Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, March 7, 2024

Date: Thursday, March 7, 2024
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 3h 43m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzc4lDcqnMs
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 2026-11-01. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:00] proud to be part of a board that hired our first female superintendent and I'm just as proud to be part of a board that works with our current superintendent Dr. Reed so thank you to everyone in our school system particularly all our women who can continue to contribute to making this place a wonderful accepting and welcoming place for everyone so happy Women's History Month. Thank you Mr. McElveen. Miss St. John Cunning. Thank you I don't I'm going to speak quickly because I want to spotlight some lesser known but extremely influential women. Felicia

[00:00:39] Ricondagaterra was elected mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1946, becoming the first woman to be elected as the mayor of a capital city in the Americas. She pushed for child programs that became the inspiration for the United States Head Start program. Sylvia Mendez was eight years old when her siblings and cousins went to register for school in California and were told, we'll take these three, but we won't take those three because they are too dark, meaning Sylvia and her siblings would need to go to the substandard school for Mexican-Americans. This resulted in the successful

[00:01:12] 1947 California desegregation landmark case, Mendez v. Westminster, which paved the road for Brown v. Board of Education. Finally, I'd like to salute my 94-year-old St. John cousin, Dolores Huerta, who has been recognized as one of the most influential labor, social justice, and women's activist of the 20th century. Dolores also began her career as a teacher to children of migrant farm workers, many who did not have shoes. When she asked the principal for money to buy shoes for her students, she was told, those kids don't need shoes. That's when she realized she could do

[00:01:49] more to help her students by organizing farm workers, which eventually led her to co-found the United Farm Workers Union with Cesar Chavez. Dolores was the driving force behind the successful table great boycotts in the late 1960s. Since the 1990s, she has worked to elect more Latinos and women to political office and has championed women's issues. She continues her activism as the president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and an active board member of the Feminist Majority Foundation. When President Obama awarded Dolores the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he gave her

[00:02:23] credit as the originator of his campaign slogan, Yes We Can, or more famously known as Si Se Puede. and I hope that all our students in FCPS have that same fighting spirit of yes we can and si se puede. Thank you, Ms. St. John Cunning. Ms. Sizemore-Hyser.

[00:02:41] Thank you and I will also try to be brief but I wanted to recognize a personal woman groundbreaker in my life and that is my mother. So many may not know my parents were both immigrants but my mother my dad came here on a scholarship and got his PhD from Stanford and University of Oregon but my mother received her PhD in mathematics with an emphasis on computer science in India in the 1960s when very few women were receiving such PhDs anywhere and the importance of this story is about women supporting other women. The reason she was able to receive her PhD is because the then

[00:03:21] Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi, also a woman, started a STEM scholarship program for girls to study STEM and my mom was one of the recipients and so she attended Indian Institute of Technology in the 1960s and as she jokingly said it was seven women and 7,000 men she received her PhD in 1966 then came here to a slew of discrimination she would walk she could not get a job at a college teaching even with her PhD she would walk in in her sari and people would say do you speak English and she said well of course how else am I gonna

[00:03:59] get a PhD she taught me she overcame barriers in her own country cultural barriers and she found ways to get an education very few women in the world were getting and then she came here and overcame the same barriers of gender discrimination to be one of the early women working at Intel in the Silicon Valley she taught me you never let barriers and preconceived notions get in your way of achieving who you can be and along the way you should support other women in doing that so I'll say I'm proud to be in leadership when we hired our second female superintendent dr reed and i'm proud of the work you've done and i owe it to my

[00:04:38] mom to show me what women can do despite the barriers the society puts in their way thank you miss sizemore heiser miss dixit i'll keep it brief uh this is really important to all the women and men obviously this uh proclamation i did want to say that uh women empowerment is is uh empowerment the entire race when we uplift women uh we are lifting the entire society this is a big cause and I do a lot of things in my personal life and other work which is

[00:05:15] towards women empowerment and I just want to say the two little girls in the audience and they're here today and I would say you we are paving the path for you we're going to do whatever we can in our power so make sure your generation succeeds and you get that equal pay and better opportunities and whatever else you do want to do in your life thank you thank you miss Dixit I I will call for the vote. All those in favor, Ms. Seismar Heiser, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. Jen Conning, Ms. Marin, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon,

[00:05:52] and myself. That is unanimous for all board members present. Agenda Item 2.06, Disability Acceptance National Disabilities Awareness Month Proclamation. I call on Mr. McDaniel for a proclamation. Whereas the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 was founded on four principles, inclusion, full participation, economic self-sufficiency, and equality of opportunity for all people with disabilities, and FCPS is committed to the principles of equity, excellence, and opportunity for all students, and whereas inclusion is an attitude, an approach, and a mindset that welcomes and facilitates participation of students with

[00:06:31] disabilities in every aspect of student life, which requires mutual responsibility for adaptation and removal of barriers so that students with disabilities have the same opportunity to participate in student life as any other student and whereas Fairfax County Public School celebrates efforts to recognize disability awareness and acceptance to increase public awareness and respect for persons with disabilities inform the public concerning their many contributions to society ensure accessibility for persons with disabilities encourage health promotion to increase community awareness of the needs of persons with disabilities and emphasize the abilities and rights of disabled persons and whereas over 28,000

[00:07:10] and approximately 16% of FCPS students receive special education services and research has shown that students with disabilities encounter more difficulty being accepted by their peers, making friends, and becoming involved in school and community-based activities and clubs than non-disabled students, and whereas the Fairfax County Public Schools provides innovative and individualized programs to advance the achievement and knowledge of students and young adults living with disabilities in the areas of vocational, social, and life skills, and whereas disability is a natural part of human diversity and people with disabilities have the same human and

[00:07:47] civil rights as everyone else, including the right to be included in all aspects of society, therefore we must ensure they are included in the FCPS community by increasing knowledge and understanding of disabilities, promoting positive attitudes by creating a culture of respect and inclusion, and ensuring the school curriculum and norms, events, and processes are accessible and inclusive of disability history and disability norms.

[00:08:11] Now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board does hereby proclaim March 2, 2024 as Disability Acceptance Month in recognition of the many contributions and strengths of people with disabilities and to promote an inclusive school community and now therefore be it further resolved that the Fairfax County School Board renews its commitment to inclusion for all individuals with disabilities in our schools and communities.

[00:08:34] Thank you Mr. McDaniel. lady or is there a second yes miss lady mr. McDaniel would you like to speak to your proclamation I think the resolution I read an excellent job of getting all the points across I was going to make so I will leave it at that thank you miss lady would you like to speak to your second yes I just want to once again uplift all of our students with disabilities with learning differences throughout my tenure in education some of these kids taught me the most important things I needed to know and they've gone on to do amazing successful things I'm extremely proud of some of the resources we have here in Fairfax County and if some of you are not aware we do have a special education PTA

[00:09:14] otherwise known as SEPTA for support advocacy and learning and they hosted a conversation on twice exceptional students with our dr. Reed last night speaking of twice exceptional we have three specialists in Fairfax County we We have Kristin Haener, who is the nation's first neurodiversity specialist in a K12 public school setting.

[00:09:37] We also have Nanyai Alde-Yamidja, who is Virginia's first public school twice exceptional educational specialist, and Rachel Rubio is our dyslexia specialist. I'm extremely proud of this commitment to the work and also the training that these folks are leading in our system so that all of our folks can be better aware, learning skills, and better able to address the learning differences of our students.

[00:10:00] Our Citizens Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities Committee that delves in FCPS to ensure best practices for our system. Their meetings are open if folks want to attend. We also have many resources in our Family Resource Center. We have a Special Education Ombudsman in the FCPS Ombuds Office.

[00:10:17] And also we have a Child Find team in FCPS who identify children under five with potential special education needs as well as educating the community about child development and the importance of early intervention. So I'm just really proud of what we've done here in Fairfax County and I just really honor these students. I also want to thank all of our teachers, faculty, administrators who work with our students with special needs and disabilities as they do an amazing job every day. Thank you.

[00:10:40] Thank you Miss Lady. Miss Sizemore Heiser. Thank you and I couldn't let this one go by without a few words and so in the combination of Women's History Month and Disability Awareness Month I wanted to lift up talking about an amazing disability rights advocate and woman named Judy human who recently passed away she was known as the mother of the disability rights movement in the United States she was a lifelong civil rights advocate who believed in full inclusion she in fact led both the work to develop the 504 Act which is considered a civil rights act for the accessibility for people with

[00:11:17] disabilities into society including leading a multi-day sit-in to make sure this act was signed she also did seminal work on creating the individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which is a civil rights act for the for the education of students with disabilities that really stopped the segregation of students with disabilities outside of their school. I will say one thing I'm really proud of with some of the language in our resolution that will really talk about not requiring only students with disabilities to adapt and

[00:11:51] change but really focusing on the social model of disabilities which claims that people with disabilities are more disabled by the society they live in than the condition of their disability. So if we really want true inclusion, if we really want civil rights, we have to focus on mutual responsibility for adaptation.

[00:12:12] We have to focus on removing barriers, and that's mindset barriers as well as physical barriers. And we have to stop expecting only people with disabilities to not be themselves in order to fit in. And we have to finally recognize that disability is a natural part of human diversity.

[00:12:34] And it doesn't mean you don't provide support JUST LIKE YOU DO FOR ANYBODY ELSE WHO HAS ANY NEED BUT THAT PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES HAVE THE SAME HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDY HUMAN SHOWED US HOW TO DO THAT AND I HOPE FAIR FACTS COUNTY CAN BE A LEADER IN CONTINUING THAT TREND THANK YOU MS ST JOHN CUNNING I WILL BE BRIEF I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING MY COLLEAGUE SAID BUT I JUST WANT TO ADD ONE MORE COMPONENT AND THANK THE PARENTS IN OUR SYSTEM THAT HELP ALL OF US UNDERSTAND AND NAVIGATE THE SYSTEM AND THE CHALLENGES

[00:13:12] THAT MAYBE SOME CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES HAVE, THEIR EFFORTS ARE HEROIC AND SOMETIMES WE PRAISE OUR TEACHERS WHICH DESERVE THE PRAISE THAT THEY JUSTIFIABLY SHOULD GET, BUT I ALSO WANT TO RECOGNIZE AND PRAISE ALL THE WORK AND COMMITMENT THAT OUR PARENTS PUT INTO THEIR CHILDREN AND A PERFECT EXAMPLE IS OUR SEPTA PTA BECAUSE THOSE PARENTS HAVE DONE MONUMENTAL WORK TO HELP EDUCATE US AND THE REST OF THE PUBLIC AND THAT'S ALL PARENTS.

[00:13:41] So I want to thank the parents for helping us. - Thank you, I will call for the vote. All those in favor of the proclamation. Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Marin, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, and myself, will the clerk read the vote?

[00:14:05] - It's 11-0, so it's unanimous. - Thank you. - For all present. - I would like to invite all those in support of the Women's History Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais. After the photo, the guests and staff will depart the dais area.

[00:14:51] I would like to invite all those in support of the Disability Acceptance National Disability Awareness Month proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:16:55] There we go.

[00:18:07] Agenda Item 3.01, Community Participation. The next order of business is community participation. We welcome all community members who are here and those who have signed up to speak this evening. Additional information about signing up to provide comments at school board regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's website.

[00:18:27] During the signup process, community members acknowledge they were informed of the school board's expectations for proper decorum when providing comments. These expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room. We ask audience members to be respectful of one another.

[00:18:45] Shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated. Please hold your applause and tell the conclusion of a speaker's remarks. Audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats, including when recording video or taking photos. We are grateful to those who have come to speak to us today, and thank you for your cooperation.

[00:19:04] School board members will be listening but not responding. Madam Clerk, please call the first speaker. Olivia Bradley. My name is Olivia Bradley, and I am a second grader in Ms. Watson's class at WSES.

[00:19:33] I have ADHD, and I know there are lots of other kids who also have it. Sometimes kids who don't have a disability, or as my mom calls it, a superpower, talk about it and make fun of people, and it really makes me sad. I think there should be a dance school where everyone learns about disabilities.

[00:19:53] Some kids have physical ones, and some have ones you can't see, like me. It might help kids not to be mean and learn it's not a joke. I think once they learn, they will be kinder. It is important to be kind and accept people who are different from you because everyone has feelings and emotions.

[00:20:12] I'm learning to regulate my emotions, which is why I am always late on Tuesdays because I go to therapy with Ms. Avery. To help kids learn about differences, I think a counselor should come in and talk about all the different kinds, especially the ones you can't see, like ADHD.

[00:20:33] I've been talking to my assistant principal, Mr. Potten, who is right over there, and my school counselor, Ms. Layden, about having a school assembly about differences. But I think every school should have one.

[00:20:50] I told my friend, Olivia W., about it, who goes to Keen Mill, and she thought it was a good idea, and said they didn't learn about it either. Ask the school board, can you please make a day where all students at every school learn about neurodiversity? I think this will help people be nicer, and I will change the world, and I will live happily ever after.

[00:21:12] The end.

[00:21:22] Patrice Gotch. Good evening, Dr. Reed and members of the school board. My name is Patrice Gotch, and I'm currently an ESOL teacher at Bryant Alternative High School, a job that I love.

[00:21:42] But I'm actually here to speak to you about another position I held in FCPS for nine years, my position as a lead teacher in the FCPS ACE adult ESOL program. I love that job too. For nine years, I worked an average of 25 hours a week during the days and in the evenings year round, yet I was classified as a temporary employee receiving no benefits, nothing but the hourly pay. Financially, I could no longer afford this job, so I had to leave. But here's a story I

[00:22:17] want to tell you. About a year ago, I was teaching an adult ESOL class in the evening, and my lesson plan focused on employment vocabulary. Students were learning terms such as part-time, full-time, benefits, health insurance, retirement, and contract. One of my students also worked for FCPS.

[00:22:37] She was a custodian. During the lesson, she said, Miss, we have good benefits in FCPS. My heart sank. I didn't want to tell her that while she had good benefits, I had none. Frankly, I was worried that my students would view FCPS devaluing of me as ultimately a devaluing of them.

[00:22:58] Our adult ESOL students are FCPS parents and FCPS employees. They're members of the Fairfax County community. I value them tremendously, and it was a true honor to serve them for nine years. I ask you to consider this question: Why aren't adult ESOL teachers classified as part-time employees with access to the same benefits as other part-time employees?

[00:23:23] And is this lack of equity something you stand behind? If not, let's work together to change it. Thank you. Lawrence Webb.

[00:23:51] Good evening, members of the school board, superintendent. My name is Lawrence Webb, and I am here tonight not because I really want to be here, but it's because of a disappointment that I've seen last week on Nextdoor I received there was an email talking about essentially redlining schools saying that there were a particular group of schools we will say they're all minority majority schools most are in a one particular district of saying these

[00:24:25] are bad schools saying that these are bad schools ultimately it is going to affect not only the students who attend those schools but the faculty and staff who attend those schools. I think it's time for the board to really look at how the funding for these schools are making sure that these students which I look at from my world of higher education for the last 20 years I've been into many of these schools there are great students in many of these schools but because when When I moved and my partner moved into the county four years ago, even he was looking

[00:25:05] at great schools, which said the school that we would, our kids would potentially go to was not a very good high school. And I had to say, that's not true. We are going to a Fairfax County high school, Fairfax County schools.

[00:25:21] Any of these schools are great schools. But when you see these listings and you see people who are going out here saying and outlining schools as good and bad, it does ultimately affect where people are going to live at in the county.

[00:25:38] And ultimately, it will affect property values. It ultimately will affect how these schools are going to be funded. And I implored the school board and the superintendent to please work hard to make sure these schools are funded to the level they need to. Thank you.

[00:25:55] Chair fish that was our last public speaker. Thank you agenda item 4.01 student representative matters. I call on miss Kareem. Thank you Mr. Frisch good evening everyone. Last week I had the privilege of attending a two day equity symposium for equity leads from elementary middle and high schools. It was a remarkable experience fostering connections and gaining insights into their personal goals at their respective schools. A pivotal aspect of the event was the seals talk where student equity ambassador leaders known as seals shared their perspectives on various

[00:26:32] equity issues. About 10 students spoke and their diverse viewpoints were truly eye opening. One example was their exploration of how student treatment varies across different high schools, a discussion that was very insightful. A student from a secondary school highlighted the inequities in her educational environment. Her narrative revealed that her school primarily offered military and trade opportunities, reflecting a narrower focus on vocational paths, while while students from other schools discussed a much broader range of academic and enrichment programs.

[00:27:04] She also noticed the frequent presence of military recruiters at her school, while other students from different schools discussed the complete absence of them. Furthermore, they discussed a significant lack of awareness among students regarding various resources and services available to them.

[00:27:23] Students are often uninformed about the availability of free telehealth services like Hazel Health, the presence of therapists in schools, and access to Tutor.com. Even when students are aware of these resources, there's a lack of motivation to utilize them due to the lack of understanding of the benefits they can provide.

[00:27:41] Remarkably, it was only last week that the SEAL students from the Mental Health Committee learned about the telehealth services offered by Fairfax County. If our district is partnering with this service, it raises the question of why these resources are not being effectively utilized.

[00:27:58] Awareness is crucial in this regard. Even for academy classes, the primary way students become aware of them is through informal channels like word of mouth from friends rather than official communication from the school system. The same applies to online class offerings such as the availability of AP or IB classes online or the internships or certifications associated with academy classes.

[00:28:22] There seems to be a lack of widespread awareness about these opportunities, and improved communication strategies are needed. Fairfax County offers a wealth of resources, but greater efforts need to be made to make students aware of what is available to them. As Gen Z students, we may not be as receptive to lengthy emails or presentations as methods for distributing this information.

[00:28:46] Instead, concise messages delivered through the social media platforms we frequently use would likely resonate better. Even just quick updates from our guidance counselors highlighting available resources could make a significant difference in raising awareness. And yes, the details may exist on the FCPS website, but that needs to be effectively communicated to students through channels we actively engage with.

[00:29:08] It should not fall upon students to proactively seek out these opportunities on their own. That places an undue burden on students. Rather, the responsibility should lie within the school system. This issue ties in with school websites. Every school has their own sub-website under the FCPS domain, and evidently the setup will vary across high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools.

