Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, February 22, 2024

Date: Thursday, February 22, 2024
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 4h 53m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBKM9tXEsbQ
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.

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

[00:00:20] - Board members, please return to your seats.

[00:00:47] This February 22nd, 2024 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the National Anthem by the Daniels-Run Elementary School Singers under the direction of Michelle McCartan and a performance of Lift Every Voice and Sing by the Justice High School Chamber Choir under the direction of Miranda Lansbury.

[00:01:11] - I pledge allegiance to the flag.

[00:04:46] - One more round of applause for our student performers. order to comply with section 2.2-3712 of the code of Virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that it since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on February 22nd 2024 to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed

[00:05:26] meeting. Do I have a motion? Ms. Anderson. Do I have a second? Mr. McElveen. All those in favor? Ms. Sizemore-Hyser, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit. All those opposed? Abstentions? Mr. Chairman, I missed a part of the meeting so I'm abstaining. Mr. Moon. Thank you. All right. Agenda item 3.03, confirmation of action taken

[00:06:02] enclosed. I call on Ms. Lady for a motion. My apologies, I'm trying to send the link to my colleagues, but I did have my script up. I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who assaulted another student and refused to follow directions of school staff at school and

[00:06:35] to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent. Is there a second? I second. Mr. Dunn, thank you. All those in favor, Ms. Seismar-Heiser, Mr. McIlvain, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, and myself. All those opposed?

[00:06:56] Abstentions. Thank you, Mr. Moon. The motion passes. I call on Miss Marin for a motion. - I move to deny the school reassignment appeal of a student who made a threat of a school shooting and to confirm the disciplinary action decision, excuse me, and to confirm the disciplinary decision of the division superintendent.

[00:07:27] - Is there a second? Miss Anderson. All those in favor, Mr. McIveen, Miss Lady, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Marin, Mr. Dunn,

[00:07:42] Miss Anderson and myself. All those opposed. Miss Sizemore Heiser. Dr. Anderson and Miss Dixit. Abstentions. Mr. Moon the motion passes. I call on Miss Anderson for a motion. I move to expel the student who brought a firearm a schedule one two controlled substance and marijuana to school on to school property. Is there a second. Second. Dr. Anderson. All those in favor. Miss Sizemore Heiser. Mr. McElveen. Miss Lady. Miss St. Jane Cunning. Miss Marin. Mr. Dunn. Dr. Anderson. Miss Anderson.

[00:08:15] Ms. Dixit and myself opposed abstentions Mr. Moon the motion passes agenda item 3.04 announcements Kyle McDaniel has submitted a written request to attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict all those in favor of approving Mr. McDaniel's request Mrs. Sizemore Heiser Mr. McElveen Miss Lady Miss St. John Cunning Miss Marin Mr. Dunn Dr. Anderson Miss Anderson Ms. Dixit Mr. Moon and myself that's unanimous Mr. McDaniel will you try your microphone

[00:08:50] In video. Come on. Welcome. Starting our next regular meeting on March 7th and moving forward the school board has decided to start our regular meetings at 7 p.m. instead of 7 30 p.m. reverting to our previous meeting time. We will be starting a half hour earlier at 7 p.m. starting on March 7th. If you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu slash school board slash

[00:09:25] board docs. Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu slash tv slash ch99. Agenda item 3.05 CTE disability employment and ACE appreciation month proclamation. I call on Mr. Dunn for a proclamation. Whereas the celebration of career and technical education disability employment and adult community education appreciation month recognizes these Fairfax County Public Schools exemplary programs and the students, teachers, and staff participate and contribute to them.

[00:10:04] And whereas, FCPS offers a vast selection of Career and Technical Education, or CTE, programs that give our students invaluable opportunities to explore and learn about a career they may wish to pursue in the future.

[00:10:20] Our FCPS CTE programs incorporate workplace readiness and portrait of a graduate skills, industry credentials, work-based learning, and career and technical student organizations. And whereas during school year 2023-2024, FCPS offered 150 CTE courses in business education and information technology, family and consumer science, health and medical, JROTC, marketing, technology and engineering education, as well as trade and industry.

[00:10:56] And these classes equipped 65,905 students with the knowledge and skills needed to prepare for the workforce, the military, continuing education, and or success in a competitive global economy.

[00:11:12] And whereas our division celebrates the many contributions of people with disabilities to America's workplaces and economy and actively partners with local businesses to provide students work experiences that cultivate workplace readiness, foster independence, and increase soft skills needed to succeed in the workplace.

[00:11:32] And, whereas, the Davis Career Center and the Pulley Career Center help students with disabilities to transition to life after high school by extending student learning through a variety of community work experiences provided by the local Northern Virginia business community.

[00:11:50] And, whereas the Adult and Community Education, or ACE, program of FCPS began with an action by the school board in 1955 and, in the close to 70 years of the program's existence, thousands of adults have learned essential skills.

[00:12:07] In addition, the Fairfax County Adult High School has given adults the opportunity to earn a high school diploma, certification of high school equivalency through the GED program, and the chance to enroll in individual courses and certificate programs, including adult ESOL, business information technology, health and medical, trade and industrial, culinary arts and world languages. FCPS's ACE programs complement the Virginia Apprenticeship Program by offering apprenticeship classes in electricity, HVAC, and plumbing, and provide

[00:12:44] career exploration in the trades or cross-training with related tasks. Now, therefore, be it resolved, the Fairfax County School Board recognizes February 2024 as career and technical Education, Disability Employment, and Adult Continuing Education Appreciation Month, and commend these programs' pivotal roles in providing our students, young and adult, the opportunities to acquire job skills, transition to new careers, have equitable access to societal resources, and grow as workers and citizens.

[00:13:18] Is there a second? I will second. Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your proclamation? I would. Thank you. Technical education course offerings play a vital role in ensuring our students receive a world-class education, which is my top priority.

[00:13:33] For students who pursue higher education, CTE courses can provide a head start on college level coursework. For students who pursue other pathways, CTE equips them with the knowledge, skills, and experience to enter the workforce or to serve in the military.

[00:13:50] Career and technical education does not always receive the recognition it deserves. So as a father and an elected official, I am excited to support this proclamation to honor the important work underway in so many schools across Fairfax County.

[00:14:05] As Mount Vernon District's representative to the school board, this proclamation is of special importance to me because the Mount Vernon District area schools have a long history of offering career and technical education opportunities for our students. Of the eight JROTC programs available in Fairfax County, three are based in Mount Vernon District Schools, including an Army JROTC program at Hayfield Secondary School, a Marines JROTC program at Mount Vernon High School, and an Army JROTC program at West Potomac High School.

[00:14:38] On a personal note, all three of my children participated in the Army JROTC program at West Potomac High School, and it made an indelible positive impression on their lives. One is currently enrolled in the Corps of Cadets at Virginia Tech, one is currently serving in the Virginia Army National Guard, and the third plans to enlist in the Air National Guard this summer.

[00:14:59] West Potomac High School is home to the West Potomac Academy, which offers hands-on, innovative learning opportunities for students in health sciences, communications, and the arts, trade, and industrial. I want to thank West Potomac Principal Jessica Statz for joining us here tonight.

[00:15:16] Mount Vernon High School's CTE Department offerings range from JROTC, marketing, education, and information technology to culinary arts, family and consumer science, and engineering education. Tonight, I'm pleased to have Mount Vernon High School's Career and Technical Department Chair, Ms. Vanessa David Brown, here with us tonight, along with Mount Vernon High School Assistant Principal, Mr. John Schaefer.

[00:15:41] And I'm also grateful to Mr. Paul Teaberger, who serves as the Mount Vernon District's representative on the CTE advisory committee for FCPS thank you Mr. Dunn Miss Marin would you like to speak to your second I would just like to briefly say that it's so appropriate that our career technical education proclamation also includes the disability employment work that's happening in our school division the Davis Center and the Pulley Center are models for helping everyone reach their potential and have fulfilling lives so thank you for that work my only wish is that access would increase to all of these programs and that students are and families are aware of them and the value of them but we

[00:16:18] know that wishes can't just happen we have to make them that we have to make them happen and so tonight later we'll be talking about our budget and these are the kinds of things that we need to keep invest investing in and expand so students don't have to travel across the county to access these wonderful programs thank you for all of the educators who are here and the families and students thank you miss Marin we will call for the vote well I didn't have a light on I'm sorry I'll go ahead I apologize I wasn't so I I couldn't

[00:16:53] to take this chance to say, and I'm so glad, Miss Merritt, I wanted to follow up on what you said. I love the fact that we have the Davis and Pulley Center. They're fantastic. I see Chad Clayton, the principal of Davis, sitting in the audience. I'm going to call him out and just say thank you for what you do. I also want to mention that we have the STEP program at many high schools that also provide workplace training for students with disabilities. So thank you for all those who do the STEP program. But I couldn't not take this opportunity to talk about the extreme barrier that we have to access to these programs and that extreme barriers forcing

[00:17:29] students to choose between completing a standard diploma that opens doors for them in the future and accessing Davis and Pulley Center and I think that is long past due and I'm glad miss many mentioned the budget and opportunities long past to do to do some sort of hybrid program where we could have full day step expanded watt a Davis pulley light for lack of better word on block scheduling so students could access courses for skilled CTE courses, academy programs, classes they need to graduate high school so they can actually stay in

[00:18:06] school till 22, get the workplace that they're guaranteed by law, get the workplace training that they need, and still be able to access a standard diploma if that's the right path for them. But students should not have to choose between closing doors to their future and the workplace skills they need to get to that future. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser. I will CALL FOR THE VOTE, ALL THOSE IN FAVOR, MISS SEIZEMORE HEISER, MR. MCELVEEN, MISS LADY, MS. JOHN CUNNING, MR. DUNN, DR. ANDERSON, MS. ANDERSON, MR. MOON AND MYSELF, WILL THE CLERK READ THE VOTE?

[00:18:41] IS MR. MCDANIEL VOTING? HE JUST TURNED ON. HE'S AN I. ALL RIGHT. SO THAT WOULD BE 12-0, THE MOTION PASSES. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT, MOVING ON TO AGENDA ITEM 3.06, BUS DRIVER, BUS ATTENDANCE AND CROSSING GUARD APPRECIATION PROCLAMATION. I CALL ON MISS DIXET for approximation. Whereas the celebration of school bus drivers, bus attendants and crossing guard appreciation month honors the vital staff that ensures our Fairfax County public school

[00:19:17] students travel to and from school in a punctual and safe manner. School transportation is an important issue of all citizens of Fairfax County as students, staff, parents, driver, pedestrian and neighbors and whereas our FCPS bus and drivers van drivers must complete a rigorous training program of classroom instruction student management and behind the wheel driving our 1025 FCPS bus drivers and 77 van drivers drive a total of eighty one thousand four hundred four miles daily

[00:19:53] to safely transport our 131,000 FCPS student riders to and from 43,329 bus stops. They log in over 16 million miles per year. And whereas our FCPS bus attendants accomplish their duties and often go beyond the requirements of their position as the regular work and communicate with school administration, public officials, parents, and students in order to prioritize student safety and well-being and whereas our FCPS

[00:20:30] crossing guards are at their post every day in all kinds of weather directing pedestrians bus and automobiles traffic to ensure the safety of our students arriving and leaving from their school they're often the first and the last miles as our students navigate to our to and from school and now therefore be it

[00:20:51] resolved. The Fairfax County School Board recognizes February 2024 as school bus drivers, bus attendants and crossing guard appreciation month and wholeheartedly commends them for their diligence in safely transporting and guiding the school children of FCPS. Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Is there a second? Mr. McElveen, Ms. Dixit, would you like to speak to your proclamation? Yes, I'll be brief, but I just spoke a lot about that. On behalf of the entire community, I want to express our gratitude for your teamwork, professionalism, and unwavering commitment to the

[00:21:31] safety and well-being of our student. Rain or shine, early morning and late afternoons, you are there for our students. Your hard work does not go unnoticed. You are the unsung heroes of our community, ensuring that our students arrive at school and return home safely every day, navigating through traffic, weather condition, and many diverse situations.

[00:21:53] As the friendly faces our students see each day, you create a safe and welcoming environment for all of them: a smile, a kind word, a bit of extra patience. These small gestures add up to making the overall FCPS school experience an enjoyable and positive one.

[00:22:11] Your presence reassures parents and caregivers that their children are in good hands. you for all you do for our students every day. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Mr. McElveen, would you like to speak to your second? I would just very briefly join Ms. Dixit in expressing our most profound gratitude for our bus drivers, bus attendants, and crossing guards. Those statistics were staggering, and I think that just shows how indebted our community is to all that

[00:22:44] you do every day. So thank you so much on behalf of the board. Thank you. Ms. Sizemoreheiser, I see light is on no worries all right we will take a vote all those in favor miss Sizemore heiser mr mckelveen miss lady missing john cunning miss marron mr dunn dr anderson miss anderson miss dixit mr moon and myself that's unanimous will the clerk read the vote mr mcdaniels oh that's right i will remember he's up there at some point so it's 12 0 the motion passes i promise by 10 o'clock

[00:23:19] all right the motion the proclamation passes uh i would like to invite all those who supported the cte disability employment and ace appreciation month proclamation including the cta coordinator miss whitney kettledge cts coordinator miss shira brother ace administrator mr paul steiner ace operations supervisor sharon goldstein and ace specialist karen stevens kim clara and fanny gayson to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais after the photo the guests

[00:23:50] and staff will depart the dais thank you i would like to invite those in support of the bus driver

[00:26:48] bus attendance and crossing guards proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front

[00:26:53] of the dais all right agenda item 4.01 community participation the next order of business is

[00:30:25] community participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening community participation community members can sign up to provide comments at school board regular business meetings and public hearings on the school board's website.

[00:30:40] At regular business meetings speakers may address any school related issue except those that are scheduled for a public hearing such as the capital improvement program, budget, and boundaries. Comments targeting, criticizing, or attacking individual students are not permitted during public meetings. Complaints regarding school-based employees should be directed to the appropriate school principal or other school official. Speakers should not use personally identifiable information in connection with an individual student or school-based employee.

[00:31:10] Additionally, speakers should be respectful and observe proper decorum in their statements, avoiding profanity, inappropriate gestures, shouting, and comments that run counter to the spirit and letter of the school division's non-discrimination policy, which protects students and staff from discrimination based on age, race, sex, color, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, marital status, or disability.

[00:31:34] Members must limit their remarks to no more than two minutes, direct their comments to the school board, and should remain at the podium until concluding their remarks. Additionally only the speaker may stand at the podium. They may not be joined by others. Speaker substitutions are not permitted. A speaker may not yield their time to another individual.

[00:31:50] At the conclusion of two minutes, the microphone or video will be turned off. School board members will be listening but not responding. We ask audience members to be respectful of one another. Shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated. members should hold their applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks and remain at their seats including when video recording or taking photos we are grateful to those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation madam clerk please read the first

[00:32:15] speaker jennifer ives good evening thank you for giving me the opportunity to address an issue that is very important to me the deferred retirement option program i'm a teacher at madison high school in Vienna. I work from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day plus evenings plus weekends but that's not unusual. What is unusual is that I've managed to do it

[00:32:51] teaching special education for 24 years without burning out and that is quite unusual. But Madison is very dear to me. I live in Maryland and I've made the commute from Germantown to Vienna every day for 13 years because basically I I found my place at Madison.

[00:33:16] Nevertheless, unless the drop provision is implemented a year from now, I'll begin interviewing in Loudoun County. Not because I want to, but because I have to. While my Virginia State pension will follow the standard trajectory, in contrast, after 25 years of service, my Fairfax County pension will begin to decrease so much and so rapidly that it will quickly become financially impossible for me to remain a Fairfax County teacher.

[00:33:49] So basically after 25 years I will be fired. Therefore at every opportunity I urge you to support the Deferred Retirement Option program so that I can continue to teach at a school I love and retire when I choose to retire.

[00:34:19] Good evening and thanks so much for letting me address the school board you said my name is Ernesto Luna I have been an educator for 15 years and I have been working with a FCPS adult ESOL program for two over two years now in this time

[00:34:55] I have met a lot of dedicated amazing teachers that that other job I love their students. Most of us have master's degrees. We are certified to teach English as the speaker of other languages and we are trained training constantly. We work hard to create lesson plans. We work hard to modify our material so we can serve our students' needs. We also work with students with learning disabilities and we merge their needs. We work with immigrants in the community, with adult immigrants, and we are more than teachers to them. We have become

[00:35:34] we teach more than English. We teach them life skills, we help them to have a better life here in the United States and we help them to have a better life in the community and be better citizens. We have created a community in which our students can thrive and learn. An example of this is some of our former students actually work for FCPS. Our job, like with any other teacher, doesn't end in the classroom. After hours we help our students with job applications, applying for a driver's license, things like that. They come to us for guidance and we try to provide the best we can.

[00:36:14] But our job isn't truly recognized. We're not really. We are considered hourly employees. We don't have a contract and we don't have access to benefits. We love our job. We want to continue doing it but we would like to be recognized like with any other teacher in the county. Thank you so

[00:36:32] much. Melissa Weike. My name is Melissa Weike. I'm speaking tonight as an individual, a 12-year bus driver for FCPS, and a member of the Operational Bargaining Unit. These drivers, attendants, and

[00:37:11] supervisors came here tonight to hear their hard work recognized, so thank you for the proclamation. But these are only words. If we change nothing, if we've learned nothing, if we do nothing moving forward the words mean nothing i spoke here in december of 2022 about low morale low retention and low pay in transportation and not much has changed thanks for the proclamation but we want tangible change thanks for the button but we want the time and place to be able to use the restroom without a hassle thanks for the candy but we want stipends for late runs and special needs

[00:37:50] thanks for the lanyards but we want compensation for double ups and double backs where you save an entire salary when we do the job of two people? Did you know that awesome 2504 that we advertise hourly actually means a guarantee of only $28,000 a year? And for attendance, it's less than $20,000.

[00:38:15] Did you know special needs buses that used to have attendance are being made to go without? Did you know we still don't have devices for work use and professional development that everyone else got four years ago? Did you know we're expected to clean our entire bus with just glass cleaner and paper towels. Would you stay? Could you do your job without the supplies or staff assistance needed? Your laptop, pens, paper, the assistance that we pay? Could you do your job twice every day without additional compensation? We told you what we wanted over a year ago.

[00:38:49] The previous board denied us, but it's my hope you'll bargain with us in good faith under a representative of our choosing. You can say we're first and last and all that, but it means nothing without action. Heather Grinberg. Hi I'm Heather, an FCPS bus driver of nearly 18 years. When I started

[00:39:27] in 2006 we were fully staffed, a far cry from where we are now. Back then things ran smoothly and we had staff available to ensure that even in the event of everyday emergencies like illness or bus breakdowns, students would still get to their schools, academies, and homes at a reasonable time. We had policies in place that supported us and rewarded our longevity and loyalty. But over Over the years, those policies began to be chipped away, and as they were chipped away, so too was our staff level.

[00:39:55] I guess the idea was to save a little money, but it was a false economy. The numbers speak for themselves: 12% short-staffed on drivers, 21% short-staffed on attendants. Transportation is running on fumes, and the only reason that we are able to safely transport our students to and from school every day is because of the goodwill and dedication of people who are willing to do not just their job, but the jobs of one to two other people as well, so thanks, I guess, and you're welcome, but being recognized for performing under these conditions that you have the power to change feels like performative allyship.

[00:40:29] I was here, right here, a year ago, and I told the board at the time how I and the majority of my colleagues wanted to be recognized as a bargaining unit with unique working conditions that require a separate contract to address, yet here I am again with no contract and an ever-deepening shortage that keeps my department teetering on the edge daily.

[00:40:47] i hope you're listening this time amanda campbell amanda campbell and virtual good evening my name is amanda campbell and i'm speaking tonight as president of fairfax county special education pta a few weeks ago septa sent a letter to dr reed and the school board sharing concerns we'd identified regarding the then upcoming budget we appreciate that there have been some short-term solutions addressing some of these concerns however we still feel strongly that long-term

[00:41:24] planning and stability in these areas is critical to be able to improve outcomes and experiences for students with disabilities special education staff are the backbone of our students educational experience the current staffing shortage has severely impacted our special ed staff extended day contracts were put into place to compensate special education staff for the extra paperwork and case management that is required and unique to their positions these extra demands continue to grow and we consistently hear the teachers voice that they cannot continue to take on more responsibilities while also adequately meeting their students needs we appreciate that there is a plan to fund their contracts through year-end funds and we also recognize that year-end

[00:42:02] funding is not a long-term solution similarly we appreciate that grant funding will continue to fund critical literacy positions supporting the shift to science of reading-based instruction and in order to adequately support long-term planning and implementation for this massive change these positions can't be reliant on grant funding that may or may not be available each year lack of planning time especially in multi-grade level classrooms is another significant issue facing special education staff. We have stood at this dais for years asking for data on how many multi-grade level classrooms FCPS has and how many grade levels are served in each of these classes.

[00:42:37] Where is this data? This data is needed to better inform decisions regarding long-term solutions to this issue. Recruiting and retaining qualified special education staff and providing them with the supports they require is necessary for our students to thrive. We know that advocacy will be needed with the Board of Supervisors and the State General Assembly to address these long-term budget need and we have and will continue to support that work and regardless of what decisions are made beyond your control this long-term planning is still necessary to support our

[00:43:05] special education students with that thank you chuck ronko good evening temporary adjective not lasting or needed for very long synonyms include disposable or makeshift are any of our

[00:43:40] employees disposable? Is an employee who works month after month, year after year, really temporary? If an employee works diligently with students for years on end but in a schedule that doesn't quite fit into the normal teacher schedule, are they really not a teacher? According to FCPS, they may teach but they're not considered teachers because they don't have a contract. They don't have workplace protections, they don't get paid the same wages when they

[00:44:17] go to professional development they don't get any benefits they don't get any steps they don't get any sick leave they don't get the right to collectively bargain the list goes on and I'd run out of time members of the school board I implore you to revisit your temporary hourly employees specifically the hundreds of dedicated teachers in the ACE ESOL program who have come before you over the last few weeks and we're all here wearing pink let's not treat these valued members of the FCPS family like fungible summertime lifeguards but

[00:44:53] instead as professionals. Let's respect all of our educators. Let's do the right thing and give these highly qualified teachers a contract. Thank you and go off script and say that proclamation was great. Wouldn't it be awesome to act on that on that resolution and give them a contract? Thank you all very much.

