we recognize the need to do all of those, and we're expected to do all of those in order to have our students have successful outcomes. [00:52:19] But I also wanted to lift up a couple things in some of these budget documents, but first I want to talk about the inclusive preschool and why that's so important. I appreciate you said the greatest raise in our special education costs have been in preschool. This is why inclusive preschool is important, because if you have inclusive preschool, it leads to better longer-term outcomes, especially for outcomes for students to be better able to be included in the general education setting, which reduces costs longer term because it's a higher student-teacher ratio, the more they can be included in the general education setting. [00:52:50] So that's why that is so important, not just for now, but this, if we're having a rise in preschool, then it's going to be a bubble of students. And what we do for those bubble of students now to set them up for success is going to have impact long-term on our budget costs. So that's why that is so important. And I only have a few seconds left. I also want to lift up that, you know, when we're talking about where we are in terms of a compensation increase as compared to our neighbors we are also compared to our neighbors the mid cost for people spending a lot of our neighbors spend more per pupil and our class sizes elementary school just classroom teacher to student ratio is about average if I can finish my thought but middle and high school student teacher ratio we're [00:53:30] on the higher end and that impacts instructions and the abilities for teachers to be supported so I'll take a go back so I've got a few other things to add but I want to lift up the full context of this increase in compensation ask. Thank you. I think that most of the data that Ms. Seismarheiser is referring to is in the WABY guide, which has pupil teacher ratios, cost per pupil, benefits, everything. [00:53:57] And so this is online. We have WABY guides back since the beginning of time on there, but the current one just came out in November, and that's where all the data is coming from. So if you have a few extra minutes it's something you might want to look at thank you miss burden miss st john coming thank you for the presentation um and for the information that we're all going to digest again from boots on the ground i just wanted to thank you for clarifying that although there's [00:54:31] been a drop in pupil enrollment there's been an increase in the need of our families and our students as someone that has helped people fill out the free and reduced lunch forms the poverty that we have in our community is not always reflected because sometimes someone will not qualify because they make fifty dollars more a month and we know that fifty dollars more a month does not go very far in this county so what we have is a snapshot of those that qualify but we [00:55:06] don't necessarily capture those that may just qualify additionally working in a school that did have a priest that does have a preschool program uh for developmentally delayed children i will tell you that they're busting at the seams so the need for more special education at the preschool level first for children that require that as well as throughout k through 12 has also increased with the increase that we've been saying and seeing in mental health needs for our students so um i know that people have said well there's less kids why do you spend [00:55:45] more money well because the needs are higher of the kids that we are servicing and i appreciate that this is needs based and that we're recognizing that for us to really provide and you guys have all heard this. I am here because we need to support our teachers. We need schools that are fully staffed with qualified teachers that reflect the community, that are respected, valued, and honored. That will make for strong schools, that will make for strong communities, that will make [00:56:19] for a strong Fairfax and strong economic future for our county as well as, you know, for our children. So I appreciate that. I know we have to dig deep into this, but I know from my own personal experience of what I've seen, everything that you're talking about, and also the increase of our students that need English as a second language, who all are very bright, but need to learn English and will become productive citizens in our community. So thank you for your presentation [00:56:58] education and I look forward to delving into it. Thank you. And I apologize, Ms. St. John. Cunning. For months I've been telling people your name is coming. My apologies. Ms. Anderson, I know that name. [00:57:17] True. To that end, following my colleague, there have been some staff members that have reached out to board members about the security of the special education daily contract extensions that are being funded out of end of year funds. This is something that I raised during meetings early on that I was happy to see that it was addressed with end-of-year funding. [00:57:37] However, I know that those dollars are stretched far at the end of the year. And so I was hoping to find out what our, what, if we could quell some nervousness and ensure that our, our, we are going to follow through with what we've said that we are going to do. [00:57:57] Dr. Reed, would you like to start that? Sure. I think one of the things that was important for us to do was to make sure that as we look at compensation for all staff that we also include within our budgeting plan to support the extended contracts, the extra 30 minutes, and therefore we did take, I think, an unusual step in foreshadowing our plans for year end, which will include the 30-minute extensions for our special ed staff. [00:58:30] Thank you. I think that will make many of our staff members much happier, and since we know that this is a population of teachers that we need to ensure stay within our county, I think it's extremely important that we privilege that dedication to that task. [00:58:54] Okay, thank you, Ms. Anderson. We will now go to Mr. McDaniel. I'll have you all for go backs. Thank you. Okay, several questions. So, in the budget, logistically, oh, that's fine, sure. [00:59:14] I apologize. I did not look up to the folks that are joining us virtually. So, Mr. Dunn and Miss Lady, at this point, I will throw it to you if you'd like to speak. And I see that Mr. Dunn's hand is up. So, Mr. Dunn, can we restart the clock, please? I am not sure if you're speaking, but we are not able to hear you at this point. [00:59:42] I didn't know you were still doing with things on your end. Can you hear me okay? now we can please go ahead um I I appreciate the um information that's been shared um you know I think it it seems if you look at the wabe guide uh you know to echo Mr. Moon um there are uh according to the categories that have been presented um you know some categories of teachers you know uh believe it was masters you know first beginning and then maximum were nine of ten but we're 5 of 10 or 6 of 10 for bachelor's and master's with mid-career. [01:00:22] So it seems that we have some areas where we actually have competitive pay and then other areas where we are well below market. Beyond that, we have some crises such as a lack of sufficient special education teachers and then a continuing problem recruiting teachers for Title I schools, especially experienced teachers. [01:00:50] Although I have spoken with Dr. Reed, and she said it's difficult to get in AP Calculus or any other different types of teachers. But I would urge that instead of taking the whole pot of money that we're seeking and whatever that pot of money is at the end of the day, Instead of allocating it evenly across the entire population of teachers, for those who are already earning 9 of 10 or 10 of 10 in terms of comparison, according to the WABE, that we focus on differentiated pay with greater plus-ups for those positions that are hardest to staff. [01:01:27] And I would look for that not just as one-time bonuses, because bonuses are not especially meaningful in this economy after taxes, they don't always add up to much, but really tossing up the base salaries. [01:01:42] So if there is a crisis in special education, that we really target more dollars to there so we can attract more applicants. Same for 2021 schools, same for other areas where we're having difficulty staffing. I also think that we should look at how FCPS is, you know, that where we're trying to get most of our teachers, understanding we're a very large system, but my understanding from many conversations is that many new teachers come to us, get all our training, and then leave after three years. [01:02:14] Maybe we should focus our budget more on plussing up the salaries for experienced teachers so we can poach some of the talent from surrounding or even national jurisdictions, making sure we have the best teachers, not just the ones who are freshest out of school and who go to those job fairs. [01:02:31] So that would be my initial comments on this budget. