Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, April 2, 2024

Date: Tuesday, April 2, 2024
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 4h 0m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCFbPcQ0j6Q
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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[00:00:01] - It's good to see everybody back from a nice break. Everyone still looks tired though.

[00:00:24] All right, so we are gathered for our second work session on the Student Rights and Responsibilities document, our SRNR, and I will turn it over to Dr. Reed and her team. - Thank you, Miss Lady, and today I'm pleased to have our team back at the table and also really impressed with all of the board consideration about this important topic for our school division.

[00:00:48] So I'd like to introduce Dr. King to share the updates and make her presentation. And I do want to remind the community watching that this is the second work session our board is engaged on on this topic. So Dr. King. Thank you, Dr. Reed.

[00:01:03] And good afternoon, board. I want to say thank you again. Oh, good morning. I'm sorry. Wishful thinking. I want to thank you for your time and your continued collaboration we work towards drafting and finalizing this year 25 srnr document the srnr team is here with me today to assist with this process to help answer any of the questions that you may have at the table with me is kathleen waltz the executive director of equity and student relations dr shannon anderson coordinator of equity and student conduct and lisa forest the administrative hearing

[00:01:38] officer in the room with us as well as um i is stefan mascal coordinator of student safety and and wellness. As a reminder, the Students' Rights and Responsibilities, the SR&R booklet is designed not only to uphold a safe and respectful learning environment, but also to foster and culture accountability and personal growth with our students. It addresses instances of behavior that violate the SR&R, holding students responsible for their actions in a manner that is fair and just. At the same time, the SR&R is built on the belief that mistakes are opportunities for learning and personal development. It advocates for constructive

[00:02:17] interventions that guide students towards understanding the impact of their actions and encouraging them to make positive changes through a balanced approach that includes clear expectations appropriate consequences and supportive measures for rehabilitation the srnr aids our students in remaining environments excuse me in remaining environments where students can succeed while learning the values of responsibility empathy and community currently Finally each school within FCPS follows the guidelines set forth by the students' rights and responsibilities, which outlines the disciplinary policies and procedures.

[00:02:56] I want to just remind you that the SRNR booklet is comprised of two sections: the Family Guide, which is updated each year by staff once Regulation 2601 has been finalized, and then Regulation 2601, Chapters 1 and 2, Students' Rights and Responsibilities.

[00:03:16] This is reviewed and approved by the school board each year. Please note that Chapter 2 of Regulation 2601 is also Regulation 2602. Today we are here to receive direction from the board as to any changes that you would like to see in the SRNR for year 2025.

[00:03:34] With that, I will now turn this meeting over to Kathleen Waltz, the Executive Director of Equity and Student Relations, to take you through our presentation. Thank you. and welcome to this second SR&R work session. Today we'll be discussing recommendations for school year 24/25, SR&R based on the school board 2x2s, stakeholder listening sessions, constituent comments, as well as your feedback from the March 19th work session. Today, could we go on to the next slide please? Today we are asking the board to review feedback, discuss

[00:04:11] recommendations and ask any clarifying questions you might have and to provide guidance to staff around regulation 2601 for school year 2425 based on today's guidance the red line version will be presented as part of the new business at the April 25th regular school board work session I'm sorry school board meeting next slide please today's presentation is organized into the following categories, adjustments from the March 19th work session. We'll again review the

[00:04:45] topical feedback for consideration, our recommended editorial changes, recommended glossary additions, as well as some possible legislative changes. Next slide please. At the March 19th work session staff was directed to develop language that spoke to the differences in how our student body learns. On this slide is language that came from our neurodiversity specialist. Our staff specialist recommends that this language be inserted into regulation 2601, page

[00:05:19] 20 at the beginning of chapter 2. At FCPS, we recognize and celebrate the diverse ways in which our students learn, behave, and process information. Every individual possesses a unique neurology that influences their cognition, perception, communication, and emotional regulation. This concept known as neurodiversity highlights our commitment to understanding and supporting the variations in human cognitive functioning arising from individuals unique brain wiring and life experiences. FCPS believes that all

[00:05:54] students deserve equitable access to opportunities and resources tailored to their individual needs, whether physical, mental, or emotional. Recognizing and accommodating diverse learning styles, emotional needs, and behavioral differences are essential components of our educational approach. FCPS prioritizes flexibility and inclusivity in our institutional structures and practices. Within the educational environment, it is important to have adaptable spaces and procedures that honor and embrace the diverse perspectives, skills, and abilities of all of our students. By engaging with

[00:06:33] students to identify their unique support needs and providing tailored interventions. FCPS aims to foster an environment where every student can reach their full potential. Next slide please. During the March 19th work session the school board recommended that we make one change to the suggested VDOE self-defense guidelines. Currently it states school officials may in their discretion consider self-defense as a factor when determining disciplinary action for misconduct involving fighting. Self-defense will never justify or excuse any other violation of

[00:07:11] the SRNR, including but not limited to any possession or use of a weapon. The proposed change reads as follows. School officials shall consider self defense as a factor when determining disciplinary action for misconduct involving fighting. Self-defense will never justify or excuse any other violation of the SRNR, including but not limited to any possession or use of a weapon. Although neurodiversity and self-defense were discussed at the last work session, we need approval from

[00:07:44] the school board for these additions. Next slide, please. Drugs and vaping. Currently, possession and use of vaping inhalants already mirrors the guidelines in the SRNR for possession and use of marijuana. However, distribution of vaping products does not carry the same consequence as distributing marijuana. Due to distribution of marijuana resulting in a mandatory referral to the hearings office, our staff does not recommend that all vaping distribution have the same consequence. VDOE

[00:08:23] recommends schools make possess possessing of marijuana and THC oil to start at a level three to five. Currently, we start at a level two response. If the school board adopts aligning the response with the video, we would change next year's SR&R for possessing marijuana to begin at level 3.

[00:08:43] If we do this and then also make possession of vaping products, inhalants, aligned with possession of marijuana, we will be changing from starting at a level 2 to a level 3 to 5. Next slide please. During the school board 2x2s there was a recommendation to change all the maize within the SR&R to shells.