[00:45:21] Christopher Babik. Good evening, thank you very much for your time and service to the community. I was supposed to be here last meeting, there was an email issue though, that was my fault, but thank you for your time. I'm an FCPS stakeholder, my spouse is an 18-year instructional staff member, my children will enter an FCPS pyramid soon, they're very excited to do so. You've heard some comments about pay,

[00:45:56] salary issues, well here's another one for you. I stand here in support of my spouse and all the FCPS instructional staff to request that you support providing these educators with a bi-weekly pay schedule. Right now they are on a monthly schedule and in some cases wait 30 calendar days or more between paychecks. You may have heard this issue before and the reasons I'm asking for this that you support this are likely obvious but I will summarize quickly. The bottom line is we live in a different time now than when this policy was probably implemented decades ago.

[00:46:32] I'm sure there's a valid financial reason for it, but today financial transactions happen almost instantaneously. And putting aside that we live in one of the highest costs of living areas in the entire country, like the rest of the country, we deal with high inflation, high interest rates, and the absolute soaring cost of child care.

[00:46:52] And those child care facilities, they want to get paid up front. They want to get paid weekly. They want to get paid biweekly. They're not nice like the mortgage companies that give you a month. But the bottom line is managing a monthly budget, unexpected costs, it's getting very, very difficult with every passing year. Your teachers, your educators, their professionals, they deserve to be paid, like most people, every two weeks.

[00:47:15] Implementing this would just provide them with a little bit of relief from financial stresses that we all face these days. They deserve your support in this matter. Thank you very much. Jean-Marie Nagel.

[00:47:44] I'd like to tell you a little bit about cybersecurity that I'd like you to work on. Cybersecurity is so important in our day and age, and we give parents the right to up their children out of pictures on the Internet. Currently, schools can put a picture and a name of a teacher on the Internet or a staff and never even tell them that it's there.

[00:48:09] Putting aside identity, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reports that one in three women and one in six men have been stalked at some point in their lives. If that holds through for our teacher population, more than 5,000, getting those pictures and identifying information off the internet, you have to give an explanation to your supervisor.

[00:48:42] Why do you want it off the internet? Nobody wants to explain that kind of thing. I would request that when teachers are filling out the emergency cards at the beginning of the year, there's a box to opt in, not opt out, of having their pictures on the internet with their names.

[00:49:02] Thank you. Please play the video testimony of Mr. Robert Rigby Jr. Good evening. My name is Robert Rigby Jr.

[00:49:26] I have been an employee here for 25 years. We've achieved many things in this room in that time. Among them are non-discrimination, better pay, kindergarten for all, and efforts for students with disabilities.

[00:49:41] Some problems persist. A stubborn institutional tendency to racism and ableism, and deep culture of embarrassment around queer and immigrant student rights. I do want to note, Dr. Reed, you have made bolder, more courageous, and more effective strides for LGBTQIA plus students than I have seen out of Gatehouse, ever. Thank you.

[00:50:06] Here are some common things when we've achieved justice. Number one, compromise with unkindness doesn't help anyone. No one feels the need for change when we appease bigotry and some truly despair. Number two, all of you are people of goodwill.

[00:50:24] Work together, disagree when you need to, but support one another as you encounter challenges. Do that also for those of us in the schools and community. Number three, allow one another and us the grace to make mistakes, to take feedback, to admit those mistakes, and to make amends as we are able.

[00:50:46] We all get things wrong, sometimes gravely so. We all need to allow ourselves the humility to recognize our mistakes and to allow one another to accept the admission of wrongs and the right enough. Don't compromise on justice, but work with one another and us to continue striving for it.

[00:51:06] Thank you for listening. Mr. Chair, that was our last public speaker. Thank you. Agenda item 5.01, Student Representative Matters. I call on Ms. Kareem.

[00:51:23] Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Good evening, everyone. I'm happy we're taking a moment this month to recognize our dedicated bus drivers, attendants, and crossing guards. Our crossing guards play such a vital role in keeping students safe as they travel to and from school each day, and the attendants on board make sure students follow the rules and get on and off the bus safely, providing safe, reliable transportation for our students is no small feat. As a newly licensed driver, I understand the challenge of driving early mornings or other difficult times of the day, even just coordinating the bus routes and stops for a district as large as ours takes impressive effort. On behalf of the students, I want to express our sincere

[00:52:01] appreciation for the hard work of these staff members. Their efforts are so important and deserve our gratitude. Moving on, I want to highlight our recent SAC meeting at Robinson last week, the last one before we present our overall proposal to Dr. Reed and March. Thank you to Mr. McElveen for attending and listening to diverse perspectives, especially those of our students. When When FCPS leadership makes the effort to truly understand different viewpoints, it shows their dedication to our school community.

[00:52:29] Meaningful progress happens through collaboration among all stakeholders. When we come to the table ready to work together with open minds and hearts, remarkable things can happen. Our SAC meetings model this kind of constructive dialogue. By hearing each other out and finding common ground, we move closer to solutions.

[00:52:45] It is also important that follow-up action is always taken after student advocacy efforts. feedback should be provided so students understand their voices are being heard. Often students can feel discouraged when meetings conclude without clear next steps. By closing the feedback loop, students are motivated to keep proposing improvements knowing their advocacy leads to real change. I also want to touch on the ongoing efforts to address vaping and implement effective solutions in our schools. Installing more vape detectors and enforcing stricter regulations should be a top priority. Closing bathrooms is only a short-term fix that creates new problems students have shared concerns with me about bathrooms being

[00:53:24] closed for years now the continuous closures are an inconvenience that can hinder learning each school has unique needs so it's important we collaborate to find long-term solutions tailored to their communities rather than reactive measures we should take a proactive approach focused on education and prevention by partnering with students we can better understand the root causes and find alternatives to risky behaviors health and safety should uplift the student experience, not detract from it. We must also prioritize discussions around equitable grading practices across our schools. As I've stated before, many FCPS grading scales are unreasonably harsh, negatively

[00:54:00] impacting student mental health. Students themselves have spoken up about grading inconsistencies at board meetings. Getting an A in AP Calculus, Honors English, whatever course it may be, should hold the same meaning and require similar effort at every high school. Right now that is often not the case. We cannot ignore the valid concerns raised by our students. Academic rigor is important, but not at the expense of well-being. Reasonable, transparent grading practices should be consistent district-wide. And yes, proactive steps are being taken to address this, but it is imperative we implement some sort of change immediately and find a short-term solution for now.

[00:54:36] Lastly, I want to bring up course selection and the inequities in this. It is not commonly shared that colleges don't see if students have an advanced diploma or not, or it is not commonly known that to enroll in some dual enrollment classes you need certain prerequisites. There are so many measures we can take to prepare our students for their four-year plan in high school.

[00:54:54] Firstly, ensuring all school websites have this information laid out in a well-organized manner. I've talked to so many students that have told me I wish I could go back and do this differently. As a county, it is our utmost responsibility to ensure our students are prepared for their post high school career. Simply posting this is not enough, also facilitating more family nights and individual advising so every student understands how to plan strategically this means proactive academic academic planning starting in eighth grade examining policies that create an equitable gatekeeping allowing flexibility when students schools evolve and advocating for holistic college admissions focused on course rigor

[00:55:30] over diploma tech the future of our young people are precious and achieving this equitable preparation is one of our greatest obligations thank you thank you miss corinne agenda item 6.01 action items financial year 2025 advertised budget i call on dr reed thank you chairman Frisch. It's my pleasure this evening to present our FY25 School Operating Fund Budget. The budget, as you're aware, totals $3.8 billion, which is a net increase of $301.8 million, or 8.6%,

[00:56:08] over the FY24 approved budget. The county transfer request is an increase of $254 million, or 10.5 percent over the FY24 approved county transfer. The budget does have a number of highlights. The primary focus of the budget for FY25 is compensation. We know that the engine that supports the world-class excellence here in Fairfax County Public Schools are the staff here in Fairfax County Public Schools and we know that as we expect world-class

[00:56:44] performances from each and every staff member in their unique roles we want to make sure that we are compensating our staff at the same level and I think it was mentioned here this evening that this is an expensive community in which to reside the cost of living here is higher and we want to make sure that our staff have an opportunity to earn a wage that is competitive here in Fairfax County Public Schools so the bulk of this FY 25 budget is compensation and we've also included a number of multi-year investments but no new

[00:57:21] initiatives or programs the FY 25 revenue overview again it's a 3.8 billion dollar budget with a number of different sources the state revenue I I think if we can go back to the chart, the state revenue is approximately a change from FY 24 of 42.2 million.

[00:57:47] The federal revenue shift is 2.3 million in our beginning balance. And other revenues, 3.3 million. And again, with the county transfer request of 254 million, THAT DOES TOTAL OUR TOTAL FY25 PROJECTED REVENUE INCREASE OF $301.8 MILLION.

[00:58:07] DR. REED, IF YOU COULD PAUSE FOR JUST A MOMENT WHILE THE CLERKS GET THE SLIDES BACK UP ON THE SCREEN. CAN WE PLEASE SHUT THE DOOR IN THE BACK? THANK YOU.

[00:58:35] CAN WE GO TO THE NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE? THANK YOU, CHAIRMAN FRESH. THIS SUMMARIZES OUR FY25 REVENUE OVERVIEW AND OUR NEXT SLIDE SUMMARIZES THE BUDGET CALENDAR. WE'VE ALSO INDICATED THAT there are initiatives that we are going to be that we've accounted for in year end notably the 30-minute extended contracts for our teachers who teach

[00:59:08] special education courses and/or support our students with IEP needs so we also have for example our boys volleyball girls wrestling we have split costs are are one time only at year end versus ongoing costs that exist in the general fund budget so we feel like this budget is one that's had a lot of scrutiny and will support the work in FY25 to bring our strategic plan to life the last slide is the budget calendar highlighting the

[00:59:44] important dates as we move forward and at this point Chairman Frisch that is our presentation OF OUR FY25 BUDGET. THANK YOU VERY MUCH DR. REID. I CALL ON DR. ANDERSON FOR A MOTION. I MOVE THAT THE SCHOOL BOARD ADOPT THE FY2025 ADVERTISED BUDGET AS DETAILED IN THE AGENDA ITEM.

[01:00:05] THANK YOU DR. ANDERSON. IS THERE A SECOND? MR. MCDANIEL. DR. ANDERSON WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR MOTION? YES. THIS BUDGET AS WE'VE TALKED ABOUT QUITE A BIT IS A BARE-BONES PROPOSAL THAT LARGELY FOCUSES as Dr. Reed said on compensation. Again, it's important to reiterate that no new initiatives have been added. 98% of the budget aims to cover salary, benefits, and student enrollment growth.

[01:00:32] The focus of this budget is to ensure we're able to recruit teachers to our schools and to retain teachers currently in our system. 92.4% of FCPS staff are school-based, working directly with our students on a daily basis it's imperative for fcps to be competitive in the local job market fcps is the largest school division in virginia but ranks near the bottom in teacher compensation on several charts especially the charts the scale for teachers with master's

[01:01:06] degree fcps is per pupil spending ranks in the middle of all divisions in the washington area with Arlington Falls Church, Alexandria and Loudon all spending more per pupil. Meeting our budget needs is a challenge with historic underfunding by the Commonwealth of Virginia using outdated staffing formulas that no longer meet the rising needs of our students.

[01:01:32] As we've noted on multiple occasions, Virginia provides less funding per student than many of our neighboring states, including Maryland, Kentucky and West Virginia. An increasingly diverse FCPS student population with higher needs require more resources and staffing.

[01:01:52] This budget is requesting the increase of $254 million or $10.5 from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. This is 10.5% is lower than the request of Loudoun County Public Schools and Prince William Public Schools, asking 11.3 and 10.6 respectively.

[01:02:13] The 2.3 overall enrollment increase over the FY23 year is expected as well as enrollment increases of almost 20% in our students who receive free and reduced meals, almost 13% in our students who receive ESOL services, and almost 11% in our students receiving special education services.

[01:02:35] I hope you are able to support this budget this evening. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. McDaniel, would you like to speak to your second? Briefly, I don't want to rehash the numbers that Dr. Anderson or Dr. Reed spoke to, but, I mean, this is a hefty ask, but it's driven by hefty needs, and that's the reality.

[01:02:55] The vast majority of additional spending is compensation, enrollment increases, and contractual requirements. I think this budget, as presented by the superintendent, is grounded in the harsh reality of today's budgetary landscape. So the last point I'll make is for the public.

[01:03:12] This vote tonight is not a final adoption. It is effectively an advertisement. It allows us to green light a very lengthy, weeks-long process of working with the Board of Supervisors and the community and staff to hash out a final budget product that will be voted on later.

[01:03:27] So happy to second and support. Thank you. Right now I have no lights on. Mr. Dunn. i i approach this budget as the first that i have experienced as a as a school board member and i approach it with a grave sense of disappointment because we had an incredible

[01:04:00] opportunity with the jlark study to collaborate with the board of supervisors and fairfax county taxpayers to and to to work together also across the state the urban crescent um to try to bring greater pressure on state legislators to pay what they owe, to use the Virginia Lottery as supplemental funding rather than as supplanting previous funding that was cut in 2009. And that opportunity was not seized as it should have been. And as a result, we're in a situation where we're

[01:04:36] asking the Fairfax County taxpayers to again step up and pay an outsized amount of money when people living on fixed incomes are already stretched thin. I hate to be back in this budget dynamic, it wasn't necessary, we shouldn't be here.

[01:04:55] I also am disappointed that at a time when the Board of Supervisors have enacted $40 million in reductions in their budget to try to achieve greater efficiencies, there's nothing apparent from this advertised budget of any effort to achieve efficiencies even though, just in the past eight weeks, I've been able to identify through individual effort millions of dollars that could be achieved in savings.

[01:05:22] I think we have the right leader at the right time in Dr. Reed, but I think we need to do a lot more, and I think we need to do more collaboratively with the Board of Supervisors rather than in an adversarial manner, which this budget represents. Thank you, Mr. Dunn.

[01:05:39] Mr. Moon? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm going to support a proposed budget. I know that there will be an amendment from Dr. Anderson about special education teachers' contract, which I will not be able to support at this time.

[01:06:01] I'm, you know, making a comment on that amendment right now because I don't want to repeat myself later on. I'm only doing that because, you know, currently there is a close to $90 million gap between our request for transfer from the county board of supervisors under superintendent proposed budget and what the county executive has submitted to a county board of supervisors as advertised budget for the transfer to a school system and that's something that we elected official elected school board members and community and parents

[01:06:39] we all have to work with the county supervisors to get a full funding. I don't want to add any more to that in terms of request that is why I'm not I'm not going to be supporting your amendment it's not that your amendment does not have a merit but I intend to fully support at the year's end having said that Dr. Reed you know most of our budget goes into paying for paper 90% of our budget goes into paying for paper would you comment upon one more time why you are seeking six

[01:07:16] percent compensation increase for our staff and also would you be able to come in upon your proposal versus County executive proposal on how the county wants to compensate its employees for the next year thank you mr. moon for I believe that at this point we have extraordinarily high expectations in this county for our school division Fairfax County Public Schools is not just a premier division in Virginia it is one of the preeminent divisions in

[01:07:53] this country we expect a lot from our educators we expect a lot from every single staff member in whatever role they have in this division everybody that's part of the Fairfax County staff family puts their all into their work it's a special place here and what we found over the last several years as we fallen gradually further and further behind in our pay as it is as it relates to not just the school divisions in our region but really school divisions across the country

[01:08:23] and as we think about recruiting the very best educators drivers office staff every staff member in every single role it's not just the recruitment that's important it's our retention and as folks get into different roles and see that they can earn a greater wage that is not uh that's a That's a disincentive sometimes to stay.

[01:08:50] So what we noticed is we took a look at our salary schedule compared to those around us and felt it was critical to minimally at least keep up with that because as Dr. Anderson mentioned in her comments, in the master's lane, for example, for teachers, we actually rank 7 of 8 in the regions around us.

[01:09:09] And that's not acceptable because we're not expecting a performance that's 7 out of 8. We're expecting to be top performers here. for us and my thinking as you've asked for it's critical that we compensate all of our staff members for the hard work and make sure that we're one of the leading pay scale divisions in our area since we expect leading quality work in terms of how I would characterize our budget in terms of how the county put their budget together I think one of the things that I really had to study a

[01:09:45] great deal coming into the division is that our county board of supervisors have traditionally provided high support for schools and I believe that our county supervisors our chair our county executive I know in all my conversations they have been strongly supportive of our education system our students in fact often talking about that being their highest priority as it is ours and I know they're working hard to make sure they can provide the supports that we need I think that mr. Dunn's comment around the J Lark study is salient here I think that we do and should have more compensation coming from the Commonwealth

[01:10:24] which would take some pressure off of both the county and the division quite honestly having said that our division as I did my homework over the last five years has provided an average of 52.6 percent in the transfer to the school division. And as we calculated that, it really provided what we felt was close to my proposed budget ask if the state also added more finances from Richmond. So we feel like it's a reasonable

[01:10:56] budget that provides the steady growth and press on a salary schedule across all job categories in this division to enable us to continue to do the world-class work we need do to continue to uplift this community you know thank you doctor in addition to that i what i want to get out uh from you was the fact that county intends to pay their first responders far more than

[01:11:27] six percent the next year yes sir that's correct thank you mr moon thank you mr chairman miss lady thank you um i just want to again echo the jlark um i just it's dumbfounding to me um that we can be in a situation where um bordering uh bordering states of kentucky and west virginia are giving more to their local school systems than the state of virginia um and i was i was in richmond last week and try to lobby and try to work with delegates and senators but it would be my dream that uh all the people in fairfax would get on buses and show up downtown show up in richmond

[01:12:07] i just don't think that this is getting heard um we are the most over educated or should i say incredibly well educated for for professions with similar levels of required education we make 72 cents on the dollar to other professions um i'm going to echo what our i'm a james madison high school graduate and i'm going to speak to jennifer ives here in the audience about her passion around being a favorites county employee but also being and finding a home at madison this is not uncommon i spent 27 years in this school system um i found a couple homes i was

[01:12:41] very blessed but you know i i was fortunate i lived on the border of loudon county but when i worked at chantilly the majority of our faculty does not live in fairfax county um and some of them drive you know sizable distance distances to get here um and and i also i'm uncertain what my colleague is referencing when he says he's i guess found money in this budget um i've scoured this budget. I found no money and we just had impassioned speeches from some folks tonight who we also need to pay and take better care of. It's hard to sit here

[01:13:15] and recognize how far we are from fair treatment if I will from a compensation perspective and a benefits perspective from the people who give their heart and soul to our kids into the system every year. So you know I agree this was a bare-bones budget. You know we could have gone in asking for the moon.

[01:13:34] I commend our superintendent and being very strategic and purposeful around no new initiatives we understand the situation that we're in but we also know because I'm I'm getting it from colleagues that are of similar situations with drop or colleagues who just know they can get paid more to leave our system and go somewhere else and also I'll be honest and and dr. Reed mentioned this no disrespect to our neighboring districts they're fantastic but the but a lot of those folks who leave us come back and tell us they don't have the demand that we have we have a high expectation as a school system of our of our faculty and staff and and i believe that

[01:14:13] they deliver and we need to deliver and pay them thank you miss lady miss Sizemore heiser thank you and um i'm glad to pick up on that and i appreciate my colleagues comments about jlark i completely agree i also spent two days in richmond talking to our general assembly counterparts about jlark about the fact that if they funded for those who don't know jlark it is the bipartisan research arm of the general assembly the state legislature that did a recent study that showed that that virginia chronically under funds k-12 education to the tune of billions

[01:14:50] nineteen hundred dollars per student lower than west virginia and kentucky so we've tried to get money from richmond one of the challenges of being the school system in fairfax county is that in virginia everywhere we are not able to raise our own revenue we have to get all of our money from other sources about 10 percent approximately from the federal government about 20 percent from the state and about 70 percent from the board of supervisors we are lucky that the board of supervisors here very much supports public education and has really strongly supported funding us but that is the reality of the state funding formulas that is what we are stuck with and so we cannot I would love to give all the wonderful people who came and

[01:15:30] spoke today and they're very real stories like I'd love to be able to do that but it's not up to us it's up to the Board of Supervisors it's up to the state I would like you and I had a great conversation about JLARC and I totally agree we need to do more lobbying on JLARC but we need every school system every Board of Supervisors and VACO and VAS and VSBA to do that with us because we cannot do it by ourselves and we need all of you to do that with us because we can't raise revenue ourselves. Having said that, I agree with my colleague that I think we're very efficient. We're in the middle of the pack of our surrounding jurisdictions for per-people spending.

[01:16:04] We are higher than most of our surrounding jurisdictions for class sizes, and we have the lowest central office ratio to school-based staff than any of our surrounding jurisdictions. We are pretty darn efficient for the quality of education. Can there be savings? Of course, you can always find savings. However, as you heard, our bus drivers are doing double jobs. As you heard, our teachers are working long past contract hours. The savings comes from money that they deserve. That's the reality. There's a lot more needs than we have than funding right now. So I think this budget with our 6% pay increase that just keeps us up with our surrounding jurisdictions. Let's be real.