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Any comments from staff? Ms. Lady, I don't think we're able to hear you. [01:02:54] Ms. Lady, we're not able to hear you, so we will try to get you on the phone again. Do you have a problem that is different than what Mr. Dunn had? [01:03:12] I don't know what the issue is, but I'm back. You're back on. Okay. And now we'll be back. You should mute your... Thank you. Thank you. Okay, okay, okay. [01:03:31] All right, let's try that again, Ms. Lady. I'm glad I'm calling Mr. Dunn because I wanted to comment on a few things. First of all, in terms of our high-need areas, you know, if we're going to pay a different salary to hire people in high-need areas, then are we going to pay teachers we're retaining in the same disciplines the higher salary? [01:03:56] And I think we need to look at equity here. As I do believe that across-the-board raise, I also want to make the point that while a lot of our faculty have master's degrees and some are working towards them, there aren't many industries where the expectation is a master's degree, especially when your salary is as low as what you get in education. [01:04:17] The other thing I want to talk about is he made a comment about people who get trained for three years and then leave to go to another system. I don't know of anybody who's come to Fairfax and left after three years to go to another system. They're leaving the industry altogether because it's a difficult job to keep. [01:04:33] The other thing I want to mention is the fact that we have a lot of faculty who are veterans who came to us from another street system, but they came in at a time where their experience was only capped at 15 years. [01:04:49] We have since changed that cap, I believe, to at least 20 years, and I believe it's incumbent upon us as what Manassas just did is they went back and retroactively gave the folks who came in at 15 their additional one to five years that they had as a pay adjustment. [01:05:12] So at the end of the day, what I'm trying to say is that this industry is at a crucial point in terms of recruiting people and also growing them to where they want to make this a career path. [01:05:34] It's been my experience the last 10 years that very few of the new people who come on board actually stay the course and want to make a career out of it. They recognize pretty quickly that their skill sets in other industries where they can actually teach are of greater value. [01:05:52] So I really want to support this budget. I do believe in an across-the-board pay raise, but I do think there are layers that we need to think about. The one question I have for staff, if it could be clarified, is the DROP program. If you can explain to me exactly how that would work for current employees who are at 25 years ERFC and 55 or employees who are not at 55 but are at 25 ERFC. [01:06:18] As I believe many of those people are looking to leave us because they can collect that ERFC if they do. Thank you. Ms. Burden. Yeah, the DROP program, the use of 25 years and age 55 is the minimum age and year requirements for someone to retire with an unreduced pension from ERFC. [01:06:45] So we have about 2,700 people that are in that legacy plan, of which about 500 of them meet that minimum requirements for a pension. And so they, as you said, they often start looking for opportunities in other divisions so that they can access their ERFC pension while still building five more years in their VRS. [01:07:09] Because for VRS, you need 30 years in order to have an unreduced retirement. So if someone is 52 or 53 years old and has 25 years right now, they're still not eligible to retire until they reach age 55 that is the minimum so they would be able to jump into this drop program two years out so that's just the 55 and 25 is just the minimum requirements to retire and receive a pension and the drop program would allow our employees that [01:07:46] meet that criteria to be able to have that those pension funds put in a separate fund for them And it'll earn 4% interest, and then that will be paid out to them in a lump sum at the conclusion of the drop period. So they don't lose anything and are still able to build the greater number of years that they need with VRS. [01:08:07] And the other thing that I would add to that with the drop program is that you've essentially retired from ERFC, from our local program. And so you would no longer pay the employee share toward retirement, which is currently 3%. [01:08:23] So those employees who are part of the DROP program would also receive an additional 3% salary because they're not paying that 3% into the retirement plan. Ms. Lady? [01:08:41] If he's at 25 years and chooses to go to Prince William County, they will get their pension at a reduced rate for your FC. So technically, we're holding them to get to 55 in this DROP version. Yes. [01:08:57] Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Lady. Mr. McIlvain. Thank you, Madam Budget Chair. So I'll start out by just saying that I was quite disappointed to see media reports over the weekend of board members undercutting our advertised budget before it was barely out of the gate. Let me be clear that any cut to this budget is a cut to our teachers. I think that's been clear and our staff pay. As far as I'm concerned, [01:09:30] this budget is indeed a bare minimum of where we need to be with our staff and there are also many needs that are not included here and i think all of us would agree with that lots of things we have said we would do in the past that we haven't done lots of things that we want to do going forward i've talked a lot about a theme of of seeing things that prior boards have approved that have some for some reason just gone poof um and i could recount many examples but i'll give you one right now which is that in 2014 uh we approved a plan that would put world language in every elementary [01:10:10] school um and i learned coming back on the board that we have still have 87 schools that do not have fless um and thanks to ms marin who asked the budget question last year that's 15 million dollars right there. That's teacher planning time that we could give back to elementary school teachers while their students are in FLESS. That's just one example. So there are many things that I would like to include in this budget that aren't there. So that's why I see it as a bare minimum and I do hope colleagues will join me and at the at the very least not undercutting this [01:10:44] request before we can even get it to the Board of Supervisors. Thanks. Thank you - Thank you, Mr. McElveen. Mr. McDowell, again. - So I have several budget questions that I've put out there. [01:11:02] None of them have been responded to yet, so I guess can I just go ahead and note to upgrade those from number two to number one priority? 