[00:09:07] The staff does not recommend this change but will make changes case by case as changing all maize to shells will cause unnecessary overuse of hearing office referrals. There are 84 maize to consider that involve discretionary disciplinary practices. Moving on to cell phone usage, in addition in a school board 2x2 there was a suggestion for the high school cell phone policy to change to align to the middle school cell phone policy. The staff does not recommend this change. Staff believes that with additional training school

[00:09:45] based administrators and teachers will gain clarity on understanding of the cell phone consequences and how to enforce the current guidelines. Next slide please. Here are some editorial changes that we are recommending. Again as discussed in the March 19th school board work session, each year minor changes are suggested to make the SRNR aligned to changes that occur between printing within FCPS. Our current minor changes include changing parent and guardian. We will add guardian to all parent statements for inclusivity. In

[00:10:23] regard to the ombuds to align the SRNR with the current language used in FCPS, we will change all mentions of ombudsman to ombuds. Another minor change is updated the name of the overseeing department in all areas. So changing the overseeing office from Department of Special Services to the Chief Equity Office. In addition, we will change the primary office from Intervention and Prevention Services to the Office of Equity and Student Conduct. Next slide

[00:10:57] please. So in regard to threat assessment and risk assessment, our staff recommends the following editorial changes to the school year 2425 SRNR, threat assessment, risk assessment. So we recommend changing the term threat assessment to risk assessment to align it with the name of the regulation, Regulation 2111, Procedures for Conducting Risk Assessments. This adjustment ensures consistency and clarity and terminology across related

[00:11:30] policies and procedures. We would also amend the reference from office of school supports to office of out of school support to rectify an error. Again, this will ensure accuracy and alignment with the intended terminology and structures. Next page, please. We have a number of additions that we are recommending to the glossary. These proposed additions are aimed to address emerging issues and reflect existing understandings of student conduct

[00:12:05] and responsibilities in a rapidly evolving educational landscape. We appreciate the guidance and support as we strive to uphold the highest standards of integrity and inclusivity within our school community. These glossary definitions include self-defense, neurodiversity, digital citizenship, generative artificial intelligence, and scholastic dishonesty.

[00:12:29] Next slide please. Here are some possible legislative changes pending Governor Youngkin's signature. So the first one is in regard to level administrative responses to student behavior and one of the areas of consideration is with regard to providing restorative justice and I'm proud to say that FCPS is ahead of the curve on this because we are currently in the process of training facilitators in all of our schools and that process

[00:13:04] will be finished in fall of 2024. The second part is student bullying. Any aggressive and unwanted behavior that is intended to harm, intimidate, excuse me, or humiliate the victim involves a real or perceived power imbalance between the the aggressor or aggressors and victim. Examples of a power imbalance include but are not limited to greater physical strength or size, access to embarrassing information, and is repeated over time. Example behaviors happen more than once and have the potential to happen more than

[00:13:43] once or cause a severe emotional trauma. Bullying include cyberbullying. Bullying does not include or an ordinary teasing horseplay argument or peer conflict next slide please so our next steps um are the sr and our new business at the april 25th school board meeting and the vote at the may 9 school board meeting and i think what we wanted to do was to review the next steps from the march 19th work session so i believe that was a last minute addition and i'm wondering if our school

[00:14:19] board clerks have access to that document titled next steps from March 19th work session and if so might we it is not within the slide deck but it should be a separate document okay so right now those copies are being passed along to the school board so some of these next steps include the shall in May statements

[00:14:47] We did make mention of that previously. So the school board member request was to have staff provide a list of the 84 May statements for consideration to be changed to shall. The second next step is to change admonition and counseling to admonition and reflection with the students or student.

[00:15:12] The third part is progressive discipline for vaping and distribution of vaping. Staff suggests a progressive discipline approach to vaping and distribution of vaping instruments. Staff also suggests that progressive discipline measures include first offense, up to two days in school suspension with ATOD education.

[00:15:36] The second offense being up to two days out of school suspension with ATOD education. And the third offense being up to three days out of school suspension, mandatory counseling slash education sessions with SAP, parent guardian meeting with school administrators to discuss the behaviors and potential interventions.

[00:15:58] So those are from the school board next steps following the March 19th work session. So at this time, we thank you for your continued dedication and partnership in this very important endeavor and we look forward to your questions and commentary thank you thank you for that updated presentation appreciate that and we're gonna go to questions we'll start with mr. fresh thank you we've done this in the past I'm reading something on behalf of a board member who's not present so this

[00:16:35] is from missiles more hyzer and I'll take my turn later in the discussion All right, so if we could start the timer since I'm going to keep going. All right. Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts on the SR&R review in writing since I could not be present today. I appreciate Robin and Marcia's thoughtful proposed follow-on. I am supportive of its concepts even though I may have comments on the specifics.

[00:17:03] Consistency in school-based discipline is a worthwhile and challenging goal. The increase of behavior issues and activities such as vaping, which make it more possible than ever for students to use and share tobacco and THC products combined with the deadly opioid epidemic, is frustrating our attempts to ensure safe learning environment.

[00:17:25] I, like you, am eager to find solutions to ensure that our schools are safe and effective learning environments. I believe we also share the goal of ensuring solutions are tailored to solve the problems data-driven and grounded in research and evidence-based practices.

[00:17:41] Changing a single may to a seemingly benign shall would mean that in many cases under the proposed changes, principals would not be allowed to use their professional judgment and be required to hand out the harshest possible penalty without regard for circumstance, previous history severity of the incident prior bullying or level of harm inflicted this is zero tolerance if we ask staff to consider which of the 84 such individual wording substitutions of may they recommend changing to shall we should ask them to consider decades of research has found

[00:18:16] zero tolerance does not ensure safe or effective learning environments but can increase overall school discipline issues does not serve as a deterrent can contribute to long-term negative academic outcomes for all students at the school decrease graduation rates exacerbate inequities and can lead to all students at a zero tolerance school those being disciplined and their peers having a higher likelihood of encountering the criminal justice legal system studies also show overly harsh and punitive measures lead to reduced safety connectedness and feelings of belonging and have been unsuccessful at improving student behavior

[00:18:54] or the overall school climate. I have also emailed colleagues links to some of these studies. I suggest we tread carefully here. We should refrain from making hurried major changes to the SRNR this year, especially without stakeholder engagement. Instead, I support staff's recommendation regarding principal and administrator training to address any SRNR confusion at the school level and to empower the support of principals in their decisions making changes to the SRNR.