[00:29:29] However, it is inequitable that some schools have a more user-friendly layout compared to others, whether it pertains to course selection, academy information, or even lunch information. By centralizing and standardizing the format of these websites to align accordingly, it would tremendously benefit students navigating and accessing information on these platforms.

[00:29:49] Through this standardization process, we can effectively raise awareness about the resources available to students. Consequently, students will be better positioned to utilize the offerings provided to them. A consistent and intuitive web design across all FCPS schools would not only create a more equitable experience, but also facilitate easier exploration and utilization of educational opportunities and support services available within the school district.

[00:30:17] Thank you. Agenda item 5.01, action item, sole source contract amendment, the College Board. I call on Ms. Dixit for a motion. I move the school board approves the amendment and authorize the division superintendent or the director of the Office of Procurement Services to execute, deliver, and administer the contract on behalf of the school board.

[00:30:42] Is there a second, Ms. St. John Cunning? Ms. Dixit, would you like to speak to your motion? No. Thank you. Ms. St. John Cunning, would you like to speak to your second? No. Thank you. Mr. Moon?

[00:30:59] Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for accommodating my request to pull this out of a consent agenda so that I could ask some questions from staff. I don't know whether this question goes to Dr. Reed or Dr. Presidio.

[00:31:14] You can direct them to Dr. Reed. Thank you. He's willing to answer. You know, first of all, could you comment upon the amount of money we are spending with this sole source contractor, basically on an annual basis or over the course of the last 10-year period?

[00:31:36] Dr. Presidio, do you want to provide the specific numbers? I know we provided that in an email. Sure. You know, we are dealing with, we are talking about the College Board. Yes. So the sole source contract that you're looking at here is with the College Board that we use for our AP, advanced placement exams, our PSAT, which is given at the 10th and the 11th grade year, and the in-school SAT testing, which is given during student senior year.

[00:32:05] so this particular contract amendment is to add for this year the AP tests and the reason that we need to do this amendment is when we did the initial contract with the College Board for this particular school year there were some issues moving to the online testing format that the College Board is moving to and we needed to do some additional cyber security reviews and agreements with the College Board and those weren't able to be completed on time so this is coming forward as an amendment to our existing contract and the dollar value that you see associated in the materials tonight it's approximately 3.8

[00:32:44] million dollars for the AP exams that we'll give this year you know doctor but thank you thank you doctor the point I'm trying to make from that by asking that question is this as a party to this contract school system FCPS is paying them a lot of money that's uh you know the information that you provided earlier indicates that from 2015 to 2024 by the end of may 31st that we'll have spent close to 40 million dollars

[00:33:20] 30.7 which is a substantial amount of money but at the same time i must to you know point out that there are quite a few subjects for which the college board is unwilling to provide ap test because my understanding is that you know some of those subjects prob are not generating profits for the college board that is why they are staying away from some of those subjects in their regard you know i must point out that we need to have some discussion with the college board especially

[00:33:58] when you know the college board is 501 c3 organization not for profit organization but but they are in fact making a lot of profits you know if i i give you some of the figures other than one year during the pandemic which was back in 2020 that was the first year of the pandemic you know they were making profits in excess of 100 million dollars each year we're supposed to be a not-for-profit organization focusing on providing benefits to our students

[00:34:33] but when they are not providing ap test or sat2 subject test in certain subjects because they don't generate more profits i think they got their mission wrong and especially you know especially a over the course of years they have accumulated more than a billion dollar of assets I think it's close to $1.6 million I think as as a party to this contract where we spend a lot of

[00:35:06] money I think we deserve we must insist upon having this conversation so that their mission should be focused on providing benefits to our students rather than focusing on profits Dr. Reed or Dr. Presby would you be willing to engage them having this discussion yeah absolutely I think - Mr. Moon, you raise a number of really good points.

[00:35:29] I think the College Board has been increasingly inflexible in their responsiveness to the needs, really, of the 22nd century learner. And I'm happy to make contact and make our opinions on that known, because I think the move to online assessments will even be less costly for them.

[00:35:50] The lack of the preparation needed for all the documents and so forth, so that should make it even easier to provide more content availability. So I'm happy to engage in that and provide you with an update after that engagement. - Thank you Dr. Weir.

[00:36:06] If they think that we are a small party to their large enterprise, I think we need to work with all the school districts as well on this one. - Yes sir. - Thank you Dr. Weir. - Dr. Anderson.

[00:36:23] - Thank you. And Mr. Moon, you did hit upon something that I wanted to ask. So I'm just gonna pivot to my other question. I want to be sure that there is a clear understanding to the public as to why this has to be a sole source contract. So I'd like for someone to speak to that, please.

[00:36:40] Well, I think it's a sole source contract because they are the sole provider for AP, PSAT, SAT, SAT, content exams, and PSAT. So they truly are the only source if our students are going to participate in those programs.

[00:36:58] Thank you. And while we'll be speaking while we'll be voting on this amendment today to the three point eight million dollars that Dr. Presidio shared, we will be expecting another contract because this current one expires the 31st. Correct? That's correct. Thank you. Thank you, Dr.

[00:37:16] Anderson. Miss Lady. Yeah, I just want to make a few additional points. One, which I believe was the case, at least when I was working, I still think it is that even our students that are on free and reduced meals that unfortunately the only way for us to get reduced costs or fees waived is for us to send them a list of those names which we refuse to do we're not going to breach that confidentiality i don't know why with it and with with the money that they're making that they can't just see what we have and honor the number we give them per test and the other thing i want to point out is that we're free labor for them that's the bottom line um you can just take school

[00:37:52] counselors out of you know out of service for two to four weeks which is they're in schools to do exactly what our student represented it was just speaking about which is talking with kids about their their four-year plans and about college planning and career planning and we take them out of commission and we are literally free labor to the College Board who are incredibly inflexible when and if we have kids who are sick or have a car accident on the way to a test or something like that so I just want to make that point too that the public understands that yes this is a sole uh source and we have to we have to pass this but they're they should be aware of the financing thank you miss lady i will

[00:38:32] call for the vote all those in favor miss sizemore heiser mr mcdaniel mr mckelveen miss lady miss st john cunning miss marron dr anderson miss anderson miss dixit mr moon and myself will the clerk read the vote that's 11-0 so it is unanimous for all those present thank you agenda item 5.02 2 action item elementary language arts basal instructional resources K 6 I call on Dr.

[00:39:00] Reed. Thank you Mr. Frisch. Are you expecting the presentation at this time on the okay so it's my pleasure to introduce our assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction Noel Clamenco who has led the team in preparing for our response to addressing our early literacy challenges in community so we're very excited to um have miss clemenco share our basal resource recommendation with the board this evening so miss clemenco take it away thank you dr reed and thanks to the school

[00:39:38] board and good evening to all of you um tonight is an exciting night um for some of us we've been on this journey for for a few years it was october of 2021 when the school board made a commitment to shifting the literacy practices in FCPS shifting from balanced literacy to what we were referring to as the science of reading it's more um it's now kind of been called um ebli or which is evidence based literacy instruction so if you want to be cool you're going to say ebli instead of science of reading but in general we made that commitment in 2021 and here we are tonight um with the

[00:40:18] opportunity for you all to approve a basal a basal resource I wanted to before I just dive into the basal resource I just wanted to say that journey that the school board set us on is articulated clearly in our equitable access to literacy plan if anybody wants a brochure I did bring them for you but we really did lay out a path to make this change because I don't think we can really underestimate what a significant transition probably the largest instructional transition i have seen in my very long career the impact that it's had on teachers and the impact that it will have on students so it's an exciting time and tonight marks

[00:40:57] really a huge milestone not only for a milestone for our el plan but for also the virginia literacy plan virginia literacy act which i'm going to start to just share a bit about here at the beginning i don't think i have a clicker do i great so just for your reference this basal adoption is part of a bigger requirement that was set out by um uh virginia it's called the virginia literacy act and it has several components to help us align our practices to ebli and the first act

[00:41:31] came out in 2022 which only really encompassed k3 and then 2023 they added on four through eight so sometimes when we're talking about this tonight or if you hear about about this work it's very piecemeal from video we because they are trying to do a lot of things at one time so it could get a little confusing but i'll be happy to try and clarify one part of the vla it's multifaceted things that will be required to do come fall is the adoption of an evidence-based core program and that's what we're here to talk about tonight video we worked over the last year plus to give

[00:42:08] us a list of approved materials they're also doing lists of supplemental and intervention materials that will come out later this month, but for now they have approved core materials for grades really K through five, but the elementary level. Go ahead and switch the slide.

[00:42:24] So what does this mean for us? So when FCPS adopts a basal resource, we have a regulation that covers the whole thing. Regulation three zero zero four, which usually starts with an RFP, but because Virginia put out a list and required us to choose off of this list, then we were able to kind of skip the RFP process and go right to the vetted materials.

[00:42:49] We conducted a 30-day public review and we also convened an IRRC, which is the Instructional Resource Review Committee, and then they, the committee, recommends to you a resource. We have also looked at cost proposals.

[00:43:05] I will kind of expand a little bit on the public review and the IRRC in this presentation. We also have already done some preliminary work to ensure that the resource being recommended by the committee does meet all our IT and security review because we would not want to get to the end and realize that we could not implement.

[00:43:23] So we have done that pre-work. Next slide. So just to kind of give you a sense of where we've been, for those of you who've been on the board for a while, we had a whole other thing, but we're not going to talk about that other thing tonight because we might as well just start with where we are, right?

[00:43:38] Here we are is June 2023, the Board of Education Virginia came out with the list, and we were all waiting. What's the list? What's the list? So once we got the list, it only really involved K-3. But we asked all of those vendors to send us K-6.

[00:43:54] We're not going to piecemeal this and think about this. We want to go ahead and start looking at things more broadly. We put things out for a 30-day review. We brought the IRRC together, and then we waited because we were told they're coming out with another list which may have more k3 and some four or five so they came out with another list and we did the whole rigmarole again another public review and another irc but we got there we got here and we're here tonight and so we have cost evaluations and we're here tonight to seek your approval next slide so just i'm not going to read all this to you but basically as i said

[00:44:31] we had to go through two public reviews public review is a time for anyone in the community to to give us their opinion to take a look either in person we have the materials at Pymond Hills with Saturday hours and nighttime hours we also put everything online so people can take a look at least get a real sense of it and we provide the hours and then we bring back all those recommendations and we bring those recommendations to our committee so when they're looking at it they're not just seeing what they're seeing but they're also hearing from the community because we had two sets of resources we did that twice next slide the IRRC the instructional resource review committee is an incredible part and you all are getting an education tonight for those of you

[00:45:10] are new to this this is the same process we go through with all basils and this is just the first one for this for this board but the IRRC started first started meeting well before that it is a board approved committee right and it's made up of 60 percent teachers 20 percent school-based administrators and 20 percent community members and all the board members have an opportunity to put someone forward and then we work with our region assistant superintendents and we also solicit applications from teachers. So it's a very, very large group of people and all regions are represented. The diversity of Fairfax County is represented and we really are very intentional to

[00:45:48] ensure that we have different school sizes, different demographics, that we have ESOL teachers, that we have special education teachers and that we have advanced academics, teachers of advanced academics. So we're very intentional to make sure that we have lots of voices around the table. Next slide. They came together in July and August 1st for six full days in the summer and they they first were grounded in EBLI or the science of reading. We want to make sure if we brought these educators together and we're asking them to select something that was going to move us in our new direction that they were versed. And we had teachers who had obviously been through some

[00:46:27] training but we also had community members who were new to this. So it was an exciting time to sort of do some some professional development and help them understand the evaluation criteria and then we evaluated eight different products over the summer in January we were able to bring everybody back for two more days after we got the new list so at that time four of the products from the summer we had eliminated based on summer recommendations two of them had been removed from the list because they would not meet our cybersecurity and DIT needs and then so at that January time the committee was down to four products

[00:47:05] three were products they had looked at but in this time as things are moving so fast with literacy resources are also improving so we also we got to look at some products that reevaluate some products that had actually even made some changes since summer and then we had one new approved from that new video list next slide please real quickly I think you could probably imagine what they were what all the committee was looking for they were looking for the evidence-based design make sure it had sound pedagogy right we want to make sure that the instructional strategies really aligned with our learning model and what

[00:47:43] we know about best practice we wanted to make sure that it was usable right we wanted to make sure that it felt like teachers would be able to go in and use it and that there would be adequate support for teachers in in designing instruction we also needed to make sure that the content actually aligned with what we call the reading rope, or the simple view of reading, and all the things we know about EBLI, that they had both word recognition, which is often the phonics and phonemic awareness, as well as the language comprehension and writing parts. We wanted to make sure that all students would be able to access the materials, and that there was built-in differentiation for our teachers,

[00:48:22] and that there were high quality cultural responsive texts and materials. This is just a little snapshot of how how the committee members kind of captured how they captured their ideas basically they had look force and we had presentations from vendors and so they were taking notes they also had all the print materials there and the online materials and they would they would do their own kind of note capturing and then they would meet in grade level teams to really talk and debrief and complete the summary sheet next slide please after that all the

[00:48:56] After all the presentations, we brought all the groups together, and we tried to find out, are there any things that we say, no, this will not work in Fairfax for a variety of reasons. So we would eliminate those. Then we would look at the products vertically, and then finally the teams made their final rankings and recommendations.

[00:49:15] Next slide. So without further ado, there was a lot of buildup to the product that we chose. It's called Benchmark Advance Adelante, but mostly we call it Benchmark Advance. This product, and I'm going to talk about why we picked it, or why the committee picked it, I should say, at the next slide.

[00:49:33] So what was some of the rationale that the committee used? That there was strong differentiation and cultural responsiveness. This, you know, it's a hallmark of Fairfax County to ensure that the materials that we use with students are culturally responsive and that all students can see themselves in the materials.

[00:49:49] So that was a big piece of what people were looking for. Another thing that stuck out about this is the alignment to letters. LETTERS stands for Literacy Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling. It's a training that we've put more than a thousand teachers through.

[00:50:04] I say that because it is grueling, but people love it. It's really the content of EBLI, really helping teachers know what to do, and that it was aligned with the Virginia SOLs. Part of our change, which isn't really a change at all, is really ensuring that our instruction has a strong knowledge building.

[00:50:24] We often, when we talk about EBLI, everyone talks about the phonics. the phonics, the phonics, and certainly that is a big part. The word recognition is a big part of what we're doing, but we also want to make sure there's strong knowledge building across literacy. And these materials really have a lot of connected text examples, phonics building foundational skills.

[00:50:45] The other parts we liked were, it includes ELD resources aligned with WIDA. So these are built into the core material, so we have things ready to go for our ESOL students. and aligned assessments to track progress in real time and built in tier two.

[00:51:00] So there's a lot of things built in. One thing that we know is that we have we have a continuum of teachers in our classrooms and a lot of teachers are asking for things that are more ready to use, right? Things that are organized, things that are connected, things that they can just take and use with kids.

[00:51:17] Now, it doesn't mean that they don't have to be responsive, that they don't have to look at data and they don't have to know their students. I don't mean any of those things. but once they have that data things that are ready to go that they're not spending time creating they're spending time making those connections with students and to students with the learning so engaging books uh for students and as i said easy to use for teachers we'll move to the next slide the the benchmark advance is has the third party endorsements um wasn't really part of our committee work but we do want to make sure that when we go to outside sources we're not finding things that are deficits that perhaps we missed.

[00:51:55] Next slide. There are a lot of videos here and I promise you we're not watching any of them but I wanted to put them in because sometimes the community wants to just click on a video and watch something quick and not read through all the slides but just to give a little bit of sense and maybe for some teachers watching a little excitement about what's to come.

[00:52:13] Next slide. One of the things that Benchmark has that we're very excited about is they have some additional supplements that we can purchase and Dr. Reed has made it clear to me that we need to make sure we're not shortchanging the teachers we're going to buy something we need to buy what they need to do an excellent job with all of our learners and and what you see up here is a list of things that benchmark provides that we have been looking at to add on to the core materials i won't go through all of them but a couple i want to highlight benchmark express are some english language development program so it would be used a lot by our it would be used by our east hall teacher but it's completely aligned to the core program so the kids won't feel

[00:52:53] like they're going here and then here it is aligned and supportive for that language development so I think that's going to be awesome we currently use benchmark hello for our newcomers really to help them with of just adjusting to be in to being in our schools so that's a great program that we're going to continue we are able to add some pre-k even though the adoption is really going to be k6 this will be for we can add we're going to add alphabet animal friends for pre-k and you see there's some other things there that some

[00:53:24] interventions and things that we'll also be able to add slide I want to be clear that no basil is perfect no product is perfect and no product is going to do us any good unless we really help prepare teachers to use it well and so we have a we have a plan to really first of all get these materials to teachers as soon as possible so if should we have approval tonight from you all we will be moving to the contracting phase and bringing the contract back here excuse me for your approval but we are getting the wheels of professional development starting getting this in front of

[00:54:03] principals getting early access getting these materials to schools before teachers leave and having summer a three-day summer literacy institute now we are asking all teachers to attend but we also know all teachers can't attend in the summer right so we are paying

[00:54:19] compensating people for attending this summer for the three day the the training if teachers cannot attend we are kind of breaking that out and we will work that in through through the school year the best we can and and we know that we're going to have supportive I will tell you as supportive colleagues I will tell you we are we are over 50 percent of the teachers have signed up and we believe that we are we have some encouragement we've recently raised the hourly rate from $15 to 25 an hour and we think that that will help bump up and encourage a few more people

[00:54:55] it's pretty hard to even get daycare for 15 an hour so we're hoping that that extra money will encourage um so we have a lot of things and i'm not going to read all this to you but we do have not just a summer pd plan the one thing you can't do is launch a basil and then forget it we are going to have to have care and feeding of this for quite some time as we support teachers with really we have not had a basil in over 20 years most of our teachers have never used what what people might call a big box product like this so it's a big change and we want to make sure that we start strong and when we continue the support as it's needed next slide the last one

[00:55:34] so what you can look for after tonight's vote and after your questions and after tonight's vote we'll have an opportunity to bring the final contract back to you later later this spring to make sure everything's set but um one of the questions that's come up a lot that i'll just address is where is this in the budget right how come we didn't see this in the budget well we were supposed to purchase this two years ago we're supposed to purchase a basil two years ago and that's when the state passed the literacy act and let us know that we had to pick off their list so we paused saved the money dr reed was very proactive last year and said you're not going

[00:56:10] to have enough money and some money was set aside last year so we feel very confident that we do not have to ask the school board for any new funds to any new funds to make this purchase and we're very excited and that would include not only the purchase but the the professional development and that is the whole presentation thank you all right before we go to board member questions just so everybody knows what we're going to do here it's a little unusual we're gonna have board member questions for the presentation and and then we're going to vote on the item that

[00:56:46] THAT WAS ON THE CONSENT AGENDA AS A STAND-ALONE ACTION ITEM. SO YOU DON'T NEED TO SPEAK NOW IF YOU DON'T HAVE QUESTIONS. IF YOU WANT TO SPEAK TO THE ACTUAL MOTION, YOU DON'T NEED TO SPEAK NOW. IF YOU DO HAVE QUESTIONS, NOW IS THE TIME TO SPEAK AND I'LL START WITH DR. ANDERSON.