'Cause I put them in as number two. - Yes, I mean, or we can do it for you. - Okay, that's fine, thank you. [01:11:17] Question real quick, I'm just kind of curious. Turf fields, community use of turf fields. We have that, correct? - Yes. - And do we charge for that? Yes, but I believe that's the purview of the, I mean, we get a piece of it, but I think the county handles that. [01:11:37] Just as a budget question, an overview of those fee structures. Thank you. Third item, if we spend $1 for a general student, just a general student, because you're talking about the blend of general versus special education versus FRM, etc. [01:11:54] If we spend $1 on a general student, what are we spending on a student that has special education? It's typically double. Typically double for special education as far as the cost of special ed services, about 30% more for ESOL. [01:12:14] And I don't think the free and reduced is something we actually calculate. Okay, that's fine. So when we're talking about the fluctuations in the composition of the student body, Simply doing a division factor of total budget divided by total enrollment is not accurate, correct? [01:12:31] Okay, thank you. Question four, on pre-K, inclusive pre-K, how many additional kids are we serving with this budget item? Well, this budget item is a placeholder of $2.1 million because the model for improvement to inclusive preschool is still under development. [01:12:52] And so at this point, we don't yet know what, you know, how many positions or what schools they would go to. For now, it's just a placeholder. Well, I agree. Yeah, I would say that it's more than just a placeholder. What we are not ready to do yet is say where we're locating these extra classrooms. [01:13:09] But, Matthew, we have an increase in the number, I believe, of preschool-aged children who require special services support. Is that correct? Do you have an estimate of that number? because we don't have a choice about serving our students who require special supports in preschool. [01:13:30] - Yeah, so the total number of preschool special education services we're expecting to provide is I believe in like the 3,700 range. - Okay, good, thank you, perfect. - Thank you, Matthew. - I wanna echo what Ms. Anderson said about the half hour contract. [01:13:49] There's a history in this county of making IOUs and sometimes they get funded and sometimes they don't. So, you know, having continuous conversations about the fact that the IOU is going to get funded, I think is gonna be really important as we go through this process. Drop, there's been a lot of conversations kind of around this program. [01:14:10] So we're just looking at some questions here. It says six and a half, on page 15 of the fact sheet, it says six and a half million dollars is the program cost. Is that year one or total for five years? - That's an estimate. And that is if everyone, every single person participated, We don't know how many people will want to avail themselves of the DROP program, and so that number may come down dramatically once we get information about who would be interested in the program. [01:14:41] But the $6.5 million, is that for year one or year one through five? Yeah, that's just an interim measure, worst-case scenario, and by worst-case, I mean the highest number that it could cost, Because what will happen is the contribution rates are developed by the actuaries every two years. [01:15:01] And next year is when we're supposed to get a new rate. And the drop program will be factored into that then. And so it is a very, very minimal increase to the overall rate of 6.48. So year one or year one through five? [01:15:19] Meaning, is it $6.5 million or is it $32.5 million over the life of the program? Year one. Okay, thank you. I have heartburn with drop, and that's where I'm going with some of these questions. And I think that as we flesh out more details of this program, that heartburn is probably going to increase. [01:15:37] Because what we're effectively doing, we're the only jurisdiction in the Waby Guide that has this ERFC program. And when you look at our total compensation factor versus salary, we go from number seven or eight on the salary to number one in total compensation costs, and it's driven heavily by ERFC. [01:15:54] Now, it is what it is at this point. What we're doing here is we're creating a third program that sits on top of ERFC that benefits teachers who have longevity. Meanwhile, we have new teachers, as we just heard from staff. When you go to job fairs, they do not care about pensions. [01:16:10] But we have those teachers that are struggling to afford to live in this county, they're struggling to stay in the profession, and we're coming out here with drop programs, creating new benefits to try and stop the hemorrhaging of teachers. However, there's no requirement for them to actually mentor, there's no delineation between teachers and administrative staff, there's no factors on merit, and I think that we're trying to force the square peg in a round hole here, we need to put our heads together and figure out a better way to keep our best teachers in the classrooms and this is not the program to do it okay that was well timed i am going to go ahead and take my turn before we get to go backs and just for everybody's information i'm just going [01:16:50] to run down the list if you do not want a second turn just go ahead and say no thank you but just to make it easier um i i think mr mcdonald took a few of my questions because this is what i get quite a bit from my community, which is how much does it cost to instruct a general education student, a special education student, an ESOL student, and now the number that I've learned that we don't really capture in that way, you know, a student at a poor school. So I'm glad that we're able to get that out. This is probably, and I don't know if any of you have this question, but I did see Dr. Agnew Scott in the audience. Can you speak to how many vacancies do we have [01:17:29] at present today the 13th? Good afternoon. At present we don't have a solid number for vacancies just because we are still in the process of completing the school year and also assessing the information to see how many teachers are expecting to return to the next year. We have [01:18:05] our letters of intent that are out there. No, I'm so sorry, not vacancies that we anticipate for next year, but but classrooms right now that do not have a teacher because they have a long-term sub, they have a teacher resident, etc. Understood. At this time, we have a little over 100 vacancies that currently exist. We are currently in the process of filling those on a weekly basis. We are still seeing the numbers drop but at the same time we're still seeing teachers exit on a weekly basis so we're monitoring those numbers. Thank you. How many special education [01:18:45] teacher vacancies do we have currently? I do not have that information at hand but that I can get for you. Thank you and how many teachers do we have in classrooms without a full license that are provisional, again, teacher residents, et cetera? I will need to check, but I'm going to venture to say I know that we have approximately 200, upward of 200 teacher trainees in our [01:19:17] classrooms at this time. Okay, thank you. I raise this point because, you know, as somebody who worked in a neighboring district and somebody who represent the Mason District, where we have the [01:19:29] largest number of Title I schools. We are routinely seeing this exodus. I know because Ms. Burden, we hired them in Loudoun. They were, hey, come on over. It's cheaper to live there from Fairfax, particularly, and we really enjoyed those teachers who had a few years because you didn't have to start from the ground up. And I know that has been a concern of the RAS that represented our region because when it comes to professional development, they could never move to step two because every year we had to start from the very beginning [01:19:59] again. So it really makes it hard to move a school. And I raise this because I know these are the places where we've had a lot of need, where we continue to have vacancies, because I really wanted to lean in on how do we ensure that we're recruiting specifically for those places, which leads me to my question to Dr. Reed, if you could just kind of open up the curtain a little bit, because I know the budget resolution that the board put forward did speak to how can we attract for those positions that are difficult to staff. Why did you land on a stipend rather than something a little bit more robust or aggressive? [01:20:38] I think the stipend is actually a move for us because it is financial recognition. I do think that we've got a variety of programs where we're providing recruitment bonuses or retention bonuses [01:20:55] services for different employee groups. I do know that the HR department is working on a variety of recruiting strategies as well. At the end of the day, it's