[00:19:24] This will give the board and staff time and to be more thoughtful as we transition to shall might be necessary to improve school climate and avoid potential unintended consequences. We may find that the training, empowerment, and other measures to ensure fidelity of implementation are sufficient.

[00:19:42] It would give staff time to conduct due diligence and engage the community before such an abrupt shift in how we handle difficult student situations, last sentence. It also should give us more time to dive into the data and research around the efficacy of zero tolerance policies and to consider all evidence-based methods of ensuring safe schools.

[00:20:07] - Thank you, Rachna, via Mr. Frisch. Next up is Ms. Anderson. Well, Dr. Anderson, let's be clear. Dr. Anderson. - Every time it's happened, I'm like, oh, I didn't put my hand up.

[00:20:23] Okay, thank you, thank you so much for this. First of all, I am very appreciative of the self-defense component being changed. I think that's an important consideration because if it's going to be something that we integrate into our system, it should be available across the board and not just where people feel that it should be included.

[00:20:43] I do have a question regarding the vaping. You went really fast, Ms. Waltz, in terms of if we were to make some changes, it would go from a level two to a level three to five. Can you expound on that? And I was also confused in terms of the level three to five, or is it just moving to level three?

[00:21:00] Shannon, you want to answer that? So if we change, so vaping right now is just, we would need to change vaping to match with marijuana.

[00:21:26] That was a consequence for marijuana. So we already have it for distribution, but we would need to change it for possession. If we do that, the possession would start at a level three, which is what the consequence for a level three.

[00:21:43] So a level three response would include several different interventions, such as a restorative justice conference, referral to support teams, such as a counselor, a psychologist, a social worker, behavior intervention specialist, behavior assessment.

[00:22:13] Oh, thank you. Thank you. referral to behavior support group, referral to community-based services, threat assessment as indicated by the behavior, invitation for a parent guardian to visit, consider alternative programs.

[00:22:28] So there's a lot more 504 screening, but the sanctions include removal from student activities from seven to 14 calendar days, in-school suspension up to five days with behavior instruction, short-term out-of-school suspension up to two days restorative circle or administrative conference upon return, and then referral to law enforcement when it's required. So it would then start at level three. I guess I got confused. You kept saying three to five. Yeah. How do you just go from two to three to five? Pretty much you'll be moving it from two to three. It's the range. The range. Yeah. Okay, got it. So the changes that you

[00:23:08] offered is this next steps document with the first offense being two days of in-school suspension etc is this the level three how does this fall in uh into the um category you know the matrix jeffon do you want to chime in here can you please uh repeat the question i'm trying to put this uh in context on this document in terms of how does it fit into the

[00:23:37] matrix of levels so if i'm as i read this it would say that the first offense is two days in school up to two days in school suspension, second offense would be up to two days out of school

[00:24:12] suspension, and then the third offense would be up to the three days out of school suspension along with a recommendation -- I'm sorry, not a recommendation, but along with a mandatory education session with one of our substance abuse prevention specialists. So that would be what we would want for students to be assigned in the event of the number OF OFFENSES ASSOCIATED WITH VAPING. I'M NOT SURE THAT'S MY QUESTION. I THINK MS. FORREST CAN ANSWER THAT QUESTION FOR YOU. WHEN WE LOOK AT A LEVEL 3 OPTION, THAT INCLUDES

[00:24:49] A LEVEL 1 AND 2, AS WELL AS A SHORT-TERM SUSPENSION ON UP TO A DISCRETIONARY REFERRAL TO THE DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT. SO LEVEL 5 IS THE REFERRAL TO THE DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT. LEVEL 3 STARTS WITH THE OUT OF SCHOOL, A SHORT-TERM TWO-DAY OUT OF SCHOOL SUSPENSION, AND IT ALSO COULD include an in-school suspension the chart in srnr it tells the level responses so it kind of outlines what can be done and so this is where that level three it starts with um two-day in-school

[00:25:28] suspension which is a part of that level one two response so all of these the first offense consequences and the second offense consequences will both be level three let's start at level three it would include starting at level three instead of level two i i'm sorry maybe i'm not asking this right i'm just trying to classify where these would fall the current the recommendation yes as it reads here so the level two three right no so the the first offense up to two days of in school suspension is a level two response okay thank you and keep going and then the second offense two

[00:26:05] days of out of school is the level three response the third the mandatory and i'm going to ask shannon to um answer this up to three days mandatory counseling where does that fall

[00:26:21] the mandatory counseling please put your mic on counseling is a little bit the atod it's it's um requested or suggested throughout the document at each of the levels each of the i'm just trying to get a sense of that third offense the consequences what level does that fall into the third offense

[00:26:58] so the three days out of school suspension would be level four it's a level four yes it's a level four okay i use a lot of my time trying to get here i'm sorry um okay and i'd like to think about this a little bit i do want to give some feedback to the changing of the maize and the shells as you know i've been talking about this for a very long time i think there's a lot of opportunities for us to strengthen the srnr to reduce some of the um personality that sometimes

[00:27:37] can creep into it as we deal with children we all are human there's bias that is always present so i'd like for that to be uh i always want that to be a consideration having said that um i i do think if we are looking into each of the 84 maize to shells and i'm happy to have that list that has to be a very robust and in-depth conversation because there are some that i think are low-hanging fruit but there are some that may have unintended unintended results and consequences and i would not

[00:28:10] want to lean into any actions that will increase our disproportionality because i'm so glad today's conversation is coupled with the goal 2 report because that disproportionality data it's making me scream in my head because it is showing how much work we have to do with our srnr so i want to be sure that we're keeping that at the front of our minds um i i'm going to pause there on that and pick that up for that goal report um i also wanted to ask about the i i raised and i'm not

[00:28:48] sure if anybody else had raised it during the former uh during the previous session the cell phone usage for middle school, which allows for teachers to use it in class for instructional purposes. Every single child has a device that we have provided. Can you please share with me why we continue to need to have that latitude when we have one-on-one devices that could be used for instructional purposes? And I'll go back, please. We are not saying that it's needed, right? We're We're just saying that that's the approved language that the board voted on when they changed the policy.