[00:57:04] THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR THIS PRESENTATION. I THINK THERE'S A LOT OF EXCITEMENT AROUND THAT IN OUR COMMUNITY THAT HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS INFORMATION, BUT I'M GOING TO DRILL DOWN IN THE SENSE OF TIME WITH MY QUESTIONS. What can parents expect, because as you mentioned, we've never had a basil in Fairfax County.

[00:57:23] Will there be a text that comes home, will it just be all digital, as I know some resources are currently? Can you speak to that a little bit, please? Yes, I can. And just so you know, if you all ask me anything too hard, I do have my language arts coordinator online so I can phone a friend, but I think I got this one.

[00:57:40] So first of all, this is not a fully digital project. are there is digital access but and Miss Marin was over looking at things there are books and there are papers and then we will expect I hate to use the term workbook because that sounds so last decade or last century but but traditional practices are good good well then some of that is definitely coming and so some of those materials will come home and there's also some of the decodables that they'll use in school there are like black and white versions they can take home so they can practice at home so there are many things to go back and forth and and I think it's really important communication and this has come

[00:58:17] up and we're partnering with the Office of Communications like how should we start messaging this out to parents so they'll know what to expect and and really generate the excitement with parents as well so that is on our mind to make sure that parents have information about what to expect and that teachers are really clear about what can be going home and what should be going home.

[00:58:37] So are we talking about the more traditional approach where every child who's in K, well, pre-K-6, I think you, well, you have some components for pre-K, but every child from K-6 will have their own text. So it's a series of things, right? There's like, I guess they're workbooks. There's writing books and there's small, small decodable books. There's a lot of different materials, but yes, they will be holding things in their hands. We're really buying the core materials for K through six and that includes our six in the

[00:59:13] middle students and so there are it is a more traditional approach I would say I taught a long time ago when everybody had their books and their decodables so I'm kind of excited for that only be also because it brings us a little bit out of the constant use of the computers which at one point we needed but right now I think there's a heavy dependence that I particularly don't care for it's It's just one too many slide decks.

[00:59:41] My next question that you kind of started to speak to is what is this going to look like for our middle school kids who are sixth graders, which I am the only school board member who has any. And we know that we need intentionality and some different planning for them, right?

[00:59:57] Because they run on different schedules sometimes and they have different, their teachers are typically teach only language arts. So that's a bonus, right? We don't have to teach as many teachers, we don't have to train as many teachers, but we really need to help them look at each individual schedule and look how they meet with students and look at times like advisory.

[01:00:15] And really, it has to kind of be customized. We have a meeting, I think it might even be tomorrow, with the principals of those schools, with our team to really dig into what their master schedule looks like and how they can best use these materials. We know it's not a plug and play for them.

[01:00:30] That's very interesting to hear because I know typically these programs there are certain times that are to to be devoted to each component of the reading day but I'm not sure how it plugs into the 80 minutes that our sixth graders at the middle schools have. So I would love to have an opportunity of what that plan looks like. Absolutely. Thank you. And I don't want to run out of time before I do this. I do want to give a shout out to Miss Cheryl Binkley because she was my representative former teacher now community.

[01:01:00] member, and you all are very familiar with her. She was part of that first group that we won't talk about, and now she also led her time and expertise to this next group. So thank you so much for all of your work along those lines. Here's the hardest question of the night. I think everybody's excited about this, and I'm particularly interested in the ELD pieces that you have for our students, the alignment with WIDA, that is great. What are we going to do for our students

[01:01:31] who are of those same levels, but are 7 through 12? Grades 7 through 12. Jump in. So there's a lot of different ways to approach. Are you talking about for a basal resource? Are you talking about in general? Any and all of it, because I think there's a major cry for our students who are at those grade levels, but parents are not hearing that there's any plan for them, and yet they still present the same issues. Yeah, I know. I appreciate that, and it's something that we're constantly looking at I will just say that you know the teachers in middle school really went to school to be English teachers not reading teachers and you know that

[01:02:07] doesn't sound maybe like a big difference but they really look at their jobs a little bit differently they did not have the opportunity to learn how to teach students to read so it's a little bit of a slower a slower change to have them really understand the evidence-based practices that we're talking about we've started that work a little bit through our staff development days we have and I know it's not everyone's favorite so it's not really we're not here to debate it tonight but we have purchased Lexia from middle school and I know that's not everyone's favorite because it's an online tool but we have to understand we have to understand that we have kids in all different places in middle school and we have teachers who aren't necessarily prepared to meet all

[01:02:47] those different places at this moment in time so Lexia does provide us does provide us that individualization. And Lexia has, I see lots of faces, sorry. Lexia also is not only online. It is a hybrid program, so students should be getting some online work and some support for teachers. It's something that is new to middle school really this year, so it's still a work in progress, but we're trying to at least do something that we could do relatively quickly to try and capture some of the students who really need some of those foundational skills that that that we could provide and you mentioned quite a bit about the

[01:03:24] middle school teachers what about the high school teachers because we still have students who don't have those foundational skills at our high schools whether they be ELL students whether they be special education students or just students who just haven't caught on yet what's the plan there so a lot of times when we get to high school and we're still having some of the foundational foundational struggles it does take something more intense right It really can't be done through your traditional English class and the English teacher doesn't really have the skills to do that.

[01:03:53] So then you start to look at intervention classes, which isn't something we really want for students, right? We want them to arrive at middle school and high school not needing those interventions. But we do have students who need them. So really taking a look at what we are offering at the middle and high school and trying to ensure that those are meeting the variety of needs.

[01:04:12] So we are looking at our different intervention programs. We're trying to see how those classes need to be changed. It is a partnership. A lot of the students, as you said, are special education. So it's a partnership with gen ed and special ed to see what's the right program. We've done a lot of the OG training, which is the Orton-Gillingham training at the secondary level. And we're doing as much as we can to keep that going so that we can build more capacity in middle and high school to meet those needs.

[01:04:39] I would be very much interested in terms of what you uncover and what you come up with to help support our students, particularly those that are in the high school, at the high schools, in order to provide them with those basic skills that they don't have yet, but yet they're, they have all the other expectations.

[01:04:58] This is a core, so there's the core text, there's supplemental intervention as well. So this is the core materials, and as part of the core materials, we talk about Tier 1 being for everybody, Tier 2 being sort of happening in the classroom when students need a little bit more, and Tier 3 is usually outside of the classroom.

[01:05:21] The core materials actually already embed Tier 2. And then from Benchmark, we've looked at all their intervention materials, and we are planning as part of those supplements to purchase the language comprehension part. we already have some strong interventions for the word recognition part of the reading rope but we are planning on purchasing some intervention materials from benchmark as well thank you for that well dr anderson your time is up oh can i just finish this one question and maybe go back what i did in here and that part is the challenge materials what are the extension materials for our

[01:05:55] students who are already working at high levels yes so a couple things one is there are built-in materials that's why it was very important for us to have teachers that work in sent in our advanced academic centers and some of our advanced academic resource teachers on the committee so some things are built in but we will also be supplementing with some of our current materials that we use with advanced academics but again it's about really helping figure out how that fits together and not asking teachers to figure all that out thank you thank you dr anderson miss anderson

[01:06:28] so you mentioned lexia so i had i had to speak up but i have two questions for you actually i have two i've you you know i'm not a fan um we've talked a lot about the fact that i believe that it's not being consistently implemented particularly at the middle school level i say that anecdotally um that it's it's not in this particularly for our students that have gone through advanced placement classes it's just not at the level that's maybe necessary and so that is That is something that I would like us to continue to keep looking at to make sure that it's being utilized.

[01:07:02] It's also being utilized maybe inappropriately at the elementary school level, too, in certain schools. And so I would love to just see us maybe look at how much time our kids are spending on Lexia. Use those IT resources that we have to kind of get user data so that we can get some more information about that.

[01:07:20] The question that I did have about the basal resources. And I know and from what I understand, and Ms. Eisemurheiser can probably speak to this much better than I can, however, I do understand that it's not necessarily approved. This particular product is not necessarily approved for special education students.

[01:07:38] Is that correct? I don't have any information. We are purchasing this for special education students. So it is tiered for special education students as well? That is my understanding. Okay. Because I was under the impression. I'm not sure. I mean, I would be interested to know, you know, I'm certainly happy to take that question offline I would love to do a little bit more because I think that that may be a misconception in the community so I would love to make sure that we actually go back and make sure that for our special education families that they're prepared for for what's coming so I think thank you miss Anderson I think what's really important about rolling out a new literacy curriculum is

[01:08:14] that every student each and every student needs core instruction at grade level period and then we move to tutorial or enrichment within a 90-minute literacy block so it's really key as Ms. Clemenco said that every student is going to receive core instruction at grade level so you miss Anderson miss Sizemore Heiser so a couple things I really appreciate I'm very excited being having been on the board that voted to do this in 21 and then watching sort of

[01:08:53] impatiently through all the pauses while we waited for the state to come out with their materials I'm really excited to see that we've you know purchased these materials and ready to roll this out so thank you for all your work and patience on this piece of it I do want to go back to your statement about some middle school and high school and and I think to pick on dr. Anderson's point about there's a lot of students who are now in middle and high school who didn't get this an elementary school right so they're there may be without this foundation or the different foundation and I and I heard you saying you know we can address some of this in sort of the intervention classes and you probably know where I'm going with this but we really can't take an elective away from

[01:09:32] an entire generation of students to put them in intervention classes and I hear that you know English teachers at the secondary are trained to teach English but I think we maybe need to rethink some of that if we have a generation that maybe didn't get this when they you know could have because we were focused on something else at the time and a lot of the country was so how are we going to maybe provide PD. So some of it is embedded in those English classes. How are we going to better utilize the intervention block as opposed to an elective? That's my question for you on these pieces. So one of the things I didn't mention, and I'll start with middle school. We're spending a lot more time talking about middle school than high school, and I hear the message. I get it.

[01:10:10] But we have new Virginia standards coming out this fall as well, and I didn't really mention that. But they, Virginia did not want us to be rolling out the Virginia Literacy Act with really standards that didn't align to the work they were asking us to do. Unfortunately, that means we don't get a bench.

[01:10:27] We don't get a crosswalk here. We have to hit the ground running and the new standards really, I think, are more intentional around the foundational skills, especially at middle school. I think that will that will help us move the teachers in that direction, for sure.

[01:10:42] And I haven't looked at the high school standards as much. So it will be interesting to look at it with that lens. when the idea of intervention isn't new right we have intervention classes at middle school now for reading we have all sorts of different programs there's different varieties different flavors at both middle and high school and what I think is important to do is really look at what we do have and make sure what we have is aligned with what what we're doing now and we need to do we need to do a refresh but unfortunately and I know nobody wants to hear it but it does take a little bit of time to make those rollovers and to train the teachers so

[01:11:18] we are looking at it and we are trying to move as fast as we can I think it's probably about trying to figure out what is you know the house on fire what do you grab first like trying to figure out where to start I know we have some interventions that special ed has been working through new approvals so I haven't seen what those are yet through that RFP process so I think it's about looking at the interventions and where we can deliver them best so I'm glad you said that that led to my next question I think it's gonna pick up what Miss Anderson said kind of picking up the Andersons over there but the question I have is I think the question is really as you know special is looking at their

[01:11:55] materials how are they in line with the materials the basal resources that we've just approved from the state especially for those special self-contained students who are on the ASOL curriculum right like how are these materials being either adapted or aligned with what special ed is doing so it's not Special A's picking these materials, and these are the K-6, especially for those self-contained ASOL students, but really all the self-contained students.

[01:12:19] So we are buying these materials for everybody, right? And our special A colleagues have been in the boxes with us and trying to, you know, they really need to look at those and see how they're going to be adapted, you know, to work. The interventions I was just kind of mentioning are really Tier 3 and sometimes sit outside the Tier 1 and Tier 2 in this resource.

[01:12:42] But the intention is, because when we picked these, we were intentional to have special ed colleagues as part of that process. And we've had them, we have the materials, they're in the boxes, and we're trying to figure out what's the best way to do it.

[01:12:59] And it's the best answer I can give right now because we literally are just weeks in. But the intention is for everyone to be able to use the materials and for us to adapt the materials as needed, but that everyone is aligned in sort of the units what we're doing. Thank you. I guess the question I would ask is for those tier 3 materials that are maybe are being RFP'd right now to make sure those are not just aligned with but consistent with these materials. I don't know where that crossover is from this from the teachers of the CAP B classes in picking these materials and making sure that we're not kind of having two tracks in that alignment too and the consistency of the type of education even though they may be

[01:13:37] you know modified right. There's modifying these materials and then there's picking tier 3 materials right they may not be modifying these materials but separate materials but how are we making sure those are still in alignment with the science of reading understood yeah the alignment of science of reading and and um is critically important yes i would just say that maybe having some crossover the other direction too right on the special ed groups and maybe you're already doing that might be helpful too to make oh into the yes we do we have people who sit in the rfp with this is that what you mean yes absolutely yes and then um i agree with miss anderson on lexi i think it is

[01:14:13] as an implementation I will say I think it's maybe as it's gone from being used I think in more the special ed setting to more generally the some of the implementation has gotten inconsistent so that might be something to look at yeah I mean I will say and happy to to share to share with the board I mean we have some excellent data that Lexia is really helping a lot of students I do not I do not disagree that implementation is always a challenge here in Fairfax and AND MIDDLE SCHOOL ESPECIALLY IS A CHALLENGE AROUND THIS.

[01:14:43] SO WE CONTINUE TO WORK ON IT AND ALWAYS OPEN TO HEARING SPECIFIC FEEDBACK. THANK YOU, MS. EISEMARHEISER. MR. MOON. THANK YOU, MR. CHENTERMAN. THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION. I HAVE A COUPLE OF BUDGET-RELATED QUESTIONS SINCE WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF BUDGET SISON.

[01:15:01] I'M GLAD TO HEAR THAT SUPERINTENDENT FOR SAW THIS COMING AND SET ASIDE ADDITIONAL MONEY THE LAST YEAR AND INITIAL INITIAL FUNDING CAME FROM A COUPLE OF YEARS. ago after the board prior board decided to go this way however my question has to do with this at the time the prior board decided to do this there was an option on our part there was no virginia law requiring us to do this that the virginia literacy act came only in 2022 and 2023

[01:15:40] that's a subsequent prior boards taking on action so the point that i'm trying to make is when the state legislature passed this new law and expanded it in 2023 did they really understand about a financial implications of requiring something like this i mean i i take my understanding is that they gave us one-time funding grant money about 5.6 million dollars but the cost of doing this is

[01:16:10] Where it exceeds 5.6 am I wrong? No, that's correct. By how many forage is that something that you can talk about how many boards Forwards how many times? Oh, how many folds? I think some boards. Um, it's quite a bit more I don't yeah, I haven't seen the current final contract and we are we don't have a final contract yet We do early negotiations just to make sure sure we would be able to afford it But we are um, we're anticipating it will be some for the product itself around 25 million. So there's a huge

[01:16:46] yes what the state is funding we are only getting about 20 percent right as part of their all in virginia money they said that we could designate a certain amount for literacy and for us for virginia that was was five we don't have to spend it on the basal but on on anything um you know related to this i think there's another thing but it doesn't even begin i mean we have a lot of needs there's a lot more there's a lot of things happening around literacy all the teacher training beyond just um just beyond the basal resource correct so i'm gonna i'm gonna ask a

[01:17:21] question about that too uh you said three days of professional development sounds like if it's 25 per hour if you put eight hours that's two hundred dollars three days is six hundred dollars i don't know how many teachers we're talking about five thousand if everyone were to come because we do include special education and esol teachers now it's it's close to six thousand closer 6,000 okay all right is that already counted for in in money set aside or yes it is thank you thank you for doing that again thank you for seeing us doing that but at the same time I think this is another thing that

[01:18:00] we need to point out to our delegation if not the entire General Assembly in Richmond that you know whatever whenever they require something for us to do That has consequences that affects us affects our bottom line. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Moon. Mr. McElveen Thank you. And Thank you, Miss Clemenco and to all of staff for what has clearly been an Extremely large amount of work that has gone into this Not to mention all the engagement with the community

[01:18:37] It's always great to see that you've you've done all that outreach in advance. I will just speak from anecdotal experience as many folks know my father was in the FCPS classroom for many years as an eighth-grade English teacher and what he saw over over his career post 2000 or so was a yearly decline in the abilities of our students whether it comes to being able to write cogently to spell the fact that they were getting to middle school without just those basic skills points to how and by the way that's an

[01:19:15] HONORS AND AAP CLASSES POINTS TO THE INCREDIBLE IMPORTANCE OF DOING THIS AND GETTING IT DONE RIGHT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE SO THIS WORK CAN HAVE COME AT A MORE IMPORTANT TIME I WILL JUST BRIEFLY TOUCH ALSO FROM MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE THAT PHONICS FOR MY FIRST GRADER IS WORKING VERY WELL ALEXIA IS WORKING EXTREMELY WELL SHE'S GONE ON TO THE NEXT LEVEL FIRST in her class to do it. And by the way, she's actually categorized as an ELL because we speak

[01:19:48] Chinese at home and I can't get her out of that system, unfortunately. So that's another problem we have. But the only question I would have for you is what kind of reaction are you getting from our classroom teachers to this so far? So I think it varies, right? We have people who are very excited because you know we started this work when the board made the commitment and you know we were piecing things together and teachers have been heroically piecing things together to try and and start to provide these foundational skills not everybody was excited to make this change as you can

[01:20:28] imagine there were teachers who for years had been really very successful with the balanced literacy approach and we're very it was a very hard change in THE BEGINNING AND THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE ON THE BOARD DEFINITELY HEARD FROM TEACHERS AND AND WE ALL WORKED THROUGH THAT I THINK THIS IS COMING AFTER THREE YEARS OF WORK WHERE WE'VE BEEN ABLE TO SEND THOUSANDS OF TEACHERS TO TRAINING WHETHER IT'S LETTERS OR ORTON GILLINGHAM TRAINING WE'VE DONE A LOT OF OUR OWN WORK WITH OUR LITERACY LEADERS SO I THINK WE'RE READY FOR THIS RIGHT WE'RE READY WE'VE GOT ENOUGH UM WE'VE BUILT ENOUGH MOMENTUM

[01:21:04] BUT I THINK IT IS GOING TO BE A REALLY SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT UM BECAUSE We're pretty clear we're expecting every teacher to use this now, of course, they're going to be responsive to the students in front of them and they'll make adaptations. But we are expecting every teacher to be using that. And that's perhaps it's going to feel different for people as well.