[01:16:42] The surrounding jurisdictions Loudon and Prince William are cheaper to live in. If we do not keep up our pay increase to what they are doing for their teachers we're going to continue to lose teachers to our jurisdictions and at the bottom at the end of the day we cannot be an excellent school system without excellent teachers that's what this budget does there are no new initiatives and trust me i hear all the time from community members about steam programs that they want and expanding tutoring and mental health supports and all the things that schools are expected to do now that we weren't expected to do 20 years ago and we need to do them because we owe our children

[01:17:18] all the support so they can thrive but we can't do that without the funding and we can't keep expecting bus drivers to do double runs and teach us to work late we've got to pay them if we're going to be the fairfax county our county expects and what their property values get and why businesses come here so i thank you for this bare bones budget and i really hope that we'll support it thank you miss Sizemore heiser mr mckelveen thank you mr frisch and thank you to dr reed our budget staff and our massive budget committee led by Dr. Anderson for their work on this advertised

[01:17:52] budget. I want to applaud all of my colleagues for not taking their eye off the ball when it comes to this budget and not adding things. There are many things that each of us would have liked to add to this budget but we didn't. A true needs-based budget would have looked much different than this one there is no question that we put our employees first in this budget and to be clear any cut to this budget is a cut to our employees yes i'll repeat myself any cut forced upon us by the board

[01:18:27] of supervisors is a cut to our employees thank you mr mckelveen miss st john cunning so i want to echo what's been said here today and we heard from people that came up and spoke about the real passion they have for working in our schools and doing extra there it wasn't too long ago that I was standing on the other side of this dais also advocating for temporary hourly employees and speaking about the double work that people do and sometimes it's not recognized it this budget

[01:19:07] honors everyone teachers staff everyone because everyone needs that extra income and that extra recognition. We are an efficient system and when we talk about efficiencies in terms of finance that's one thing but the thing that I want to talk about is the efficiency in terms of our staff because there are a lot of people out there like our bus drivers that are doing double duty, like our family liaisons, like our counselors and they're doing it because they are passionate. This budget is trying to reflect that and trying to reward that

[01:19:46] and trying to say we don't want you to burn out it is definitely a needs based budget and it is primarily focusing on the central need this is not just an investment in our teachers but it is an investment in our children that's the bottom line if we don't have quality teachers that are going to that we're able to retain and recruit we are not investing in our children and we can't take the the eye off the ball in that sense and so I commend Dr. Reed for

[01:20:22] really focusing on what we really truly need and our budget team and yes as our colleagues have said there are a lot of other needs that we have but we're gonna put our students and our teachers first and that's one of the reasons I will support this budget. Thank you Miss St. John Cunning. Miss Marin. I believe this budget is frugal I believe this budget is prioritized and it is focused on what makes our schools work and that's our people. People are worth every cent and

[01:20:59] way more. We are in the middle of all districts in the Washington area for cost per pupil and we are at the bottom of compensation but when compared to our neighboring school districts and we know that the profession of our educators and our operational staff there's a shrinking pool. The thing that excuse me and I know that the board wants us to be at the top and the superintendent wants us to be a top. The thing that hasn't changed is what Virginia does. Governor Youngkin seems to think that hobbling the largest school division in Virginia and one of its primary economic engines is a strategy of success for this Commonwealth. His leadership in that of the General Assembly is needed to do the work to right-size the state funding in this largest school division because our

[01:21:39] taxpayers in Fairfax deserve that state support. Let's review those numbers. They are astonishing and they've been mentioned at this dais already. Virginia school divisions receive 14% less funding for students than the 50 state US average and our school divisions receive 4% less than the South Atlantic school division average. In the shadow of the nation's capital, the states of Kentucky, Maryland, and West Virginia fund more per student than does the Commonwealth of Virginia. In West Virginia, state funding is 25% more than the 50 state average, which is 11% more than Virginia. If Governor Youngkin and the General Assembly can address a few things in addition to the funding, we'd be

[01:22:17] glad to focus even more of our dollars on our actual mission of educating students for careers they can't yet imagine. How about addressing the needs of our 66,000 students who qualify for federal food support programs because of a myriad of economic reasons. When we have students dying of opioid overdoses because of failed health systems, when we spend time and money training our staff for lockdown drills because weapons of war are available, those are the kinds of things our legislature could work on as well as our funding and then we'd be glad to continue providing our excellent education here in Fairfax County. I fully support this budget and it's the right thing to do for Fairfax. Thank you, Ms. Mayor, I'll take my turn.

[01:22:56] I have zero doubt that our funding partners expect us to maintain a world-class school system, and that's what this budget aims to do. We can't maintain a world-class school system without making sure that we are recruiting and retaining our world-class staff, and that means being competitive regionally and nationally, like the superintendent said.

[01:23:16] Gone are the days when the problem of staffing could be solved in our own backyard entirely or in the region entirely. We are looking globally. we are looking nationally we are looking in our own schools in order for that to work the pay has to be there too and the benefits have to be there too. And so while it is never fun to be in budget season on a board when you know what we get to do is just the pay increase. That is our primary responsibility. We cannot remain competitive regionally and nationally if we do not do so with our staff. And so I

[01:23:55] I support this bare bones budget that focuses entirely on compensation and maintaining our world class schools for the growing populations we have inside of them. And I look forward to this process unfolding because it's at the very beginning.

[01:24:14] We are just beginning this process of the budget. And so I look forward to working with my colleagues on the school board and with the board of supervisors as we move forward together. Mr. Dunn. I recommend the remarks of Mr. Frisch and Ms. Marin, which I think are brilliant and well stated.

[01:24:33] I think if we only treat this as an issue of dollars, then we're not listening to all of the speakers we've heard in the past eight weeks and that I've heard in the past 10 years. I heard today issues about policies, issues about operations that directly affect their lives.

[01:24:49] Our willingness to sign contracts rather than treat them as hourly employees. That's not a budget issue. That's an operations issue. And having personally led a $2 billion federal agency from being inefficient to highly efficient, cutting $25 million in 90 days, working with the union to achieve the largest reorganization in agency history, implementing major IT systems, retraining an entire workforce of 800 employees, I know what I mean when I talk about operations.

[01:25:16] And I see this budget and to say you've scrubbed the budget and you don't see millions of dollars in savings, you're not looking. I'm sorry. My experience is we shouldn't have a 6% pay increase for anyone not working in a school. My position is Dr. Reed doesn't need a 6% pay increase, that's $30,000, that's one IA.

[01:25:37] That's one IA who could make a difference in a classroom with 30 kids or more. I don't think anyone working at Kate House, God love them, needs the pay increase as much as the bus drivers, the folks teaching in our classrooms, they need it the most.

[01:25:52] I don't think we need 6% across the board. I think we need to focus it on the people who are getting paid the least on a regional basis. I think there are things we can do to achieve more savings with our existing budget, but we cannot continue to rely on the blood, sweat, and tears of our teachers, asking them to work 120 hours a week when they're getting paid nine out of 10 in our regional school systems.

[01:26:14] It's time for the state to step up, and if the state won't step up, then we need to go march. We need to go march down to Richmond and make them pay up. but if the only option is to ask Fairfax County to step up, I hope they will. I hope they will because these teachers need it.

[01:26:30] Our staff needs it. They deserve it. And they've held it together for too long with blood, sweat, and tears, and I'll be there for them every day. - Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. McDaniel.

[01:26:45] - Briefly, just again, to go back to my original comments, this is not a final budget adoption. And all this vote does tonight, really the mechanical part of this is it caps the request and it caps the total top line spending number. That does not mean that over the next few weeks, we cannot cut things.

[01:27:06] That does not mean that we cannot shift what we spend on things. That does not mean that we cannot go and find any other programs that maybe do something better that leads to savings that we can invest in other programs. All this vote tonight does is start the process that allows us to now begin to work with the community and the Board of Supervisors to move forward in what will ultimately become a final budget adoption later on this spring.

[01:27:32] So just for those watching at home, I wanted to be very clear on what this book does tonight. Thank you. - Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. I call on Dr. Anderson for an amendment. - Thank you. I move to amend the main motion by adding 24.2 million to continue the initiative funded in FY22, FY23, and FY24 with Federal American Rescue Plan dollars.

[01:27:55] This initiative has provided an additional half hour from 7.5 hours to 8 hours to special education teachers, employment contracts, and recognition of the volume of work required outside of normal contract hours by increasing the county transfer by $24.2 million.

[01:28:12] Is there a second, Mr. Dunn? Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your amendment? Yes, I would. I've actually been very glad to listen to the conversation that's happening here this evening. One of the things that I wrote here that mr. Malcolm II said is a true needs-based budget would have been I think you said a dream and We are making do because we're in this space. Yes What we have in front of us is the most critical thing, but we also have other critical things That I wanted to highlight through the conversation in this motion We have the special education teachers extended contract and I don't think I need to sell anybody up here because we all know it

[01:28:51] I think that is true. If I disagree, if you disagree, please let me know. I don't think any of us don't think that's important. I don't think any of us don't think it's not important for us to have our bus drivers, our family liaisons, and other hourly folks to have a living wage. I think the rub is in how do we present that? Do we present all of it, warts and all? This is what I said in the last two work sessions, which is what I brought this forward.

[01:29:20] I want us to engage in that conversation to make sure that we are articulating while this budget is needs-based, it is not inclusive of all of our needs. We have so much more, and that has to be a highlighted conversation. That's what we are charged with by the Code of Virginia.

[01:29:40] We are charged to develop a needs-based budget. We are charged to present that to the Board of Supervisors, And it is their job to appropriate funds, and we determine how they are spent. We determine how they are spent.

[01:29:56] And I get it. This is causing a lot of heartburn, and that is not the goal. The goal is to make sure that we are being front and center and fully transparent with all of the needs that we have to maintain this world-class system, to maintain the high expectations of Fairfax County to maintain the high expectations from our families because we can't continue to do what we have been doing which is stretching our folks to the very last we just can't do that and we know the heavy paperwork and the burden on our special needs students

[01:30:34] and again I don't need to reiterate what we what we heard tonight and I think there's space for us to do that for us to present all of these very dire things yes definitely I am in support of where we are but I think we could have presented more in terms of what else is critical to this division Dr. Anderson Mr. Dunn yes thank you you know I I come from a family of educators and my

[01:31:09] mother my grandmother my sister my my wife my brother-in-law my sister-in-law and I see every day the hours they put in, you know, far more than what they're compensated for. And every teacher I know in Fairfax County, it's even more extreme. And the population served by our special education teachers are among the most dedicated, hardworking people I've ever met in my life.

[01:31:36] And the personal sacrifices they make, working far in excess of the hours for which they receive compensation were only made temporarily better by the funding during the pandemic i think it is absolutely incumbent on us given the voices i've heard in my community to speak to them and say this is one of our highest priorities this has been identified by our teachers associations and unions as one of their highest budget priorities and listening to the community I think it's

[01:32:16] important for us to articulate this dire need at a time when a third of our special education teachers are either long-term subs or provisionally licensed it's absolutely dire when we're eating our seed corn in terms of our teacher workforce to speak to them and say we have your back and if we don't have your back then what message does that send to them as they're looking as one of the speakers said tonight whether to move to Loudoun County or another surrounding jurisdiction we need them our students need them and we need to speak in a unified voice to the Board of Supervisors

[01:32:53] that if you don't give us this additional funding then there will be terrible results that follow for those who are most in need those who need the greatest support and so I am strongly in favor of this amendment and I hope my colleagues will join me because this is the time not later when there might be money but now to ask for it as part of a maximum advertised budget which might be reduced but to at least highlight the importance of this need as well as the six percent raise that every teacher deserves in Fairfax County. Thank you Mr. Dunn. Miss Lady. Yeah I

[01:33:33] just want to make sure that those listening are aware of the fact that this is actually in the budget it's in the budget in a different format it was proposed in the budget that the reserves leftover from this year would finance uh that exactly the 24 million dollars um and uh you know based on the fact that sadly uh we have vacancies uh we've we've battled with vacancies throughout the year um and we're sort of in similar it's not as bad as maybe last year the year before but i feel confident we're going to have the money in our reserves having said that

[01:34:08] um i also want to commend dr reid because i if you didn't catch it in the past board of supervisors has allocated 52.6 percent of their budget to the school system and this year it's 51.4 percent um and i think that she did a very astute job with their cfo and other folks to try TO GET TO WHAT WE PREDICTED THAT AMOUNT WOULD BE AND I THINK IT WAS IN UNDERSTANDING IT'S A DIFFICULT BUDGET YEAR TO LOOK AT THE FACT THAT WE COULD FUND THOSE SALARIES WITH RESERVES.

[01:34:44] SO I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT CONSTITUENTS WERE AWARE OF THAT AS WELL AS EMPLOYEES. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS. LADY. MS. MARIN. YES. CHAIR FRISH, I WOULD LIKE TO UNDERSTAND FROM THE MEMBERS SECONDING THE MOTION WHY THIS MOTION PROPOSES TO ADD FUNDS INTO THE BUDGET WITHOUT REMOVING ANY funds proposed in this budget since the point was just made by the seconder that the budget needs to be further scrubbed. If he would like to respond it'll come from your time. I would like a

[01:35:13] response please. Can you clarify the question please? I'm wondering why the seconder of the motion is supporting a plan to increase the size of the budget when this same seconder just advocated that the budget has things in it that shouldn't be funded. Why is there not the proposal to reduce something elsewhere to cover this cost rather than go to seek from the board of

[01:35:42] supervisors this additional amount. At what point did the seconder, myself, state that there were things in the budget that shouldn't be funded? What I stated was that there were ways to make the school board, the school operations more efficient, freeing up millions of dollars so that we can actually achieve more of our priorities in terms of increasing workforce compensation and providing every student with a world-class education. Thank you. I am confident in Superintendent

[01:36:19] Lieutenant Reed's budget planning that has already identified funds from the end of current fiscal year 24 that will be used to meet this need, as Ms. Lady, excuse me, as another member said, they are already identified and budgeted for, so I will not be supporting this amendment. Thank you, Ms. Marion.

[01:36:35] Ms. Sizemore-Hizer. As somebody who has advocated for special education for about 20 years and who fought for this in the first place, I will not be supporting this amendment because what this amendment does is potentially tank this and the very reasonable budget request Dr. Reed has asked us to do.

[01:36:58] Dr. Reed has already put this funding in our budget in a separate way, as my other colleagues have mentioned. She has done so so we can work with our board of supervisors to present them a budget that is funding our needs, supporting our teachers, reasonable with what our surrounding jurisdictions are doing, but also ensuring we get the raise for our teachers we need.

[01:37:24] And she has presented a plan to fund this money for our special education teacher extended contracts outside of this ask of our board of supervisors. To add this yesterday to this ask imperils both of those things.

[01:37:41] One thing I've learned throughout my life is that the right thing done the right way at the right time is how you set things up best for success. This is 1000% the right thing to do. Doing it in this way in this time will imperil not just this but the entire budget ask and that is why I do not think this is the right way to do this. The right thing in the right way at the right time to get both what we need our compensation

[01:38:15] for our teachers and these special education extended contracts which we already have a plan for and is already allocated in different funding and i think that's really important because at the end of the day our staff worked very hard i support dr reed and her hard work to propose a needs-based budget that focuses on the compensation our staff need with plans to do the work the staff that work really hard for our special education teachers and i know

[01:38:53] firsthand how hard they work my son went from being told to be put in an institution to college because of our special education teachers trust me if i didn't think she had a plan to preserve both i would have brought this amendment i'm not going to parable to those things i don't support this thank you miss sizemore heiser mr mcdaniel uh just i'm not going to support the motion i believe mr mr moon's comments on the previous motion the main motion

[01:39:31] really succinctly summed up my views on the matter as well i think i mean you know we've asked the board for 254 and this would be increasing that ask to 278 give or take um the timing is off i i certainly support the the the policy goal here um i support the half hour contract i think the plan of funding it at a year in funds is the wise move here um so for those reasons i will not be supporting motion thank you thank you mr mcdaniel miss st john cunning thank you as someone who has SAT FOR THE PAST TWO YEARS WITH THE SPECIAL ED TEAM AT

[01:40:11] MOUNTAIN WOODS ELEMENTARY AND FOR THE PAST 26 YEARS AS INTERPRETER SAT IN COUNTLESS IEPS TO SUPPORT FAMILIES AND SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS. I RECOGNIZE AND REALIZE HOW IMPORTANT THIS ASK IS. HOWEVER, I AGREE THAT THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT TIME OR THE RIGHT WAY AND I FEEL CONFIDENT THAT THIS NEED WILL BE MET AS MS. LADY HAD STATED BEFORE.

[01:40:38] As we said, it is a bare-bones budget, and to vote for this amendment without taking in consideration the fact that we need more counselors, more social workers, more parent liaisons, more interpreters, I think would also disregard those needs, and those needs are just as important.

[01:41:01] So for that reason, I too will not support this amendment, and it is in no way a reflection of the fact that I wholeheartedly respect and understand the work that our special education teachers do, but that I am also confident that they will be taken care of as promised by the superintendent.

[01:41:26] Thank you, Ms. St. John Cunningham. Ms. Dixit? I am not going to support this amendment, knowing wholeheartedly that this additional $24 million will be adjusted with our year-end budget.

[01:41:47] and that is the plan and there are other things also included in that you know the year end and everything there's a plan to get funded so additional burden on the ask for the supervisors is not necessary if we can take care of that ourselves it just you know makes more sense the other thing I wanted to say is that Mr. Dunn made a comment today saying Some people should get the raise, some people don't.

[01:42:20] For running any successful organization, we need very effective management. We need thought leaders, innovators. Are we going to not compensate for doing a good job? Are they not part of the staff? Are they not valued?

[01:42:36] I run a company myself, and as a CEO, I would be heartbroken to hear that somebody said somebody said you should not get paid or you should not get a raise if my employees thought that for me because I am leading them to them to be successful right that's that's the vision of the leader here so it's a fair number it's not the the superintendent and the leadership team is giving themselves 30 percent raise and not anybody else is an equal equitable raise

[01:43:13] for everyone and I think it's only fair to do that for all the members of the FCPS team. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dixit. I will take my turn. I think we are needlessly confrontational at the moment.

[01:43:32] Look, every single person at this dais supports our teachers. Every single person at this dais has said that they want to defend public education. Every single person at this dais believes that these extended contracts should happen. The disagreement is on how we're going to do that, right? And there's disagreement not just on this board but among our associations of employees and others. So it's not surprising that there will be disagreement over how we might do that as a board together. You know, I look at this through a lens of where we are in the budget process and looking

[01:44:08] back at the year-end funds that have been available historically. One of the unique things about the presentation we received from the superintendent this time around is an idea of what the year-end funding situation and expenditures would look like and that by the way as far as i'm concerned is refreshing that that we have somebody thinking that far ahead to think about other things that should be uh paid for down the road if we magically solve the staffing shortages um and there is no money left over well then there will be a reason for rejoicing um but that is not likely to happen given the historical trends not only in fairfax county but for the entire country um and i have

[01:44:46] zero doubt that we can continue to meet the needs of our special education teachers with this extended contract through the mechanism as identified in the proposed advertised budget from the superintendent and i have zero doubt that everybody at this dais will continue to advocate for our special education teachers and their families because this is not just about those educators this is about those educators meeting the needs of those families who work so hard to to get what they need for their kids.

[01:45:13] So I'm excited to vote for this budget. I will not be supporting the amendment because I believe the advertised budget from the superintendent does a sufficient job of finding a path forward for this. And I appreciate all that my colleagues have had to say. Mr. Dunn.

[01:45:33] - Thank you. Very well said by Mr. Frisch, as always. So I would just, I respect Mr. Sticks' opinion, But in my experience, you don't give the same raise to everyone because some people are underpaid compared to market.

[01:45:52] Some people are grossly underpaid compared to market. So rather than give everyone the same raise and have some people remain grossly underpaid, you try to level out those differences. So everyone is basically in a better situation, but you remedy the inequity, right?

[01:46:11] And since we have a big focus on equity, that's something that I think of as well. I also think about comparisons to the federal government, right? If you look at the pay for most of our senior leadership, we have a $3.5 billion budget.

[01:46:26] But most of our senior leadership at FCPS earn more than the leadership of the Department of Defense, which has a $1 trillion budget. So if our CFO is getting paid more than the CFO of the Pentagon, I think that's a problem.

[01:46:43] I think that we need to be sensitive to comparisons and think about people who are struggling on $20,000 or $28,000 a year to earn enough to feed their family. That's the person I think of.

[01:46:59] I don't think about whether someone earning $250,000 needs to get $15,000 to $30,000 more. That's not going to make a big difference in their life. But someone going from 28 to 36 or 40, that makes a big difference. Going from hourly to contract, that makes a big difference.

[01:47:15] ESOL teachers getting a contract with benefits, that makes a difference. So I'm focused on those who are suffering the most and contributing the most on the front lines with our children every day. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Moon. Mr. Dunn, your points are well taken.

[01:47:35] You know, passing this budget, this superintensive proposed budget as is, does not mean that that's the budget we're going to be passing at the end of may you should have three more months to go and tonight mr don i don't believe that you have any a specific proposal for the board to consider so you have three months you know hopefully you can propose something for the board to consider between now and then so that we can have a fair discussion

[01:48:13] and and fair debate and then make make a decision at the right time which is at the at the end of may when you adopt the final budget miss Sizemore heiser thank you and um a couple things i wanted to say but i ran out of time the previous time is i just wanted to reiterate i think mr mcdaniel's been making these points this is not our actual budget this is our budget ask there are multiple more steps before we get to the end of the budget this fiscal year this is just the beginning point

[01:48:48] right and so the the important parts the the what we need to focus on this beginning part is different than what we need to focus on in may and in july when we're voting on where we can fund right now we're focusing on maximizing getting the funding we need it's a different kind of calculus so i'm just going to say that that i think and i'll just say to be honest one thing that makes me feel really thrilled and really happy in this amendment being brought is that for someone who's been fighting for special education for 20 years I love the passion you all are showing and the recognition that you all are showing how hard our special

[01:49:28] education teachers work and how much harder they work so thank you for sending that strong message from all of us because I believe all of us sitting here and mr. McDaniel on the screen strongly understand the value of these contracts it's doing it in the right way at the right time that sex sets everything else suffers success is I think where you're seeing the disagreement here. But the passion for the work, I think, is from what I'm hearing unanimous amongst everybody. And that is an amazing thing. So understand these are coming, understand that we have a plan, understand we all, I believe, from what I'm hearing, support the plan, and understand in this moment we

[01:50:07] want to maximize getting, doing the right thing for everybody. So thank you guys for making me feel good about something that I've been passionate about for a long time. Thank you, Ms. Seisbarheiser. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. One of the things that I wanted to say is just kind of putting budget chair hat on and I think some of you kind of mentioned this before I was called on is we will have more time once whatever this decision is once we receive what our final numbers are we will have more time to have some of the discussions that I think have begun this evening.

[01:50:43] Again, as I shared earlier in some of my comments, our Board of Supervisors, our state, et cetera, they are responsible for the appropriation. We are responsible for the, hold on a second, we are responsible for how it is allocated.

[01:50:59] So we can be strategic. We can have some of those conversations that have just been raised here and, frankly, at the work session as well. We will have time to do that over the next several months. So I wanted to share that.

[01:51:15] and also the other thing is um we all come to this work with different thoughts with different actions with different backgrounds etc you know i myself i've worked my entire career with special education teachers who kept worse hours than i did and those were the worst hours as a school leader and so we all understand what is what takes place with all of our employees from our folks in the building and to the folks at the central office as well you know i remember during COVID central office folks work what 17 hours a day 18 hours a day to keep this running there is

[01:51:53] value in all of our employees and there's value in what we're saying in terms of being strategic in terms of how we raise certain groups and I think this conversation is when we will certainly articulate and plan for Mr. McDaniel and I will plan for that during our next budget work session so if we could pause on those pieces it would be so appreciated thank you thank you mr dunn

[01:52:22] we need to take a vote on this amendment yes first okay all right seeing no other speakers we will go to a vote on this amendment which is on the screen all those in favor of the amendment on the screen which would move the extended contract into the budget mr dunn and dr anderson all those opposed

[01:52:58] Ms. Seizmoorheiser, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Marin, Ms. Anderson, no, I can't see, okay, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, and myself, and I can't see Mr. McDaniel.

[01:53:16] Mr. McDaniel is opposed. Okay. I'm opposed. Thank you. Abstentions. Ms. Anderson, will the clerk read the vote? So we have that as two yeses, nine noes, one abstention.

[01:53:33] So the motion, the amendment, sorry, fails. All right. The motion fails. We are on to the original motion and we will go to a vote. Could we please have it on the screen? All right. I had already called for a vote. Do you have the motion?