[00:29:27] That's also another piece that I would like to raise because I raised a self-defense that made it to these charts, but I raised that and I didn't see any feedback to it because I'd like to know what is the thinking of staff because I do know it creates a lot of difficulty to pull kids back.

[00:29:44] And I'll stop because I'm over my time. Thank you. We'll get you a go back. Ms. Anderson. Thank you for all of this. it was really helpful to see the huge list of maize versus shells but i think that where i'm standing right this second is that i agree with staff that we should hold off and we should do a follow-on motion to this that we look at them more carefully for next year in conjunction with the work that you guys are talking about doing where we're going to ensure more consistency with our principles and how how they're conducting things because i also had pause related to the goal 2

[00:30:20] report, particularly related to discipline, so I would very much like to see that. I am personally also still confused related to the progressive discipline for vaping and distribution of vaping. I think that there's a convolution that's happening with the way we're talking about vaping that makes me nervous. It actually, and I will just say this, I think it opens us up for liability.

[00:30:45] If we are always assuming that the kid is doing the very worst thing, then I am concerned for the system just to make sure that we can create rules that are defensible. And so if we always assume that the child that has the vape that isn't even nicotine, we're always treating it exactly the same as if it was marijuana, that's a concern to me.

[00:31:06] I personally also agree with Dr. Anderson that I do not see the way this level defense system is going to fit within the level defense system that we already have. And so I'm concerned about that. I see what you're talking about. But I would think that maybe it would be helpful that if we have more specific language, what we're talking about with vaping and vaping instruments.

[00:31:29] And so if we're talking about vaping at all, should we say this particularly excludes marijuana? Because it's a different, we already have different systems in place to put that forward. I went back and looked at just the preliminary pilot program related to vape detection that we had going on in some of our schools.

[00:31:52] There were 20,000 hits in the school. And how many schools was that set up in? That was before me. Two. So in two schools, we had 20,000 hits. How many extra hearing officers would we need in order to submit every single person?

[00:32:13] I mean, it's astronomical. So I want us to be reasonable in how we're moving forward, not to suggest that we don't want to safeguard our kids against what's going on in the world. I absolutely think every single one of us should support any bill that comes forward that actually make sure that we can get these these shops away from our schools I think that's a major part of it but I agree we can't necessarily fight as as missing John coming cunning said the last time I we can't necessarily fight big tobacco and I don't think that that necessarily should be our goal and I'm concerned I mean when I was growing up you'd pass a cigarette to somebody else

[00:32:50] and that would be considered distribution at this point and I am concerned about what that's going to do for us in the future. Carl, Mr. Fersh, sorry. Dare you call me by my first name. All right, a couple things. One, I think if there's a general tenor here, it is that there's significant frustration with discipline and with vaping, and a feeling

[00:33:26] that the rules and responsibilities we currently have in place are not working. And so what happens What happens when you've got this pendulum is that it swings one direction and then if people are not satisfied, they want to yank it back and pull it back the other way that doesn't necessarily result in the change that people are, you know, hungry for either. And so what I would like to see and I think the following motion that Miss Lady and Miss St. John Cunning have been talking about probably pushes in the direction of is okay, if the sentiment you're getting from this board is that we're not hitting the mark when it comes to

[00:34:04] addressing these discipline issues along with what dr anderson said about the disciplinary data that is very concerning how do we do a better job to address the discipline so that staff don't keep coming to us saying that you are not doing anything to address this problem and that we do it in a way that is equitable and actually reforms the behaviors that we're trying to address and so i think the follow-on motion is a good opportunity to have staff do that due diligence and come back to us. I'm not necessarily looking for harsher punishment for the sake of

[00:34:41] harsher punishment. I want the behavior fixed. I want less reliance on vaping. You know, even if only a fraction of those hits are accurate, it's still alarming. And so what we're currently doing is not working. And to the question about shells and maize, you know, I look at that list and and there are many that I think could be or should be shalls, but I also know that it will be a big change for the system.

[00:35:09] And as we said at the beginning of this process, if we do anything, when we do big changes to the SRNR, we like to engage the community, our stakeholder organizations, our parents, our educators who are on the front lines, etc. And since no major changes were recommended this time around, that hasn't happened.

[00:35:27] And so I would be hesitant to support anything that's a major departure from what we currently have without doing that due diligence. And I don't think we can do that kind of due diligence in the time we need to have the document printed and available for families.

[00:35:44] But I do support the direction that Ms. Lady and Ms. St. John Cunning are going to have these issues looked at in a very thoughtful way. Ms. Sizemore-Heiser references various academic studies about what zero-tolerance policies impact are.

[00:36:02] I'd also like us to look at what policies do have the impact that we're looking for and are not punitive, because, you know, I don't want a kid to be put on, you know, the pipeline to prison because people are frustrated.

[00:36:18] I want us to actually help them. Thank you. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Mr. Lady. Since the staff is looking for our feedback, I'm going to go one by one.

[00:36:32] Neurodiversity statements, that's recommendation, I will support that, but I have a question as to how the system, our system can operationalize the statement in there that we all believe in, whether the end resource is going to be perceived as inconsistent consequences being meted out for same behavior, depending upon which students are.

[00:37:06] and commit certain offense. So that is a concern on my part, how we can actually implement or operationalize this in meeting out consequences. But for the time being, I'll be able to support that.

[00:37:21] Self-defense, I support staff's recommendation. Although changing, I think this one is aligning consequences for possession and use and distribution inhalants, I'm gonna keep it as is.

[00:37:36] and possessing and using the under-influence are support staff's recommendation. In changing MAIS to Sherald's 84, I cannot give you one blanket yes or no at this point. There are many places where MAIS are currently placed should remain as MAIS, but at the same time, there may be a few places at least that I see deserving more discussion.