also the quality of the work and the mission driven vision of the particular division that also matters. But I don't know, we could certainly have Dr. Agnew Scott add more to the recruitment plan or flesh that out for you if you'd like. [01:21:26] i know i i because again i get to see this on a daily basis you and i have had conversations as of last week one of my schools has eight vacancies three of them a special education i don't believe they do any longer they may not any longer but that was a conversation last week and i don't know what the update is and we have the school that has had the whole fourth grade team has only had one regular teacher everybody else has been a sub a something there's got to be an emergency response to that kind of emergency. So I wanted to make sure that I raised that. We also, our last job fair that we had on last Saturday was [01:22:04] exclusively for Title I schools and those schools that traditionally have had a difficult time being fully staffed. So it was intentional on the part of our HR department to make sure that the very first job fair of the season was devoted to schools that had the highest needs. And we had 400 attendees, in my understanding is we've offered minimally to 160 contracts. So I think that's, you know, a pretty dramatic shift for how we're recruiting and hiring in the division. And I don't know the ins and outs of this, but is there a space for if we are providing a bonus or whatever it is, [01:22:42] is going to be the financial recognition of the job that needs to be done in these hard to fill positions that maybe we add a requirement that, you know, you need to stay for a couple of years and that school to avoid what school principals have to deal with, which is starting from square one. So I think part of the challenge that we're being responsive to with this budget is actually raising the salaries across the board so that it's not just a signing bonus, but once you're a part of team FCPS, you're, um, you'll be able to appreciate regionally competitive [01:23:18] salary um year after year after year and not just in your first year or in your last year right but as you progress through your career uh in fairfax county public schools we want to provide a world class uh salary here to keep our staff and i think i was talking about and i see that my time so i'll just wrap up the sentence i wasn't talking about at this point teachers who were leaving fairfax county for other places but within fairfax county leaving school a for school b because life could be a little bit easier at school b so if you wanted to speak to that and then i'll put myself [01:23:50] on a go back well i do know that we do have staff that maybe start their career in maybe third grade and prefer fifth grade or middle school and prefer high school or you know find some passion over the course of their journey with us but i do i do get your point that we do at times have staff that leave schools where perhaps the lift is higher sometimes and the challenges are higher which is why we've shared i think both matthew and lee shared our needs-based staffing formula to try [01:24:26] to lower class sizes in schools that we know have higher needs because we want to maintain the same high expectations for every student regardless of the school they're in and want to make sure that we're staffing with appropriate high supports where needed okay go backs uh chair frisch so i i think it would benefit us if we dug a little deeper into why um uh you know certain [01:25:01] populations within our school system require additional um resources and uh can we talk a little bit about what for example for an english language student uh the additional supports that that um that that money goes towards paying for broadly speaking sure um i would say that often it's lower class size it can also be push in which is when we might have teachers with specialized training join the classroom to support students or at times pull out where student teachers who have or educators who have special expertise might pull small groups out of classrooms [01:25:40] so in general what we're looking for are smaller class sizes and perhaps more staffing to provide wraparound support and for our specialized population i would think it's similar similarly modeled and so it's not just throwing a dollar out there and saying these populations are more expensive to educate and also this is like an example of equity in action right this is what we need to do to make sure that we are preparing these students for success after school I think it's the absolute if you will bringing to life of belief that we're going to maintain high expectations but it's the type of support that's going to be variable [01:26:18] Right and to some extent, you know, when we think of our most our students who are most academically gifted You know, they require different services as well that might be an added expense to our system as well, correct? That's correct. So Through this conversation, I hope those watching at home and our friends in Richmond in in the county Understand that though our population in the school system is down but rising, right? [01:26:49] You know, that we are providing a level of service to ensure that we are turning out exceptional students, however they come to us. That's right. We are thrilled with each and every one of our students. [01:27:06] And I just think that, and again, as of this morning, we're at 182,315 students, so our enrollment continues to rise. And we continue to welcome children from all over the globe. [01:27:21] One of our elementary schools this past year, between January and June, received 150 students from Afghanistan, many of whom did not speak English as a first language. Very bright, capable, curious, young people filled with a sense of wonder who are going to require a bit more support as they enter their journey here in Fairfax County Public Schools. [01:27:44] but we're going to maintain high expectations for those students. What it's going to require, though, is a bit more in staffing and resources. It's probably something that we should be mindful of in the years to come because this doesn't change. You know, if we continue to have larger populations with these various needs, it's going to continue to be something that we're looking at. [01:28:05] That's correct. I think our strength is also our strength is our diversity, And that's going to require us to resource our schools so that we can meet the needs of each of our students. And again, critical to that, any of that, meeting the needs of any student, is a world-class workforce. [01:28:24] So, again, I appreciate the investment there and look forward to supporting this moving forward. Ms. Murrow. I'd just like to reiterate what Mr. McElveen said about ensuring that board directives are followed up on. [01:28:42] And I know in our board office we've been talking about how we track that. it's really incumbent on the superintendent's office to be sure that we're implementing the things that our board did and um i know there were a few things that you're following up on dr reed but it's difficult to keep track of of the the things when we expect that they're going to be on their way so maybe we could figure out a way to really tighten that up so we know that our directives are being implemented i will leave that for it now thank you mr moon thank you mr mcdonia just a [01:29:17] follow-up to you know what you have said about MSA being applied and new teachers for the next year and also those teachers on currently on step one remaining on the same step, do I then assume that those teachers, new plus current step one teachers, are going to move together to the next step or that's yet to be decided? If we in any year that we gave step increases, they would move forward together. [01:29:52] So they will move forward together. Okay, I probably would have some questions regarding that and going forward, but that's some other time. Well, we're doing compensation on next Tuesday's work session, and so we'll unpack all that a little bit more then. [01:30:07] If we have a work session next Tuesday. All right, with that said, I'm going to send this one in as a budget question. I'm looking for historical data related to our transfer request and how the Board of Supervisors responded to that. [01:30:29] And one last one is, Ms. Merron talked about board's directive. The budget resolution that was passed by the board at the end of last month, January 25, I consider that as a board's directive with the superintendent. And I'm hoping that the resolution, language in there, priorities included in the resolutions, adequately reflected in the superintendent's proposed budget and if you can drag me which pages I should go to see how they were reflected I would appreciate that very much. [01:31:07] Well there's a short summary on page 63 of the fact sheets that I just gave you and there's also like a little summary on the PowerPoint from last Thursday night that identifies each of the components of the resolution and where we have funding to support that. [01:31:27] Okay, thank you. Thank you. So page 63. 