[01:53:55] One second. Your microphone is not on. Mr. Dunn. In light of Mr. Moon's comments, please state your motion. Sure. I move to amend the main motion by excluding from any budget increase the salaries of the highest the 25 highest paid FCPS employees to include the superintendent is there a second there's no second thank you moving on to the main motion all those in favor of the amendment

[01:54:31] the uh the motion on the screen not the amendment can we have the regular motion thank you all those in favor of the motion on the screen which is to adopt the budget financial year 2025 advertised budget, please raise your hand. Ms. Sizemore-Hyzer, Mr. McIlvine, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Marin, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Mr. McDaniel, all those opposed, all those abstaining, Mr. Dunn. The motion passes. Thank you.

[01:55:05] Agenda item 7.01, Performance Review, Learning Environment, Treatment of Students, EL10. We're going to take a five-minute recess and then we will come back to Dr. Reed.

[02:00:10] Board members, please return to your seats.

[02:04:25] We are back.

[02:04:49] Agenda item 7.03, Performance Review, Learning Environment, Treatment of Students, EL10. I call on Dr. Reed. - To the board and the public. At this time, I would like to present the monitoring report for the Division for Executive Limitation Number 10, which as our chairman mentioned, discusses our learning environment and relationships with students in FCPS.

[02:05:19] In this particular executive limitation, states that the superintendent should not fail to establish and maintain a learning environment that is safe, respectful, non-discriminatory and conducive to high student achievement and well-being for each student. So what we know to be sure is that the ideal environment for our students and our staff is one that enables our students to feel safe and our students need to be safe and centered to maximize their learning environment.

[02:05:49] At the time of this report, to the best of my knowledge, information and belief, we've gathered a number of departments have worked together to gather information and data points and evidence that I believe supports making adequate progress towards compliance with this executive limitation associated with this topic.

[02:06:10] And I'd like to share some of the highlights as part of the monitoring report this evening. Although I'll only be sharing selected indicators this evening as part of the presentation, I want to remind the board and the community that the monitoring report in its entirety is available on board docs for your review.

[02:06:29] So I'd like to begin by discussing how we maintain a climate that's characterized by support and encouragement for high student achievement across all demographics, subgroups and identifying barriers and solutions to inclusion and participation. Our strategic plan develops and implements strategies to address gaps in student achievement, which we're actually monitoring very closely at this time.

[02:06:54] Our chief equity officer and her staff collaborate with other departments and offices to create and maintain culturally responsive operational and instructional practices, a few of which are our division strategic plan, our equitable access to literacy plan, our special ed enhancement plan and our preschool inclusion plan currently under development we are also providing professional learning that increases equity literacy and understanding of structural inequities marginalization and its impact on students staff and families with some examples here being our

[02:07:31] equity symposium this past summer as well as our upcoming well actually we already had our winter 2023 equity lead institute and this enables our leads across schools and departments to come together and share best practices they provide turnaround training to staff on topics such as our new educational equity policy neurodiversity and family and school partnerships finally to provide support to leaders in our division our chief equity office provides collaboration consultation and coaching to support region leaders school-based administrators teachers and central office staff

[02:08:08] to create spaces for inclusion belonging and participation for students staff and families some of the topics covered this year have included utilizing the cultural profession proficiency continuum to manage the dynamic of difference the culturally responsive instructional and leadership practices and supporting and unpacking performance evaluation standard six which is a new evaluation standard in the Virginia Commonwealth evaluation process.

[02:08:38] Another important aspect of our division work is to implement policies and procedures that foster a learning environment for all students that promotes respect, belonging, and well-being. We want to note that at this time, Regulation 2603, our Health and Welfare Gender Expansive and Transgender Student Regulation, ensures that all students, including our gender-expansive and transgender students experience a safe, supportive and inclusive school environment, as well as our Educational Equity Policy 1440, which ensures access to services, spaces,

[02:09:13] opportunities and the diverse array of accommodations to meet the needs of the entire Fairfax County public school community. We're also in the process of having trained restorative justice facilitators at all FCPS schools via the series of four learning cohorts.

[02:09:29] Now, I want to pause here for a moment because one of the things I've heard a great deal since coming, both with the former board and current board, is the need to become a more robust school system and less of a system of schools and the need to provide some consistent practices across all schools and departments.

[02:09:49] And I really want to take a moment and commend Dr. King, who has put together a division nationwide program to support restorative justice and I believe just recently had our most recent cohort start and there's a lot of really great energy our schools have really stepped up our school principals who are enormously busy have made sure that we have at least two members from each school that are participating in this really important work. Why is this important work? Because it's going to continue to support the learning environment for each

[02:10:24] of our students and not just rely on disciplinary consequences but in addition to those disciplinary consequences move to actually teach those behaviors and create those conditions for fewer and fewer repeat behaviors and we think that's very important if we don't have a child's attention it's difficult for them to learn so I'm just really we're very excited about that and the level of consistency across all schools.

[02:10:57] Additionally, we continue to have a strong focus on social-emotional learning. Examples of these include our Monday morning meetings at the elementary level, responsive advisory meetings at middle and high school, and centrally provided materials have continued to be developed.

[02:11:14] In FCPS, we also recognize the protection of students against discrimination, harassment, bullying, or other unsafe conditions requires a multi-faceted approach. And some facets of this approach include that all employees are required to complete Title IX training to support a culture of non-discrimination.

[02:11:35] Our Title IX Coordinator provides oversight and support to administrators in the investigation and follow-up of all Title IX violations in compliance with federal requirements. Since the current Title IX coordinator started in the position in 2021, the Title IX team has offered individualized training sessions called roundtables with school teams to ensure they have a full understanding of Title IX and the protocols that FCPS utilizes.

[02:12:02] Many school teams use these roundtable sessions to review a particular case or to help new administrators understand their obligations. Additionally, we have systems and standard procedures in place to prevent, respond, and document allegations of bullying and harassment the evidence for number four demonstrates how we promote structures to engage students in providing input into their learning experience I think it's a real hallmark of Fairfax County public schools the focus we have on student voice our student equity ambassador leads or our seals is a student leadership group that works to

[02:12:38] amplify student voices and provide an increased understanding of diversity equity, and inclusion through leadership development projects and relevant experiences for our high school students. We currently have 93 students across all high schools who participate as SEALs. We're also proud of our John R. Lewis Leadership Program which promotes student voice as a core feature of its design and our Superintendent Student Advisory Council where we have 108 student delegates from high schools across the division who meet monthly to ensure student voice is involved in key decisions in our division and I believe

[02:13:14] our student board member also is a part of that group and that's they're going to be making their presentations to me here in the next couple months I'll be looking forward to hearing their input next I'd like to share how we ensure progress on number five and making sure that parents and families receive information in a variety of ways including division-wide practices for notification of student scores on standardized assessments quarterly progress reports and provide information about students grades progress reports and so forth we can always improve on each of these the fact that we're making

[02:13:52] out of progress does not indicate we have arrived at perfection in any one of these areas but I believe there's hard work and progress going on on all these topics our work on number six is focused on engaging with teachers and administrators in the development of administrative student discipline regulations.

[02:14:12] Our student rights and responsibilities continues to be an important part of our work, and the dissemination of these regulations continues to our students, staff, and families. We conduct SRNR learning sessions twice a year at least, and during the fall session, stakeholders are invited to attend and complete a survey about the current SRNR.

[02:14:33] During the spring session, these same stakeholders are invited to provide input on proposed changes. lessons around the SRNR are updated and facilitated by advisory teachers including mid-year reviews of these lessons and videos. We also have provided training for school administrators regarding discipline best practices and this past summer was the first time in quite a while that it was a mandatory training for all assistant principals in the county which obviously was well attended. So in taking a look at number seven our FCPS leaders and administrators regularly

[02:15:10] review discipline data we want to focus on school-based referrals out of school suspensions 10-day or more suspensions drug-related issues and so forth this year all schools that had been identified as having disproportionate discipline rates have created goals strategies and actions in their school improvement and innovation plans so where we have seen a need we've asked and expected a plan and we're monitoring the plan our efforts to take reasonable steps to identify STUDENTS AT RISK OF FAILING TO MEET CERTAIN EXPECTATIONS WOULD BE THE FOCUS OF NUMBER EIGHT.

[02:15:47] WE HAVE MANY SYSTEMS IN PLACE TO IDENTIFY AND SUPPORT AT-RISK STUDENTS, SCREENERS, DIAGNOSTIC TOOLS, OUR MULTITIRED SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT TEAMS, OUR DIVISION-WIDE FOCUS ON CHRONIC ABSENTEE ISM HAS BEEN A HIGH PRIORITY THIS YEAR AND IT'S ALREADY SHOWN GREAT IMPACT WHEN COMPARING OUR DATA FROM THE 93RD DAY OF SCHOOL LAST YEAR, I DON'T KNOW WHY WE picked the 93rd day but from the 93rd day of school last year to the 93rd days of school this year we have seen marked improvement in attendance for 190 of 198 schools i think that's significant i

[02:16:23] really want to take a moment to thank both our public who are watching our students for attending our families for encouraging attendance and our staff for making sure that this is a a priority. Finally, I want to talk about number nine. Number nine directs our division to ensure that all confidential student information is properly used and protected. We recognize that the protection of confidential information requires a multifaceted approach, which includes, for example, investment in technology alongside training of each of our employees. FCPS has been

[02:17:02] engaged in a multi-year process of continual improvement with regard to the safeguarding of student and employee information. With regard to technology investments, we continue to upgrade our technology infrastructure to ensure appropriate technology controls are in place in an effort to manage and secure electronic data and to mitigate against the reality of both individual human error and an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape.

[02:17:27] I don't like I think what we saw today with our many of us with cell phones. It's a very aggressive cyber threat landscape at this time and I want to make sure I commend our IT department and cyber departments for the work they've done in this area.

[02:17:43] In addition to technology improvements, we've also put in place a number of organizational or structural improvements over the last few years, including this year, designed to help us further protect confidentiality and use of student information at an operational level. Finally, in alignment with the Fairfax County Government Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy, the Trust Policy 1445 is designed to protect student and family information from being disclosed directly or indirectly to federal immigration officials.

[02:18:15] Having said all of that about number 9, I would like to also share with the Board that We certainly have experienced this past year, let me find my notes here so I'll make sure I read exactly what, I've got to, okay, let me find my memo.

[02:18:40] I have this past year, let me see if I can find it, John, okay, got it. We had an inadvertent disclosure of student information last fall.

[02:18:59] At that time, and so I began an external legal investigation at that time as soon as FCPS was made aware of this and the external review provided recommendations to prevent incidents like this going forward.

[02:19:14] As outlined in a memorandum provided to the board and posted on board docs, if we could go ahead and pull the memorandum up please, Madam Clerk, we have implemented the recommendations of external counsel and as you recall this winter I did send a note several notes actually to our community about this particular issue and we've been responding to this situation the disclosure of student information last fall specifically in our memo this evening that I've attached for your

[02:19:53] review that we're waiting to pull up specifically the office of division Council is now coordinating directly supervising bait stamping indexing reviewing and redacting documents that have been requested under FERPA FERPA and incident response training will be provided to school-based administrators special education staff department of special education staff and leadership in march 2024 this coming month the training is being put together right now Public records, which include the FERPA FOIA Office and the Procedural Support Department

[02:20:32] of Special Services, is now under the supervision of the Office of Division Counsel to ensure attorney oversight of any administrative legal proceedings in the Virginia Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Education. The Office of Division Counsel now has weekly meetings and additional meetings as needed with public records staff to ensure consistency in FERPA and FOIA related responses and finally the Office of Division Council ensures the timely filing by the Department of Special Services of all written responses to complaints filed against FCPS with video E and or the

[02:21:12] Office of Civil Rights in the US Department of Education. So chairman Frisch I would say that I believe this evening as we are implementing the memo attached and with the data that I've described in executive limitation 10 that we are making adequate progress in this area.

[02:21:40] So thank you and I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you Dr. Reed. I now call on Ms. St. John Cunningham for a motion. I move that the board finds that the superintendent has made adequate progress toward compliance with EL-10, given completion of the steps outlined in the attached memorandum.

[02:22:01] Is there a second? I will second. Ms. St. John Cunning, would you like to speak to your motion? I would like to thank Dr. Reed for her presentation and for the hard work that's been done to come into compliance, and I particularly appreciate the memorandum.

[02:22:21] Thank you, Ms. St. John Cunning. Ms. Sizemore-Hizer. Yeah, just briefly, I also want to thank Dr. Reed and your staff for all the work. This is quite an extensive report on how you're demonstrating adequate progress towards compliance. And I think especially in the first year that we're having these reports and information about compliance, I think it's important to recognize that you're still coming into a system a year and a half in where there's processes and systems that were in place before that we're finding and addressing.

[02:22:49] And I appreciate your transparency and work in when you're finding issues of addressing them. And I think that's obviously a work in progress. So I think there's a lot of really good things going on in our system as demonstrated by this report towards these things. And I have a few areas where I think we could probably do a little more focusing, anti-bullying efforts.

[02:23:08] I'll put them in my sheet. You don't have to – you can. I can stop you. But anti-bullying efforts, I think we – an emphasis on inclusion, Indicator 5 and 6 is sort of missing from here. And that, I think, is a big gap. I appreciate the proactiveness of bringing the memo for number nine, you know, without us sort of having to direct you to come back with a corrective action plan shows a lot of thoughtfulness and being proactive.

[02:23:32] And when we do have an issue of trying to address it immediately and being transparent about that. So I think we have made good, adequate progress. I look forward to the progress you're going to make between now and next year. And as you know, I will have some thoughts on that. But I appreciate your work. I appreciate your team's hard work.

[02:23:48] And I look forward to continuing good trouble. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Seizmoorheiser. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Thank you for this helpful information. It's always very interesting to dive into it. I am going to start with some of the areas that I thought were highlights.

[02:24:06] Indicator four. I'm sorry. Let me start with indicator two implementing policies, the restorative justice, which you've highlighted that Dr. King is spearheading. I think these are really good practices. They're going to help to reach this goal of ensuring that we are promoting that safe and welcoming environment.

[02:24:24] The coaching model regulation 2603. I think that for me is evidence that this indicator is making adequate progress. I do have some questions there in terms of the monitoring protocol for the implementation.

[02:24:40] Like how are you monitoring the impact of some of those really good ideas? But just so we could measure one, are they happening with fidelity? And what happens when they are happening with fidelity? THE GOOD THINGS THAT WE'RE EXPECTING, ARE THEY TAKING PLACE?

[02:24:56] SO, DR. ANDERSON, ARE YOU SPEAKING TO A PARTICULAR ONE OR JUST IN GENERAL ACROSS THE INDICATORS? JUST IN GENERAL, BECAUSE I KIND OF SEE THAT AS A THREAD THAT I WAS LOOKING FOR. I'LL GIVE YOU AN EXAMPLE. IF WE'RE LOOKING AT NUMBER TWO, JUST TO KIND OF HIGHLIGHT THAT THERE A LITTLE BIT, TALKED ABOUT THE POLICIES ARE IMPLEMENTED, THE COHORTS, THE SCL, I'M SORRY, NOT THE SCL, But, yes, the SEL team are 100% of our schools doing this.

[02:25:26] Is this being monitored? Just generally, I want to know, like, these good ideas are taking place with fidelity. How are you checking for that? Yes, ma'am. So if we're looking at Indicator 2, what I would say, and particularly to the SEL materials, the materials are being generated.

[02:25:45] The SEL screener for students in grades 3 through 12, it's my understanding those are being provided or those are being administered twice a year I don't know that I could say this evening I do know that we're looking at the data the SEL screener data to make determinations I don't know that I could say this evening that these materials are being utilized with fidelity across every classroom currently in the division I do know that materials have been created but it continues to be a discussion how we might best utilize those materials I think some schools have created their own materials because they have found

[02:26:23] unique context that their school so I think we have work to do still in terms of as I indicated earlier you know we're not at perfection here what we're doing is we're taking data points and pushing on those with both policy moves as well as monitoring data I can say for example with the attendance indicator that's part of the dashboard that goes to senior leadership every Monday morning we look at attendance and we also look at attendance conference completion so we're taking a really tight look at that as far as the title nine training for example that I referenced we're looking at professional development completion

[02:27:03] charts by region by school right now so we make sure that everyone's taken the title nine training the roundtable so I think what we're wanting to make sure is that we're not just talking about the work as I present it to you this evening But we are we have created data input and throughput to the senior leadership table actually that says yes we're doing that.

[02:27:27] And our principals are committed about doing those things because they recognize how important they are. No I appreciate that because in order for me to really evaluate the adequate progress I need to kind of understand the baseline and I need to understand where you are now. And you provided that in some areas.

[02:27:43] I think the one where you talked about was it night the 93rd day the 93rd day that was a very good example of data that showed where were we last year where are we this year is this progress a lot of this is a little bit nebulous for me because I don't have that comparison but I'm just going to keep going.

[02:28:04] I think area four where you talked about promoting structure for students I love the evidence that was provided there the seals the sack the POG plan again tangible things that we could capture that are taking place another area of strength that I thought was number five ensuring that each student and their family are receiving feedback having said that I do have some questions there which is Schoology is one of the examples you utilized how are we ensuring that that's being used consistently throughout the system or even consistently throughout a building because I can tell I can

[02:28:41] tell you from my experience as a parent there are some teachers who are very good about using Schoology you can open Schoology and SIS you have all of the information and some others not so much if this is a point of communication to our families how do we ensure that it is happening across the board so I think those are good questions some of the answers to those questions we haven't necessarily tracked or charted so to give you a year over year for some of those data points are more difficult this year as I stand in front of you and should be much clearer next year because we've created baselines for

[02:29:20] some of these indicators actually this year because they didn't exist previously I don't know I know we have a couple folks out with illness tonight but I don't know if mr. Sethi if you're able to share how we're able to look at data metrics for the use of Schoology or perhaps the sys or parent view data in terms of communication if there's anything you could add this evening I know you weren't planning to do that so I'll honor it if you're not able to do that this evening to the point of Schoology as you were saying we have now created the baseline of a data fabric where we can bring in data from

[02:29:55] Schoology and see the usage of that so going forward we should be able to go back and see What was the usage this year, this day? There's a lot of signals that come in through the data set that is coming from the vendor. To the point of parent view and student information system, that is a consistent sort of need internally for us to progress for how many parents digitally engage with our platforms right now to where we want as much, if not 100% of the parents engaging with the platform because it is important for them to be able to see progress reporting

[02:30:31] IN REAL-TIME BASIS COMING OUT OF PARENT VIEW IN THE STUDENT INFORMATION SYSTEM. SURE. AND I APPRECIATE THE INFORMATION ABOUT MONITORING THE PARENT USAGE AND I THINK THAT IS A VALID POINT AND WE NEED TO DO THAT BUT I REALLY WANTED TO HONE IN ON WHAT IS THERE FOR PARENTS TO ENGAGE WITH.

[02:30:49] THAT'S THE PIECE THAT I HAVE FOUND TO BE INCONSISTENT IN TERMS OF WHAT YOUR EXPECTATIONS ARE AS YOU MENTIONED EARLIER SYSTEMS OF SCHOOLS, SCHOOL SYSTEM, THAT'S A PIECE WHERE I THINK there's some opportunities um and I know we talked about this briefly but I'm going to raise it here when we've had conversations um regarding how our parents continue to engage with our teachers when it comes to academic um feedback elementary levels we have these great conferences that are set up come middle school we have the big drop off I'm wondering what could be what could exist there

[02:31:23] well a lot of things could exist there um I there are many divisions that have parent conferences that continue through middle school and high school so I think that's a conversation we need to have with our staff our principal associations our teacher associations and staff groups I think there has there can be tremendous value in those conversations so that's a possibility perhaps also expanding curriculum night opportunities I think there are a variety of channels and for

[02:32:00] families today just identifying channels that are working for families one of the things we are working very heavily on right now is the creation of an app so that families more often than not are using smartphones rather than going to desktop computers for us to be able to push out information for families or be able to have more interactive engagement so I'm really looking forward to just different tools our families of today engage differently perhaps than I might have engaged with my children when they were in school or my parents might have

[02:32:35] engaged when I was in school which honestly was go to school so you know I think there's a lot more connection today than ever before and I think we know that that benefits our kids and the last thing that I wanted to raise in this area again when we're talking about consistent practices across policies is is grading I know we have task forces happening with grading that speak to you know the scale but I don't know if we've gotten into the granularity of how we are waiting formative and summative assessments.

[02:33:08] Some schools that ratio is 90 10 some schools it's 45 55 some schools it's 50 50 system of schools school system that's a piece where I would love to hear your thinking and it doesn't have to be this evening but next year when we're having this EL 10 be provided that would be something that I would be very interested in and the other piece that I really wanted to highlight is number eight reasonable steps to identify students tutor.com high-impact tutoring 190 of the schools have shown improvement and chronic absenteeism so much appreciate that data but a couple

[02:33:47] of questions and this is I don't know if this is your time just went off oh okay If I could just wrap up this question, and then I'd love to go back, is are we monitoring the tutor.com usage? Because I know it's a significant investment, and I wonder in terms of what percentage of our students are utilizing that resource.

[02:34:08] Yes, ma'am, I believe we are. I know one of our members that is out this evening might have that data. I don't know if Mr. Sethi has a ballpark on that. I have a dashboard. I can go look at it. It'll take a few minutes to kind of get in there if you want to.

[02:34:24] We can send the report. Maybe by the time we get to your go back. What's that? By the time we get to your go back. Oh, perfect. You'll have it in my go back. Super. Thank you, Mr. Sethi. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Ria, for the presentation. As someone who is relatively new to this kind of presentation, because I was not part of the board that adopted it back then, executive expectations, now executive limitations.

[02:34:52] so let me ask you a one very fundamental question first or a very basic question let me let me put it that way is I see superintendent's interpretation right below executive limitations are those interpretations all been agreed to by the prior board because I see the wordings all in black ink just like exact limitations but your evidence presenting being presented tonight those are all in blue so do I assume that those interpretations have been agreed to by

[02:35:28] the prior board or I'm asking you so the interpretations are my interpretation of what the policy the executive limitation policy is expecting that I do I just pick the blue for the indicators so those interpretations are being brought to the board tonight for the first time yes okay now I understand And then, okay, this is some other time, but okay, now I get that, because I was not able

[02:36:02] to find those interpretations anywhere for other ELs or EEs, so… Well, you would be able to find those for those that I've presented this year. Correct. But not for… Correct.

[02:36:17] Because long ago when, you know, the board I sat on, when they initially talked about executive expectation, operational expectations back then, board actually discussed super engine interpretation and written agreement so that super engine knows exactly what the board was expecting to bring as data or other information.

[02:36:39] So having said that, what Dr. Anderson stated about in order to basically fairly evaluate whether it's been a progress being made.