[00:38:02] I think the chairman talked about, and some other board members also talked about general tolerance, including Ms. Seismanheiser that as someone who had dealt with the philosophy behind the general tolerance, how the pendulum has swung from one end to the other end, maybe swinging back again, is that inasmuch as general tolerance has negative connotation in it, at the same time when we are implementing general tolerance against some of the grievous offenses is that that also has some positive impacts as well.

[00:38:40] I'm gonna give you an example of a gang fight and drug offenses when we had very serious problems during the last three decades that we implemented for certain period of time, zero tolerance.

[00:38:58] And that had, of course, there was some negative consequences as well, but largely that also worked as well. So I'm not going to simply disregard that benefit of general tolerance in one big swoop.

[00:39:14] So with that, cell phone uses, unacceptable staff's recommendation. And editorial changes, those are all good. And as to the four seconds, I need to go back. All right.

[00:39:34] Seeing no other placards, I'll take my turn. I think that per the follow-up email that Marcia and I shared, I think that we need to do a deeper dive into the may and shall document.

[00:39:53] But I don't think that we're in a position to change any of those at the moment for the current year. I do believe that we, you know, like we've discussed, might bring a -- will probably very likely bring a follow-on motion around that so we can get staff input, faculty input, principal input, and also community input regarding that. In terms of the the reality of our situation with vaping, you know this is where I just don't know I mean we I don't know how but I do believe we have to start to

[00:40:29] convey to all of our communities even at the elementary middle high school level the extent to which this is a pandemic, quite frankly. I mean, it's like the amount of vaping that's going on in our schools that's directly impacting learning.

[00:40:47] And the reason I was so interested in the cell phone change to being that of a middle school is because the dialogue is taking place about when they're going to meet, what time they're going to meet. And I understand how hard that is, but cutting off that kind of communication could perhaps change how many people are meeting in a restroom at a certain time and sharing a vape.

[00:41:08] You know, for the most part, you know, while the majority of our kids are probably, you know, listening to music in between classes, that was just the thought process behind that is that's the communication device, right? So, and that's not a referral to the hearings office.

[00:41:26] The other thing is we've talked a lot about consistency. So as someone who has, you know, come into a new year as a former administrator and been inundated when I had to go to wherever, you know, I was directed to go for a full day of mandatory trainings that were sort of like 50 minutes and then you're in the next room for 50 minutes and you're in the next room for 50 minutes, you know, it's then how is that turnaround done with fidelity, right?

[00:41:55] So I think the biggest thing we want as a board is more consistency school to school We want principals to better understand that when it does say may That they may take action, right? So if they know this is a student that they've had repeated issues with that they can escalate the discipline content to continuum But I don't I don't know how that's done, right? I also know that in a high school of 2,900, which is where I worked you know, honestly A couple things one we never taught executive functioning which is a completely different conversation But complained about the fact kids didn't have it all the time

[00:42:32] But the second thing is when we do the SR&R it's so fast. It's so fast It's thrown at them in like 50 minutes, and then fill out your quiz and hand it in. I just think we need to do a better job perhaps Incrementally reviewing that but I also think we again need to let our parent community know but that in in two schools We had 20,000 hits it's because they have to have a better understanding all right We are to go backs unless Marcia. Do you want to take a turn?

[00:43:03] Miss Marin. Thank you. Thank you So I agree about the behavioral piece and that's part of our social emotional learning that we've invested a lot in And so if that needs to be looked at to see what else can be done to further Garner not only the understanding but the character that students will need to stand up to peer pressure and to make healthy decisions. That is is one aspect I want to touch on. The other is we've talked a lot about what we're trying to do in the schools but again that family piece and there were some ideas shared at the last meeting about how to really help

[00:43:38] families be part of this solution because we're not going to solve this alone inside our schools, so I haven't heard about that. And I want to keep us focused on that too. I do agree that the may shall needs further review, so I just wanted to add about that. On a different note, I wanted to add that I was reviewing some, for intents and purposes, memorandums of understanding or agreements that FCPS has with the county regarding crossing guards, and from that came information that was in some of these documents about our school resource officers, our SROs, which are provided

[00:44:13] by the Fairfax County Police Department and staffed in our schools. So I found a document from -- or is given access to or located -- a document in 2018 that lists very specifically what our SROs can and cannot do in our schools. But then there is a document in 2023 that is from the police department that says a much shorter list and description of things that our SROs do. And this also includes crossing guards and generally just police department work in our schools. And I don't know if that 2018 more comprehensive document still

[00:44:48] stands, or if the 2023 document, which is much less comprehensive, replaces that, but that, so that is my question, is the 2023 the be-all, end-all, and what about the 2018 version?

[00:45:04] I would have to go back and look at the SRO MOUs. I don't know, sometimes there's a re-up of those, which is just a clarifier, and sometimes it's a completely new MOU, so I'll have to go back and check, but I can have an answer, Later today sure so and the 2023 document was included in your weekly letter to the board dr. Reed And then somehow the 2018 I think that is posted on our website I think that's how I got it. It's on our FCPS website, but also there really needs to be any time agreement with the county is Brokered about police work. It's got to be there's got to be of course alignment with SR&R

[00:45:44] But maybe there's we can make sure we're regularly reviewing that with each SR&R review, too so um that's my main point for right now okay i think we're to go back dr anderson um thank you one of the things that i have and i agree with what was said i i think mr frisk said this and also miss seismol hyzer when we do have significant changes it should and i think it has in the past been accompanied with some more robust um community engagement so the progressive

[00:46:23] discipline for vaping for me will fall into that category because this would be a significant change that we will wholesale be putting forth without any community discussion. So I've heard it from our high schoolers with the town hall that I had with Ms. Kareem in terms of how difficult it is for them to enter our bathrooms, for them to just feel safe in our bathrooms. So there is a problem that needs to be resolved.

[00:46:49] What I want to hear is how do we resolve this if this is the proposal without continuing to add to the disproportional data that we'll be reviewing in a couple of hours?