63 is the history of the transfer, right. One of the pages of the PowerPoint identifies the differing priorities in the resolution and where we've allocated funding to support anxiety. [01:31:47] All right, if you let me know which pages will help me better. Okay, thank you. Slide 15. Slide 15. Okay, thank you very much. Ms. Dixit. So I've been waiting. I don't know what happened to the numbers here, but thank you, Mr. McDaniel. [01:32:08] One thing I wanted to say is that being a teacher, I feel it's a calling. Not, you know, everybody can, you know, pick professions, and I feel personally those who choose teaching is the, I guess, noblest professions of all. [01:32:25] we all acknowledge that and even though we know it's not the best income sort of compensation right now as industry and how the cost of living we are trying to get there this is an effort I guess in this budget to get and retain the highest the teachers and with the good compensation so I am I would like more and better things for our teachers and support that fully and thank you for at least giving the 6% raise, which they truly deserve. [01:33:01] My question was in the budget, I looked at the presentation, maybe I missed it. Even though we are talking about the academic success and we have a lot of different things added in our presentation, which aligns to the board, I'm just referring to one of the pages here sorry moved away as this page 15 of this presentation as student academic success and there are a lot of things which are included here in terms that I did not see any addition to academic Academy classes you know CTE [01:33:37] classes is that part of the biggest the bigger presentation I guess or the are Are we adding more classes for academies and CTE classes and career and technical education? [01:33:56] No additional classes are being added. Okay. They're maintained. Okay. All right. So, that's something we, just to get our students to be with the career readiness. That was something we, I guess I will submit that as a budget question and see if we can add that. [01:34:14] Dr. Reed, you have. Right. Ms. Dixit, one of the things, again, this budget is sort of what we're thinking about in terms of requiring new revenue or new expenditures. We are looking at adding the drone program, for example, at Westfield High School, and we are looking at those, but it's within the current budget that sits already, if that makes sense. [01:34:39] So we didn't call some of those new courses out as unique in this budget because they're within the fabric of the budget that already exists, if that makes sense. Because we're going to still fund a certain number of courses for students, and there's a process that there's an approval a year ahead of time. [01:34:58] So there's some new courses, but they're not going to require new expenditures or revenue because if we're adding some things, that means students aren't in other things, if that makes sense. But we can provide a more detailed answer in an upcoming session. [01:35:17] And I think you and I discussed about this, that we could, in fact, ask some of the, so bless you, the industry to come and work with our students, which may not be additional cost to the school, but then could be Microsoft or, you know, Google, like, you know, industry partners can come and educate these students and the various certifications. [01:35:41] - Correct, as we discussed internships, externships and partnerships, they wouldn't necessarily have a budget impact, but they would in fact increase opportunities for students. - Ms. Sizemore-Hyser. [01:35:57] - Thank you. And I know the question came up with a budget session next week and I would unfortunately advocate for one because some of this materials we just got as we walked in the door and didn't have a chance to read, unfortunately. So I wanted to go back to my conversation about teacher salaries and class sizes. [01:36:18] 'Cause I talked about the average class size for teacher and that's just classroom teacher to student ratio. Elementary schools are on average compared to us around jurisdictions of middle and high school 'cause we're on the higher end of class size. But I wanted to lift up, when you look at those on the teacher scale position, class sizes, and this is also in the WABY guide, we are on the lower end. [01:36:41] I mean, we're on the higher end, which means that the teacher scale are those who are music, arts, reading, other specialists that are on the teacher scale. And because we're on the higher end, which means we have a higher student-teacher ratio for those on the teacher scale, that means, I think, I interpret that to mean that our teachers have less support than teachers in other systems because there's fewer of the teachers that provide that teacher scale support, whether it's reading specialists or music and arts, librarians, coaches, mentors, PE, et cetera. [01:37:12] It may impact, I believe, our class sizes and electives at secondary school as well. So I think we need to really look at the class sizes holistically from what supports our teachers. I don't know if you were hearing that. I know there's a little sidebar going on, but I think that's important to lift up. [01:37:28] No, I did hear it, and I have often heard that we actually have more supports. So I would want to make sure that staff have an opportunity to provide you some detailed feedback on that topic. That was my question, because when I look at the WABE guide, right, For example, it says student per teacher scale position, and this is page 29, middle school we're at 19.7, Arlington's at 14.7. [01:37:52] So does that mean we have more support or less support? I want to make sure I'm interpreting that correctly. At high school we're at 20.3, others are 16.4. So which way does that, because it looks the opposite from the classroom teacher. So do we have more support or less support is a question I have. Well, the bulk of the calculation for, and Alice, you know more about this than me, the bulk of the calculations for the teacher scale position are the classroom teachers plus the add-on. [01:38:23] So if we're already high at the classroom teachers, then yes, it's going to come down with the addition of those, but we're still going to be higher than everybody else because we're higher on the classroom teachers. So I'm interpreting correctly that it's less support for the teachers. But I wanted to make sure I was interpreting that correctly or more. It could be the same support as what others are providing, but our class sizes are large. [01:38:42] And so that's what's, you know, the percent of support with more students. It's because it's a piece of the calculation with all teacher scale. Got it. Thank you. I just want to make sure I was interpreting that correctly, that if we have larger class sizes, it's less percentage support as well because they're supporting more students in those larger class sizes. [01:38:59] I also wanted to lift up, I know there's a lot of conversation about JLARC. And while I think it's very important, like Mr. Fresh said, to really talk to the state about what's in the JLARC and really lift up how underfunded we are. And I think it's important to continue that message. I worry a little bit about relying too much on the state coming through around JLARC. [01:39:18] I look at the governor's budget and how it's significantly less funding for schools than previous governor's budget, that's a message. I also, I looked at Michael