[02:36:55] I mean, I just like Dr. Henderson, I would love to see more starting point data. So they all know, you know, if if there is no starting point data, you're going to have to tell us, you know, there's no data. We have to collect the data or data is just simply not possible to collect.

[02:37:11] I need to know that you provide some important data, but not on all points. So that is going forward. And that is something I'm looking for so that I could really see it's a progress, enough progress, or too slow, or you're doing way, way too well, you've got to slow down, so that I can tell you that.

[02:37:31] But thank you. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Mr. McIlvine. Thank you, and thank you, Dr. Reed, for this report. Just one question on the memo, and this could be better directed to Mr. Foster.

[02:37:49] But I'm interested in seeing that we've moved FERPA and FOIA and public records requests under the Office of General Counsel. And I'd just be interested in hearing more of the reasoning for this.

[02:38:05] I feel like, as all of us well know, the demands on this office are intense, and they've grown even more intense over the years. And I know the last time I inquired, we just had one person doing our public records requests.

[02:38:21] So that's, I think, a major issue for the system. And in some ways we're exporting a very understaffed office into another understaffed office under the general counsel. So I'd just be eager to hear the reasoning for that and if you have any thoughts.

[02:38:41] Thank you, Mr. McElveen. I, of course, have thoughts. I will say that in the past several years prior boards have added staff to the Office of Division Council and also added positions to the FERPA and FOIA processes.

[02:38:58] I don't know that we would ever say we're fully staffed for honestly almost any role probably. However, what I will say is that the decision to resituate the FERPA and FOIA office work INTO THE OFFICE OF DIVISION COUNCIL WAS A RECOMMENDATION MADE BY THE EXTERNAL REVIEWER WHO IS AN EXPERT IN FERPA AND FOIA PROTOCOLS AND THE RECOMMENDATION WAS TO MOVE THE FERPA AND FOIA OFFICES UNDER THE OFFICE OF DIVISION COUNCIL.

[02:39:28] SO IT WAS MY DECISION TO FOLLOW THAT RECOMMENDATION BY AN OUTSIDE EXPERT AND MAKE THAT MOVE. GREAT. WELL I KNOW I AS WELL AS MANY OTHERS ON THIS BOARD WILL LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING HOW THAT works out and how our requests continue to come in and we'll be interested in that data.

[02:39:47] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. Ms. Anderson. I just wanted to say thank you so much for the extent with which you covered each individual point. It's very helpful for me to kind of see it in context.

[02:40:03] I particularly love the idea that we're capturing best practices in the attendance arena. And I would encourage, if we're going to start looking at things like Schoology for usage, I'm also wondering whether or not we can use some of our instructional specialists to actually investigate schools that are utilizing Schoology well, so that we can take them as promising practices that could actually be distributed across, again, that idea of a school division.

[02:40:30] And so I would really encourage what we can do, particularly now, despite the fact that I vote for us to bring math textbooks back because I think that will help parents. However I will also say that because so many of our materials are online that we do have more data than ever related to usage of those and I would hope that we would continue to utilize those data points to make sure that it's similar to the conversation that we had earlier this winter about the fact that we want to make sure that those tools that we're

[02:41:06] investing in are being utilized appropriately and so the other thing is I would love to be able to highlight those schools that are used utilizing them in a way that's either unique or above and beyond and so that way again we can kind of we've talked a ton about compensation tonight but there's other ways that we can build morale amongst our staff and one way is to highlight the great amazing work that they're doing and so I would love to see us use the promising practices in that method thank you and i think you're absolutely right we've had several pd opportunities this year where staff within our division have shared their practices and um we have amazing

[02:41:43] educators thank you miss anderson mr dunn um i've just discussed with you uh dr reed how every every school should have a web page instead of just saying having demographics these are the top 10 reasons like a dave letterman list these are the top 10 reasons you should send your kid to the school and uh and and and i look at this report and i i appreciate the level of detail

[02:42:19] um it's definitely an improvement on the prior reports uh but i will continue to ask as i have in previous meetings for you to help me help you right um you have said that we are at an inflection point where either we're going to rebuild public trust in public education or we're going to go other way of school vouchers and I can't do anything with this report and the reason is because I don't there's nothing in this report saying what the situation was before you became superintendent okay and there's nothing

[02:42:59] showing me what changes you've made right there's nothing telling me what are what's succeeding what's not succeeding what are you doing for the things that are succeeding to expand and build upon that for things that aren't succeeding, what are you doing to correct that and what are the metrics and milestones that we can -- and what's the data, right, not just words, where are the charts, the infograms that you have a staff that creates great things for the budget that I can show in my newsletter to my constituents, I can share with them in town halls to show, hey, we are going in the right direction.

[02:43:34] I mean, I personally believe you're the most impactful leader perhaps in FCPS history, But I have no data to show that and I can't tell the story to anyone because it's completely anecdotal and based on belief and faith, but we don't need to rely on faith alone when we have data and evidence.

[02:43:54] I don't think it would require a huge change in approach or vendors or anything else. You have the data, you're just not sharing it, right? And so please allow, you know, show me that you that you are the most impactful leader so I can tell my constituents and they can see the journey that, hey, we are on our path to become the number one public school system, not just in the country, but in the world.

[02:44:21] But again, without those trend lines, without that data, the story is lost and public trust continues to erode. So I sent you a very long email. I can't really judge complaints because I don't have the data and information, right? Because if you say this program exists, standards and procedures exist, are they effective or ineffective?

[02:44:42] Do they predate your leadership? Are they headed in the right direction or wrong direction? Are they based on best practices from other school systems or are we just doing things in a bubble and creating things from scratch that we don't know if it exists? And I'm looking at like, you know, some training and programs, I just, I don't know.

[02:44:58] It's all very much in a vacuum. like a wavy analysis. So I ask for your help because if I can't help you then ultimately we lose the battle for the future of public education. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. We will take that to heart and I'll see what we can do in terms of providing some better support and charts for you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Ms. Dixit. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Dr. Reed. A lot of information here and you always share a lot. So I would sort of take it from Dr. Anderson's point that we

[02:45:36] stop getting feedback from as our students go to middle school, high school. And I really miss those elementary school report cards where we had a little note from the teacher that there was a lot of participation by the student. Right now I don't know how my son is doing leadership skills or working with his other you know his peers is he like you know helping them and they are falling behind so those are the things that we really helped us I think in the elementary school level and if it just takes I guess a few minutes for a teacher to write a little good thing or not so

[02:46:14] good thing but just once in a quarter so that way I guess I mean I guess I it won't help me because my son is graduating, but a lot of others can help others, other kids in the school. So I appreciate if that can be taken in consideration.

[02:46:33] Any points from you? Well, I I smile because I remember those report cards. Right. It felt like someone else really knew our children and our elementary teachers really do. Right.

[02:46:49] I think there's we have to always manage that tension between having you know 20 to 30 children that you would write a note about and an average secondary instructor perhaps that may see 150 children and being able to write that same note because you know they don't have that single teacher generally all day but they have so many children during the course of the day but it's maybe even more important sometimes is our children hit the adolescent years and the as they prepare

[02:47:24] you know for their life beyond and I I've often said that the older our children get the more they need those adults in their lives and so I take your point and I think it's a good perhaps question for us to really discuss about what that could look like I know often it's I haven't looked Directly here, but often it's a list of comments that teacher may be able to pick or something But it doesn't feel as personal for sure. So it's a good point I and it's perhaps at a time where we most need to know our children, right? Yes, so I I think

[02:48:01] You have something there. I don't have an answer tonight about how to do that But maybe that's something we can think about how to do better. Thank you so much and Just about the FOIA. I you know It's an ongoing topic and so many changes you are making to address that. That's great. But I would like to take some of the also being Mr. Dunn from federal government and the experience and how they use FOIA because there is I have seen like them using FOIA at a very good way that things don't get out.

[02:48:38] Obviously, if somebody does on purpose, that's not always the reason, like there's WikiLeaks always right there, right? But usually their FOIA systems are really good in place. I was just thinking about, like, are you taking them as a benchmark or any other things you are considering when you look at FOIA-related issues, so.

[02:48:58] Yes, ma'am. So, I think one of the things when we engaged with our external reviewer, that's one of the things I know our external reviewer works across all cybersecurity, FERPA and FOIA genre, whether it be governmental or private sector.

[02:49:18] So I know they were looking at best practices and we had the benefit of their thinking in the recommendations that we have now implemented. Thank you so much. And my last point is about restorative justice. The discipline issue we all know has come up a lot and this is a really great idea to stop these kids to go any further and get into trouble more and just stop them in the tracks.

[02:49:43] But there is a -- when we see these discipline issues coming to us, there is a lot of -- I think there is a minority students, there are a lot of English learners, there is kids with disabilities, so I think they need the most support and I think you are doing the right thing there.

[02:50:04] WANT TO SEE HOW THAT WILL AFFECT THOSE DISCIPLINE HEARINGS AND CASES. THAT'S CORRECT AND WE ARE CHARTING THAT FOR DISPROPORTIONALITY PURPOSES. RESTORATIVE JUSTICE PRACTICES ARE A BEST PRACTICE FOR ADDRESSING THAT. THANK YOU. YOU WELCOME.

[02:50:19] THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR THIS LENGTHY DOCUMENT. I JUST WANT TO -- THIS IS POSTED ON BOARD DOCS AND I WANT TO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE WHO LOOK AT THIS TO CLICK ON EVERY SINGLE HYPERLINK AND TAKE THE TIME TO READ WHAT'S THERE.

[02:50:36] I also want to encourage my colleagues to work with their region superintendents to get the data that they're asking for that's there. I just reviewed some data from Region 5 related to disproportionality of discipline, looking at attendance, and also the cell screeners, what's done with that, how that's communicated back to parents.

[02:50:59] There's a lot in here, and having worked boots on the ground for years, while some of these things were being implemented and in they're in place now right I also want to commend the superintendent that she just since she arrived she's only doing what she can do to improve our school system and where there hasn't been benchmarking when she finds out about it she starts the benchmarking I do believe there's there's data in this document that demonstrates that and where we don't have data she's admitted that we haven't been benchmarking that and we need to do that. So I just want to commend you on your approach, but also having worked in the

[02:51:39] system as long as I have, I do know that most of these things are being done with fidelity. Having said that, I'm a good to great believer, so anything we're doing well, we can always do better. I also want to make a comment about what my colleague was talking about in terms of personal notes to our students. It's been my experience that while it might not be noted on a report card, The teachers often do those types of things with their students.

[02:52:06] Sometimes it's just in prior to class beginning, having a conversation. Sometimes it's in correspondence on a paper or a project. And there's a variety of ways we do that. But I also commend the fact that a lot of our schools do ceremonies where they're recognizing momentum in a positive direction.

[02:52:26] I think for her that it's sort of like buzz something because they're hornets, right? and I'm sorry I can't get to it, but basically what they're doing is they're celebrating kids who may not have had good attendance, but now they do. Or maybe they didn't have a positive attitude towards learning and now they do.

[02:52:41] So there are ways in which we are uplifting and celebrating and trying to see and meet every kid where they are and build upon the strengths that they possess. But most importantly, I mean, these documents are fantastic and they take time to digest, but you really need to click on all the links 'cause then I think some of the questions that you get without doing so, If you dig a little deeper, there's more answers.

[02:53:02] And then also work with regions to get data or work directly with some of your schools to get some of the data that you're looking for 'cause I do believe it's there. - Thank you. - Thank you, Miss Lady. I'll take my turn before we take a couple go backs. I appreciate this and I wanna piggyback on something that Miss Lady just said about working with the regions to get data.

[02:53:25] One of the things that has come up in many of my region, all of my region meetings, has been our work around attendance and the Herculean effort and this is this is why I mentioned this the indicator says take reasonable steps to work on these issues the Herculean effort that is happening all across this county to make sure that we are addressing attendance in our schools we have non-instructional staff beating the pavement knocking on doors to get kids into our schools and that is happening every single day so it is not just taking reasonable steps. It is taking leaps to get there. So I appreciate that. I also want to talk about

[02:54:05] Indicator 2, implementing policies and procedures that promote safe, welcoming, inclusive, accessible schools. Earlier this month, an Oklahoma high school student, Nex Benedict, a gender expansive student who's 16, died after being beat up, according to their family, a in a in a restroom at their school and nexus mother said that this came shortly after they came out as gender expansive and in the climate within oklahoma where laws have been put in place

[02:54:39] targeting these kids and i raised this to say i raised this not only just to say nexus name and to acknowledge this tragedy but also to acknowledge the work that you've done as superintendent to make sure that our school system remains a supportive caring inclusive safe place for these kids even as people in this commonwealth would turn the clock back and move us towards Oklahoma so that's just one reason why I am happy to vote in favor of this motion to say that you are not just making adequate progress you are making tremendous progress on this

[02:55:17] EXECUTIVE LIMITATION. SO THANK YOU. THANK YOU. ALL RIGHT. WE HAVE A COUPLE GO-BACKS. ALL RIGHT. DR. ANDERSON. THANK YOU. I'M GOING TO TRY TO BE QUICK. I SEE THE HOUR AND I KNOW WE HAVE MANY MORE THINGS LEFT. THERE WERE TWO AREAS IN WHICH I REALLY WAS NOT ABLE TO MAKE A DETERMINATION BECAUSE I DIDN'T FEEL THAT THERE WAS ENOUGH INFORMATION. BUT I HAVE IT ON MY SHEET SO YOU CAN READ THAT. AND THOSE ARE AREAS ONE AND SIX. AND SO I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.

[02:55:53] THE THREE AREAS IN WHICH I STRUGGLED TO SAY THAT THERE WAS ADEQUATE PROGRESS WERE THREE, SEVEN, AND NINE. NINE FOR MANY OF THE REASONS THAT YOU'VE JUST TALKED ABOUT AND I KNOW AND APPRECIATE VERY MUCH THE PLAN THAT YOU'VE JUST OUTLINED. BUT THAT PLAN WILL YIELD, I THINK, DIVIDENCE IN THE FUTURE. BUT AS OF RIGHT NOW, I DON'T THINK WE'RE THERE YET. BUT I EXPECT THAT WE WILL BE VERY SHORTLY I WANTED TO TALK ABOUT SEVEN A LITTLE BIT BECAUSE I THE REASON WHY I DID NOT FIND THAT INDICATOR SEVEN WAS IN COMPLIANCE IT'S BECAUSE THIS ONE TALKS

[02:56:31] ABOUT ENSURING DISCIPRENT POLICIES ARE CLEARLY COMMUNICATED AND ENFORCED PROPORTIONALLY I THINK THAT IS NOT IN COMPLIANCE WHEN YOU HAVE 19 SCHOOLS IDENTIFIED IN INDICATOR I'm sorry, that is Indicator 7.

[02:56:49] We have 19 schools that have been identified as needing the RDD teams in order to combat disproportionality. So it kind of canceled it out for me because we have a good number of schools that are in that position.

[02:57:07] And one of the things that I do want to echo that Mr. Dunn said, because I wrote this on my form and I think I even showed that to you at some point is when there is a new initiative a new strategy that you have employed indicate that so that it can be attributed to you because I know some of the things here have existed and that's okay to list them if you've tweaked them and they're having a different result but when you are implementing new things I want to see like oh this is the innovation that we've been talking about so I would appreciate that alert.

[02:57:41] Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Sizemore-Heiser. Just briefly, I agree with Chair Frisch that you are very much in compliance. There are areas and I agree with Dr. Anderson over my colleague that there are areas that I think we need more on.

[02:57:57] But that is, you know, I would sort of lift up a little bit the purpose of these reports, right? These are monitoring reports. Where are we in time? Are you in compliance now? That also means, as one of my colleagues said, there's always room for improvement. And I believe a year and a half in with the first round of monitoring reports, there's going to be room for improvement.

[02:58:15] Having said that, I appreciate my colleague bringing up the conversation about you're one of the most impactful leaders and how does he sell that story, right? Because I think it's a really important point that my colleague brought up. And while this may not be the right mechanism for that because this is a monitoring report, I just wanted to say it goes to what I've been sort of talking to you about in terms of needing a strategic communications because we are an inflection point with public education.

[02:58:41] And I think there's a lot of good things. The attendance is an example of that that are going on. And I think we need to tell our story better. And I'm not sure these reports are the way to do it. But the point my colleague made is very correct. So thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Ms. Sizemore Heiser.

[02:58:57] Ms. St. John Cunningh. Thank you. I wanted to echo what Miss Lady said in terms of also being a boots on the ground type of person that recognizing that there's a lot of things in this report where there weren't benchmarks before.

[02:59:14] and i appreciate that you have added benchmarks and you took the words right out of my mouth chairman fresh because what has been done with attendance and i was part of the attendance team at my school is absolutely heroic from going and picking up kids from adding late buses from making phone calls to wake up the families or the kids it is happening and some of those steps were not in place before and i don't think people understand that when we're talking about that this has improved those processes weren't in place and the fact that they have been

[02:59:53] intentionally and thoughtfully been put in place and are being acted on is something that deserves commendation and i appreciate that and the staff that is doing the work um and i think that is helping to build the trust within the community uh the other thing i want to say that i just i spent all day yesterday at Lewis High School and was there with their leadership program and sat at the round table with the executive principals. And this is a program that is new and, you know, should take credit for the amazing work that is being done there to have student voice but also

[03:00:30] community and family voice that is building incredible trust within a community of high need. I would love to see that program replicated and I think every executive principal sitting at that table was like how can we do this and we miss an opportunity when we don't listen to our students because they know what they need and we have incredible voices in our students so I want to commend the work that we are doing to hear those voices and not only to hear and listen to what our students are saying but then to have a program like the Lewis Academy so thank Thank you for that.

[03:01:08] Thank you. I know we're running short on time, but I would be remiss to accept the commendation for attendance. It's really Dr. Ponce, Ms. Hall, our regional assistant superintendents, principals, like they are all over it.

[03:01:24] So I just want to give it up for them. They've taken this on and just with the attendance team and Mr. Sethi's ability to build dashboards so people can see, it's been a team effort and I'm really proud of the team.

[03:01:36] Thank you, Dr. Reed. I will call for the vote on this motion, which is on the screen. All those in favor, Ms. Sizemore Heiser, Mr. McElvain, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Marin, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, myself, Mr. McDaniel. I can't see if his hand is up or not. His hand is up. Mr. McDaniel. All those opposed, Dr. Anderson, abstaining, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Moon. The clerk read the vote, please.

[03:02:09] we have nine yeses one no two abstentions the motion carries say that one more time please we have nine yeses one no two abstentions the motion carries thank you very much all right at this time the board will take a few minutes to document their individual feedback on this report school board members may complete the hard copy found at their seat at the dais or the online

[03:02:45] form which is linked in the script if you have any issues accessing the form please contact the

[03:02:50] clerk we will now take a 10-minute recess board members please take your

[03:09:59] seats agenda item 01 policy review learning environment treatment of students el 10 the next order of business is the policy review for

[03:10:35] executive limitation 10 learning environment treatment of students el 10 following the board's vote in September 2023 and our vote at the February 8th 2024 regular meeting each year the board will review each of the 13 executive limitations at the time of the monitoring report is provided to determine if any revisions are needed moving forward the board may also review any of the executive limitations at any time a change is needed at this time board members may provide comments on executive limitation 10 learning environment treatment of students to determine if any revisions are needed

[03:11:14] and if I could have people clear their their lights just so that I know what's GOING ON I TURN OFF THEIR LIGHTS I GUESS IS THE BEST WAY OF SAYING IT. THANK YOU. I DIDN'T NEED EVERYBODY TO TURN THEM ON AND TURN THEM BACK OFF I APPRECIATE IT.

[03:11:34] AT THIS TIME I NOW INVITE BOARD MEMBERS WHO WOULD LIKE TO SUGGEST REVISIONS TO THE EXECUTIVE LIMITATION TO MAKE COMMENTS. DR. ANDERSON. THANK YOU.

[03:11:50] I WANTED TO SPEAK ABOUT THREE BECAUSE IN LOOKING AT THE LANGUAGE IT MADE ME WONDER WHETHER OR NOT THIS WAS EVEN REASONABLY STATED. LET ME GO AND FIND THE LANGUAGE WHERE IT SAYS. Um, protect against discrimination, harassment, bullying, and other unsafe conditions that might threaten, um, the academic performance, health and wellbeing, et cetera.

[03:12:19] I think I definitely understand the intent, but it's the protection that I struggle with and with assessing. How do we assess that the protection is there? We could certainly put forward policies, systems.

[03:12:34] The second half is very clear, which is a method to report such incidents. And I know the intent is to protect, but can we really say that we are going to protect? Can we really hold you accountable to that protection?

[03:12:51] That wording just really has stuck with me and it really made me struggle as to whether or not you were meeting expectation in this area. And I just wanted to share that. I don't have any substitute language, but it was something that I was wrestling with and I wanted to just share that out loud.

[03:13:06] And if anybody else saw it differently, I'd love to hear it. just for the sake of process folks you don't have if if there's not language decided tonight it doesn't mean that language can't be decided at the next meeting or the meeting after it can be brought at any time so you can spark the conversation now and have conversations later if you'd like all right seeing no other comments we will go ahead and I call on Miss lady for emotion I move the school board maintain executive limitation 10 learning environment

[03:13:44] treatment of students as is currently detailed in strategic governance manual Thank you, Miss Lady. Is there a second second? Thank you, Miss Dixit. Miss Lady, would you like to speak to your motion? No, I think we've had a lengthy discussion, but I do think the language is appropriate as it is right now. Thank you. Miss Dixit, would you like to speak to your second?

[03:14:04] I'm good. Thank you. I will call for the vote on the motion, which is on the screen. All those in favor, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, Mr. McElveen, Miss Lady, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Miss Anderson, Miss Dixit, Mr. Moon, myself, Mr. McDaniel, that is unanimous.

[03:14:27] Can the clerk read the vote? - It's 12-0. - Thank you. - The motion carries. - Agenda item 9.01, strategic plan update. I call on Dr. Reed.

[03:14:43] Can we turn the mic on, please? All right. - Thank you, Chairman Frisch. Each month we provide a strategic planning update that focuses on sharing our division's work to achieve excellence, equity, and opportunity.

[03:14:58] And I am thrilled to share this evening's brief report. These are examples of our early implementation strategies. And this evening, I'm excited to share some of the work we're doing with our new middle school sports program.

[03:15:14] So this fits under goal four around equitable access and opportunity. And we're gonna be focusing on, in particular, the measurement in goal four that talks about availability of and accessibility of extracurricular activities.

[03:15:30] It's also related to one of our goal two measures focused on participation in extracurricular activities. These small strategic plan bites are really to take a look at our goal reports and measures that while we have some critical measures for this year, these are also measures we want to highlight.