[00:47:04] Because that was stunning. It was essentially black kids, students with disabilities, those were economically disadvantaged students. They're the ones who are going to continue to have the disproportional impact of this.

[00:47:21] So I cannot be in favor of this third piece in any way, shape, or form. And if we are going to pursue this, then I'd like for us to engage the community so that there is awareness and further education. But if this is the proposal, how do we ensure that it doesn't continuously impact the disproportional data that we already have without this being in place?

[00:47:46] Dr. Anderson, I don't disagree with you. You know, education and how we talk to our principals and train our administrators who are, you know, giving discipline in school around biases and disproportionality is important and our data shows us and compels us to do so, so that's work that Dr. Anderson's office is doing with our schools that have large data in disproportionality amongst those student groups that you mentioned.

[00:48:22] consequences doesn't necessarily change the outputs right but it it it comes with education with our students right we need to talk to the students about the dangers of involving yourself the SEL work that Miss Marin spoke about as well but you know the board asked us to put this recommendation in it doesn't necessarily mean that that tiered approach is going to change the behavior if there's not education to our students about the dangers of drugs in our schools.

[00:48:57] Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. The other thing that I wanted to ask, and I wanted to kind of piggyback on Ms. Lady's point, which is there's high levels of inconsistencies in our school, whether it's because the training is too brief, it's too short, it's not efficient.

[00:49:18] Where is that data? How do we see this as a board? because I poured over all of the appendices, not necessarily you at this point, I guess it's the next team and Dr. Reed. I poured over all of the appendices that were involved, I'm sorry, that were included in the Goal 2 report and I did not see anything that spoke to how we are doing in our regions and our pyramids and our schools. That will not give us the information that we need to attack the disproportionality and to also include it in our SRNR?

[00:49:54] So, correct. What we've been looking at is monitoring the professional development completion for staff on topics which include this topic. I think Dr. Anderson has been heading up our disproportionality work. I have.

[00:50:10] Well, different. Shannon Anderson has been heading up our disproportionality work and maybe could speak to the schools and the protocol and framework that was set up this year. This is the first year that work has been ongoing, and this is a new position, I believe, Dr. King, isn't it, as of a year ago?

[00:50:32] Not a new position, but a new responsibility is part of her position. Part of her position, okay. So perhaps you could share some of the work, the framework that is being worked on with particularly the schools that have a higher disproportionality. Sure. so last year we identified 19 schools that had moderate to high disproportionality and four or more subgroups so the subgroups are are race ethnicity black black african-american students or hispanic latino students or el one through four are students with disability so you

[00:51:09] know okay right it's in the report i guess what i'm looking for is where is the list of those schools is that information that cannot be made available to the board it can certainly be made available to the board i think for the public facing documents um because in some cases the end size uh of students may not be a large number that we wouldn't necessarily make those more publicly i'd like to make that request to have that information be made available and i think i asked that as well during the um goal 2 presentation i don't want to get ahead of the next conversation So I want to kind of stick to this, and I notice that my time is up.

[00:51:48] Yeah, I think we have that report ready, and I want to say we may have provided that last spring, but we'll provide that this week. We can get that, too. Right, particularly with the new data that you're offering today. Sure. Thank you. Mr. Moon.

[00:52:05] Thank you, Ms. Lee, again. I wasn't sure whether I should be asking these questions right now or wait until the next session. i probably dr king will say wait until the next one but since this was provided person to march srn our work session i'll at least uh profess my upcoming questions uh related the relations between i mean this is basically what was very intriguing that i found uh from this

[00:52:44] 19 page slides that we received a few days ago was that student achievement went up after discipline hearing or disciplinary forward but my questions will have to do with whether our students in general show progress in student achievement as year goes so i want to see the comparison between that and also i want to see the data between what's been provided versus

[00:53:25] similar data related to students who did not go through you know those process whether so so that so that i could come to a a more uh reasoned conclusion later on okay those are the questions Because I'm going to either you or later on.

[00:53:50] So, Ms. Forrest's team put this data together based on the information that they have for the hearings office. I would have to rely on our data specialist to provide us the other data so that we can do a proper comparison for you. Sure.

[00:54:06] Thank you. All right. I'll take a brief go back. I want to thank you for the data that Mr. Moon just referenced. And I also just want to share that I think that, and we're talking about this, making some changes that empower our base schools, if you will, to be creative around credit recovery.

[00:54:38] But I think that historically, to some of this point, that some of the reasons why you see that uptick in success after students have been to the hearing office is sometimes where that reassignment is allows that student it also a couple things one there there's the student to faculty ratio is much smaller in most instances and so you can better monitor whether a child is roaming a building or not or the physical size of this alternate assignment is is not big so it's not hard to know where students are and they're therefore their time on task is much

[00:55:14] increased right so you know that is an absolute benefit but I just want people to understand that some of that what we've been able to do with Edmentum or we've done with online learning with supports in place in the room and you know kids are working actually they're seven an hour day if you will in the building much more focused than they are in a base school where we can't it's just 2900 kids you just sometimes you don't know where kids are where kids are in the building because they're not where they're supposed to be But you don't know where they are The other thing I want to say about the PD tracking, you know as someone who worked in the system a long time

[00:55:53] I didn't know that it was optional not to do my required PD training, so I feel like I should go back and get some kind of gold star because I always did all my PD training But now that I'm sitting on this board I am just fascinated by the number of people who think that that's not something they need to do So I commend dr. Reed and also dr. King and dr. Anderson. Thank you for tracking that It is very very important that they do their PD and and I will say this the PD has improved That the self-directed PD has improved The quizzes at the end you need to know your material. So I also commend people who are creating the PD

[00:56:31] Continue to do it with fidelity and people understand it deadlines a deadline because they get frustrated when their students don't understand a deadline's a deadline. So actually the only thing that I really want to add to this conversation again from working with principals is that sometimes in terms of discipline, and this is where the training has to come in or where the message has to be received with that may versus shall, is that a lot of times principals don't report some discipline issues because there are report cards online and they don't want their school to be looked at,

[00:57:09] oh, this has high discipline issues, or they may even be feeling that from central office, if they have a lot of discipline problems, they're not being effective. And so I think we have to change that culture so that a lot of principals feel comfortable making those reports. Because I do know of certain principals that purposely were not reporting discipline.