Malloy's latest about the legislative package, and it seems like most of the JLARC-related bills either failed or are being continued to next year. [01:39:35] So I don't know, obviously the budget hasn't happened yet. I don't know if some of that funding could still be in the budget, but I just wanted to lift that up as something I noticed. The signaling isn't good from what I'm seeing. I don't know where they're gonna end up. I really hope that they include some of that in the budget to be TPD. [01:39:52] Ryan, I'm so glad you mentioned things that we passed before or other things. There's a whole, that was a fast three minutes. May I finish my thought? There's a whole list of things, whether it's STEAM programs, things for special education, major maintenance, special education things that we've needed to do for 20, 30 years that we haven't been able to get to. And I just lift that up to say that this really is a bare bones ask because we're at a crisis for teacher staffing and that's what we focused on. [01:40:16] But there are so many more things we need. Leave it at that. Thank you. Ms. St. John Cunning. Thank you. Thank you. I really don't have a question. I just want to, again, thank you for this And also mentioned that looking into this deeper, that also there are some increases for other school staff, and I appreciate that. [01:40:42] Obviously, the teachers are the core of our personnel in the building, but the support staff is critical as well, and we're also losing positions there. So bringing their salaries up to market levels is also important. [01:40:59] The other things I wanted to raise were that a lot of students that receive our special services are not just ESOL, not just special ed, and not just free and reduced lunch. Some kids are all three, and they require those services, and that's something that a lot of people don't recognize. [01:41:18] i personally like the drop program i do have to look at it more closely but i know a lot of teachers that already were currently looking elsewhere precisely because they would not they'd say i would love to stay here but this isn't going to benefit me so i know personally some teachers that will stay here because of that um a lot of people have left buildings i wish we could compel teachers to stay for two or three years i do know that after covid there was a mass exodus of those teachers that are willing to stay because then they could choose sometimes to live [01:41:56] closer to their homes so i don't want to say that if we provide more money that a teacher will necessarily stay in a school sometimes a position opens that is closer to their home and i do want to say i really want to express that a lot of this conversation has been teachers may not want to be in title one schools and where there might be a greater need in title one schools i have worked in them all my life and there is a great richness there's a great sense of community and a great sense of positive culture i know personally teachers that have left title one schools [01:42:34] particularly after the pandemic not because they wanted to but because they said i can now i can now work in a school that happens to be walkable to where my kids are at, and I can walk to school with them, and I can work there. [01:42:51] That person, however, has become a great contributor to a lot of programs in our school. So though she physically left as a teacher, she keeps coming back to support our students. So I just want to make that distinction that sometimes people don't make the decision to leave because they're not happy in a Title I school. [01:43:08] are very personal reasons and i really want to express that there is the rich cultural diversity in our title one schools um and even though they're economically disadvantaged does not mean that they're poor in spirit i think that sometimes they're richer in spirit and community thank you miss anderson oh you're good okay all right uh dr anderson thank you i i just want to get back to some of the things that you kind of talked about dr reed earlier regarding you know the good things that are happening in our schools and there are but i also want to be realistic to point out that [01:43:47] we do have some significant gaps amongst our schools and i i will not ever apologize for wanting to put more resources to the places where we have the greater needs i've always felt as a school administrator and i feel today that where we have the most the neediest students that's where we need to put our best and brightest because they're not going to be able to overcome and to achieve without that. [01:44:12] So I'll leave that there. I know one of the things you opened this conversation with, and I believe both you and Ms. Burden said it, which is we are to present a needs-based budget. That is our responsibility. But what I think I'm hearing is that this budget does not necessarily reflect all of our needs. [01:44:29] So there are some significant things that have not been included. And I want to ask this. One of the ones that we have not talked about is, well, it's been mentioned, But it's not included, and I know you have a plan for year-end, but why would we not, since we know this has been an important component of our work for the past two, three years, why would we not add the 30 minutes for special education teachers to show that this is our need? [01:44:58] Because the documents on page 66, even if we're going to compare with how we rate against other divisions, it shows that we're kind of middle of the pack when it comes to our increase ask. So I would love to hear some thoughts around that. [01:45:17] It is certainly something that we think is important. I believe it's when we costed out another $25 million. Is that correct? $24. $24 million. so we certainly can amend the proposed budget to add that or as we've indicated we're going to be planning to address it at year end but the board certainly we could amend the budget to add that right thank you because addressing at year end just builds into next year's program so i i feel like it's six of one half dozen of the other and if this is our responsibility to show our needs [01:45:57] We should show all of our needs, and we might need to prioritize after the fact, but we still need to articulate to our funders that we really have significant needs. And I think we're shying away from exposing all of that, so to speak. I hate to use that term. [01:46:15] The other piece that I would love for you to speak to, which I know I've received some communication around, is the elementary education planning time. I know it's kind of buried in there a little bit, but can you bring it up to light? [01:46:32] I won't say lift up. That's also on the list of items to be considered for year-end. So it is not in the fiscal, there's not additional funding for that in the 25 budget currently. I would say the monitors that we originally, I believe Dr. Brabrand, initiated to address elementary planning time are in the budget. [01:46:54] they're not explicitly called out because they've been rolled into the budget so those monitors and that support are continuing i think what we're talking about at year end is the professional development placeholder as we look at elementary needs with the new basal reading curriculum which is going to be the first time we've had a new basal reading curriculum in almost 30 years so we're wanting to make sure we hold space for supporting planning and professional development around the new basal curriculum but as far as equitable elementary planning time that strategy [01:47:28] that began several years ago with monitors has been continued how close are we to closing that gap many of the schools have closed it i think what we've discovered is that some schools are not utilizing their monitors for elementary planning and where that's not occurring we're not seeing equitable planning time i think is one of the analysis one of the analyses of that particular topic um but i would welcome dr presidio or dr agnew scott to comment further but i think the monitors were originally intended to cover that uh disparate planning time i don't know how close [01:48:08] at this point we are to that i know we had a team working on that last spring yeah thank you dr reed i i think you covered it i don't have a lot