[03:15:51] So I want to share that the quote on the screen highlights the importance of students especially in these adolescent years feeling connected to their school and having another adult in their lives to be part of that journey. We're focused on our new middle school sports program tonight because it's one of the many ways students can experience this feeling of connection this deep feeling of connection and for many of us in the room this evening and many of you watching we've either been a student athlete or in a drama production or in the arts or we've coached or directed or produced

[03:16:27] events and i would dare say many of us are still close to those who we've coached or directed or produced those are relationships that really stand the test of time these programs promote positive and cooperative relationships with peers and trusted adults they develop a high sense of personal integrity and understanding of accepting responsibility for actions both good and otherwise and really a level of persistence that's critical for success in today's ever-changing landscape this is the first year of our middle school sports program at all 26 middle schools one of

[03:17:06] the things that was important to this board was to make sure that this was accessible at every middle school and again thinking about our system of schools versus a school system this is something we said every child regardless of their neighborhood was going to have access to fall programming as you know was cross-country track and field is coming up this spring with five Saturdays cannot wait we're also providing transportation so this is not a barrier for student athletes who perhaps don't have access to transportation uniforms are also provided no cost for participation in

[03:17:44] our athletic coordinators and coaches do receive a stipend. I also want to call out our middle school principals and staff who have taken this on and really dare I say run with it. I know I didn't say jump with it but I did say run with it but they have just put in extra hours on top of already very busy schedules and I just shout out to our folks they've really made this work. In the fall our numbers I think are astounding. I would like to say we had over 2,000 middle school kids out running cross-country many of whom it was their first experience as being part of a team I attended as did many of our leadership team members multiple

[03:18:23] cross-country meets I know many of you as board members were out there we talked with parents that said this is a first time their student had been part of a team other parents shared with me their student athlete had had maybe some challenges making friends but being part of a team had really mitigated some of that. So we've just had some, I think, tremendous datasets. So to see our middle school sports

[03:18:46] in action, I would ask Madam Clerk to please run the video.

[03:19:07] It is absolutely exciting to see students get to play sports at the middle school level in Fairfax free of cost for them. So many of our families cannot afford to pay for their children to go to an outside provider to be able to participate in sports, to be able to get those skills that students learn only on the field or on the court.

[03:19:25] schools offering sports to them is the way, is the avenue for them to explore their athletic pursuits. Our practices were during the first hour of after school and a lot of those students then stayed and participated in other after school activities during that second hour. It was a lot of kids who never participated in after school programs before so it actually added a bunch of kids to our program. In PE we learn about all these positive effects to exercising and all the different benefits it has for your health and your social life and your mental health and it was good to be able to implement that with middle school sports and see the actual effects of it. My endurance got

[03:20:03] better, that I enjoy it a lot and that I made a couple of new friends there. It actually helped me to get a lot more stamina and more energy and it helped me after the day to refresh myself to get all my energy out. And to be able to offer sports to all of our students, to students from other countries, students who were born here in America, students who might be students with individualized education plans.

[03:20:28] All of our students from every background enjoy middle school sports. They run off, "Mr. Bradford, Mr. Bradford, I cut two minutes off my time." We did our mile time for one mile at the beginning of the season and then at the end and I shortened it and it was by like 30 seconds.

[03:20:46] We have layers, right? We have a great performing arts program with band, orchestra, chorus. have a great after-school program but adding this other thing for students that involves the interscholastic competition piece where it's fun it's safe right it's a structured activity for them to do but then being able to compete against other schools and represent themselves well I think is that kind of that next piece that provides that full experience for for many of our students I had loads of fun running with my friends and running with other schools and I would cheer on other other schools for my students and I could even tell from other schools too, the kids were so supportive of each other. Like I

[03:21:25] didn't expect other kids from our school and then like other kids from other schools to be cheering each other on and they were just so supportive and I loved seeing that, that was my favorite. So I've 100% felt that more of that school spirit because it brings us all together. I think it was great that I was able to you know represent Liberty Middle School. When we offer middle school sports, what we're offering is a chance for students to find a place where they belong to find meaning in school outside of the classroom to make connections with other students and to really have ownership in the school where they're

[03:21:57] the stars excellence equity and opportunity yeah so I just I mean you can't not watch them be moved right like our I think one of the highlights of the season was when our Falls Church High School cross-country team came to cheer on the Luther Jackson team while they were out at the cross-country meet they're just we start to see the high school kids come out and I'll tell you what middle school kids look up the high school kids first right bar none so I just I feel like this program is moving I'm looking forward to track season and

[03:22:35] again the principals who were profiled here are really models for all the middle school principals that have taken this on I couldn't be prouder of them and our athletic teams Tom Horn who was here this evening Bill Curran at their office it's been a team effort and I couldn't be prouder of them as we're continuing to think about strategic planning reports I want everyone to get plenty of rest before March 19th because our goal five report leading for tomorrow's innovation is going to be hot off the press and we're going to make sure we're providing data and additional information that we hope each time our reports

[03:23:13] will continue to improve so Mr. Chairman that is our strategic planning soundbite for this evening. Thank you Dr. Reed. Dr. Anderson. I can't help myself I had to say a couple of things since my daughter was one of the kids out there. Of course she was. I'm like was she in there and the only thing that I really wanted to highlight was the fact that this was no cuts.

[03:23:34] Everybody could participate which is really tremendous and I'm really looking forward to the development of this program when we go into other sports because I think it's really going to help to raise the competitive level of the teams in my district where our kids are not typically in the AAU teams they're not typically in the private trainings and just getting that initial love for the sport and training I think it's really going to mean a lot for us in the Mason District so so excited about that but I do want to give kudos to the after-school coordinators

[03:24:09] because they are like the rock stars of making sure that this happens thank you thank you dr anderson miss sizemore heiser yeah i know it's late and so i'll try to be quick but i just wanted to say how thrilled i am to see this um you know we talk about you and i've had conversations about what's going to set our kids apart in an ai world right and it's a lot of the skills they learn in performing arts and in sports resilience persistence leadership teamwork collaboration right? Those are the skills along with critical thinking and others that they're learning that they're really going to set them apart in the world that they're going to be in when they're

[03:24:45] adults. So I love that we do this. I was a former, you may not know this about me, a former girls on the run coach and a former coach for FPYC for cross country and one fateful season of soccer coach for BRYC. So having never played soccer, it was a very interesting thing to do.

[03:25:05] So I just say it was I loved everything that you saw there I saw in the kids there right but there are kids who can't access that whether it's driving to get to where the practices are to practice at a different time of day. Sometimes our special ed kids maybe have a harder time accessing those leagues so providing this the thing I just wanted to say I love it this is great but I have to lift up as we're looking to expand if we're looking to expand we've got to consider how we're going to do this at the secondary schools.

[03:25:33] And I'm going to beat this drum and I'm going to beat this drum because we have one set of facilities for two schools in a secondary school model and it's not equitable, right? I was actually talking to somebody else about this and she said she grew up in a smaller town where there was 7th through 12th in her.

[03:25:50] She said, but we had two gyms and two theaters and two tracks and we don't for the secondary schools here. So I think we need to be really thoughtful because I think we need to expand this and we need to figure out how we're going to do it in that model. So I'll just put that out there.

[03:26:05] Yes ma'am. Thank you miss Sizemore heiser miss Anderson. So I I absolutely love that we're doing this because I believe that kiddos that are engaged in sports in open for everybody. It means that there's reduction in discipline problems. It means that we have happier youth. It's all all the things. So I love everything about this. I'm also going to lift up something that I had been talking to you about earlier and I'm going to keep using it as an opportunity.

[03:26:37] We had 2,000 kids, over 2,000 kids that we offered a free T-shirt to, and it doesn't say FCPS anywhere on it. It has their school name, but I want us to be loud and proud about how we're using branding to talk about what we're doing so that people can see what we're doing.

[03:26:55] And that is on every document that comes out of our office that's in every T-shirt, all the things. And so that will probably be the trope that you hear from me most is that I want us to show our excellence in that way too. - Yes, ma'am. - Thank you, Madam Public Engagement.

[03:27:11] Committee Chair, I have Ms. Lady. - Yeah, I mean, this goes without saying, that was a fantastic video, and as a student athlete, it's amazing. But I also want to uplift the fact that there are a number of sort of intramural programs that are thriving in our middle schools where it's sort of volleyball or it's basketball, and they're practicing and they're playing another school.

[03:27:34] So while it's not a sanctioned middle school sport, that our kids are leaning into that, as are our faculty, And really mostly want to uplift and appreciate and thank you for providing transportation, I believe, to our middle schools four days a week, which again is allowing the more and more of these kids who need that connection with additional faculty to stay and build those relationships.

[03:27:56] So I appreciate the funding for that transportation. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. That was a high priority of our middle school principals, the late bus. Thank you, Miss Lady. Mr. McElveen. I loved Miss Anderson's comment about including the FCPS branding.

[03:28:14] I think one of the things we do really well in Fairfax County is association with school but not with district and we are one here in Fairfax County. You know as a former tri-sport athlete cross-country track track very diverse I couldn't I couldn't love this more but I think you know what I'm going to mention and that is facilities and access and we we saw the issues this past year with rain outs and and and muddy ground and other other things you know it's it's appalling that as a county we

[03:28:52] we don't do better when it comes to our athletic facilities and I'm not gonna blow it up here but we do have past contracts past documentations that that need to be enforced with the county and I hope in the next year or two we we begin enforcing those so that we get the facilities that we've been promised in the past thank you yes sir thanks thank you mr. McElveen mr. moon thank you mr.

[03:29:20] chairman it's exciting to see that you know we are having these in a sports for middle school students my question to you is you know going forward how would you determine which other sports we may add so good question what I have committed to the middle school principals is this coming year we're just doing cross-country and track again we're just gonna make sure that we do that well while we pick the next season moving forward because I think we all we must

[03:29:57] make sure that what we do is sustainable so I I think it'll be dr. ponce mr. current in the athletic office with the middle school principals that will determine what sports next I have preferences of course but I think that that group is going to have to sit down and we'll really rely on folks on the ground level at middle school to think about that and I assume student voice will be somewhere in that but that's a decision we're going to make by a

[03:30:31] uh december of next year so that it can be included in fyi 26 uh the budget if there are any startup costs for a new middle school sport next year so when you say december of next year meaning december of 2025 or 2024. december 2024 for the fall of 25. all right thank you yes yes sir thank you mr moon seeing no other comments we will go ahead and move on to agenda item 9.02 Academic Matters. I call again on Dr. Reed. Well thank you Chairman Frisch and you know the only

[03:31:09] thing as exciting as a strategic planning report is Academic Matters. So I want to share that February is Career and Technical Education Month. So for Academic Matters this evening we're going to talk about how FCPS is preparing for the careers of tomorrow. In particular we're going to focus on how FCPS is increasing pre-k access to STEAM and computer science and how we're building a strong foundation for future advanced learning opportunities for all students so stay tuned early access to STEAM so this is really

[03:31:47] exciting and one of the things that is really a key to goal 4 of the FCPS strategic plan as well we're looking at making sure that students see themselves themselves in the opportunities that steam provides as well as computer science electives in their career pathways We know that the probably the next big push is really quantum Technology AI has been upon us for a while. I think we're still wrestling with how best to utilize AI Mr. Smith and dr. King were at the recently at the national superintendent conference and came back

[03:32:27] really excited about a lot of things they've heard about AI and opportunities so we're going to be dialoguing about how those are going to become centered in some of the work we're doing in computer science and STEAM across the division. So one of the things we want to remember is we're starting with our very youngest learners who are probably in many ways our most curious learners and really one of the things we have to remember here in Fairfax County and across the country is how do we maintain that sense of wonder for our young learners and how do we help them stay curious just a little longer.

[03:33:06] We do have access to STEAM across all pre-k and early childhood special education classes. Access to computer science is rapidly expanding and one of the things we're looking at currently is this fall all early childhood teachers are participating in professional learning on how to engage students in problem-solving with computational thinking.

[03:33:31] The expansion of computer science learning also is providing the use of coding as a means of communicating ideas and building foundational problem-solving skills and thinking in logical and sequential ways, and wouldn't that be fabulous? So as we think about math and ELA, STEAM, as well as computer science integration, who doesn't love engineering?

[03:33:54] So one of the things that's exciting is that we actually are thinking about how students improve their writing when they have universally designed computer science and coding lessons in what we call computer science for all. So the unit average is the orange and the blue is the pre-assessment and this is multimodal composition.

[03:34:17] And we're really seeing student writing actually improve as a result of this work. we're pretty thrilled about that we have a little math lesson going on in the picture there you know I can't account for the Washington capitals necessarily but I think the elementary math tests are including engineering design challenges computation algebraic thinking and the graph on the right highlights growth and student writing skills that resulted from computer science integration into English language arts there are students in the

[03:34:54] right the data resulted from the use of universal design digital tool called compose and code which helped organize their writing and then program the writing as an animation so in the words of one of the teachers in this project they said the greatest thing about the lessons is that everyone has been able to access them and that makes it a key tenant of a universal design for learning the global classroom and get to green are also two ways in which the integration of sort of the steam and computer science are occurring in the

[03:35:32] global classroom projects students engaged in steam and computer science learning tasks are using those to address United Nations global challenges like food insecurity for example in this slide students are designing and engineering autonomous food delivery vehicles and I was recently in a classroom where they were actually working on literacy skills around these global classroom project challenges the kids they're very engaging because they're extraordinarily relevant quite honestly in the get to green project we have steam and computer science learning used to empower students as they

[03:36:08] innovate solutions that protect the natural world in the example on the slide to the right students are programming a micro computer to measure soil moisture in connection to science learning and environmental sustainability goals. The soil moisture, as many of you know, will have something to do with firefighting and the stability of environments.

[03:36:31] So if you look at the age of the students working on these things, it's really incredible in terms of the computer science integration and the outputs that are possible. I also want to just share that our elementary students are using STEAM and computer science for what they call daily specials.

[03:36:51] They're using STEAM and computer science as rotations, specialist rotations, where students have dedicated time to create with engineering, and they've also been able to access learning through other specials like library and the arts.

[03:37:07] So there's just a tremendous amount of work that continues to develop our portrait of graduate skills and spark student interest in these career pathways. Finally just want to clarify that our strategic goals for 23 through 2030 really includes again as part of the measure of goal 4 that we continue to move our students through expansion of computer science and steam. It benefits our students in a variety of ways and one of the other measurements which we're

[03:37:42] tracking very closely right now and I believe we have several years of data that we'll be sharing is that the math learning with computation and algebraic thinking that begins in early childhood will support student success in algebra by eighth grade for all students and that doesn't happen overnight but with steady and sequenced sequence focused and aligned planning it'll be a reality for our students here in Fairfax and we believe will go far beyond algebra in

[03:38:13] eighth grade and that is academic matters Mr. Chair Dr. Reed Mr. Dunn I'll keep it short because I think we all want to go home it would be great the same comment as with the executive expectations report I think this is a great presentation but for people watching and I'd love to be able to share this with my constituents so they can get excited too, but there's not really any information on how many schools is this present in and is it being expanded?

[03:38:51] Has there been any validation or data showing it's effective, right? I mean, I'm aware of hundreds of programs if you just Google, you know, STEM and STEAM that are out there. Is our program actually one that works? Is it one that's costly?

[03:39:06] Is it one that has ever been revised, you know? And again, your impact as a leader, I'd love to be able to share that because being able to share the good news story that, hey, we're on the right path, and your children are learning this stuff, but there's just not enough data in here to share, and maybe it will be in the future.

[03:39:27] But again, everyone wants their kid to learn engineering at least or be exposed to it, but I'm not able to say from this, are there any schools in the Mount Vernon District with this? Is it effective? Is it being expanded? PRACTICE OR JUST KIND OF WE CREATE IT FROM SCRATCH?

[03:39:44] THANK YOU. THANK YOU MR. DUNN. IN THE INTEREST OF TIME I'LL SAVE MY RESPONSE AND WE CAN TALK ABOUT IT OFF LINE ON FRIDAY. THERE ARE SEVERAL CHARTS IN HERE BUT TO YOUR POINT I THINK WE COULD DO A BETTER JOB OF MAKING THAT MORE TRANSPARENT.

[03:40:01] THANK YOU MR. DUNN. DR. ANDERSON. THANK YOU. THAT DAILY SPECIAL IS VERY EXCITING. THANK YOU FOR SHARING THAT. IS THAT HAPPENING IN ALL OF OUR SCHOOLS? LET ME GO BACK TO THIS AGAIN.

[03:40:16] I believe it was happening in all of our let's see here elementary students due to do daily specials schools offer so I I will have to get back to you if it's in every school so I do know that I've spoken recently with several principals whose enrollment has been growing so rapidly they've run out of rooms and some of them have had to cannibalize their steam labs to be utilized as classrooms so then it's creating a model for how do we set those types of

[03:40:51] how do I say some of the steam projects obviously take space and storage so it's requiring a rethinking as we then further explore kind of just how we have students in schools and lack of space will also impact access and that would not be equitable yes ma'am my other quick question is kind of an unrelated subject but you will see the thread here the daily specials they're being treated like music pe is it a drop-off or is the teacher expected to participate or is that planning time it i think that also depends by school i've visited

[03:41:28] schools try to get in schools every week and i've visited schools where there's a specialist who's assigned to the steam lab so that students go from the regular classroom to the lab and that's planning time for the teacher and then I've seen schools whether it's lack of space or whatever where the steam activities occurring in the classroom with a specialist coming into the room and generally it's been my experience a teacher stays in the room even though a specialist has come in the room so I think we have different models across the division to answer the question do you have a preference or an expectation I don't know that I have a preference or

[03:42:06] an expectation at the moment I think well I do have an expectation actually I MY EXPECTATION IS THAT STEAM EDUCATION IS REALLY ACCESSIBLE TO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF OUR STUDENTS. I THINK IT'S THAT IMPORTANT. I THINK IT'S THE ABILITY TO APPLY WHAT CHILDREN ARE LEARNING IN MATHEMATICS AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS.

[03:42:25] BECAUSE WHEN YOU HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO PIVOT AND PROBLEM SOLVE, IT ENABLES YOU TO INDEPENDENTLY PRACTICE THE KNOWLEDGE, WHICH ENABLES YOU TO DEMONSTRATE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONCEPT. YES, MA'AM.

[03:42:41] THANK YOU, DR. ANDERSON. MS. ANDERSON. As someone who actually develops curriculum for a fifth grade STEM organization that's nationwide, I love that we're doing this in a way I can't describe.

[03:42:58] I had very similar questions to Dr. Anderson. I do think that this is one of those consistency moments that we can ensure. I also think it helps solve a problem with elementary planning time that I think that Some schools are utilizing their art rooms as additional space, and those would typically be able to be scheduled in.

[03:43:20] So this is one of those promising practices moments that I think that we can utilize to kind of see what's being done out there with the different STEAM labs. I would love to know more about whether or not we do have at least a STEAM dedicated specialist in every school.

[03:43:37] I know that it often doubles up with the art teacher, which I actually love because they're teaching the creative aspects of engineering, too. But I would love to see more about this as we move forward. Because I think that the coolest thing is that there are some teachers out there that are doing a whole lot with very little.

[03:43:54] Because of the engineering aspect of it, you can use recycled materials for so much of the work. And so I would love this as a moment to share not only practices and how they're planning with it, but also practices in what they're doing.

[03:44:10] So a moment to share curriculum to kind of to gain that cohesion across the division. So I think that would be very helpful. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Miss Anderson. Miss Dixit.

[03:44:27] Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Reed, this is really close to my heart. I do believe that every student should have the access to in public school, engineering in computer science in elementary school. This is the step in the right direction.

[03:44:42] It talks about, you know, covers equity. You know, kids who can't afford to go to after-school classes and take those robotics, you know, go to those, you know, camps. This is excellent for them. I do want to see, look forward as you're talking with innovation and the future leaders that if this is a wish list, I guess,

[03:45:04] If every school, elementary school, has one engineering lab and a computer science class for different students, like from starting from third grade, and they can just do baby go once a week for those engineering classes, just opens up their mind to so many things when they build on, build things together, they cut the word, they make, you know, start from like basic cutting, CD, CAD, designing, and things like that.

[03:45:35] So that is something I guess it's going to just change the world at least FCPS students they will be ready for the future and they will be the tomorrow's leader as what we are trying them to become. Yeah I agree it's like who doesn't love that. Thank you Mr. McElveen. Thanks so I think one of the threads we're hearing tonight is the equity with this so I mean the presentation was

[03:46:07] great I share Mr. Dunn's concerns about the lack of substantive information but we really do need to get to a place to Ms. Anderson's point where we're funding a STEAM resource teacher in every school because we aren't right now it's up to principals to to siphon that money from elsewhere to do it and I know from my experience in my elementary school they're getting it once every two weeks which i know the kids would love to be in there every day right that's i know that's not feasible but more than every two weeks would be great and then just finally i would just

[03:46:43] note that we have a triple t problem and i really hope that we can as a board delve into triple t because we've had as i've referred to in recent meetings we had set aside funding to get world languages in every elementary school as part of Triple T and that never materialized. Our students are getting world languages maybe twice a week for 20 minutes. It's where it does exist and that's not enough. We need to make sure PE, music, art, STEAM are all incorporated and done so where they're

[03:47:21] actually getting enough of it to make a difference. So that's a topic for another other day. Thank you. Yes sir. Thank you Mr. McIveen. Miss St. John Cunning. I'm really impressed with this presentation and from someone that developed a summer a free summer steam program for children that were marginalized and what we saw was fantastic. I developed that with a teacher that is currently the steam person at Cameron Elementary Meredith cozier which is probably one of the strongest steam steam teachers I've ever seen. And what it does for our kids Kate

[03:48:00] through six is a rotation I agree with everyone here it has to be in every school but I also understand the limitations unfortunately that we're facing which goes back to our needs based budget every elementary school deserves to have a STEAM teacher there and it has to be a rotation and what I particularly love about STEAM and what I have seen kids in the elementary school do is that it involves every kid and we see talents that are not necessarily exhibited

[03:48:38] under normal academic programming to where you see some of your special education kids like really soar in that STEAM program or where you see some of your ESOL kids because they're doing non-language dependent activities be the leaders.

[03:48:54] SO I THINK THAT THIS KIND OF PROGRAMMING HAS SO MANY OTHER EXTRA BENEFITS THAT I WOULD LOVE TO SEE IT INCREASE. AND I JUST DID HAVE TO DO A SHOUT OUT TO MARIDA BECAUSE SHE HAS DONE AMAZING THINGS.

[03:49:12] BUT AS MR. MCELVINE SAID, THAT'S A TOPIC FOR ANOTHER DAY ON HOW WE CAN GET THIS IN EVERY SCHOOL AND HOW WE CAN HAVE THIS SPACE IN EVERY SCHOOL. YES, MA'AM. THANK YOU, MS. ST. JOHN CUNNING. MR.