[01:21:24] So this is a this is a maybe a paradigm shift in Fairfax a little bit around literacy that we're expecting a lot more consistency and to use these materials. and we are I think a lot of people are excited to have these and to really not be creating everything or I shouldn't say creating because we've always provided materials I want to be clear about that but teachers had to make a lot more they had to architect it together from the pieces and now hopefully some of that will be done for them and they can spend more time assessing the students and matching and instructing so I guess what I'm saying is some teachers are excited some teachers

[01:22:03] are leery and hesitant um i've already told our our teachers that come to the superintendent teachers i'm a little scared to come next fall as we're rolling this out because implementations are hard right this is going to be a change and it's a lot to learn and these systems there's a lot of pieces there's a lot of things and they're doing it with kids in front of them so we need to give teachers a lot of space and grace and support and i know they can be successful but we all have TO KNOW IT'S GOING TO TAKE A LITTLE TIME I HOPE THAT'S HELPFUL THAT IS HELPFUL AND I I KNOW YOU WILL BE THERE EVERY STEP OF THE WAY WITH THEM AND I THINK AS A BOARD WE NEED TO BE PREPARED

[01:22:41] FOR THE YOU MIGHT HEAR SOME STUFF YOU MIGHT HEAR SOME STUFF COME FALL THE PEOPLE ARE LIKE WHAT DO THESE PEOPLE DO RIGHT AND AND AND RIGHTFULLY SO PEOPLE NEED TO BE ABLE TO TO VENT AND STUFF BUT WE WILL SUPPORT THEM I JUST WILL SAY THAT WE WILL SUPPORT THEM WELL IF ANYONE KNOWS change is hard it's the sport so I'll just end by saying that I do want to thank prior board for their foresight dr. Reed for their foresight and pushing ahead even as dr. moon mentioned before the the state took action so thank you all thank you mr. McElveen miss Marin I'm going to save the bulk of my

[01:23:17] enthusiastic support for the motion a little bit later but I because I do think this is a night to celebrate half about half of the students in our schools are going to have this transformative work and i think it's a night to celebrate it and there will be questions and time for that but one question i have is miss clemenco you mentioned that it's been a few decades since we've had a basil what is the expected lifespan of this investment and when should we plan to do so i get the idea that 20 years is too long what would be a goal for us so we could not be late to update this in the future so what i will say is that the

[01:23:55] The contract is seven years, and that's the typical cycle of a basal. We are on a cycle, like once we're done with language arts in a minute, we're going to have to start math and social, right? We go constantly on a cycle of refreshing our basal resources. So the contract is seven years.

[01:24:11] I do think that hopefully we will continue to see the product will continue to evolve. I mean, what we saw from July to January for this product, they really the thing they did that was the most helpful, I think, is they removed a lot of things.

[01:24:30] What we've seen in the last couple of what we've seen in a lot of the products is they were so infused with balanced literacy and then the science of reading came. They just piled on. So teachers are not only getting the new stuff, but all the old stuff was still there. And what a confusing and mess for teachers.

[01:24:47] Right. so things are still sort of evolving and settling and and the vendors are usually you know are providing us updated materials so I think it will continue to evolve with us over the seven years but short answer is seven years thank you Miss Marin I'm going to take a turn just a little more context here and I appreciate everybody's comments about uh the past board um and I also appreciate that the presentation focused on the now um because we've been over some of the things that we've done over the years but just to put a finer point on it correct me if I'm wrong um instructional services began working with community members to talk about this

[01:25:26] a few years ago and then the board took action to move us in this direction y'all began training people looking at materials developing materials there was probably going to be a move towards developing our own materials for this transition right and then the state took action and then we had to wait for their materials or else we would have perhaps been CAUGHT DOWN THE ROAD WITH MATERIALS THAT THEY DIDN'T APPROVE OF AND SO NOW WE'RE FINALLY HERE WHICH IS A BIG DEAL PARTICULARLY SINCE WE'RE ALREADY PART WAY INTO THIS PATH OF EDUCATING

[01:26:00] OUR STUDENTS USING THIS METHOD AND WE ARE BEGINNING TO SEE PROMISING SIGNS OF THE RETURN ON THAT INVESTMENT IN THE PERFORMANCE OF OUR STUDENTS WITH LITERACY. SPEAK TO THAT. NO. THANK YOU. I think we are well positioned because of the time we have put in and the training we have done, the small moves that we've been able to make, I think, have made a difference.

[01:26:27] And there is nothing that breeds success like success, right? So we have schools that have data that, I mean, teachers are clamoring to do more because they are seeing kids' data move. And there is nothing that is more exciting to a teacher than seeing a student go from not knowing to knowing, right, from not reading to reading.

[01:26:48] And so the data is showing, and it's not, and I know somebody said, well, I haven't seen the SOL data yet. Well, because that doesn't start until third grade. So a lot of the data that we see, that impact of Lexia, we're seeing it more in our iReady results and other types of assessment.

[01:27:04] But yes, we are starting to see it. And we think that this, Basel, and trying to really ensure that we have that fidelity of practices across our schools will start to see the greater groundswell. Well, I just appreciate all the work that you and others have done to make this happen.

[01:27:20] We have an amazing team. Yeah, absolutely. And if they're watching, we're here, guys. I'm sure they are. I mean, they're watching with popcorn on Channel 99. Exactly, exactly. So we appreciate them as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Continuing on, I call on Ms. Marin for a motion. I jumped the gun. I forgot we had to go back. Dr. Anderson, sorry. It's okay. You can take it from over here. I'll just wait for you

[01:27:55] to get there. Thank you. My next set of questions is really regarding some of the professional development plan that you've just shared. One, I'd like to hear this from Dr. Reed. I'm sure you're going to have a dashboard for this. And can we get an update as a board in terms of where we are regarding the teacher training as you have more and more teachers trained I'm sure you have a few already you have the big summer push you'll have some folks that you'll gather

[01:28:35] throughout the year but what is the timeline that you you expect for all teachers to be trained and when will you be benchmarking where folks are and I think you said 6,000 teachers well you're correct we likely will have a dashboard that we'll be setting targets from Miss Clemenco do you have sort of a draft outline? So we have enough seats this summer for 6,000 teachers. So if there's any teachers listening, we hope we will get the maximum number of teachers this summer, right? Because that time away from students, that three days, that focus would be great to capture the most.

[01:29:15] I said we're over 50% now. I think it will climb. We won't get to 100%, right? So then we have to kind of go into hey school starting mode right and so we have some plans in August to do some just-in-time training with the people who don't do the summer and then we will have to do some rolling trainings whether we utilize the reading specialist whether we utilize our team we'll have some different opportunities for people to capture the rest of training just to be clear as as planned right now oh sorry the three days are kind of a combination it's not just like how do I what are the materials it's really how do I use the

[01:29:54] materials so it's two days really on the focused on the new basal then we have some other components of the Virginia Literacy Act around assessment and reading plans that will spend the third day on so some of it will be able to be chunked out throughout the year we also know that we're going to need to even those two days won't be enough so there's going to be some ongoing things we're putting together not to go into too much detail but we're looking at some ideas like a core team. So have one first grade, one second grade, one third grade teacher that gets support at the beginning of each unit and then turns around to the team. So we're looking at

[01:30:30] multiple ways to support teachers as they move through it. Thank you and I do look forward to whatever your dashboard yields. Speaking of training, we do know that in a lot of our schools we have a high number of teacher residents, we have a high number of long-term subs and vacancies.

[01:30:48] How do we capture that group? That tends to be pretty, you know, it fluctuates throughout the year. Are we even going to have a plan for that group of teacher residents and long term subs? So we actually do have a plan to address in particular provisional and teacher residents.

[01:31:06] I'm going to ask Miss Neal to talk a little bit about the thinking around centrally deployed instructional coaches for the fall. Thank you, Dr. read at this time we're going to be sharing some updates with schools that we have centrally funded instructional coaches who are currently deployed to schools who have needs and we're going to be piloting starting next year an effort to recast their role to focus in on our novice teachers our new teachers in years zero to three to focus specifically at some of the things you're talking

[01:31:39] about dr anderson so these instructional coaches will provide some sort of i wouldn't think it's going to be as robust as the three-day but some sort of orientation to these materials they will be in classrooms with our new teachers coaching them on a regular basis modeling the types of teaching and learning and taking those things that are coming out of our instructional services department and our special services department to make sure our new teachers can implement those strategies sure but I guess I'm asking for those long term subs and teacher residents who are going to be embedded in the classrooms for some period of time what will be

[01:32:16] their professional development with the materials compared to what our teachers are getting this broad and expansive three-day experience or chunk throughout the year I want to be sure that we're not losing that group because I have schools where there's a lot of teachers who are long-term subs or who are teacher residents etc and they're in front of our neediest kids so i want to make sure we're connecting those dots so dr anderson one of the things i think that's a best practice is to make sure we also provide training for our substitutes because anytime we put a new curriculum

[01:32:52] in place we know that particularly those folks who are regularly in our classrooms really need to understand the rhythm and how to utilize those materials so i would expect that miss Clamenco and Ms. Neal already are thinking about how to make sure we have opportunities for our substitutes to also be part of this training.

[01:33:10] And I would expect that these 21 already hired, these are instructional coaches that are already in our division, that we're going to be deploying centrally for these provisional staff. I would expect they would also be in this three-day training so they are well aware of the instructional strategies and how to best utilize these resources.

[01:33:31] That would be an exciting thing if we had some sort of PD for our substitutes, particularly those that are in our building long term or just very regular substitutes. Thank you for that. One of the things that you started to talk about, Ms. Komenko, is the impact to the work of the teachers.

[01:33:48] I think I see this as an opportunity to take something off the plate, you know, because I see that every single teacher group is reinventing that same wheel and we have the disparity and the product in the production of what they create because you have experienced teams and you have new teams and you have teams with a lot of long-term subs.

[01:34:10] So I think this is this has the opportunity to be the great equalizer if all of those things regarding the training is true. So Dr. Presidio I think this is more of a question for you I think which is how do you perceive that your team will now support teachers if they're not creating those materials that they typically would have been creating for teachers to still architect to to fit their needs in the classroom well actually I think their role will still be pretty similar because the curriculum development work is a pretty small piece actually of the work that the resource teachers do most of the work

[01:34:47] that they do is through training and coaching and working with individual teachers and teams in schools the curriculum development work typically happens in the summer and that's a pretty small portion of what that work is so those folks will be able to have more time and more capacity to that to do that coaching and support work now of course during the summer they're gonna be doing a lot of professional development work with our teachers because again as miss Clemenco mentioned there's going to need to be a lot of professional development opportunities for teachers because not everybody's going to be able to access those training opportunities at the same time thank you that was your time dr. Anderson thank you all right moving on I

[01:35:26] May I call on Ms. Marin for the motion? I move that the school board approves the purchase of Benchmark Advance 2022 as the basal instructional resource for elementary language arts. Thank you. Is there a second?

[01:35:42] Second. Ms. Lady. Ms. Marin, would you like to speak to your motion? You know I do. So I'm ecstatic to vote to adopt this basal instructional resource that will be used next year in the fall. Thank you to the really countless hours over many years to those who made it happen.

[01:35:59] Noelle Clemenco, Ms. Colleen Eddy, my constituent Diane Cooper Gould, Ms. Cheryl Brinkley out there, and so many others who viewed materials and gave input. I was delighted to view the materials prior to tonight's vote, and let me tell you, they're really amazing. And I say that as a school board member, as a professional early literacy, and also as a parent with a dyslexic child. I think this instructional resource has something for everyone, both in the main materials and in the supplemental add-ons so what this program does is we've heard is it instructs kids through the science of reading or the EBL I I'm going to start try to use in that which

[01:36:38] is proven to be the strongest approach in literacy mastery and we know that research shows that if kids don't learn how to read by third grade they will encounter difficulties not only in reading but in everything else in life and unfortunately we see that in our schools that that kids who just simply can't communicate and read are acting in other ways to try and show themselves and we need to help those students. 20% of the population in the US is dyslexic.

[01:36:59] This is not an you know an unusual thing. People some people have a difficulty learning to read and it's okay and we know how to help them. What I also love is that this aligns literacy instruction across the school division for teaching strategies and for thematic content. So all of this content already aligns with the Virginia standards of learning and while education is an art and science as we heard teachers sometimes they do want something that's a little bit more of that you know directed hey here's what you can use and they will embellish it and make it their own because they're amazing educators this also is designed to build knowledge vocabulary and their perspectives via thematic units I have loved the idea of thematic units since I first started working in this work in

[01:37:38] 2002 and saw amazing preschool work happening with kids from under-resourced communities who when you give them thematic content they come alive they get it and it's real to them so there's units and the great thing is that the units happen across all the grade levels so for instance if you have your history culture and geography unit in kindergarten you're also studying that in sixth grade so if you have students in your family that are those ages you could talk about the same kinds of things and make those connections so I love that it also has a an element to include our families and I do want to be sure that our family family liaisons are included in that training and able to communicate to families where they can find it because that's how we really

[01:38:16] help the families to engage their learners. It meets the requirements of the Virginia Literacy Act. I am remiss in thanking two delegates who helped brought that act to fruition. Our own Fairfax Delegate, Delegate Carrie Coiner, excuse me, it's Carrie and Carrie. Delegate Carrie Delaney of Fairfax and Delegate Carrie Coiner from outside Fairfax who did an incredible job working bipartisanly to get this passed.

[01:38:40] And this is such a success for the state. It's a success story for what happens when the state supports public education. AND I ONLY HOPE THAT THE GOVERNOR WHO SIGNED THIS INTO LAW CAN CONTINUE TO LOOK AT WHAT THE STATE CAN DO TO BE A LEADER WHEN IT COMES TO SUPPORTING OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS HARD WORK. AND I DEFINITELY SUPPORT THIS MOTION.

[01:38:59] THANK YOU, MS. MARIN. MS. LADY, WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR SECOND? YES. I MIRROR THIS ENTHUSIASM. I ACTUALLY THANK YOU TO STAFF. I KNOW HOW THE HOURS, IT'S HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND SOMETIMES YOU FEEL LIKE YOU'RE ON A TREADMILL GOING NOWHERE. BUT WE GOT HERE AND I'M VERY EXCITED ABOUT THE PRODUCT.

[01:39:16] Purchase a benchmark basal instructional resources, as Noel outlined and shared, it has sound pedagogy, aligns with letters, and the Virginia SOLs, provides strong differentiation and cultural responsibility. It includes word recognition and language comprehension, and builds skills across all areas of literacy.

[01:39:32] And I was, before Noel said success breeds success, I just kept thinking. I was at Hutchinson Elementary today, and I was in a room with kindergartners working on phonics, making connections. And, you know, when you see kids make connections and you see teachers' faces light up when their kids are learning, it's palpable.

[01:39:52] So I'm really excited about this. Thank you again for all the hard work and can't wait for our kids to get started next year. - Thank you, Ms. Lady. I will call for a vote. All those in favor of the motion that's on the screen, Ms. Sizemore-Hyzer, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Marin, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, and myself.

[01:40:14] Will the clerk read the vote? That's 11-0. The motion passes. Thank you very much. All right, moving on to agenda item 4.03, action item amending the school board's proclamation process.

[01:40:31] I call on Ms. Anderson for a motion. I move that the school board approve the changes to the strategic governance manual as detailed on board docs regarding the school board's proclamation process. Is there a second? Second. Mr. McDaniel. Ms. Anderson, would you like to speak to your motion?

[01:40:48] Quickly, I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about why we are proposing to not speak to proclamations during our meeting. However, I did want to just say a few things. All of us would love to speak to every proclamation that's brought forward.

[01:41:03] We all have things that we believe strongly and want to share. Many of our meetings go late into the night, which is a significant ask of our staff and community members, and we are cognizant of this. this this move is not to quiet any voices that would want to support the amazing people and causes that we highlight as part of our proclamation process it simply moves the discussion about proclamations to the board matters section of our meetings where time when time allows or moves comments to our newsletters thank you miss anderson mr mcdaniel also briefly um i agree with what was

[01:41:38] just said um and and this this tweak uh this change was part of a topic of discussion that that we had during our retreat, and I think it was generally supported by members of the board. And what I did with the Disability Awareness Month proclamation, I didn't make a comment.

[01:41:59] And I didn't make a comment because the wording in the proclamation is the comment. So that's another reason why I support this change. And to Ms. Anderson's point, if we want to elaborate further, we can do that during our board matter time. So I'll take a second. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Dr. Anderson?