more to add to that other than just um to say that we are continuing to partner with our elementary school principals uh to see how we we can get additional elementary planning time because we know that there is still a disparity. [01:48:29] I don't have the exact amount because there is a little bit of variability from school to school, but we are still working to develop alternative strategies and we'll continue to keep the board apprised of how that work develops. Thank you. I think I'm going to add a budget question to determine how and who. I want to know how close we are and which schools still need that additional support and how could those monitors be better utilized to ensure that we have parity with what is happening at the secondary level um i have 27 seconds left but i'm going to probably um [01:49:06] okay i'm going to just stop there and just do a little bit of house cleaning housekeeping um ms seismorheiser the next work session that we have is going to be happening it's not an optional work session so we will have the opportunity to dig into this i like you i'm struggling with being handed this and having my list of inquiries while listening to the conversation that is happening here as well so that is happening what was perhaps optional if we don't have any registrants is the where is the um public hearing but the work session is definitely going to be taking place [01:49:39] um and i i just want to say just lastly i i do agree with what's been said around the room this is a bare minimum budget I I think we we need to show all of it warts and all warts and all so I will be having some discussions once I have an answer regarding um some of the questions that I have about an amendment to this budget for the um 24 million for the um special education planning [01:50:05] thank you thank you and uh Mr. Dunn do you I think your hand is up Mr. Dunn okay maybe do do a go back. Okay, brief comments and then we'll go back for thirds. What's been said around the room really has to be communicated to the public, which is a responsibility to develop a needs-based [01:50:40] budget. I think this proposal tries really hard to do that, and I think it's done a fairly decent job given the cards that we've been dealt here. I think it's responsible, and however, you know, we have a responsibility to educate every child across Fairfax County to the absolute best possible way that we can, meeting both legal and, in my opinion, moral obligations to give every kid a rock star education. So when we're looking at high-level budget numbers, I know it can be kind of a hit-and-run timeline to a certain extent. We've really got to do our job and dig into that [01:51:19] and figure out how to synthesize that and communicate that to the public in the best way. know the the drop program not to beat the proverbial dead horse in my view I get what it's trying to accomplish and I'm in favor of the goals that it's trying to accomplish but in my view it's putting a band-aid on a broken leg and I think that we need to do a better job of figuring out how to get about accomplishing those goals for the reasons that I previously stated so for third go backs I believe miss Sizemore Heiser did you have okay so I wanted also [01:51:55] as we're kind of talking to the public a little bit with some of our challenges from the state point at the LCI changes and in ten years our LCI percentage has gone down from the state which means we're getting less money from the state That's what it looks like. It was like going down about 68 point six eight to point six five went up a little bit point six five three point six five seven the last biennum, but I Wanted to say I agree with dr. Anderson on the 30 minute elementary sped time So I was going to ask that I have another thing that might put as a budget question I would love to get a little better sense of the percent changes in terms of our recruitment and retention of teachers. [01:52:32] How long does it take to fill a position? How much longer are they open? How many do we have newer versus more experienced teachers? How many teachers are leaving each year? Some higher level needs, special education, English language learner, Title I vacancy rates versus other schools. How many teachers are on a provisional license, teacher residences? [01:52:48] I'd love to get a two-year, five-year, and ten-year percent changes. So I may put that in as a budget question, so I just want to flag that for folks. And the last thing I wanted to say, Dr. Reed, I totally understand this is a bare bones budget, and I want to point out how bare bones it is. The previous board did, I know it's your favorite thing to hear me say, a two-year AIR outside consultant on special education. [01:53:09] In November of 2022, we had the first response to that, our staff response in the first presentation of the special education enhancement plan of November 2022, almost a year and a half ago. I don't know what in this budget is responsive to the AR report and or the special education plan. [01:53:26] I believe we did a placeholder last year for the special education plan, but I don't know what additional needs we have because there's nothing in here that talks about that. So if you could address that, that'd be helpful. Sure. It's largely addressed in the differential staffing. [01:53:42] Lee, if we could bring up the, when we are talking about increased enrollment and increased support for staffing our special ed dollars that we've earmarked within the budget, can you pull that up, please? Actually, I think Ms. Sizemore-Hizer is talking about the $2 million that we budgeted for the AIR report, and so we have $2 million of recurring dollars in the current budget. [01:54:12] It wasn't an add to the budget, we have it in the current year, and then I think there's one and a half of one-time dollars for a total of $3.5 million that is available to address the recommendations of the consultant. So we've actually increased last year's placeholder by, you know, over 50 percent, I think, if we went from $2 million to $3.5 million. [01:54:37] Right. Well, the $2 million is recurring. We put it in as recurring. But yes, so those are funds dedicated specifically to that report and its recommendations, as well as moving forward with new students, the increased ratio for funding for staffing. [01:54:53] I think it's part of the 47 million, I believe, I can't see the slide, but it's part of the 47 million that we had as an increase due to enrollment, because we also had, I think there was a slide where our students with IEPs are actually increasing at a faster rate than our enrollment overall. [01:55:15] So those monies are also in that part of the budget. But I don't know that we can find that slide right now. - Dr. Reed, the three and a half million for the AIR report is not in these numbers. It's already in this year's budget and so will be carried forward. [01:55:35] Well, the two million that's recurring is in this year's budget and so it appears in the next year's budget too, but it's not an increase. - I understand that, but I think we've got semantics. we have an increased number of students requiring IEPs that we are staffing and budgeting at a higher rate than we would students in general education. [01:55:56] And those dollars will be applied in the model and expectation with which the AIR report is expecting. Part of one of the things the AIR report was very strong about was working on inclusion. So they work on universal design for learning as a professional development strategy something that we're actually beginning in april that work and talking about in fact this week at our all county principals meeting so there are dollars embedded to address those strategies as well for this particular budget year i guess i'm so i i understand that you're saying that the [01:56:34] additional staffing that we're having here is going to be in this new model however we don't know if the new model staffing numbers are the same as what we're doing now we don't know if the new model has higher staffing needs lower staffing needs so my question is with this additional staffing built in built in on our current model of programming or based on what some ai recommended i'll give you an example a specific what i'm talking about our current model doesn't build