[00:57:30] They were trying to handle it in-house, and that's why, so I just want to make that point. Okay, Dr. Anderson. Thank you. One of the points that I wanted to speak to was regarding the vaping pilot program that we have in two of our schools.

[00:57:48] I know I've asked you about this a number of times in terms of where are we going with this? Will this be expanded? And your response to me was that it was not going to be expanded. And can you kind of share as to what the rationale is to that? Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Our chief safety and security officer, Tom Vaccarello, and his team are working with school-based staff to determine how effective the current pilot has been.

[00:58:12] And as Ms. Anderson shared, there have been a lot of alarms, if you will. Not all of them have been verifiable. And we're not sure that it's a solution that's either manageable or practical or is working.

[00:58:30] So I think there are other products that they're looking at or different ways to address that. It's not dissimilar to smoking in restrooms in years gone by. And there have been everything from smoke detectors, which then get dismantled often, even the vape detectors, and there's a significant financial cost to putting those in as well.

[00:58:55] So I think we've used the term ROI quite often, return on investment. If this was the holy grail, right, like if this was working and we didn't have any more vaping at the schools were piloting it, I don't think there would be much hesitation, but that's not what we're seeing. So I'm happy to have, I think Mr. Vaccarello recently provided a brief update on kind of the effectiveness.

[00:59:17] But I think right now, if we have safety and security dollars, the question is, where are they best deployed? So at this point, I know they're still evaluating products and efficacy of what we currently are trying. And it's not particularly promising at the moment.

[00:59:35] Okay, thank you. The other piece that I wanted to raise is, you know, principals reporting violent, you know, violations. That's a tough one. It really hurts my heart to hear that some principals are not doing it so that their schools look better.

[00:59:54] That's a problem. But I also want to make sure that we keep in the room. There's that gray space where even with your own employees, like, Mr. Frisch, you're not doing the right thing. I'm going to call you into my office. we're going to chat and then you're going to go forward and do something differently and I'm not necessarily going to put a file in your I'm sorry a letter in your file we have to remember there's that space and as somebody who sat in that seat for 17 years there's that space for us to do what the SRNR is saying which is to teach which is to try to change behaviors not the egregious ones

[01:00:28] that require the the automatic record but for the ones that we are just trying to you know move some kids along because I don't want us to lose that space. And it's a fine balance. It's a fine balance between being inconsistent, not reporting things for the wrong reasons, and allowing those instructional leaders to do their work with students who were trying to grow and change behavior and not just punish into compliance because we know that has not worked. So I want

[01:01:05] sure to elevate that in this conversation doctor were you wanting to say something okay thank you i see that's my time but you know i can i ask one more question i i don't think i got a response to the middle school um using of cell phone devices in the classroom when we have one-on-one devices are you asking what we believe i'm asking for something because i would like for that to not be an opportunity and i think i went on a little bit last time but i didn't hear from you all in terms

[01:01:44] of what are people saying what are people thinking why do we need that as an option she has something to you've gotten um mixed responses with that you know some schools would like the teachers have discretion of using the cell phones and then some schools um would like it to be just you know school option of cell phones for students to be just dismantled in there So we haven't gotten any concrete, one way or the other, of a decision of why or how cell phones would be used.

[01:02:22] So we haven't gotten a little consensus with that. It really differs per school. Thank you. Mr. McDaniel. I'll have more comments at the next session, but I do have concerns on the vape.

[01:02:39] And Dr. Anderson really captured some of those. But I'll have more comments at the next session about that question, though. And I wasn't at the last meeting, so if this was addressed, I missed it. I apologize. What type of input, when you specifically developed this suggestion for the progressive discipline policy on vape, can you kind of walk me through what input you received from school-based staff?

[01:03:03] I believe Dr. Anderson and Mr. Mascall worked on that so they can provide comments. Dr. Anderson? For that last iteration of it, we looked at progressive discipline, and we decided on those would be the best way to approach it.

[01:03:26] We did not have time to speak with staff about that. However, we wanted to see, we wanted to honor what the board said about vaping and do something a little bit like one step more than what was last year.

[01:03:46] So that's how we came up with that. I guess more broadly, not limited to this, but throughout the development of this vape, of addressing the vaping problem, what type of input have you all received from school-based staff?

[01:04:03] So, during our listening sessions that we provided, of course, the vaping has been problematic, and so schools would like to have harsher consequences on the vaping. And so, with this leveled progression, it does take it a little bit further than we had last year.

[01:04:25] Okay, so there has been some input from school-based staff. Absolutely. And where I'm going with this is the school-based staff is going to have to enforce this. And this policy can be, you know, it could be the answer, but if we don't have anybody, if we don't have consistent enforcement across all the schools, it's not going to work.

[01:04:46] And not only was it not going to work, it could lead to negative outcomes of increasing disproportionality. So that's, again, I'll have more comments at the next session, but that's where my head is. I do want to share that through other means and listening tours from students, that vaping is the number one thing.

[01:05:05] VAPING AND OTHER DRUGS IN THE BATHROOMS THAT ARE HAPPENING, SO IT IS SOMETHING THAT BOTH STUDENTS AND PRINCIPALS AND STAFF ARE TALKING ABOUT, AND I ALSO JUST WANT TO SHARE THAT WE JUST -- WE GOT THAT UPDATE DURING SPRING BREAK, SO WE WOULDN'T HAVE HAD TIME TO SHARE WITH STAFF AS WELL. THANKS.

[01:05:23] MS. MERRIN. THANK YOU. I'D LIKE TO SHARE THAT WHEN WE HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT AS BIG A TOPIC AS THIS, FOR ME, I ALWAYS GO BACK TO WHAT CAN THIS BOARD DO TO MAKE THE CHANGE HAPPEN THAT WE WANT ON THE GROUND?

[01:05:41] for me that goes back to the policy policy 2601 was last reviewed in 2016 but it had no substantial changes since 2011. now five years ago or five years after 2016 the last board was pretty busy in 2021 dealing with covid and i know that this board has already committed to reviewing some big policies that have been delayed in their review but i find it i'm challenged to sit here and figure out the solutions and how we get students to change their behavior and parents to change their behavior when our policy is only two paragraphs.