[01:42:17] Thank you. This is a place where the Anderson's defer because I will not be supporting this this change. Obviously there's some here there's some things here that are not an issue. It is fine to change it from resolution to proclamation. That's not a concern for me at all.

[01:42:33] The concern for me is the part that we cannot make comments to to to the proclamations. I'm looking at it tonight. I have prepared comments, but I'm going to look at what happened tonight. Tonight when we had the Women's Proclamation, when we had the Disability Proclamation, there were some beautiful things that you shared about your grandmother, Ms. St. John Cummings.

[01:42:57] There were some beautiful things that you shared about your mother. There were some things that you shared also, Ms. Lady, regarding even Dr. Reed that I did not know about. And it was a great opportunity to hear that, to understand that, to learn that, to have our community because we had more people here at that time to actually hear that I understand there's a space here where we could put some things to board comments but they get cancelled and nobody is here and the whole idea of a proclamation is to really uplift and to elevate and to highlight and to recognize certain communities and yes we don't all have to speak to every proclamation I certainly do not but there are some proclamations which will really burn

[01:43:35] and hurt my heart to know that I can't speak to it while the people are here to be recognized. I'm thinking back to the one that I shared with Michelle Leet where she was sitting here. I'm sorry she was not sitting here but her family was sitting here and there are some statements I won't put in a proclamation but I would it was wonderful to be able to highlight her daughter Sydney Sydney just to be able to share that. I'm not going to write that in that proclamation. The soul of it is missing. I just really want us to be thinking about why do we even why do we do these proclamations. It's to really uplift communities and groups that are not typically viewed and highlighted and recognized and I think we're losing the

[01:44:14] soul like these stories that were told tonight that will just diminishes I think the proclamation process I think there's some spaces for us to do some other things yes we have broad support for people not to speak to proclamations don't speak but for the few people who want to speak we should allow that this enforced you know censorship to save a few minutes because I actually timed it tonight and I timed it last time it was not I think it was not enough time I think to warrant this and when we have a situation where we're doing this and

[01:44:50] we're losing the opportunity to really highlight and recognize people who are not who don't get that recognition on a regular basis I think the juice is not what the squeeze on this one at all in going back to what we'll be doing in June the Laura Ashley award that we provide to our student we don't get to speak to that it just doesn't seem to be worth it for me.

[01:45:11] So this part for me does not really make sense. And even going back to one more point I want to make now I'm going to go back to my thing here our proclamations we typically vote on them before we get here. But what happens to the dissenting voice. What if somebody does not agree then they have no space to speak before they vote which we always have space to speak before we vote. This one doesn't work folks I hope we can rethink it.

[01:45:37] Thank you Dr. Anderson seeing no others I will call for the vote all those in favor of the motion on the screen miss Sizemore Heiser mr. McDaniel miss lady miss st. John Cunning miss Marin miss Anderson mr. Dixit and myself all those opposed mr. McIveen dr. Anderson mr. Moon will the clerk read the vote the vote is eight yeses three nos the motion carries thank you agenda item 6.01 performance

[01:46:11] review financial planning EL5 monitoring report I call on Dr. Reed who is right there thank you chair Frisch so I'll be presenting the EL5 in a different format this evening we thought it might be helpful you have the monitoring report in front of you and the monitoring report for those at home

[01:46:48] watching is attached to board docs but we thought we would try some slides to make it a little more engaging not that financial planning wouldn't be engaging in and of itself but we thought that it could be helpful this evening so thank you for queuing that up and we'll start with oh I almost stripped over the stool here anyhow we'll start with the slide that pretty much talks about the financial planning expectation here and at the time of this report I want to share that

[01:47:25] TO THE BEST OF MY KNOWLEDGE, INFORMATION AND BELIEF, I DO BELIEVE WE'VE GATHERED INFORMATION THAT SUPPORTS COMPLIANCE WITH THE BOARD'S EXPECTATION IN THIS PARTICULAR EXECUTIVE LIMITATION. ALTHOUGH I'M ONLY GOING TO BE SHARING SELECTED INDICATORS IN THE POWERPOINT, THE ENTIRE REPORT IS AVAILABLE AGAIN AND ATTACHED TO OUR BOARD DOCS PLATFORM.

[01:47:48] SO THE FOUR MAIN AREAS, IF WE WANT TO MOVE THE SLIDE FORWARD, THANKS, KEVIN. so the four main areas are number one well you can read them on the screen these are essentially the areas that the board called out as most critical with related relationship to family planning so as we walk through these i want to take a look at number one which is clear around developing an annual budget that has these specific a through k indicators and this is the first part of this particular executive limitation is

[01:48:23] the budget development process i want to note that there's a lot of excitement i think among our budget team about recognitions that the team has received and these are really important because they illustrate the level of transparency our division for many years has illustrated the asbo which is the association of school business officials and the government finance officers, GFOA awards are really all around financial transparency and reporting.

[01:48:55] So there's a lot of excitement in receiving those awards and there's not an insignificant amount of work necessary to achieve that level of recognition. I want to remind the board that we've kept to an annual budget calendar and this again is critical and it's shared with employees and the community in a transparent way.

[01:49:16] It's connected on the website via the budget area. It's also shared on employee news, the division newsletter, and all budget documents are available to the public throughout the entire budget cycle.

[01:49:31] The fiscal forecast is where we start with the annual budget. This occurs for FY25 for this year. It occurred this past November, and it included the preliminary summary of projected state and federal revenue.

[01:49:47] Of course, our state revenue was not what we had expected or projected, but this was our first stab at this in November of 23. As we then know, the next major step is to prepare the proposed budget. And this proposed budget is a budget that's shared with the school board, which is a student focused equitable and by statute needs based proposed budget for FY 2025.

[01:50:13] This year, we aligned it to our strategic plan, and the priorities outlined included most specifically workforce recruitment and retention to include competitive compensation, student academic success and access to enrichment and mental health supports, as well as the closing of achievement gaps, school safety and security, the maintenance or lowering of class sizes and accelerating expansion of preschool options, and many, anyhow, I'll leave that there.

[01:50:44] Secondly, the development of an annual budget, we looked at the operating funds. So there is a school operating fund revenue section which introduces various revenue streams and then provides details for each stream as to the historical fiscal contribution.

[01:51:00] And we have a school operating fund expenditure section which provides detailed guidance on how revenue is budgeted and allocated to specific areas of operations such as salaries, employee benefits and additional operating expenses. to work a few more charts in this presentation.

[01:51:20] Next we looked at how the budget aligned with our strategic plan alignment, in particular our four pillars of our strategic plan. So the percentages are broken out and we made these transparent to our staff and our community.

[01:51:35] One of the things that I want to share is that there was a follow on motion from the board on January 25th that requested recommendations for a comprehensive and cyclical efficiency review. And if it's been my recommendation, I sent a note, I think that had to be sent out to you by close of business February 29th.

[01:51:55] So on February 29th last week, you did receive a note from me outlining a memo recommending that after looking at all our options, I felt like it would be most prudent for us as a division to seek the Baldrige Award for performance excellence.

[01:52:11] I think this will enable us to look at our budget from an efficiency standpoint and also an effectiveness standpoint. We can have a very efficient budget that doesn't effectively lead us to the return on investment that we expect in student outcomes.

[01:52:27] And I believe it's all of our intent as well as our community's expectation that our budget not only be efficient but also lead to effective outcomes for our young people. Our annual budget development also includes reserves, and these are reserves, there are four of them in our school operating fund, and these include the four that are named above.

[01:52:52] The school board flexibility reserve also is committed to meet unforeseen circumstances. These could be anything, because they're unforeseen, so I can't predict what they are. No, it's a spoiler alert. Anyhow, so developing an annual budget, the school board office also provides executive administrative and tech support to all of the members of the board.

[01:53:17] This office is responsible for maintaining official exhibit files of all school board meetings and historical legal records. The responsibilities also include compiling and publishing agendas, agenda items, posting, a variety of coordination tasks maintenance and posting of all current policies regulations and notices to the website so number two of our four is providing the board with a multi-year plan this plan the second requirement is a critical component of the financial planning process and there are multiple

[01:53:52] aspects i'll address this evening first of all we want to make sure that we share multi-year plans through a fiscal forecast that's included in each approved budget and this is the one from our fy24 budget which provides detailed revenue and expenditure assumptions with projections through fy 2027. the current projections go three years into the future and we're going to be exploring ways to have a five year out in future budget documents right now to go five years out it

[01:54:28] It doesn't, we feel like we want to make sure these are real, possible projections, and right now we feel confident with three, but we're working on ways to make that five. We also consider school department and enrollment needs as part of our multi-year planning efforts, including projected school and departmental staffing needs, as well as state staffing standards.

[01:54:51] So we're always looking at those, and I want to share that Fairfax County public schools have traditionally maintained, I would consider, more effective standards than the state standards, and I think that's probably true across the Commonwealth, that the SOQs don't fully fund what's really necessary to provide the world-class education we expect here.

[01:55:17] I also want to mention that the percentage of students has really increased in the last five years in terms of those students eligible for free or reduced price meals in particular. So let's take a look at student enrollment because of course this is a big driver in budget planning and this financial process definitely takes the number of students enrolled into consideration as well as forecasted changes in enrollment and the needs of those students who are in our enrollment numbers. Here we can see the projected and actual enrollment from 2019

[01:55:51] through 2025. And I think one of the things that's also interesting to note, it's kind of small print, so if you're at home, you might need to squint a little. But our actual enrollment as of February, this past February, was 182,414.

[01:56:10] So we are continuing to grow this year, which I think is a great sign for our community. Looking at the multi-year enrollment and per pupil costs, the FY25 proposed budget provides information on cost per pupil as well as cost per service.

[01:56:27] Shown here is the FY24 Wavy comparison that compares FCPS to other school divisions when looking at the cost per pupil that we're spending. And as you look at that, there are many divisions spending more per pupil than we are.

[01:56:46] So it's again just a data point that we utilize in our financial planning and something we've talked about with our Board of Supervisors and our state delegates, our delegation in terms of budget needs.

[01:57:03] Next our capital improvement plan is part of the fiscal forecast. Again the fiscal forecasts are projected in the CIP to ensure the school construction projects remain well resourced. The SIPP program funding provides a summary of needs for five years and an overview explanation of the cost analysis and outlines projected costs to support school capacities for increased student enrollment.

[01:57:31] Upcoming draft reports will provide courses of action to maximize current funding also and investigate new streams of funding. So other ongoing multi-year efforts include systemic annual cyclically or cyclical reviews Reviews of job classifications sounds a little redundant, but we're building in the cyclical review and that was part of our budget plan and again it's part of our planning moving forward so we can make sure that all job categories are reviewed on a regular basis.

[01:58:07] Also it ensures that relevant investment needs are clearly identified and outlined as well as identifying unfunded obligations because we are required to comply with federal and state mandates often without adequate funding I think mr. moon mentioned that this evening with our literacy materials the state at the end of the day is only really paid 20% of what it's going to cost us to purchase materials for our upcoming initiative in that area want to remind our board and those watching from home that the advocacy for funding with the legislature again continues to be

[01:58:42] important with the Seminole report on the JLARC study and quite honestly I just really hope people are thoughtful about looking at this and actually paying attention to it because at the end of the day we have world-class expectations and we we absolutely need to fund those number three or four is providing timely advice to the board which allows the board adequate time to consider the information so we're going to talk a little bit about that first it's important to note that the

[01:59:18] annual budget process is outlined ahead of time and calendared to allow ample time and opportunity for collaboration and feedback with a variety of stakeholders we've had joint meetings with the fairfax county board of supervisors public hearings question and answers and our budget question process. Additionally, we have quarterly budget reviews that are conducted and made publicly available. So there's many there are many opportunities for input feedback and

[01:59:53] collaboration. Lastly, number four is states that I shall not take or not fail to take all reasonable prudent anticipatory and proactive actions in securing financial resources for the division from relevant funding and revenue sources and I'd really like this evening to highlight our quarterly budget review process which consists of a grants development component and this includes updates on the status of grants within the current fiscal year and the prior fiscal year when that's applicable.

[02:00:27] So the summary shows which grants we've submitted, which are pending, have been awarded or were denied as well as the name and amount of each at the end of third quarter in FY24. AT THIS TIME, MR. CHAIRMAN, THIS CONCLUDES THE SUMMARY OF THE MONITORING REPORT FOR EXECUTIVE LIMITATION NUMBER FIVE, FINANCIAL PLANNING. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, DR. REED. ALL RIGHT, I CALL ON DR. ANDERSON. THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS.

[02:00:56] THIS WAS AN INTERESTING ONE, PARTICULARLY BEING IN THE ROLE OF BUDGET CHAIR THIS YEAR. SO A LOT OF THIS WAS VERY FAMILIAR. I DO WANT TO SAY, FIRST OF ALL, KUDOS TO THE TEAM FOR THOSE AWARDS THAT YOU ARE TYPICALLY BEEN AWARDED EVERY SINGLE YEAR because your budget practices and um are top of the industry standard so kudos because i don't think miss burden can you say how many years running those awards have been provided or you your team has won those awards yeah we started applying for the asbo certification

[02:01:36] and the gfoa back in 1998 and we have received the asbo award for the last 26 years running the gfoa award we have paused on that during during covid and we're going to start that back up but that also started in 1998 so about 22 years of the gfoa and we'll begin that again for fiscal 25. so it's been a long time and that's wonderful i do really want to highlight the areas where i saw just really significant strengths and i kind of break up my document as you probably saw the last one. I outlined each of the indicators. Indicator one, I thought, was a huge strength.

[02:02:14] I have a lot of evidence that I have been able to find regarding the planning, the scheduling, all of that is clear and it's repeated. The collaboration with the Board of Supervisors, the response of the Board's resolution, I've appreciated that because I think that was one of the pieces that we have not had in the years past because we've had this resolution. This is our third year and this is right and roughly but this is the first time where there's been a very clear um response to each of the components so thank you for that um one of the pieces in that

[02:02:51] first section which is 1c um budget being easily accessible transparent and understandable to the community i fully agree it is available it is transparent but i am not sure that it's as understandable to the public as we would like and I I don't have a real way to make that easier but I do want to raise it because continuously we get from the public I want to figure out what this is and they have a hard time navigating that 500 page book and it's a big budget so it's going to have a lot of pages but I know that piece wouldn't ring true with the feedback that I've received

[02:03:30] but the other two pieces you guys have a lot of things available on the website um one of the areas and i want to make sure i stick to my time that i think is the one of the greatest growth is probably number two the multi-year plan i i definitely see that the cip provides that five year look which is ahead and i may be working with a different definition than you are um regarding items you know 2A to 2F I was thinking that that plan that you talked about would hit all of these

[02:04:07] different components we definitely have the fiscal the three-year revenue document that you provided but I was not able to find where we had that multi-year plan that showed looking ahead the needs of the of the schools and departments I definitely saw the staffing ratio in the books as you have articulated but I was not able to see the evidence of those two of those other areas and maybe I've missed it and I

[02:04:37] would love to be sent to the right place thank you dr. Anderson mystics it one second mystics that I didn't hear a question but would you like to respond TO THE STATEMENT. SURE. I SURE I THINK YOU DIDN'T SEE IT BECAUSE IT'S NOT THERE WHAT WE'VE DONE IS WE PLAN WHAT WE TOOK IS THE DIVISION LEVEL DATA AND WE HAVEN'T RUN THAT FOR ALL 200 SCHOOLS OR ALL THE DEPARTMENTS YET AND IT DOES SAY CONSIDER THE NEEDS OF SCHOOLS AND DEPARTMENTS SO

[02:05:16] WHAT WE DID I THINK IS TAKE IT AT A RELATIVELY HIGH LEVEL TO LOOK AT THE THREE YEAR OUT AND I'LL I'll ask Ms. Burden for any additional comment on that particular score. No, you're absolutely right that we, you know, it's pretty high level, the entire operating fund, not the level of detail that it's asking for here.

[02:05:39] I will say that I think as we move forward with this executive limitation and with that feedback, we can mock up a model that we can look at populating for the next cycle. So I appreciate the feedback.

[02:05:56] Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Dixit. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Dr. Reed. So one of the points Dr. Anderson just made about the dash -- the visibility of the data and the budget, not a lot of people are very good with numbers financially and just to understand the document.

[02:06:19] And when you were saying presenting that, I was thinking about how a dashboard would be helpful to create it on your FCPS budget website, and then it can link to different things. But overall, some people can see the graphics and understand it more.

[02:06:37] I am not clearly how it's going to work out, but that's something to explore. I think Fairfax County government uses the dashboard model. I think we saw that in one of their presentation when we were at the joint session.

[02:06:53] so that's a possibility yes ma'am we'll take a look at that i do remember that it was a we can take a look at that thank you very much seeing no others we will move on to the motion oh there it is sorry miss anderson i guess i should put these back on um while i was teaching at kansas state i had the joy of teaching my favorite students ever which were in the engineering department and one of the things that i did as liaison with the english department is i went in and i actually worked with students related to baldridge and i had student groups that were

[02:07:32] working on baldridge award applications for their particular departments so i know a little bit about the baldridge process so could you speak to a little bit about how you see us working with them in that amazing framework i can i um i really feel like it's a much more aspirational way of approaching really what you've asked for which is a review of efficiencies i think the follow-on motion was really thoughtful right we are responsible for a lot of money and it's really our community's money and I always take more seriously money that I'm

[02:08:11] responsible for in that sense and those resources really are what are going to support education of our future you know our children and making sure that we're wise stewards of those funds for our students staff families and communities is just a really important responsibility that we can't take lightly.

[02:08:30] I think the Baldrige Award provides an opportunity for us to look at all aspects of the division. It's very structured. It's a very disciplined approach over the indicators. I believe there are seven. It looks at all aspects of the division and allows us to really identify is the money and how we're spending the money and how we're making those decisions leading to the outcomes that we expect for our children, which is really our strategic plan.

[02:08:57] So I'm really looking forward to it being a piece that connects the strategic plan to our resources. It's based on a needs-based allocation model, and it should allow us, I think, when we do this well, to make better decisions on behalf of our students as well.