in secondary school inclusion into electives or really even it's too e-support into gen ed or aap classes right is this funding for higher staff built on our current model of staffing [01:57:13] or is there extra room in there for whatever new model because we haven't seen or heard what the new model might look like outside of inclusive preschool i don't know how we know what those numbers are when we don't know what the model is i mean the ai report was very specific around transition it was very specific around staffing i've lifted up for four years the issue of secondary school support in gen ed and electives i have a parent reach out to me about wanting desperately another orchestra like what annie ray's doing and i hate to tell her like they have have two electives they have to take personal development and literacy and there's no space. So I don't know how we know what the funding is for new model [01:57:50] when we don't know what the new model is. So I think the model is still Dr. Presidio do you want to comment on that as I know we have a work session coming up on the AIR or the Special Ed Enhancement Plan. We do and thank you Mrs. Sizemore-Hyser for those questions. It is complex because we're talking about multiple different models or different ways of doing things within special education services for students, right? [01:58:21] So inclusion is one piece of that. Pre-K inclusion is one piece of that. Transitions for our students from level to level and post-secondary transitions is one piece of that. Better access to advanced coursework is one piece of that. Better access to electives is one piece of that, right? [01:58:38] So there's so many things that we're trying to innovate and really provide better services to students. There will be increased costs. You know, this is a five-year plan, and we're essentially in year one of the implementation of the plan. We'll have an update for the board in the April work session about the work that we've done since really in this past year, which is really mostly foundational in nature. [01:59:02] It hasn't really involved a lot of additional costs at this point. But you are right, as we move into implementing some of these new models, there will be new costs. Of course, we're going to do everything that we can to try to minimize additional costs and be flexible with how we provide new supports and new services and be very fiscally responsible in how we do that. [01:59:21] But a lot of those new models and service delivery models are still in development. So I definitely appreciate the questions. I understand the urgency to get more details on it. We'll have more information, I think, on some of that in the April work session that will help. But right now, we do have funding built into the FY25 budget as presented by Dr. Reed that think is adequate for FY25. Thinking about future years we're going to have to have additional conversations about additional needs. I would just say in my three seconds left Dr. Reed that I think this is a conversation that needs to be a little more intentional because it is a 30-year need [02:00:00] and it has been a six-year process to even get us to that and so I just want to put that out there. Yeah and I appreciate that I think what we're dealing with is we have a number of 30-year needs that we're trying to budget for in FY25 and I think that the competing commitments are creating a challenge for us so I can appreciate that and we'll certainly take the comments to heart and go back to provide a more detailed response thank you and I apologize I missed I missed Mr. McElveen [02:00:35] for his round two so if you would like to speak for six minutes you you may but that is not a shall whatever you would like to do thank you yeah there are some occasions i'd want to but this is not one of them so um you know i've it's been interesting to hear people talking about uh you know whether this the fact that this is a bare bare minimum budget and um of course i've contributed to that but i think that um you know there are a lot of things we could throw into this budget i don't think we we at this point i don't think it's productive to do that i think that um you [02:01:13] You know, looking back historically, and I don't like Board of Supervisors School Board meetings. I find them pretty uninspiring usually. But one of my favorite versions of those meetings was when Karen Garza was here, and she took to them a list of the things that would truly make our budget and needs-based budget. [02:01:38] And it was over 300 million for one-to-one computing alone. It was one of my favorite moments. And I know Lee and Marty were there as well. But, so I think that's one, in terms of a thought exercise, that's something we could do, is put all of our needs based, all of our needs in one document, just to have that. [02:01:57] And it would be good as a new board, just to see what that would actually look like. So I would just follow up on one thing that Seema and Dr. Reed raised, which was the new course offerings. so this is one thing that is inspiring and maybe there will be time in an academic matters or some time to share with the community these these new things because i know you mentioned drones but i've also heard ballet these things are very exciting to people in my community where i live not to mention the whole county so as a next step if we could get a read out if not an academic [02:02:36] matters on that thanks yes sir i just want to be clear there was no one else to speak for a third time not even online mr dunn's hand is up and miss lady you're all set okay well just okay well and kind of keeping with what i have raised during all of the budget conversations of this year i'd be remiss if i didn't raise it here it should be as no surprise to anyone we have a lot of needs [02:03:16] our needs are clearly outpacing our resources and i appreciate ms eyes more heiser raising the impact of the lci i am particularly um appreciative you have to start my time i'm appreciative of the fact that she has provided i did not i saw mr malloy's email come through but i didn't get a chance to see it to read it yet regarding where it appears that the jlark related budget proposals and bills are going which doesn't seem to be very positive and i know this is not for [02:03:53] this body this i'm not saying this to you all because you do not have any authority to do any of these things but i do want to raise this to whomever may be listening and watching um we have to diversify how we the the revenue streams in fairfax county if we can't count on the lci because that's going the opposite direction. The J-LARC, which I fully agree, we need to fully pursue. We need to pursue that to our fullest and we need to take a look some we need to take a look at some other ways that we are going to meet the needs of the students of Fairfax County. I don't [02:04:30] want to belabor the point. A lot of you have already said it. When our schools are thriving, our community thrives. Fairfax is the economic engine of the Commonwealth. So we need to ensure that we are supporting that effort. And so I'm continuing to call on the Board of Supervisors to evaluate how they can diversify the revenue streams. I know I have raised meals tax before because it was a conversation in 2016 here. And now that question just has gotten exponentially easier because it doesn't have to go before the voters anymore. It's up to the Board of [02:05:10] supervisors to vote for it because that has changed by the General Assembly in 2018. And if we could count on regular funds to come into our schools to meet these needs that cannot be achieved by our current process or our current streams, then I think we really need to evaluate that. [02:05:31] And so with that, those are my final comments. We will have, can we put the slides with the dates back up please oh it's you thank you we do have our public hearing that is tonight at six o'clock I think at last night we had about 10 folks who had been who had registered has that changed it has yeah it has not so so we still have about uh 10 speakers signed up I believe so we'll have [02:06:11] that public hearing tonight and then um we will plan to see everybody back next week for a work session. That's it. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com