[03:49:27] thank you for the presentation and this may be a slightly different program or issue but I would like to be able to discuss some time in the future about global classroom projects that how a program has really expanded but at the same time there are there seem to be some challenges in further expanding the program you know for example a teachers unable to get necessary professional you know uh development training or there has not been any any designated staff to oversee the

[03:50:05] program i mean it has not been designated as a program so uh that's something that uh i want to have an opportunity to discuss with you yes sir thank you mr moon seeing no other comments we will let you leave the podium and we'll talk to you in about five seconds okay all right next on our Our agenda is agenda item nine dot zero three.

[03:50:39] Superintendent matters. Thank you. I call it Dr. Reid. Thank you, Chair Frisch. Lots of excitement. This is School Board Appreciation Month. And I know our staff would like to thank our school board.

[03:50:57] This year's theme across the Commonwealth is that our school boards are the heart of education. And I would like to personally thank our school board on behalf of all our division students families and staff and I'd like our staff to recognize as well and thank our board if we wouldn't mind so what okay also our bus drivers and bus attendance appreciation I want to thank chief

[03:51:33] operating officer Andy Muick for helping to spearhead a number of activities and I want to add my deep appreciation also for our more than 1,025 bus drivers, our 353 bus attendants and 77 van drivers who safely transport 131,000 of our students to school each and every day.

[03:51:54] It is through your tireless efforts, including regularly getting up before the crack of dawn, honestly well before almost anyone in the division, and being that friendly first face again, that greets each of our students.

[03:52:10] Want to remind folks that it's Career and Technical Education, Disability Employment and Adult Continuing Education Appreciation Month, and appreciate the celebration this evening, appreciate the VHSL and academic team recognitions. I also want to mention that last week, we held our first strategic plan advisory committee meeting.

[03:52:27] And we had over 20 of our community members who were part of the development of our strategic plan and our core planning team join us to give us feedback on how the implementation of the plan is going. In particular, we discussed goal one. I want to thank Marcy Neal and Dustin Wright for organizing and planning that event.

[03:52:48] We had a great turnout and a lively conversation. Last week, I also had an opportunity with Ms. Marin to attend the math stem night at Herndon Middle School, where we had our high school students working with our middle school students. It was really exciting.

[03:53:04] Earlier this week, I met with the Wise Owls at Shrevewood Elementary School and did see a global classroom project in fifth grade, where they were working on global challenges with international peers.

[03:53:20] Last Friday, I was at Robinson Secondary to see the production of Matilda, the musical. And school was kind of grim for Matilda and her classmates, so I have not seen a classroom anywhere in Fairfax County that has the grim nature that I saw that evening.

[03:53:36] Also, I've had a chance to see Lake Braddock, Bruins, Woodson Cavaliers, Edison Eagles, and Falls Church Jaguar, young girls basketball players, and that's been a lot of excitement. And finally, we have passed the 100th day of school, so it's quite a landmark for students in the division, and we are approaching Pi Day, one of my favorite holidays after Groundhog Day.

[03:54:04] I want to mention that we are having a job fair this Saturday at Lake Braddock from 9 to noon. And just lots going on in the division. So thank you, Chair Frisch. Thank you, Dr. Reid. Agenda Item 9.05, Glasgow Middle School Boundary Study Scope.

[03:54:23] I call on Dr. Reid. Thank you, Chair Frisch. For the boundary Glasgow scope, I'm going to call on our... You know what? I skipped right over an agenda item. I apologize.

[03:54:44] So we're going to go back to 9.04, which comes after 9.03. For those keeping score at home. And I again call on Dr. Reed. Thank you, Chair Frisch. And at this time, I'd like to introduce our Chief Operating Officer, Andy Muick, who will introduce our presenter and report on the middle school start time study. So thank you. Mr. Muick?

[03:55:15] Yes, ma'am. Good evening, school board and Dr. Reed. And I wouldn't be following the superintendent's lead if I didn't spread the recognition. Anything good that happens in the transportation department is Paul D'Andrade and Michelle Phillips, our leadership in transportation.

[03:55:32] So the next brief is the middle school's start times analysis of alternatives. The contract was awarded last fall to Prismatic Services, a professional K-12 educational consultant. Dr. Prieto, the president of Prismatic Services and the lead consultant on our FCPS project is going to be coming up shortly to brief how the alternative analysis, the analysis of alternatives project is going to be run over the next 10 months, culminating in a

[03:56:06] recommendation and alternatives to the board in the January 2025 with a possible adoption of that recommendation in school year 25 26. We're doing the analysis for several reasons I'd like to mention two before I turn it over to Dr. Prieto. First in 2016 when we moved high schools to a later start time the superintendent at that time stated that middle school start times would be revisited at a future date and here we are at that future date. Second and most important the science and data shows that the increase in sleep for middle school students results in improved health physical and mental

[03:56:44] and improve academic performance, then that's the strongest reason to be looking at this. And so with that, I'll turn the podium over to Dr. Prieto for the brief. A second there, Mr. Chairman. I thought I was here on the wrong day.

[03:57:01] I'm clearly here on the wrong day. Thank you for your patience. No, no worries. Good evening. For those of you who haven't met or met again, I'm Dr. Prieto, President of Prismatic Services. We're the firm selected for the middle school start time study. Recognizing that there's been some time since the release of the RFP and the start of the project and also recognizing that there's been some leadership changes on the board as well as in the Transportation Department, I thought it would be best to start at the beginning and just briefly go over that history.

[03:57:31] So I'll talk about the origin of the RFP, where Fairfax sits in comparison to other areas, and then so we have some common background for the work. So this project in Fairfax is not the first time that we've considered middle school start times, or the first time that the division's considered middle school start times.

[03:57:52] As Fairfax was engaged in the work that ultimately became the blueprint for change, middle school start times were considered at that time, along with the high school start times. Ultimately, the blueprint for change, adopted in 2014 and implemented in 2015-16, changed high school start times to 8 o'clock or later.

[03:58:10] This realized a board goal from 2012. With the high school change, instead of moving middle school start times later, they were adjusted to 730 from a previous range of 720 to 805. At the time of blueprint adoption, the then superintendent stated that she would consider moving middle school start times back at a later date, as Mr. Muick mentioned.

[03:58:31] So the 730 school start times is where all middle schools currently are. The division's three secondary schools currently start at 8 o'clock. Looking at the goals and objectives, in 2019, the board directed the superintendent to review middle school start times.

[03:58:49] After that COVID period, we arrive at this RFP. As stated in the RFP, the goal of this project is to develop an action plan to help the board attain its goal of starting middle school at or after 8 o'clock. Recognizing the importance of sleep for all adolescents, not just those in high school, my team and I are thrilled to be part of this work.

[03:59:09] THE FOUR COMPANY OBJECTIVES IN THE RFP TO REACH THAT GOAL ARE REVIEWING BACKGROUND INFORMATION, DEVELOPING OPTIONAL APPROACHES, PREPARING AN ALTERNATIVE ANALYSIS, DRAFTING UP BELL SCHEDULES, UNDOUBTEDLY, AND THEN DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING A COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PLAN.

[03:59:28] SO SOME OF THE KINDS OF QUESTIONS THAT WE ANTICIPATE GOING THROUGH AS WE PROGRESS THROUGH THIS PROJECT, CAN MIDDLE SCHOOL BELL SCHEDULES BE ADJUSTED WITHOUT NEGATIVELY IMPACTING start times for uh elementaries and high schools can the middle school bell schedules be adjusted so that middle schools and high schools have start times on or after 8 a.m and the million dollar question can these changes happen without impacting the budget we're going to look and we're going to try so our planned tasks on this project are all geared towards bringing to the school board

[04:00:03] recommendations for middle school start times in january 2025 so that a recommendation can be adopted for implementation in 2526 if the board chooses to do so to get there we have a number of milestone activities the background report which we're currently engaged in covering the history of efforts in fairfax around this issue we're also developing a number of case studies with a few large school districts to look at lessons learned from their implementation on-site observations this isn't going to include observing bus observations at selected middle schools in order to get a good feel for things every time we do one of these studies i always feel better if we've actually seen it on the ground is to see what's actually happening so that we can look at

[04:00:41] impacts from that that avenue alternatives analysis this is where the routing part of my team will be spending their spring and summer we've already determined that fairfax has a solid routing team internally so we're happy to be working with them to look at alternatives we don't always have that on these projects online community surveys and forums we plan to have two rounds of these activities we've four forums planned for the spring and four for the fall The spring ones are going to be more informational in nature.

[04:01:10] We'll communicate about sleep research and let participants discuss how later school start times could be beneficial and could be implemented. Sometimes our best ideas come from people who are living it. And then the fall ones will present two to four alternatives for input. Here's how the major activities look on a timeline.

[04:01:28] Technically project implementation initiation happened in October 2023, but at that point recognizing that we would not be able to meet the original RFP objective of finishing the project in September of 2023. We worked with the previous transportation director to adjust the timeline.

[04:01:44] We use the November and December period to complete a lot of work on the background information document that will be submitted to the division soon. And then the other major activities include the forums and the analysis in the spring. All of these activities will lead us to a January 2025 school board presentation and hopefully an affirmative vote to begin implementing the recommendation, whatever it ends up being.

[04:02:04] There you go. This is the prismatic team that will be assigned to this project. a little bit of background prior to founding prismatic i served in two other major consulting companies and i've actually done work in fairfax before as a really really really young consultant i worked on the 1997 mgt of america study for fairfax and then i started prismatic in 2007 focusing solely on pre-k12 thus far we've completed 300 projects for clients in 31 states and the district of columbia with school districts ranging in size from 108 students

[04:02:42] to Los Angeles LAUSD size. One of these projects was the 2013 Food and Nutrition Services Project for Fairfax. As I understand it, I was pleasantly surprised to see the division recently implemented the last fresh fruit, vegetable/salad bar in the last school, and that was one of Prismatic's recommendations. The Prismatic team for this project includes two former transportation directors and a senior router. We also have a technical advisor on this project, Phyllis Payne.

[04:03:10] Ms. Payne may be a familiar face to you. She's a co-founder of the local sleep advocacy group and a leader of the national start school later group. We're excited to have her on the team. She's been instrumental in helping us develop that historical background because she has been part of school start time efforts in Fairfax since 1998. We know the community engagement is a big part of the Fairfax culture so we want to embrace that in this project. We already have dates for the four spring forums and we're working out the logistics now. The purpose of those sessions is again to to provide background information on adolescent sleep research, also to make the community

[04:03:47] aware of transportation constraints, and to get some initial input opinions on challenges and opportunities associated with going to later middle school start times. We're also planning survey work as well as an online forum to gather input in a variety of ways. I'm a big believer in allowing participants to participate in whatever way they feel comfortable, so we always try to have different modalities for that.

[04:04:08] In the fall, after we've identified alternatives, we're going to repeat the same process, only this time we'll be gathering feedback on those alternatives and then recognizing that many of us have not been with fairfax since the last century i thought it would be good to do a real quick recap of start time changes the history of discussions about start times in fairfax goes back to at least 1991. in that year the division discussed moving elementary school start times but also staff also recommended middle schools at 7 30 to 7 45. at that time middle school start

[04:04:40] time was 7:45. In 1998, the task force looked at middle schools starting at 9 o'clock. In 2006, two external studies looked at high school start times and also recommended middle schools starting at or after high schools. In 2009, another task force proposed middle schools at 9:20 to 9:40.

[04:05:00] In all those years, no action was taken at a high level on middle school start times, but you can see from the second column at the bottom that by 2009, not all the middle schools were on the same start time and some actually started at eight moving into more recent history we had the beginnings of blueprint for change in 2013 implemented in 2015-16 blueprint placed middle schools at 7 30 with the three secondary schools at eight in 2020 there was a school board work session on middle school bell times but no action was taken i think the general takeaway from

[04:05:36] these history slides is twofold one fairfax has considered middle school start time adjustments for a long time but has thus far not taken definitive action obviously we're hoping that this time is different the second takeaway is that middle schools in fairfax have not always started at 7 30. we have done different things in the past here so we could potentially do something different in the future to give us a sense of national trends we pulled these data from nces on this graph green is good start times after 8 30 for middle schools the x-axis shows the dates of the

[04:06:13] available data points from 2007-8 to through 2021 the data show that we've always had some middle schools in the country that started at 8 a.m or later since 2017-18 you can see that the proportion of green is growing and we're starting to see growth in the number of middle schools that are starting at 8 30 or later and then finally just some additional context for where the division sits on this issue in comparison to some other large school districts in 1997-98 minneapolis schools move their middle school start times from 7:40 to 9:40 I checked and

[04:06:51] their schools middle schools currently start at 8:40 in 2000 Brevard schools in Florida moved from 8:50 to 9:15 some of those are now at 9:30 at that time Fairfax middle school started at 7:20 2014 Long Beach in California moved from 8:00 to 9:00 also in that year the American Academy of Pediatrics released this position paper stating that middle schools and high schools should not start before 8 30. this was a big moment for sleep advocates at that time fairfax middle school started between 720 and 805. in 2019 california passed a law requiring middle schools to start no

[04:07:30] earlier than 8. that law went into effect in 22 23 so they've been doing it for two years statewide 2020 through 2022 there were several influential studies and meta-analyses that point out positive effects from middle school start times of later than 8 30. these effects include total sleep time improvements, behavioral health improvements, and academic performance improvements. In 2023, Florida passed a law requiring middle school to start no earlier than 8 o'clock. That law goes into effect in 26-27. In 23-24, your neighbor in Maryland, Anne Arundel, implemented new school

[04:08:06] start times. All middle schools shifted to 9-15. Prismatic assisted Anne Arundel in that effort. Also in that year, New York City schools decided that middle schools can start no earlier than 8. throughout the period 2019 through 2023-24 fairfax middle school stayed at 7 30. so that's context on middle schools for both in fairfax and nationally then as we begin this project it's really important to look at local constraints you know it's easy to dream big but can it can it be achieved and so your transportation executive director identified the current driver shortage

[04:08:44] as a constraint we would add that this is a national issue and it's not one that's likely to to go away soon so we're very cognizant of that in addition we recognize that Fairfax is a large transportation system that supports many special programs analyzing the potential impact of moving middle school start times on both the number of drivers needed and on all the special programs will be part of our work on this project in conclusion one of the keys to a successful project like this is identifying what are the major wants and non-negotiables at the outset in our work with Anna Arundel their board articulated what they call their stakes ON THE GROUND AS PART OF THE PROJECT PARAMETERS EARLY ON SO WE WERE ABLE TO WORK WITH THEIR

[04:09:24] TRANSPORTATION DEPARTMENT TO CRAFT A SOLUTION THAT BUILT ON THOSE. WE WOULD SEEK TO DO THE SAME WITH THIS BOARD. AS WE PROGRESS THROUGH THIS PROJECT WE WELCOME YOUR INPUT AND YOUR QUESTIONS. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. THERE WERE ABOUT FIVE LIGHTS ON BEFORE WE EVEN BEGAN. SO I'D LIKE TO HAVE EVERYBODY GO OFF AND THEN TURN BACK ON IF YOU WANT TO SPEAK. ALL RIGHT. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

[04:09:50] Mr. McElveen. Well, first of all, just thank you for your long history with FCPS. We appreciate the work that Prismatic has done. In fact, the first time I met with our superintendent, Dr. Reed, I put a copy of the Prismatic report on her desk from 2013.

[04:10:10] And I appreciate you acknowledging that we finally made it to that goal. It took us 12 years. It made my LinkedIn feed, sir. and i think the same is true as we look at the incredible history you've laid out i was in kindergarten when when we started this work on start times in 1991 so it's taken us a while and you know there's a quote by trotsky that revolution is impossible until it's inevitable and i think we've over over time found that to be the case in fairfax county where really it's up to leadership at the top to set the tone and then everything else

[04:10:48] works itself out that was true with karen garza in 2014 when we did this work on on the blueprint for change and high school start times and i think that's it's going to be the same with with dr reed here um setting the tone um and it also falls to the board you know what we found with blueprint for change is that the school board really has to set that goal and live up to it so that the the superintendent and her team can follow through on it.

[04:11:19] So I'm hopeful that's going to happen here. You have a great team. I'm glad to see Phyllis is still at it. She'll be a great support, because no one-- with the exception of present company included, no one knows our bus routing better than she does. So godspeed, and I look forward to getting to 8:00 AM start times for middle schools.

[04:11:40] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. Mr. Dunn. Thank you, very impressive presentation. Thank you again for your service to the community. So when you have schools that start at 9:00 a.m., what do you do with sports and after school activities?

[04:11:57] I mean, when are you dark at 4:30 or 5:00? So Anne Arundel, all of their middle schools start at 9:15. They shifted their sports program, which is much more extensive than what you currently have, to the after hours and are not experiencing any problems.

[04:12:12] One of the things that I heard in the other presentation is that you're running about two hours of after-school programming in your middle schools right now, and that seems to be a fairly substantial block of time that perhaps could be used for middle school sports, even if we shifted an hour later.

[04:12:27] And I'm not saying we will. We have no recommendations yet. We've just begun. - And can I ask, where do you see the intersection with the work we're doing on school boundaries? I've heard some, you know, from some conversations that have been had in the two-by-twos.

[04:12:45] I I think I think it's an interesting question um you know they're both potentially um highly impactful projects for the division uh I don't know that I I see a necessity that one go before the other or that they go in lockstep it was mentioned in one of the two by twos that perhaps the work of boundaries will be far enough along that we could do community input sessions in the fall to gather on both issues and my ears perked up about that because I'm all about trying to get people out for things and and I think Fairfax has a

[04:13:21] much better history of getting people out to come out to things but I have certainly done public forums for other other school districts where a lot of effort goes into it and we have four parents show up and and you know we don't necessarily get the input we're looking for so I think there's a natural possible working together on those streams one of the things that is potentially a question about it is you know do we want to do we want to bother transportation twice in a row with major changes and I think that the response to that is you know what goes unseen in the transportation department is that

[04:13:58] they're dealing with changes all the time and so whether we come to them with a school start time set of changes and then a boundary set of changes or flip flopped the two they could handle them in sequence they could handle them at the same time because that that's part of the work that they do all the time can I ask just to clarify my understanding so is is the study focused primarily on the transportation component you know school buses and maybe traffic impacts especially with people who you know commute to DC or commute to Maryland or you know West Virginia or wherever they're going and being able to get their

[04:14:35] kid to school if because there are many parents who don't you know aren't service by school buses right so so traffic impacts is obviously a huge part of it but I mean are there other elements that you're looking at like possible beneficial effects on student health or you know impacts on after school activities like we were just talking about I think that the the the the benefits the potential benefits on students are well documented while researched and so it's just a matter of whether or not we can get there and what has and what the reason why I think that the RFP was brought to us as primarily a look at the transportation piece of it is because in the past transportation has been

[04:15:15] the barrier to making the change it doesn't sound like from looking at the published reports that there was any lack of desire to do what is best for students it's just been whether or not we can get over the hurdle i will say that you know there are very few things that a school division can choose to do change it can choose to make that will impact absolutely everyone in it school start times is one of them and we recognize that you know get figuring out whether or not it can be done at a cost neutral fairly cost neutral or or acceptable level of cost moving middle school

[04:15:50] start times later the real work of implementing something like that happens after the start times have been adopted and i will say that that's one thing that we helped ann arundel with their develop the system and can it be done transportation wise they took the ball afterwards and did all the rest of that work changing the the the hours for the crossing guards letting the the lunch the lunch crew know that the lunch has to be at a different time reworking all of the sports schedules figuring out how to communicate to their communities that okay elementary schools are going to be starting at a different time so daycare you may want to get on board with this ahead of time

[04:16:27] and plan ahead for it and they really spent a good eight months doing that works and that contributed to a very smooth opening for them our work was the transportation piece because like like Fairfax transportation was seen as the only hurdle to making the change so you're only looking at middle school start times but it seems like from the service the chart you provided that when we moved high school start times that caused middle school start times so if we change middle school start times does that affect elementary and high school I think that it is we are looking at a lot of different options we're approaching

[04:17:05] this with all things around the table and you know what what doesn't didn't get seen in the work that we've done we did with Anne Arundel and with some other school districts is you know we start with a thousand different options and slowly work towards the right one I think that if we are to propose something that will be completely cost-neutral we would have to look at what other start times we can wiggle to make that work because I've checked with your executive director there are no additional hundred buses in the back lot with 100 drivers ready to go to make it cost neutral um now what might be those trade-offs

[04:17:39] i don't know yet we will look at costing out just a move of middle schools i think you had that done in 21 22 um and and we're provided with some pricing on that we'll we'll verify you know is the price gone up gone down was it was it costed out well um because that should be an option for you but I think that most of the most of these projects there's not a lot of extra cash laying around and so we do want to bring something that's relatively cost-neutral to the table for consideration and sorry last question is any part of the scope of your contract because I haven't

[04:18:17] seen your contract involve talking to staff and teachers about whether this is something they want because it might affect you know daycares have set hours and if you don't pick up your kid by next time you're paying like overtime or they leave your baby on the street right so um something like that yeah so just so so looking at you know with you know teachers with kids and everything like you know and if their schools don't move their start times or daycares don't flex their hours right so is is that comprised in your state or is that something fcps has to do so we do have

[04:18:54] as part of the community input piece online surveying work and what we proposed for the spring surveying work is to get some survey input from the lived experiences of your current middle schoolers and your ninth graders which I think might be a valuable data point that you don't already have we also proposed to survey the middle school teachers you know have them tell us what they see might be the biggest problems or maybe they come back and they tell us that they would all love to switch to a later middle school start time I think WE HAVE NOT YET DECIDED WHAT THE ONLINE SURVEYING WORK WILL LOOK LIKE IN THE FALL BECAUSE, AGAIN, IT DEPENDS ON HOW THINGS

[04:19:33] SHAKE OUT WITH WHAT ALTERNATIVES WE HAVE. I WILL ADD THAT WE DID DEVELOP AS ONE OF THE INITIAL DOCUMENTS FOR THIS A LIST OF THE KEY STAKEHOLDERS WE NEED TO TALK TO. IT'S DECEPTIVELY SHORT IN THAT THERE'S ONLY 65 ENTRIES ON THERE BUT SOME OF THOSE ARE GROUPS AND SO WE ARE GOING TO ENDEAVOR TO MEET WITH EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE GROUPS AND GET INPUT FROM THEM AS TO HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT IT THAT DOES INCLUDE INTERNAL TO THE DIVISION GROUPS YOUR MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ASSOCIATION BUS DRIVERS ARE ON THERE BUT IT ALSO INCLUDES EXTERNAL GROUPS AS WELL BECAUSE WE RECOGNIZE THAT YOU KNOW THE DIVISION IS SITUATED WITHIN A COMMUNITY

[04:20:11] AND EVERYONE WILL BE AFFECTED BY SCHOOL START TIME CHANGE IF YOU CHOOSE TO ADOPT ONE THANK YOU THANK YOU MR. DUNN MS SIZEMORE HEISER SO I APPRECIATE THE PRESENTATION AND THE HISTORY OF KIND OF the history is very helpful as well um gonna sound like a broken record i think so um i appreciate you mentioning in your presentation um when the the latest times change and what happened with the secondary schools but um i had asked i think almost a month ago to have the secondary schools added to the history because not all of our community are going to be unless you watch the

[04:20:51] presentation but they might be looking at the presentation posted online and i would say perhaps not even everybody on the board might have the same base understanding of what the secondary school times were because in the secondary schools the middle high schools start at the same time right and so um i think it's important for all of us to kind of have a base of understanding and the community as you're moving forward with this work as to what those were and i bring this up again because i think when we kind of leave them out and i think this came up in our conversation right They're actually a really great base for gathering data because I lived as a parent where when my

[04:21:31] daughter was in middle school it started at 7:20 even though the rest of the middle schools didn't because it was on the high school start time at the time and that was before the latest change. When my son was in middle school it was after the change and he started at 8:00 so I actually literally lived the change as a parent as did many other parents and so I think you've got a good basis of data of what the time change for middle school would do from what happened with the second So I do think it's really important to be very intentional about including that, not just kind of in the conversation, which I appreciate, but in anything that we do.