[02:09:13] So I'm just thrilled with that possibility, and I'm looking forward to the work and the process. - I just wanted to say that I wholeheartedly agree with all of that, and it's a heavy lift. - It is. But this process was always going to be a heavy lift to look at the different components of what we're doing.

[02:09:30] So I think using it within that framework of looking towards excellence and what Baldrige does particularly well is help you formulate the questions that you need in order to get to the next level. So I love that we're going to utilize a framework that exists. Thank you.

[02:09:47] Thank you, Ms. Anderson. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just two areas for questions. First one, I think I understand what you said about having a multi-year plan. This time, this year was just three years, but you want to end up going forward, you'll be able to provide five-year fiscal projections.

[02:10:06] Yes, sir. Was one of the reasons why we are only able to do three-year this year is upcoming, potentially collective bargaining? How that's going to affect? I don't think that was really, it's certainly a factor that's going to be new for us.

[02:10:23] think traditionally in the division we've only done three years I don't think we've ever done five years and I think when we looked at that that was the response miss burden and it helped me with that historical perspective yeah the the governor the the awards from ASBO and GFOA require that we provide three years three future years and so that's what we have provided for some time now for the last quarter century I think yeah okay okay I get that I get that however but this is in executive limitations for the five years that I

[02:10:59] didn't I didn't make that decision okay so that was you know one of the things I wondered as I was reviewing so well did I miss this five-year projection no it's only three okay and the next question is a little more a little more tricky one because you know obviously you know there is a gap between our advertised budget in terms of what you are asking from county side and when the county executive as a proposed and there's a 90 million dollar gap and if I look at the

[02:11:37] executive limitation number five under one B it is a development annual budget that is based on realistic assumptions and a current and ongoing assessment of of local, state, and federal funding sources.

[02:11:59] We rely on county board of supervisors for almost 70% of our funding. And when there is a $90 million of a gap like that, did you think, what kind of realistic assumptions did you make in coming up with your proposed?

[02:12:18] And we, board is responsible for passing it. So that is my biggest question at this point. And I'm also looking at, I was also looking at that PowerPoint presentations that was given to both school board and county supervisors back in November 28th, 2023.

[02:12:42] I was not part of that board. At the time, there were some assumptions, assumptions from school side, which were different from the ones you presented. For example, you had, we only had, back in November 28th, $17.1 million for enrollment and student needs, whereas I think it's a $40 million in your budget.

[02:13:11] So I'm talking about how those numbers came about and why the new numbers are so different from those numbers going back to November 28th. - So great questions, and I'm gonna start by saying that I believe the budget I presented was a needs-based budget.

[02:13:31] and again i think that fairfax county public schools we are a world-class division and we have to pay our educators in a world-class fashion there's just not a um and i don't think our board nor i nor probably anyone in the room is going to um think that that's not a needs-based budget at this point i think that's a critical uh cornerstone really of the work we're doing moving forward i will say that what we did in planning the budget is we sat down and looked at what was the historic percentage that we receive from Fairfax County Board of

[02:14:06] Supervisors in terms of the transfer the percentage of revenues and so what we know over the last five years is we've received 52.6 percent of those revenues as our transfer and in fact over the last 10 to 15 years that number was larger than 52.6 percent in actuality what's happened as we've calculated that is that it's only 51.4% at this time and had it been the 52.6% that we would have expected in the planning cycle that would be 63 million more dollars right now in the transfer from the county

[02:14:42] which would have taken us above 200 uh 200 million in the transfer then we really projected the state to provide based on early indications about i want to say lee i think i texted this evening we were hoping for another 40 million ish from the state we expected so the actual transfer request in the plan budget that I presented to the board the proposed budget was well within reason in my thinking and planning early on I will

[02:15:19] say that the numbers from the fiscal forecast to the proposed budget I know know we took another look at enrollment if you go back to our enrollment chart we've tended to level off more during the years and this year we've actually continued to grow in February I believe we were larger than we were in February 2020 even so the growth has kind of surprised us over the course of this year but I'll let miss burden maybe make a more specific comment in that specific number that you asked for the shift so miss burden and as far as the fiscal

[02:15:54] forecast goes you would know but we present that to the school board in early October and at that point we don't have enrollment projections for the upcoming year so the number that we used was just a guess we continue to have you know our special populations el kids frm kids and special education kids that grew faster than their general education but at the time of the fiscal forecast we don't have any enrollment data because the enrollment the planning

[02:16:30] department when they project enrollment you know they use the September 30 but it's it's it's as of September 30 but it's not actually due to the state until mid-october because it has to be reconciled and checked and all that and so at the time we presented to the fiscal forecast the school board we don't actually have enrollment projections in addition to that it's as Dr. Reed indicated the state revenue historically had been far greater and due to re-benchmarking and some of the items that we saw go way down with the governor's introduced budget but at that time of course we did not have any state

[02:17:07] revenue information back in October for the upcoming year so we made an estimate and it ended up being far less than that which increased our ask to the county appreciate your answers however I mean I still wonder why this joint meeting with the supervisors was November 28th only a little more than a month and a half before you had your numbers new numbers but because how the

[02:17:45] supervisors are looking at this 17.1 million for enrollment and student needs our new number is 46 that's an almost difference of 30 million dollars that's a huge chunk so it is you know if you aren't sure about the numbers back in november you should we should have told supervisors that those are numbers from nowhere well i don't think they were numbers from nowhere um the the calculation of the 17 versus the 30 do you have a better explanation lee on

[02:18:20] that yeah it's just a timing problem I mean we this is one of the challenges that we have every year that oftentimes by the time you know we don't want to of course get out in front of the school board so we do the fiscal forecast we present it to them in October the fiscal forecast joint meeting with the board of supervisors is always the last week of November and so I always have difficulty with that because by the time we present it I know better information but I can't I can't provide that information because the fiscal forecast that we did back in October is the official one and that is the one

[02:18:58] that we're presenting to the Board of Supervisors so it's always a little bit difficult because we do have better information by November 28th but we're not going to announce that and the school board has no idea as to what that new information is and certainly we don't want to usurp the superintendent's proposed budget process either. I think perhaps what I'm hearing because I think there's been a process that sort of has certain pragmatic steps right and the type of data we have early in October really evolves over the course of time and in this case I think perhaps this is an

[02:19:34] opportunity for us to sit down and look at do we want to look at this differently moving forward but I think for this year we followed the process that's traditionally been followed. MY TIME IS UP, SO I'M GOING TO REFRAME FROM ASKING MORE QUESTIONS.

[02:19:51] OKAY. THANK YOU, MR. MOON. I CALL ON MS. SEISMORHEISER FOR A MOTION. THANK YOU.

[02:20:07] I MOVE THAT THE BOARD FIND THAT THE SUPERINTENDENT HAS MADE ADEQUATE PROGRESS TOWARDS COMPLIANCE WITH EL5. IS THERE A SECOND? I SECOND. THANK YOU, MS. MARIN. MS. SEISMORHEISER WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR MOTION?

[02:20:22] YES, I WOULD. AND I APPRECIATE ALL OF MY COLLEAGUES' QUESTIONS AROUND THIS EL. THIS IS THE FIRST YEAR WE'RE PRESENTING THIS IN A NEW PROCESS. frankly love the transparency in terms of laying out what we expect for you from financial planning and laying out where our process has been which gives us I think new room to look at the process from fresh eyes and I want to really thank staff for their hard work in putting this together and all the hard work in doing this so thank you Ms. Byrd and Ms. Whittington and her staff as well I believe you made adequate progress towards this goal I think you made good progress towards this goal there is a lot here that you have including a multi-year plan a fiscal four class and it was three years this

[02:21:00] year but building towards that five years I really appreciate the fact that what you're presenting to us fits with what we're asking for which is student focus needs based reasonably aligned to our resources focusing on instruction compensation and aligned to the strategic plan I think those are all really really important pieces and I think the fact that you're this budget is almost entirely focused on instruction and changing enrollment needs and on compensation in an era of staffing shortages don't worry about what's going on over there I think is really really important and vital so I appreciate that and just to piggyback on what Miss Anderson said in response to

[02:21:40] that fall on motion which I think was very thoughtful but also a really big lift to come back with a plan I really appreciate that we're looking to use a Baldrige Awards for performance excellence process because not only does it look at efficiency it looks at effectiveness and it leaves room for us to be innovative and excellent right like being efficient without being excellent isn't necessarily the right thing right and being effective and inefficient isn't necessarily the right thing but excellence requires effectiveness efficiency and a level of aspiration right we don't we want to be the best we are and that's this framework allows us to do that so I

[02:22:20] think this is a great response to the fall on motion as well as the high standards that it sets and I like the fact there's a very clear process we can follow in applying this to this fall on motion really looking at our return on investment our kiddos learning and it's not just a process that's tailored for education it's a process that's used by effective organizations in a variety of industries so I think that is wonderful I do think that going through the exercise of the EL and the presentation has showed us some opportunity I think and I think that's always good because when you've been doing something in a

[02:22:58] similar way for many years sometimes you don't think about looking at it from a new lens and so I think this EL has given us a chance to look at some of these things from a new lens I look forward to a five-year fiscal forecast I hear this the struggles with enrollment and I think maybe there's an opportunity even look at even earlier on not just projected enrollment projected student NEED ALONG WITH ENROLLMENT, RIGHT, SO WE HAVE AN IDEA, BECAUSE I THINK THAT'S SOME OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES HERE, IT'S NOT JUST THE ENROLLMENT BUT IT'S THE SHIFTING NEED OF OUR STUDENTS. RIGHT. SO HAVING SAID THAT, I REALLY APPRECIATE THAT THIS IS QUITE A LENGTHY AND DETAILED EL AND I APPRECIATE QUITE THE INFORMATION

[02:23:37] THAT YOU HAVE PROVIDED TO ANSWER EACH ONE OF THE QUESTIONS. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH, THANK YOU YOUR STAFF AND LOOK FORWARD TO BUILDING ON THIS EXCELLENT WORK. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS. SEIZEMORE-HEISER. MS. MARIN WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR SECOND? Just briefly I'll say that I see evidence of fiscal oversight frugality where possible but high impact investments the evidence even tonight that you forward thought to fund our basal resources is clearly just the latest really latest example of the financial oversight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Miss Marin. See no others. We will go to a

[02:24:14] vote. All those in favor of the motion on the on the screen please raise your hand miss Sizemore hyzer Mr McDaniel Mr I can't see if his hand is up or not okay Miss Lady Miss Saint John Cunning Miss Marin Dr Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Dixit and myself all those opposed abstentions Mr McElveen and Mr Moon will the clerk read the vote that's nine yeses

[02:24:48] no no's two abstentions the motion carries thank you at this time the ward will take a few moments to document their individual feedback on this report school board members may complete the hard copy found at the dais or the online form linked in the meeting script if you have any issues accessing the online forum please contact the clerk the board will now take a 10 minute recess

[02:36:43] board members please return to your seats board members please return to your seats board members

[02:38:23] please return to your seats all right we have quorum at the dais so we will continue the next

[02:39:29] ORDER OF BUSINESS IS AGENDA ITEM 7.03 POLICY REVIEW FINANCIAL PLANNING EL5 FOLLOWING THE BOARD'S VOTE IN SEPTEMBER 2023 AND OUR VOTE AT OUR 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 AS NEEDED AT THIS TIME BOARD MEMBERS MAY PROVIDE COMMENTS on executive limitations number five financial planning to determine if any revisions are

[02:40:05] necessary as a reminder as i just said you're welcome to bring these suggestions at any time in fact if you do have suggestions you can workshop them with your colleagues in advance of meetings like this one so that everybody's prepared to have that conversation all right i call on mr mckelveen for a motion i move to the school board maintain executive limitation 5 financial planning as it is currently detailed in the strategic governance manual is there a

[02:40:42] second second miss anderson mr mckelveen would you like to speak to your motion uh no thanks thank you miss anderson would you like to speak to your second no thank you thank you um we will go ahead and go to a vote for the motion that is on the screen all those in favor of the motion on the screen raise your hand miss Sizemore heiser mr mckelveen miss lady miss st john cunning miss Maren, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixon, Mr. Moon, and myself. That's unanimous for everybody at the table.

[02:41:16] All right. Item 801, Academic Matters. I call on Dr. Reed. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and it's time for Academic Matters. So lots of excitement this evening as we talk about literacy development for our multilingual learners. You're going to hear a little bit different language about our multilingual learners. We've had some conversations and I'll be sharing some thoughts

[02:41:51] about that in my weekly reflections about how language matters in terms of how we talk about our students and the strengths they bring to the educational experience that we all get to share. So this evening I am thrilled to be talking about literacy development, particularly on the evening where you've adopted the Language Arts BASIL.

[02:42:16] I want to thank the staff that was part of that work. It's incredible work, very thoughtful work, and also want to thank staff this evening for putting together this presentation. One of the things that is important for you to know, and I think this evening we made very clear, is that we're going to make sure that we're going to be providing materials from the basal curriculum for the over 20% of our students who are multilingual learners.

[02:42:44] So we're really excited and we're going to focus on the work we're doing to support our multilingual learners this evening. So as we move to the first slide, and for those of you at home, this is attached to board docs. So one of the things we want to talk a little bit about is our multilingual student demographics.

[02:43:03] And you can see the demographic data from January of 2024. Again, we are now at 182.414, January 2024, we are at this particular moment 182.254. The largest circle, of course, that's represented.

[02:43:19] The next circle includes students with a home language that's other than English. And not all students that have a home language other than English are necessarily identified as multilingual learners for purposes of extra support.

[02:43:36] That would be that smaller circle, and just noting that as of January 31st here in Fairfax County Public Schools, we had 38,000 students who are identified as multilingual students and also receiving special supports in our county at levels one through four.

[02:43:56] One of the things that is really exciting, of course, is our equitable access to literacy plan and this evening one of the notes I took was that we want to make sure our parents are also very aware and including family liaisons in the training and materials.

[02:44:13] So hopefully we're also I know we're likely planning parent activities to share lots of excitement about that. But these high expectations that our bold new literacy plan is going to be nurturing are really for each and every one of our students.

[02:44:31] So we want to make sure that everyone understands we have the same high expectations for all our learners. And we're going to be continuing to provide strong supports for our multilingual learners. So one of the simple view of reading for our multilingual learners is there -- and I had to work some math in here -- so we have some math.

[02:44:52] Word recognition times language comprehension equals reading comprehension, right? So if we think about that, the word recognition really allows that oral language fluency. If you've ever worked with a struggling secondary reader, often the fluency level, it takes so long sometimes to sound out words and get through a sentence, you really lose the meaning and comprehension becomes more difficult.

[02:45:17] So we're really noting that our multilingual learners really have a much greater emphasis on this oral language development which then supports the reading comprehension. It's really important for both our classroom teachers and our teachers who work more traditionally with multilingual learners.

[02:45:40] Most recently I know Dr. Rich Polio is sharing with us that 89 percent of every teacher in our division works with a multilingual learner and that number continues to rise and as we think about that, that makes it really critical that all of our staff understand how effective strategies for multilingual learners are as we make sure that students are able to thrive in every course.

[02:46:08] The specific literacy support for English learners and multilingual students has to be explicitly taught and interactive practices, but this really explicit instruction in English language is critical to support literacy development and the new tools that you approve this evening will really provide those opportunities for our multilingual learners visuals colors charts anytime we can encourage and increase student voice and student talk in the classroom again is very important

[02:46:43] the picture you see in front of you on this slide is from another new promising practice here which is project GLAAD and it's really identifying those GLAAD strategies and integrating those really in every content area and instructional strategy that we've utilized and it's a best practice multilingual language strategy so I want to share a little bit about that again GLAAD stands for guided language acquisition design and this will really help support our teachers particularly teachers maybe who haven't had multilingual students in

[02:47:22] past because our multilingual student population is growing so some in some cases we have staff learning these strategies to be better able to connect with students currently in Fairfax County we have over 300 teachers that have been trained and we're we have more staff scheduled for training in the future so this evening you're really getting kind of a double dose here of tier one and tier two on our basal resources but the core resources are an essential practice for integrating the English language development across the

[02:48:00] curriculum and when as a as miss Clemenco indicated we are going to also be purchasing English language development resources so that we have a seamless integration and connection between our multilingual services and our classroom and content learning it's going to be very important finally I want to end with reminding our community that our multilingual learners are on a journey and they're simultaneously increasing their proficiency in English while they are also learning new grade level content.

[02:48:35] And I think about that, you know, having a first language and learning a new language is such a strength. And many of our students speak multiple languages, not just two. And it's just an opportunity, though, to also think about the content knowledge they need to be acquiring at that same time.

[02:48:56] So one of the things we know is that the more time English learners have practicing English, the better they perform academically. So as our multilingual learners have a better grasp of the English language, they're able to perform better in content areas.

[02:49:14] So that is academic matters this evening, Mr. Chair. Thank you Dr. Reed. I call on Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I'm happy to start with this chart because I think it's a very powerful one.

[02:49:30] It really speaks to the fact that not having English as a -- not being proficient in English is a temporary state because we see the trajectory is exactly where we want it to be. And our students who are former ELLs are performing at the same level as our students who have never been ELL.

[02:49:48] So that is something I think we cannot emphasize and share enough because I think it's uplifting there is light at the end of that tunnel because sometimes it is not seen that students who don't have language proficiency yet in English can perform at a high level and we're seeing that they can. I think what you're saying is so important because sometimes I think we have different expectations and when you look at this chart we have to remember we have to maintain the same high expectations for each and every one of our students. The level of support which goes to some of the budget differential in terms of increasing numbers of students who are multilingual who may need more support.

[02:50:27] And when we provide it, they are capable of achieving everything that they had hoped to. Absolutely. Thank you. On chart five, we talked about the literacy support for English teachers. Who is receiving this? Is this elementary primary or is it across the board K-12?

[02:50:46] At this time, it's been at 27 title one schools, which all of our title one schools except one i think are elementary so i'm guessing this is primarily an elementary but i'm going to defer to uh we have two middle schools that are title one rich that's right so this well the particular strategy that we showed in the i believe it's slide six uh about project glad that is what we're focused on title one schools however the strategies that dr. Rita shared and that you noticing on slide five our strategies

[02:51:21] that that our office and that we train all teachers in across in k-12 so these are strategies that teachers receive training either from their school-based instructional coaches or lead teachers we're also looking at more other than project glad there are other such as many people have talked about SIOP training in the past there is a so we are looking into other professional development models that we can use because you know as miss clinical mentioned earlier 6,000 elementary teachers we have 11,000 teachers over

[02:51:57] 11,000 teachers total this is also a long-term goal of training all teachers in these strategies okay so I that's so that's an expectation it will here's what going to say I believe that and we've taken this we've used this as an example in our Academy classes we had some of our music teachers came forward and said we want to have some of our classes back in Academy classes for credit and what we've said is if you include inclusive strategies within the course you want

[02:52:34] for credit within the Academy for teachers earning I don't know what they're called here clock hours some kind of continuing credit hours and so what I would expect is that when we present our new basal reading literacy curriculum professional development that these strategies should be embedded and included within that professional development in other words I don't think we have time nor do our staff have the energy to take multiple types of professional development so my expectation would be that our universal

[02:53:11] design for learning strategies the GLAAD strategies are embedded integrated in part of how we present how we're going to be presenting the new basal curriculum so rather than have multiple classes to sign up that's just gonna be how we do our work well that definitely makes it more efficient because time is of the essence and I think former board member Omay she will be so pleased to hear that the universal design the UDL is going to be part of this training just dropping down to slide 6 that talks about the guided language acquisition design you

[02:53:47] mentioned that this is targeting the 27 title one schools how many teachers are we looking at to be trained and glad because I see how many we have so far but how many more do we have to go I can't tell you the exact total number of title one teachers but I know right now we are working on we have a plan for 300 additional teachers next year we're basically working with one grade level at a time at multiple schools so sometimes two grade levels per school and so it will take a few years but we have we're

[02:54:21] we are continuing with project glad we're all in with project cloud for now for the next few years okay so you said it will take a few years what do we anticipate that timeline being five years six years i think we need to sit down and pencil that out and get really clear about that i think I think the many of the GLAD strategies they are a finite number we can integrate into professional development that we're going to do for this literacy and I think it'd be a huge missed opportunity an HMO huge missed opportunity if we don't do that at this juncture because we're

[02:54:57] going to miss I'm sorry is that a new thing it is a new thing in HMO it would be a huge missed opportunity if we don't integrate those strategies into this proof of professional development okay

[02:55:07] I'm glad to hear that. And as you're talking about penciling out that timetable, I would just plead with you to please do that with a sense of urgency, because we have students here who are struggling. And if this is a promising practice, I would like it to be in front of them sooner rather than later. And if we have and I have no idea how many teachers we have here, but if it's 10,000 teachers, two, 300 a year just makes it a lot harder, I think, to reach the milestones that we have in our strategic PLAN WHICH IS TO HAVE THOSE INCREASES OF THIRD GRADE READING BECAUSE WE HAVE FIVE POINTS THIS

[02:55:44] YEAR BUT IT'S RAMPING UP AND IF WE COULD TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT SOONER RATHER THAN LATER I WOULD APPRECIATE IT. YES MA'AM. THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR THIS AND HMO I THOUGHT WAS WHAT I HAD WITH MY DOCTOR BUT I'VE LEARNED SOMETHING NEW TONIGHT. YES MA'AM. THANK YOU DR.

[02:55:59] ANDERSON. MISS DIXIT. THANK YOU MR. CHAIR. DR. REED. ACTUALLY I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO A VIDEO like you shared last time because it's really uh good to see the kids actually doing something and performing in sports or anything like that so but my question i'm an english learner myself and um when these kids come from in like any country and they're um obviously i i had learned in english in india but i'm just saying a lot of kids come without any english knowledge they come to school and I've seen them with very curious eyes they want to look they

[02:56:38] want to be they belong they want to belong they want to talk to everyone and I've seen the support given one-on-one at elementary school level I'm talking 10 years ago or so and this kid to transform is from I think one of the Middle East countries and he just he was like a little lost child like trying to understand what to do and then just few months and he was talking like he was born here I was so surprised to see that transformation and and I'm sure this is this these are like common day stories especially Marcia and and you know some

[02:57:16] of my colleagues have worked in school this is a very common thing they saw so I just wanted to ask that some title one schools what are the resources given under this project GLAAD. So I'm hearing from Center Ridge Elementary that they have like kids speaking like 40 different dialects.

[02:57:38] They're having a lot of, they're a little bit struggling there with, you know, providing the support. So I think that we, in fact, Ms. Clamenco and I were recently discussing what extra supports we can provide even as we roll out the new literacy basal resource.

[02:57:58] I think that's top of mind right now. Do we have a Title I school response, Rich, to kind of what we're doing or Dr. Ponce? I know you've been working with some of our schools with English language programming as well because we're looking at that model. I know you and Rich met. I don't know if you have anything you want to add to how we're supporting Title I schools with our multilingual supports.

[02:58:22] I was about to send the whole number of teachers that we have in Title I. We are working, still counting all of them, but we have been working together. We are going to work and kind of standardize practices in all Title I because as you work in different Title I's, they utilize the money differently.

[02:58:49] And this is what we are trying to do to make sure that, Because all of them are receiving resources, but also remember some principles, because in the way that were designed, they spend a little bit differently than others.

[02:59:05] That's why when you go to Title I schools, you see different resources, and not necessarily because they don't have it or they did not receive it, because they utilize it differently. But that's why we are working together to make sure that they standardize practices.

[02:59:21] Thank you, Dr. Ponce. rich anything else you want to add to that well I'll just say that project excuse me project GLAAD is we are focused specifically on title one schools with project cloud because it is a more intensive professional development journey for each teacher so these strategies as dr. Reed said our goal is to embed strategies using UDL over the next few years for all teachers with this specific program it is research-based it's it's been around for number of years out of California New Mexico and we found that so the teachers

[03:00:00] the reason why it is taking we're doing a few hundred teachers at a time is it's a two-day like classroom training and then four days of observation these are strategies that are used throughout the day typically in content area during content time so it will not overlap with the time that students are that teachers are using the basal resources and during language arts block this is typically done during math social studies or science project cloud strategies because we want our English learners our multilingual learners to understand content and so these strategies are critical for that content understanding so it doesn't mean that we can't use these strategies we can't

[03:00:39] roll this out quicker in other ways this particular promising practice this particular program is more of an intense and so we wanted to use a finite number of schools for these first few years Center Ridge being one of them

[03:00:54] to your point. Thank you so much. Thank you Dr. D. Thank you. Thank you Ms. Dixit. Ms. Sizemore Heiser. Yeah just briefly. First thank you very much for this information. I'm glad to see very targeted work for our English language learners around literacy interventions and literacy education. So a couple just quick questions. Just one thing I wanted to point out. I know you mentioned it but the fact that 48.2% of our students have a home language speak a home language other than English I think is really important data point that I just wanted to lift up to just and then I

[03:01:31] noticed in slide 7 it talks about some of the purchase of benchmark express talks about leveraging culture and first language knowledge and fostering learner agency and I would love to know and if you don't know tonight a follow-up how are we leveraging students culture and how are we ensuring that what we're doing with this literacy material or other is culturally competent and also culturally competent of sort of our families and the family engagement piece.

[03:02:01] I think we can certainly add to that. I know Ms. Klomenko you likely have a response to that. My response would be I will take the grace of a little time to make sure I can give you a full response. Yeah I just it just struck out to me because I think as someone and I know I'm not the only one at this table who was there but someone who was an English language learner and for whom English was not my first language. I think having an awareness of what that feels like and a cultural competency that goes along with that in a perspective taking perhaps would go a long way in terms of the success of our

[03:02:37] interventions and success of our programming so I just was curious to learn a little more about how it fosters learner agency and then I'm assuming with project GLAAD which looks wonderful the reason we're focusing on title one schools is because you've done the data on the correlation between English language learners and title one schools and I'm seeing there's more concentration of English learners at Title I schools I just wanted to I believe that we are looking at the elementary schools that have the highest concentration of multilingual learners that's correct thank you that's that was just one of my things I know Title I schools are based on free and reduced price meal populations and so I wanted to make sure that data was done that

[03:03:17] it's a higher concentration of English or multilingual learners I should correct yes and it sounds like a wonderful program those are really my two main questions and I'd love it maybe offline at some point to understand the one around the cultural aspect to some of the materials we bought yes ma'am thank you miss Sizemore heiser mr. moon thank you mr. chairman I thank you for the presentation I right this is one of the things I true I really cared about and especially what I saw on page number four at the bottom was what I had on my

[03:03:53] mind for many many many years to talk about how English learners require a greater emphasis on oral language development so they can obtain sufficient language proficiency which in turn will allow reading comprehension i know you know we all know that the needs of english language learners are diverse all depending upon uh you know where they came from what educational backgrounds you know one may have and et cetera but especially those who come come to the U.S. as teenagers at the later stage, as opposed to those who are born but still language, second language, English language learners,

[03:04:33] or those who come here from very early age, kindergarten, even before that, that for those students who come at the later age, language development, it's not just developing the language, also develops their confidence in adapting to a new culture, environment, new life, and for many of them, many of them, they need to really focus on their oral language development. They may already have some reading and

[03:05:08] writing, especially reading skills, but many of them lack their oral language skills. And what I see as an area for improvement for school system to do, it's not I know it's not just on the part of the school system's job to do it but when I see your students of a certain background certain language background trust amongst themselves instead of

[03:05:44] instead of be you know instead of a interacting with the native speakers they just because they've they lack confidence in being able to communicate in English language with the native speakers IF THEY ARE ONLY A STAY WITH THOSE WHO SPEAK THEIR NATIVE TONGUE. THAT'S WHERE I THINK WE NEED TO DO A BETTER JOB OF ENCOURAGING THOSE STUDENTS FIND A WAY TO DEVELOPED ORAL LANGUAGE SCARES. YES, SIR. THANK YOU, MR. MOON.

[03:06:19] MS. ST. JOHN CUNNING. THANK YOU. I JUST HAVE A FEW COMMENTS. I'M REALLY GLAD, NO PUN INTENDED, TO SEE THAT WE'RE DOING THIS AND THAT THERE'S SUCH AN EMPHASIS ON A STRONG EMPHASIS ON TRAINING OUR TEACHERS. AND I KNOW THAT NEW Mexico has had a lot of success with this type of a program my family's from Mexico and I know that those schools have been really successful in helping multilingual students I'm a bilingual bilingual person that grew up bilingual II and to what mr. Moon was saying and to the science of language

[03:06:56] acquisition the first step is comprehension and the next step you know it's is oral so the fact that we're following the science of how we acquire language to going to that is really important so I'm really happy to see this one of the things I want to stress when we were looking at the graph which is page number eight is that we have students that come to us from countries from very very different academic backgrounds and we have some that have had very little schooling, interrupted schooling, and very high levels of schooling.

[03:07:35] It's unfortunate that sometimes just because they don't speak the language, they can't demonstrate their knowledge, and the tests are in English, even though they may understand the content. So I think sometimes these graphs don't tell the full story, and I just wanted to point that out because I've seen some kids that actually come in and say, "Wow, this is really easy work they understand the content area they just can't demonstrate it and just kudos to our ESOL teachers because they're dealing with that spectrum of kids and so I just wanted to stress that I wanted to stress that we're all so fortunate in Fairfax to have some of

[03:08:14] our immersion programs which help some of our kids and to have kids that already have a language it's a strength and they're learning a second language and as you say some of them come to us bilingual with different languages, two other languages other than English.

[03:08:31] And in the end, the science shows that you may be behind initially, but then because of how your brain works and the connections, you will be ahead of a monolingual person. So I'm just really happy to see this. I'm really glad that we're basing our program with these students on an evidence-based approach.

[03:08:55] AND I'M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO LOOKING AT THE MATERIAL. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MISS ST. JOHN CUNNING. SEEING NO OTHERS, WE WILL MOVE ON TO THE NEXT AGENDA ITEM AND I INVITE COLLEAGUES TO TURN THEIR LIGHTS OFF FOR THE NEXT ONE. ALL RIGHT. NEXT UP, AGENDA ITEM 8.02, SUPERINTENDENT MATTERS.

[03:09:17] I DRAW OUT THE CALLING OF DR. REED. THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR. WHAT A FUN WEEK IT'S BEEN. WE'RE NOW IN MARCH, RIGHT?

[03:09:33] So that's exciting. It's been a lot of events. I've seen a lot of board members at a number of our events. Last evening was one such event. We had our SEPTA-hosted twice-exceptional event with our Special Education Parent Teacher Association, two E-Families.

[03:09:51] And it was quite a crowd. We had a lot of folks in person and online. I appreciate the board members who took time to be there as well. Last week, I had a chance to speak at our FCPS Equity Institute. Dr. King's team put on a fabulous day of training and reflection for over 350 school-based and central office-based equity leads. The theme this year was building bridges, breaking barriers, and how to build connections across diverse communities. It was extraordinarily well attended and the topic of universal design for learning was an initiative that we talked about

[03:10:29] within the Equity Institute so it was an excellent opportunity. I also want to mention that I had the opportunity to attend several basketball games which of course were amazing. Our Centerville girls played very well and our South Lakes boys and Hayfield boys had an amazing game the other night and our Southlake boys I believe are playing in the state championship Saturday at 1 o'clock in Richmond and I look forward to cheering our Seahawks on there the Seahawks right our Seahawks on go Seahawks that comes easy from Seattle

[03:11:07] this past weekend had a chance to be at the real food for kids culinary challenge and I am amazed at the things our students can cook up and a number of our schools also received awards um Mr. Smith and Dr. Ponce and I had a chance and Mr. Sacco to be there um we had winning entry teams from South Lakes High School Luther Jackson Middle School also and um just a lot of excitement a lot of food uh last week on Monday uh just a really

[03:11:43] moving event uh the Dr. Larry Bussey Family and Community Library dedication and the Bussey family was there and joined a number of uh staff it was just a really nice evening to reflect on the contributions of dr bussey and the um legacy he's left for our community and um also had a chance to visit and speak at the lunar new year chinese new year festival here in this room uh last week so at that point i've had a chance to visit stenwood elementary westgate elementary

[03:12:17] franklin sherman elementary um and there's just a lot going on so lots of excitement and um also want to just give a shout out to annandale adams head adam sean de rose who received the 2024 northern virginia educational leadership award from leadership fairfax so i'm sure principal de rose is watching this evening i just want to give him a shout out And the Adams are definitely in good hands.

[03:12:47] So and then finally, I had a chance to attend the district 11 music assessment briefly, and we have some great musicians. So if you haven't had a chance to get out to a concert recently, make some time. We've got some extraordinarily talented young people, as well as our reflection art awards.

[03:13:07] So anyhow, have at it. And that's superintendent matters, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Dr. Reed. up next we have agenda item 8.03 fy 2024 third quarter budget review i call on dr reed thank you mr chair i am thrilled to have our chief financial officer miss lee burton present the third quarter budget um report although i would be remiss if i didn't say a big thank you to our social workers

[03:13:44] it is National School Social Work Week so thank you to all our social workers as well and Dr. or Ms. Burton take the third quarter budget report away I'm really excited to hear this one and good evening Chairman Frisch school board members and Dr. Reed the third quarter review offers an opportunity to revise the fiscal 24 budget based on any additional revenue that was received and make other adjustments as needed the purpose of the quarterly budget reviews to provide school board with information about the funds under their control and allow budget

[03:14:19] an opportunity to review all school department and centralized budgets to determine if any adjustments are needed we do this three times a year mid-year which is in december third quarter which is in march and then year end which happens in july section one provides revenue adjustments and reflects the funding that was received from a settlement from a class action lawsuit against a vape manufacturer of 3.2 million the recommended expenditure changes which align with

[03:14:54] the revenue are also 3.2 million and we are recommending an allocation to the safety and security screening pilot of 3.2 million recall that at year end we allocated 3 million to the safety and security screening pilot and we're proposing recommending that we add an additional $3.2 million to that project at third quarter.

[03:15:19] Also recall that the $6.7 million was included in the fiscal 23 year-end to fund continued enhanced summer school. At the time of year-end, plans were incomplete for summer school 24, the upcoming summer.

[03:15:36] Program locations were not available yet. Potential participation hadn't been projected. Thus, these funds, the $6.7 million at year end, reside in the operating fund. Since then, of course, plans have solidified, and the summer school program needs an allocation from the funds set aside at year end, which requires a transfer from the operating fund to the summer school fund, which is a sub-fund in the grants fund.

[03:16:01] Staff has calculated the amount of additional funds needed to serve 35,000 students at 73 sites, And then section three reflects that transfer, approximately half of the set aside funds are needed at 3.3 million, and this budget change merely moves half of the set aside funds from the operating to summer school, which is what the intended purpose was.

[03:16:26] The remaining pages detail changes to other funds and other supplemental information. We have eight other funds, and they're all multi-year funds, which that just means that funds flow from year to year with fund balance stabilization reserves as appropriate.

[03:16:45] Generally, and with this third quarter, we are recognizing authorized bond proceeds for school construction, and then we have some increases to existing grants or new grants in food services, ACE, and the grant fund.

[03:17:02] and there are no changes to the other fund. That's it. Thank you, Ms. Burden. All right. We appreciate your time. We will move on to the next agenda item. Thank you.

[03:17:24] Agenda item number nine, consent agenda. Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure, Robert's Rules, provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion. Many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and in the public in advance.

[03:17:44] Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. The consent agenda is on the screen. Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Hearing and seeing no objection, the consent agenda is approved.

[03:18:01] Agenda item 10, new business. The following are new business agenda items. There will not be a vote on these items this evening, but action is scheduled at a future meeting. Agenda item 11, board committee reports. I will now call on committee chairs to speak if they have anything to report.

[03:18:22] Audit committee chair, Mr. McIlvain, do you have anything to report? Just to report that our committee met a couple Mondays ago and we went over the annual audit plan, among some other things. Not too much going on at audit land right now.

[03:18:38] Thank you. Thank you very much. Governance chair, Ms. Seismar-Hyser, do you have anything to report? I do. The governance committee has been busy at work. After the forum topic that the board passed in early February, I want to say, we have been working to come up with a timeline for reviewing policy 8130.