[04:22:04] So we all have a common base of understanding. The other thing I will say about the secondary schools, we do have, I think, nine or 10,000 students in our secondary schools. So it is important to that up front. So thank you. And thank you for pointing that out. I would add one small piece to it is I'm working with the COO on the community engagement plan, plan which includes more than the major highlights that were in the work plan the division already has information about the study on its website and so what we're thinking is that we'd like to have at least a monthly update there where we can we can add in those pieces as we go along to help

[04:22:39] keep the conversation going I think that it doesn't hurt to repeat some of the the greatest hits from the sleep research people need to be aware of that but also you know what we're looking at in terms of constraints and the fact that we have three secondary schools but also three middle schools that include an extra grade and so things like that are you know all part of the mix as we're going through this I appreciate that and I would just reiterate my request to anything that we present include that as you know and I think I would encourage including the information about the middle schools that have that extra grade as well but I think it's important to kind of have So I would put you in my request to update this as well.

[04:23:18] Thank you. Thank you very much. Ms. Sizemore Heiser Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Just very excited to be able to finally have this conversation. And for returning board members how many times we talk about middle school star times.

[04:23:35] It was the constant discussion of the last board. So it's exciting to kind of see that the work is starting to to to gel. I would love for you to kind of talk a little bit because you kind of glossed over it in terms of the health benefits of this like why should we even do this at all it's not a matter of convenience there are some health benefits that I don't think you fully explain and we should take advantage of the zero people watching since it's almost midnight well I will say I am not the sleep expert on the team that is why we recruited Ms. Payne to be a part of the project because she has lived the research for so many years and we will be providing to you as one of our deliverables

[04:24:16] BECAUSE IT WAS IN THE RFP AND UPDATED LITERATURE REVIEW SO THAT YOU CAN GO LOOK AT SOME OF THE ORIGINAL SOURCES IF YOU'D LIKE TO. BUT I THINK THAT WHAT HAS BECOME PERHAPS MORE CLEAR THAN WHEN THIS BOARD WRESTLED WITH THE ISSUE IN 2014 LEADING INTO 2015 IS THAT AND THIS WON'T BE NEWS TO MIDDLE SCHOOL PRINCIPLES ANYWHERE IS THAT MIDDLE SCHOOLERS ARE NOT THE SAME AS ELEMENTARY students they they are going through biological changes and that includes changes to their preferred and most beneficial sleep patterns the research that has come out of it

[04:24:54] in terms of just looking at middle schoolers and trying to stay focused on them is improvements in academic performance and so one of the things that i think we want to to consider is you know as we see other entities moving to later middle school start times and we have documented research that shows things like a later school start time can be equivalent to an additional couple months of education um you know are we doing the right thing if we don't make the change there are documented benefits based in the literature in terms of behavioral health improvements in terms of reductions in uh attempted suicide rates and suicides i mean

[04:25:33] if we wanted to go down that path there's documented improvements in terms of discipline And and so I think if you to me, the literature is compelling enough that it that it's and perhaps that's why I don't dwell on it as much as I should, is that, you know, if we can get there, we should.

[04:25:50] From our perspective, I view our role as trying to to help figure out how this division might get there. Thank you. And I also appreciate that you raise the fact that there are some school divisions. I'm sorry, some schools, some middle schools with a sixth grade because I happen to represent all three of them.

[04:26:09] and so my community is waiting with bated breath because the middle school experience for us is a little bit longer outside of the secondary school experience it's a little bit longer than typical and living in this time has really been traumatic one of the things that i wanted to raise is the engagement that you talked about i really want to be sure that we are and i'm hoping that this is mostly a Dr. Reed question because I imagine staff will be supporting you in organizing these engagements but I want to be sure that one they're located where people who don't have

[04:26:45] vehicles can travel to can reach and that language translations are not optional or if available but they are available to ensure that we're capturing every part of our community and I don't know how that's going to work but I want to make sure that we have that assurance yes ma'am thank you looking forward to more very excited thank you Dr. Anderson Miss Anderson I appreciate the points that Dr. Anderson made language was one of the things that I wanted to talk about because one of the things that I'm concerned about is family care plans that are going on that's both daycare

[04:27:24] issues related to you know parents trying to get kiddos to different places but it's also our middle schoolers that are actually providing daycare opportunities for younger siblings that are coming in later. So as we move those issues around I want to make sure that the community engagement actually tries to capture some of that information. And then the other thing is I would love to know more about how this has affected attendance at other schools because that's such a primary focus of what we're working on right now. I would really like to make sure that we don't

[04:28:01] inhibit i i have an eighth grader i can't imagine having him have to get to school on his own at 9 40. so that is terrifying to me and i know particularly in those circumstances where they can't get themselves to school because there is no transportation option in so many of our in our neighborhoods um that is concerning to me so i think that it's something at least to to address maybe other divisions that have done this um so that if we can get some of that anecdotal evidence I think that it would be helpful to see how other places have dealt with

[04:28:35] that particular issue. Thank you very much Miss Anderson seeing no others we'll let you go thank you so much. Almost good morning but good night thank you. All right now it's really agenda item yes thank you 9.05 Glasgow middle school boundary study scope I call on Dr. Reed. Thank you chairman frisch um at this point uh in providing a the glasgow middle school boundary scope response to the follow-on motion um i'm going to ask our chief facilities officer jana saminsky to present

[04:29:15] the uh responsive document to the glasgow project scope ms saminsky thank you and good evening to the board and for those of you listening at home my name is janice samansky i'm chief of facility services and capital programs for fcps tonight i'm presenting staff's findings for the scope of study for the glasgow middle school boundary study next slide please to start some background information on glasgow middle school in this boundary study is captured on this slide glasgow

[04:29:51] middle school has a capacity utilization of 95 for school year 23 24 and that includes modulars and the school is projected to reach 100 capacity utilization for school year 28 29 a student membership of glasgow is 1 722 students for school year 23 24 and school board policy 21 81 20 identifies the preferred maximum of 1 350 students program capacity for middle school grades seven

[04:30:22] and eight and the current current program capacity is 1809 students on july 13 2023 school board adopted a motion to complete the glasgow middle school scoping study concurrent with the development of the proposed fy 25 through 29 capital improvement program staff began this process with community boundary scoping meetings in august and september of 2023 as required and outlined in regulation 81 30. staff held community um sorry next next slide please so this slide demonstrates

[04:31:02] historical solutions implemented at glasgow so glasgow has historically had a capacity utilization between 95 and 99 percent since school year 2018 2019 and the year of this was the year after the modular building was added glasgow's historical membership reached a high of 1929 students in school year 20 2021 and is currently again at 1722 students this slide shows a map of the current capacity utilization at glasgow and schools with adjacent boundaries these schools are in region

[04:31:42] two and region six and include Luther Jackson Holmes and Poe middle schools the blue shaded represent schools with the sufficient capacity surpluses and yellow represents schools approaching or having a slight capacity deficit Glasgow middle school currently has a capacity utilization of 95 as I mentioned in contrast to other middle schools in this area that have a capacity surplus or a capacity utilization of less than 90 this slide is similar to the previous map and shows projected capacity for school year 2829, five years from now. Poe and

[04:32:20] Holmes middle schools in region six are projected to remain with a capacity surplus. Glasgow and Jackson middle school in region two are projected to remain close to a capacity deficit. This slide shows an overview of the existing school capacity of surrounding schools for this year as well as projections for 2829 for Glasgow. The left side of this table shows the design capacity followed by the program capacity and I'll clarify program capacity is really how many students the facility can hold with the current class selection and programs the

[04:32:55] capacities are followed by the 2324 student membership program capacity utilization as well as other any other modular classrooms and temporary classrooms on the right side of the table the columns in blue show the school year 2829 projected student membership and program capacity utilization so as mentioned earlier in the presentation community meetings were held on august 29th of 2023 at glasgow middle school and then again virtually on september 11th in 2023 feedback was gathered in

[04:33:30] writing from approximately 159 participants attending either the in-person meeting or virtual meetings an online feedback form was also open for two weeks following each of these meetings garnering about 198 responses to the form poe holmes and jackson middle schools were the most frequent suggestions for schools to be considered with each school mentioned over 100 responses other responses included in no particular order justice falls church oakton and annandale high schools plus thoreau middle school and please note there was variation in the frequency of the

[04:34:07] responses so beyond the schools to be considered there were other major themes that arose in the the community feedback and that includes capacity and over and or overcrowding concerns of removing AAP centers the AAP Center programs and the impacts safety the sixth through eighth grade configuration and the k-5 grade alignment and so moving on to the next slide this really outlines the entire boundary adjustment process per regulation 8130 this boundary study is

[04:34:45] currently at stage two of the process where the scope of the study for schools is presented to the school board following the feedback from the boundary scoping community meetings following today's meeting and after action by the school board on the scope additional community meetings will be held to present and discuss possible boundary change options as prepared by staff after those additional community meetings there will be a series of school board meetings where a recommendation for any boundary change will be presented to the school board and put forward to be voted on a public hearing to the school board is also included in these series of meetings for

[04:35:19] additional community input so here is a draft timeline with approximately timings of the next steps in the boundary adjustment process so you can see here we are today at the scoping findings presented to the school board and it all kind of ends with the anticipated fall 2025 new boundary into effect so based on that community feedback current school boundaries and aap level 4 center boundaries we present the following to be considered in the boundary scope study we want

[04:35:57] reiterate this is for consideration of scoping and not guaranteed to be in a scenario so this includes Glasgow middle school Holmes middle school and Poe middle school to be included in the boundary adjustment also include AAP local level four center boundaries in the scope of the study including Glasgow Frost Belvedere and Canterbury woods and please note multiple strategies may be necessary to reduce Glasgow's middle school membership to that 1,350 students below just given the density and the geography of the area in the Glasgow boundary and then lastly

[04:36:34] to consider including high schools in the scope for options that may involve a split feeder and that concludes my presentation thank you thank you Ms. Szymanski I call on Dr. Anderson thank you I very much appreciate this presentation for those of you who are the returning members you know how long I've been talking about Glasgow middle school and the need to reduce the capacity and I do want to just set up some context there's been a lot of efforts to deal with the number of students at that high school I'm sorry at that middle school which is at many points has been

[04:37:13] larger than some of our high schools last year Glasgow had more students in Lewis High School even efforts to reduce lockers and thank you very much facilities for helping to do that in spaces because the hallways were so unmanageable the removal of lockers just to give a little bit more space you know bathrooms the stressors on cafeteria the stressors on staff by having such a large middle school so the need for this cannot be underscored and I'm very grateful for your attention to these details but one of the things that I I think I am I'm a little concerned with

[04:37:52] and Dr. Reed maybe that's a question for you the the scoping consideration as we've talked about I think this is a little bit broader than I imagined. And I I wonder and I don't know the answers to this.

[04:38:08] If there's space for us to consider a narrower scope, because I am not sure. I'm just going to leave it there. Is there space for us to consider a more narrow scope for this work?

[04:38:24] So, Dr. Anderson, I think I would agree that that would be a conversation that I can take back to staff because I think that yes I think there's space for that conversation so I can take that back to staff. Okay because you know we've talked about this quite a bit and and I and I just really worry about some of the impacts that could take place here. I don't want to tie the hands of staff but I just worry in terms of the impact that this could have. I know we've had earlier conversations were Luther Jackson Poe Glasgow and Holmes

[04:39:02] were all part of the conversation but for logistical purposes Luther Jackson was removed Luther Jackson is 7-8 those other three schools are 6-8 and when we had earlier discussions even when Dr. Zuluaga was on board it was determined that the AAP movement was not going to be helpful because most of the students were within the boundary.

[04:39:24] And now just to see this being expanded in this way is a little bit surprising. So I would just love to have further conversation on that. Yes, ma'am. I think that's true. I think if we don't narrow the scope, I would be reluctant to move forward with the scope as currently described with a concern that as we move into a boundary policy review, we may confirm business rules for future boundaries that might actually be in conflict with where we are headed in this particular scoping model,

[04:40:00] given the breadth of possible options that are on the table. So I'm certainly willing to go back to staff and work with staff on narrowing the scope as described this evening. I definitely think we are in agreement on that.

[04:40:16] The last thing that I want to share is, THIS IS A SCHOOL IN WHICH PARK LAWN WILL FEED SO THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE AN ISSUE THAT GOES AWAY WE'VE HAD THOSE CONVERSATIONS JUST TWO WEEKS AGO WHEN WE WERE TALKING ABOUT BOTH COATS AND PARK LAWN SO I AM VERY CONCERNED ABOUT MAKING SURE WE TAKE ACTION BUT I WANT TO MAKE SURE IT'S THE RIGHT ACTION SO THANK YOU FOR THAT FLEXIBILITY YES MA'AM THANK YOU DR. ANDERSON MISS LADY THANK YOU CHAIRMAN FRISH SO JUST AS A CLARIFICATION ON THAT BECAUSE AS I WAS WATCHING THIS PRESENTATION AND LOOKING AT THE DATA AND LOOK AT THE EXPANSION OF ADDITIONAL

[04:40:51] elementary schools and other middle schools first of all i need to thank staff i mean this work is incredibly uh detailed um and i guess because the enormity of adding the additional schools um while i understand my colleagues request if we could narrow that again i'm assuming well i don't know but i guess my question to you dr reed for point of clarification is i'm not sure exactly what i heard you just say is that given the scope now and the enormity of this would this adversely impact the holistic boundary work this board has embarked on and do you think

[04:41:26] that as it's presented it's something we should we should move forward with at the moment as the scope was presented no i would not recommend moving forward with the scope as presented because i think it's more because of the number of schools involved and the number of schools involved in the possible outcomes just mathematically looking at potential scenarios my concern is that moving forward with this scope as described at this time might actually conflict with some of

[04:42:03] the rules that we may be creating in the new boundary policy review so i think um and i so i don't want to do work and undo work having said that i have spoken to dr anderson and understand that if it's possible to scale back the scoping work i think that we could take a second look at THAT. BUT AS DESCRIBED, NO, I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND MOVING FORWARD.

[04:42:25] THANK YOU. THAT'S WHAT I THOUGHT I HEARD. YOU CAN TAKE A LOOK AT THAT AND MAYBE IT CAN BE NARROWED. THANK YOU, MS. LADY. MS. ANDERSON. THERE ARE TWO THINGS THAT I SEE GOING ON HERE AND I'M VERY HAPPY TO HEAR THAT THE SCOPE AS IT STANDS WOULD BE IMPACTED BY THE BOUNDARY WORK ANYWAYS. BASED ON OUR CONVERSATIONS THIS MORNING IN GOVERNANCE, I ALSO RECOGNIZE THE FACT THAT THE TIMELINES ARE SIMILAR TO EXPECTATIONS. SO I would hope that we could figure out how to coordinate those two together but the second aspect of it is there's a policy implication here as well because we have

[04:43:03] a policy that says for grades seven and eight but this middle school is from six to eight so what is the right size if we're if we're going to write size schools based on in a policy each to miss Sizemoreheiser's point as well we should be sizing them for all the types of schools that we have so sizing them for a secondary school sizing them for six to eight because they're not over if you look at it sheer from the if you just do the basic math they're probably not oversized if you consider that there are three grades so I just want to make

[04:43:39] sure that we have a policy that actually supports the work that we're doing so that we don't utilize policies that are that are mismatched so yes ma'am thank you miss Anderson mr. moon I had the same question that miss Anderson had about you know using 1350 on the policy a 80-30 and just somehow a the goal that we need to achieve because school is 6 7 and 8 and the policy is just for 7 and 8

[04:44:15] so having said that compared to homes and middle schools obviously Glasgow middle schools enrollment is much larger so I mean I could easily see how it can be redistributed you know amongst those three schools if you could scale down the scope I could see that but I have this slightly different questions about you know looking at the slide number six Paul middle school in Jackson middle school when a program capacity utilization is obviously below 90 percent

[04:44:52] 80 percent why are they still using temporary classrooms six and five I will I will defer to Ms. Szymanski why we have trailers on school properties that are less than 100% enrolled.

[04:45:12] Is that the question? Jackson is 88% and then six temporary classrooms and Poe is 74% with five temporary classrooms. If you don't know why tonight, just to provide us some information about those later.

[04:45:29] I will make a guess while Ms. Szymanski is looking up probably the data, but having been at both school sites and in the trailers, they're not new. So my guess is that they've been there when the enrollment was larger and just haven't been removed.

[04:45:46] So there's a certain elasticity for the enrollment possibilities. I guess I want to know whether they are being used for instructional purposes or whether they're just sitting there. Well, that's another question. They're being used. Ms. Szymanski, do you have any comment or do we need to include this in a Friday letter follow-up?

[04:46:03] I think it would be best to follow up in a Friday letter to make sure we have all the appropriate information. I think my gut is probably along with Dr. Reed's on the first part. Thank you. Appreciate that. Turned off my microphone.

[04:46:20] Thank you, Mr. Moon. Seeing no others, I will take my turn. Yeah, I was surprised by the scope, and I appreciate the candor that everybody's had at the board table tonight ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS FOR POTENTIAL BOUNDARY WORK GOING FORWARD AND MAYBE AN APPETITE FOR HAVING A NARROWER APPROACH. ONE THING I WANT TO, YOU KNOW, AND I'LL BRING THIS TO OUR FACILITIES TEAM AND THE SUPERINTENDENT AT SOME POINT. WE'VE ONLY DONE SO MANY OF THESE BOUNDARY ADJUSTMENTS OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, A COUPLE, LIKE LESS THAN FIVE AS FAR AS I CAN REMEMBER. I WILL SAY THAT IN THE PAST, WHENEVER ONE OF THE SCHOOLS THAT I HAD A

[04:47:01] decent sized chunk of was brought into the fray of the conversation i always heard from folks about that before it came on to a meeting agenda and so i i think going forward as a best practice you know i don't expect to hear from somebody if i have one percent of the kids or you know but you know a decent sized number five percent maybe or more i'd love to be able to know THAT A SCHOOL IN MY COMMUNITY IS BEING SUGGESTED FOR A BOUNDARY CONVERSATION AND THAT THERE ARE

[04:47:37] COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THOSE THINGS WITH THOSE SCHOOLS AND NOT JUST THE SCHOOL WHERE THE PRIMARY REQUEST ORIGINATES WITH. SO THAT'S SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOR OUR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT. WELL, YES, SIR, AND I'LL TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THAT. I THINK KENT GARDEN WAS MY FIRST FORAY into the fray I believe as you put it and I've made a note of that moving forward and we'll make sure we notify board members and have a more engaged role so it's my responsibility.

[04:48:07] Ms. Tolan was an absolute beast with like the specificity and making sure that I mean she told me you know she knew more about like how it would impact my schools than I even knew before my schools were involved so I appreciate that thank you. We have Ms. Sizemoreheiser.

[04:48:24] thank you and I appreciate that because that was a question I had as well so I appreciate you lifting that up and you know I appreciate the looking at the more narrow scope I guess I would just put out there as we look at that one of the things I know we've talked about as a board in the forum topic conversation as well as in governance is at what point do we and it came up with a middle school start time conversation too is at what point do we maybe pause things to that may negatively or even impact, make it more difficult, our boundary policy work, and that's, I think, going to be an ongoing iterative conversation.

[04:49:03] The vote for this was back in July with a different iteration of this board before that policy work was really being contemplated. So I think, you know, just like the middle school start times was voted for and, you know, outside consultant was brought in before that policy work was considered.

[04:49:19] So I think that's something to think about, and I do understand, I appreciate Ms. Anderson the point is three grades, right? Broken record again, we have 4,300 students at Lake Braddock with one cafeteria. So when we're looking at the number of students on one facility, the middle schoolers regularly eat lunch at like 10 o'clock in the morning because of that. So it is multiple schools that one facility, it has 4,300 students with one cafeteria. Now, I think the capacity for Lake Braddock and Glasgow are very similar, and I'm not suggesting we do anything about it,

[04:49:55] it. But I'm just suggesting that there are many schools that have similarly unique challenges on their facilities because of the unique makeup of the schools. And I just wonder as we're looking at maybe re-looking at the scoping of this really keeping in mind how we maximize our policy work for success.

[04:50:17] Thank you. Dr. Anderson is that up for a go back? Yes. Okay. I just want to say I you know my ears kind of perk up when we're talking about pausing the maybe the conversation to pause this work and I kind of liken this to the conversation we had regarding the renovation queue where we honored what was already in the queue and I just wanted to raise the fact that Glasgow is already in the queue so I'd like to see it through that would really cause me a lot of worry if we were able to do that as much as we can dovetail as Miss

[04:50:55] Anderson shared I think that makes perfect sense this will cause me just significant heartburn if this was a place where we paused and we elected not to pause in another section of our CIP we have to be consistent in terms of our expectations if the renovation queue has to be honored the table four also must be honored thank you Dr. Anderson all right moving along on our agenda we now have item number 10 consent agenda our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the

[04:51:34] board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member at a point of order i apologize it was a recommendation for a vote do we not need to vote on that middle school this was a presentation it wasn't okay i just want to make sure all right thank you thank you it was not an action item uh items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda items are on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda

[04:52:08] hearing none and seeing no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda item 11 new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled for a future meeting the new business items are on the screen all right it is 12 22 i'd like to see if there's an appetite for not doing board items tonight so without objection we will not do board items tonight and we will adjourn the meeting all right no objection this meeting is adjourned thank you everybody

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