[03:18:59] And we've been, so our timeline is for governance to have that policy review and revision complete by May of this year for them to move on to the board for a work session and further from there. So we have quite a bit of work ahead of this committee between now and May to do that.

[03:19:14] We have our next meeting next week, and we're gonna start with developing our first revision policy 8130 to then um continue then we'll reach out to all the rest of the board members to hear their input and feedback before developing further drafts so yeah thank you Ms. Sizemore Heiser budget committee chair Dr. Anderson do you have a report yes I do and I wish it was a happier one um obviously we've all been abreast of what's happening in the budget and we know that the county has decided to advertise a real estate tax rate um last Tuesday which is the four cents which

[03:19:49] will not help us to bridge the gap except unless the percentage changes so we still are facing an 89 million dollar gap we are hoping that any additional state funding the conferees are expected to complete their work by the end of this week I think the deadline is noon tomorrow hopefully that's done tomorrow if not then Saturday and hopefully that will help us bridge the gap It is likely that the board will have to have some conversations regarding reducing the FY25

[03:20:23] budget if we do not have that cushion be met by the state. And once the state and local funding levels are finalized in early spring, the superintendent, if we still need to make some reductions, will be providing typically some recommendations for the board's consideration.

[03:20:43] And it will be a challenging discussion, but I think we need to be prepared for that. That is kind of the scenario I think we're looking at at this point. Thank you, Dr. Anderson, a successful children and youth policy team.

[03:21:00] Either Dr. Anderson or Miss St. John Cunning, do you have a report? Miss St. John Cunning. We met this week and we're preparing for our upcoming public meeting. We're trying to flesh out the agenda. Some of the highlights we discussed were the opioid crisis addressing chronic absenteeism and how we could get community involvement with that.

[03:21:22] We're still trying to flesh that out, but it was a very productive conversation. Thank you, Ms. St. John Cunning. Agenda item number 12, board matters. Next on the agenda is board matters. I would call on each school board member to speak. Dr. Anderson, you're up first this week. Just so people know, the clerks have envisioned this ingenious method of making every one of us first at some point, and it just slowly moves down the dais.

[03:21:55] So if you were last, one day you will be first, and so you'll get your turn. And I will go ahead with Ms. St. John Cunning. We'll come back to Dr. Anderson. Okay.

[03:22:14] Well, first of all, I can't say enough about our constituent, little Olivia, that presented to us today. And I want to thank her and her parents and her sister for being here, as well as her assistant principal Jason Potten from West Springfield Elementary School.

[03:22:32] I want to also highlight that a Walt Whitman Middle School student was a senate page in Richmond. He is an eighth grade student. His family is military and they are currently stationed at Fort Belvoir. He was selected as a senate space page by Scott Serval's office. He is one of 26 senate pages currently serving on the general assembly floor. The application process started in October and RJ was notified of his appointment in December. He began living in Richmond during the week in January and his last day as a page is this Friday March 8th. Also I want to for those basketball fans we're going to

[03:23:10] have the Kingstown Cup this Friday on March 8th. Boys and girls teams from Hayfield and Twain will meet for the fourth time on the basketball court at the Kingstown Cup. The Kingstown Cup was first played on March 2019 and the event was created to heighten respective student body's sense of belonging in their schools.

[03:23:27] Whether you were an athlete or on the court, participating in the pep band, singing the national anthem, or simply rooting in the stands, everyone, even for just one evening, can be connected to one another. And I have to wear green and orange for both teams that night. The middle school district orchestra assessment this weekend, March 8th and 9th, had four schools and 26 ensembles will participate and be scored for their performances.

[03:23:53] This is a celebration of the amazing music education happening in the greater Alexandria area. Mr. Martin Garfield Levine is the director of the orchestra at Mark Twain Middle School is this year's event chair. Thank you to Miss Alicia Day Jeff Jeff Colin I sorry I mispronounced that from West Potomac High School for her role as a host.

[03:24:13] So a lot of great things going on in Franconia. Thank you Miss St. John Cunning Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Yesterday I had the honor to attend also with Mr. Moon, the Fan Quest Special Olympics basketball game at Annandale High School where the Adams took on the Justice Wolves.

[03:24:35] It was so exciting and so amazing. I absolutely loved it. The kids cheered so hard and they had amazing lighting. It was a fantastic opportunity. Last week I also had the opportunity to read to some enthusiastic students at Braddock Elementary schools through the Readathon to the Read on Young Readers program.

[03:24:58] This is a program that was founded to mitigate the potential reading for English language loss for students due to remote learning during the COVID pandemic. This program has expanded to include in-person readings in addition to the virtual program and it currently exists at Mason Crest Elementary and Braddock Elementary and they are looking to expand further.

[03:25:19] Two weeks ago, Falls Church High School held an open house to showcase the renovation and progress to the community. Because the open house was on a school board night, Mr. Frisch and I were unable to attend, but I did manage to have a sneak peek, and it's a fantastic, fantastic, fantastic space.

[03:25:40] The labs are tremendous and top of, you know, state of the art, just a wonderful facility. So I'm very excited that our students are going to be able to see some of the new things rather than just living through just the construction. Annandale High School was recently recognized for its exceptional newsletter, the Annandale Community Insider, the awards of communication and excellence to celebrate the creation of exceptional websites, newsletters, and social media content.

[03:26:08] So again, go Adams, as well to say congratulations to Mr. DeRose for his award because he's doing some really great things there. I do want to highlight some students. Last month, senior Simone Pendleton became Falls Church's girls basketball all-time leading scorer when she hit 1,316 points.

[03:26:30] She was also named to first team all-region National District Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year. Congratulations to you, Simone. Also, congratulations to state swim champions from Justice High School, Emma Redmond, in both the 100-yard breaststroke and the 200-yard individual medley.

[03:26:52] In the girls' 200-yard freestyle relay team, Claire Coughlin, Annika Wendland, Reagan Kamshor, and Emma Redman, they rock. And I also have the opportunity to see these girls swim all throughout the summer because we're in the same pool and they coach my daughter.

[03:27:08] Also, congratulations to Mason District student Victoria Bujorno from Edison High School, who received the award of merit for her photograph for photography in Virginia's PTA's Reflections Art Contest. So great things are happening in the Mason District.

[03:27:25] Thank you, Dr. Anderson, Miss Lady. So Ramadan starts Sunday at sundown. And so I just want to uplift those in our community who observe. Also to echo Dr. Reed, it's National School Social Worker Week. We thank you for all you do.

[03:27:41] So often constituents ask me how they can share their thoughts on issues important to their family and students. Right now we have several ways for you to do that. Please join FCPS at the next Community Conversations on Opioids on March 18th at 6:30 at Lake Brannock High School. Also, we have two budget Drainsville Town Halls coming up.

[03:28:00] One is this coming Monday the 11th. That will be with Supervisor Bierman and myself and our CFOs. And we will be at the McLean Community Center at 7:00 on March 11th. And we will be at Herndon High School on Monday, March 18th for a second Town Hall.

[03:28:15] Also, we invite you to complete the family engagement survey, which has been sent to parents on March 3rd via email because your feedback helps us best support our students. We also will be doing community conversations again this year, and those will commence in April. And then on to some school news. Today, I visited Hutchison Elementary School with Archiva School's Dr. Ponce.

[03:28:36] Thank you to Principal Ayala and her staff for such an in-depth look at their programs to address the needs of their students. It was wonderful to see their practices at work in the classroom across all grade levels. Congratulations to over 700 FCBS winners of the 2024 Regional Scholastic Art Award, including winners from Herndon High School, Langley and McLean.

[03:28:55] Special congratulations to Meredith Yu, Langley High School, whose piece "Shake It Off" was nominated as one of the five best in show American Visions Awards. An exhibition of gold key and silver key winning pieces will be displayed at Northern Virginia Community College, Ernst Community Cultural Center in Annandale now through March 14th.

[03:29:13] McLean High School, Shanley High School, and West Springfield High School among 28 schools nationwide selected as recipients of the 2024 first amendment press freedom award for mclean high school this is the ninth win and the seventh consecutive award congratulations to the highlanders also want to congratulate the mclean high high school quiz bowl team who won the state title finally i invite constituents to visit the mclean project for the arts in the mclean community center to view two other art exhibits the langley pyramid youth art show now through march 11th and the mclean pyramid march art show from march 13th through the 30th featuring

[03:29:47] work by students elementary through high school and both pyramids thank you thank you miss lady mr mckelveen pass thank you miss Sizemore heiser thank you um i'm really excited uh this week i got a chance along with my colleague miss anderson to attend the west springfield high school ptsa meeting and talk all things capacity and other issues related to west springfield i also attended virtually the septa 2e meeting last night and i graduated septa for another great meeting on 2e

[03:30:24] issues and i know i have dr reid's promise that there's more work coming on that and so i'm excited to see um that great work um i am so sorry i missed annandale's fan quest this week i had a conflict but i'm really excited to attend both lake braddock and robinson's fan quests both on friday night so it's going to be quite the trick to stop by one and then run to the other and And luckily, they're only three miles apart.

[03:30:49] So for those who don't know, FanQuest, it's an amazing, phenomenal event. So come on out to Lake Braddock or Robinson Friday night. I also wanted to thank Miss Olivia, the student who spoke earlier in support of Disability Awareness Week. And I have actually invited her to come back for our next meeting when I'm bringing a proclamation on neurodiversity celebrations and asked her to come speak again.

[03:31:11] So I hope she takes me up. And I told her it would make my night if she does. So I hope she, right. And then I want to congratulate Irving Middle School, who was recently recognized as a WUSA 9 Eco Challenge winner. It's an opportunity for local schools to win $5,000 in Washington Gas to make their eco-friendly projects a reality.

[03:31:30] So they use donated and recycled items to build an aquaponics system, which is really phenomenal that our kids are doing that. West Springfield High School was one of three high schools, along with Chantilly McLean, to receive the Journalism Education Association's 2024 First Amendment Press Freedom Award.

[03:31:50] And this is the second consecutive award for West Springfield High School. So congratulations to the Spartans on recognizing how to support, teach and protect First Amendment rights with an emphasis on student run media. And it's super, super exciting.

[03:32:05] And last but certainly not least, I'd like to lift up that Woodson High School's drama class will present a public performance of The Last Firefly, free for any student. pay what you can ticket option for parents on one day only Saturday, March 9th at 10:00 a.m. It is the fantastic story of Boom, a child of thunder and a mythical adventure about discovering one's inner strength.

[03:32:28] So for those you're interested in Boom and mythical adventures and discovering your inner strength, please check out Woodson. It is recommended for grades two and above. So just as FYI there. And the last thing I wanted to mention is I want to congratulate the following Braddock district schools for earning a VHSL state championships we have Robinson secondary class 6 golf Woodson high school e-sports rocket league in non-VHSL activities Robinson symphonic band has been recognized as Virginia music educators select performing ensemble group and I'd also like to recognize the boys 400 meter swim relay from lake Braddock for

[03:33:06] breaking not just a lake Braddock school record but a VHSL state record the congratulations to the super fast swimmers at lake braddock so with that i am looking forward forward to a weekend of fun events at um fan quest and um i hope you all have a wonderful weekend thank you thank you miss sizemarheiser mr moon thank you mr chairman i thought about passing just like my colleague mr mackerbean but i i must point out that uh oh by the way dr reed the a lunar new year celebration

[03:33:42] you and i along with some other board members attended uh a those outside the chinese community called that lunar new year celebration as opposed to chinese new year mr mckelby might call it chinese new year but i don't so so having said that i am going down to richmond this saturday i don't know who else is going besides dr reed i expect to see her just to uh a really be a good cheerleader i did go to south lakes high school yesterday to pick up a couple of t-shirts so i'm gonna be i'm

[03:34:20] gonna be proudly wearing seahawks t-shirts down in richmond thank you mr moon miss dixit thank you mr chair and yeah thank you for all the community members parents students principal and staff who participated in the sully district budget town hall with the supervisor kathy smith i'm grateful for your input and thoughtful comments um it was a good turnout we really had a good conversation good questions coming that day. Miss Lieberton was there with Alice. So

[03:35:00] I also I wanted to talk about the proclamation today on Women's History Month. I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the women's making history in our schools including my colleagues in the school board office and on the FCPS leadership team. Approximately 75 percent of our nation's teachers workforce is made up of women i honor their passion hard work and resilience i'm very proud of the students on shantley high school our winning the 10th consecutive first amendment press

[03:35:35] freedom award for journalistic excellence is very just amazing um our two other fcps winner of this award of mclean high school and west high west springfield high school Congrats to them all. Thank you so much. Good night. Thank you, Miss Dixit. Miss Anderson.

[03:35:55] First, I want to say thank you to the Cherry Run kiddos that came and sang to us tonight. They did a beautiful job and it was really exciting to see them. I have a few other things to share. I'm pleased to have co-sponsored two annual Fairfax Job Teen Fairs or Teen Job Fairs.

[03:36:13] One that was last weekend at Chantilly High School and one is this weekend at West Springfield High school from 11 to 1 and it is open to all teens in Fairfax County. It was really cool to see all the different businesses that are out there interacting with our kids. The Chantilly High School Technology Student Association is holding a tech fair that I'm particularly excited about on Saturday, March 16th from 10 to 2 in that cafeteria and they're going to have slime, elephant toothpaste, Ozobots, like all the stuff that I am really love doing and the entrance fee

[03:36:49] is five dollars and all proceeds go to the American Cancer Society. I was grateful to join the Lake Braddock Secondary School Autistic Student Association last week at their meeting to hear their concerns and suggestions proving what I already know that we have some amazing students who have a wealth of knowledge that we need to do more to tap into. I've also been welcomed for school visits by some of our amazing principals. I was able to visit Lewis High School, Chantilly High School, and Greenbrier East and West Elementary Schools. I was also able to swing by the recent instructional job fair at Lake Braddock a few weeks ago. It was really exciting

[03:37:27] to see our school staff working together to show all that our county has to offer for new applicants. And last but not least, I had an amazing conversation with one of our own staff members in the last few days that's doing amazing work in the world related to education for students about hazing in memory of her cousin adam i would like to thank dr reed for highlighting her work in the last week um to staff and courtney thank you for your time and i can't wait to see where we can go from here thank you miss anderson miss marron i am accepting invitations for music in our schools

[03:38:01] month events thank you to our music educators um education would be flat without music and if you If you get that pun, thank a music teacher. So I was disappointed to miss Marshall Road Elementary's International Night, which was tonight. I went last year and it was phenomenal.

[03:38:18] Tomorrow I'm starting the day bright and early actually with this lady over at Madison High School to hear about their grading approaches, something that I'm really interested in. I hope the board will continue to look at our grading policy and discuss grading practices in the near future. In the evening I'm headed to Herndon High School for their Heritage Night, featuring the step team that I saw perform last month at the Herndon Library, among other performances and things.

[03:38:40] Yes, Southlakes High School basketball, I am going to be there to cheer on the Seahawks because they're not only my constituents but my fifth grader budding basketball playing Seahawks son would not want to miss it. So it's very exciting. It's the first time I think in 20 years that they're going. So Hayfield has been a tough competitor the last two years.

[03:38:59] So I wanted to share some praise for incredible athletic and artistic achievements, some of which I've had the opportunity to see, the Scholastic Art Awards last night, really, as Dr. Ponce said in his opening remarks, they really just reveal what our students are feeling and experiencing, and it's really just an amazing window to see our students' thoughts and experiences, and with generous scholarships from our community, like the Vienna Art Society and the League of Reston Artists and Arts Fairfax, so it's really a spectacular event at Nova Community College, which graciously hosts it.

[03:39:29] Southlake's Pyram is also hosting more art at both Reston Community Center locations and I'll be there on Sunday and Thursday for those events. We have athletes in our community, the fastest four runners in Virginia history in the four by 800 on the track team out of Southlake's High School, Aya, Catalina, Caroline, and Bella.

[03:39:50] And I also had some good conversations this week about 2E, twice exceptional learning. I know Dr. Reed had her conversation that I could make while I was at the Scholastic Art Awards, but my appointee to the Advanced Academic Advisory Committee filled me in on the work happening there and I would love for our board to talk about that more in depth. I know we all have ideas and passions. Finally, Ramadan Mubarak for those who are celebrating this upcoming holiday. Good night. Thank you, Ms. Marin. I'll take my turn. This week I had an opportunity to visit a school bus stop in Mantua to talk with some parents about their concerns over some road safety and student pedestrian safety

[03:40:27] issues. It was, I very much appreciated their candid feedback and being able to be there on hand for that conversation. Last week I had an opportunity to judge the artwork for the Regional Scholastic Art Awards and like Miss Marin said it was such a delight to see the talented work of our students and you can see it too through March 12th at Virginia Community College at Northern Virginia Community College in the Ernst Community and Cultural Center. I was also able to to observe our government students at Woodson High School as they presented and debated legislation

[03:41:06] as part of their annual student congress. The League of Women and Voters were also on hand registering eligible young voters for this election, so that was nice to see. This weekend I am volunteering with Food for Others right here at Luther Jackson Middle School. They play a vital role in addressing food insecurity throughout Fairfax County, going above and beyond to serve our communities and make a positive impact in the lives of many students and their families.

[03:41:35] They are just such a caring and committed force in our community and I very much appreciate their work. I'll also be attending the Fairfax County NAACP's advocacy agenda rollout on Saturday and on Sunday I will be at the Fairfax County Peace Awards which are nearly 20 years running now and encourage everyone all of our students to think more about peace as both a means and an end and it recognizes those young leaders who work as peace members peacemakers and finally i've heard from various members of our community students and parents who are worried about recent

[03:42:11] news they've seen and i want to send a message of reassurance to them fairfax county public schools remains committed to fostering safe supportive welcoming and inclusive school environment for all students and staff including our transgender and gender expansive students and staff it is clear that students learn most effectively when they feel safe and supported and respected and accepted for who they are all students have a right to privacy in fairfax county public schools facilities or while participating in fairfax county public schools sponsored events and activities any student who has a need or desire for increased privacy regardless of the underlying reason is

[03:42:51] is provided with reasonable accommodations, including single user facilities. Thank you, have a good night everyone. We're adjourned.

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