[01:06:18] And I just sent it around to the board. Again, it's policy 2601, which I'm trying to pull up right now myself just to read two. And it basically says we want to guarantee the rights of our students and respect their constitutional rights and their legal rights and their dignity and their civil rights.

[01:06:36] Nowhere does it talk about things like do we as a board want to support punishment versus teaching and education when it comes to how we respond, how staff is going to respond to actions. Do we want to put in our policy the role of the school and the role of our families, what we expect?

[01:06:55] Do we want to put in there what data should be reviewed annually every time an SR&R review is undertaken? This exercise of reviewing a regulation, which is the operationalization of a policy, I think is really crippled by the fact that our policy does not give us direction.

[01:07:16] This happens in some of our policies. Some of our policies are very broad, and then the regulation is specific. And I believe that the policy should be, in general, more reflective of the board's intentions and philosophy and values from the community rather than leaving that all to regulation.

[01:07:33] I think that if we could spend more time on the policy here, we would get a lot more accomplished and get our thoughts reflected in an actionable approach. Thank you.

[01:07:49] Anyone else have any additional comments, questions? Dr. Anderson. In addition to all the work that I'm doing to get the data to you all, I'm very busy over here.

[01:08:02] I am interested very much I just want to put this in the air of putting forward a follow-on to remove that discretion for middle school for using cell phones in the classroom because we have one-on-one devices and I think that should be where we go because it gets that much harder for teachers to pull it back and you have a substitute in the building forget about it it becomes the wild wild west and it's hard for them to pull students back so I'm interested in that and I will love to hear more from you all in the coming weeks and also i'll be touching base with my

[01:08:37] principals in the coming weeks about that and again it's just the middle school one not the high school it's just the middle school removal of the use of cell phones in the classroom at teacher discretion it's either i think we have it or we don't i think it's just a little bit too challenging um i think that's it for me for right now thank you miss anderson i would be in support of that as long as it's designated as for non-instructional opportunities because there are apps and things like that that are not functional on a computer that actually can aid learning and

[01:09:12] so i i'm fully on board with having it be that the teacher can't use it as a babysitter at the at the end of class i'm okay with that completely but i i would um i would hate to take away the opportunity to have some access to cell phone if it's actually being used in some sort of instructional manner. So I'm all for reducing the recreational use of cell phones in a class, but not necessarily instruction. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. I will echo that.

[01:09:47] I will also say that, you know, as we all know, we have some faculty who Their bell-to-bell to instruction is off the charts. I've worked with some teachers who teach an AP course and don't give any homework because those kids, she owns those kids or he owns those kids for the 90 minutes that are in their room.

[01:10:09] And then there's situations where you're passing through and you're thinking perhaps what's going on instructionally. We will continue to work on that, I'm sure, in terms of helping teachers better understand and better plan for bell to bell instruction so but but i would support something similar with the cell phones at the middle school level because you know we have to be engaging our kids instructionally when they're in a classroom or in practice or reflection or enhancement or remediation but they need to be working all the time so all right that's good for me any other

[01:10:46] go backs okay so folks um as with all work sessions there is a next steps document that has been created so if there are any additional next steps our requests that you need from staff just a process question I know that miss walls had said she was looking to hear from the board on some of these proposals how are we doing that are we taking consensus are we providing this at another time if you could speak to that that would be helpful because I know some of us spoke

[01:11:23] to it and some of us didn't i will invite uh our chair mr frisch to address that question my understanding is that we were told that you would require a vote from board members in order to change the document correct and we don't do votes here we we don't require a vote we would just like direction from the board so we can begin red lighting the um information so i'm not saying that you have to vote consensus that will allow us to be able to do our work well let's take a

[01:11:55] pre-consensus consensus exactly yes um uh would the board like to provide consensus or not um on these questions right now um or would you like to provide consensus or not in the next step in the next steps documents so those are the two options unless somebody has another option for consideration Mr. Chairman, since we have 15 minutes, can you go through them quickly and then see whether we can give them some guidance?

[01:12:31] So that's option one, and we can offer consensus on it. So the first option is to provide consensus in the time we have left before the end of this session, and the second option is to do it on the next steps document. So all those in favor of doing it now.

[01:12:49] All right, there we go. Do you want to tee us up with the first item, and then we can take a consensus on it? And maybe we can put it back up on the slide as well. I believe it's slide number.

[01:13:06] Okay. Thank you for this opportunity. And our first adjustment is neurodiversity and including language about neurodiversity and adding to the SRNR document. So in addition to the glossary, it is included on page 20 of the SRNR document.

[01:13:27] So if folks are in agreement of adding this language, please raise your hand to offer consensus. All right, that one has consensus. - Thank you. - And the next one? - Yep, the next one is self-defense. So this is changing the language from may to shall.

[01:13:47] Consider self-defense as a factor when determining disciplinary action. - So people who are okay with this, consensus, again, you've got consensus on that one. The next one? - So the next one is vaping, and I know there's some discussion about that, so we can skip that for now, Or what would you like to do?

[01:14:09] We'll do the same thing. So if those who would like to provide consensus can raise their hand, the language that's on the screen. Correct. And who would not like to provide consensus as well.

[01:14:29] So we just, nobody raised their hand, I'm just following through. Okay, we'll do it again. If you would like to provide consensus to make these changes, raise your hand. Are you, are you, wait a minute, wait a minute. I'm trying to understand you, what you're asking. Staff's recommendation is not to make changes.

[01:14:52] Correct. On the top one, okay, is that what you're asking? Whether we support staff's recommendation or? Correct. Okay. So, if you support not making the change, which is what staff's recommendation is, raise your hand.

[01:15:09] All right, you have consensus as well on not making a change. Okay, the second one is possessing, using, and being under influence of controlled substances. And this is coming into alignment with VDOE? If you want to provide consensus on that front, raise your hand.

[01:15:30] All right, you have consensus on that one. Next is topical feedback, clarity on enforcement of certain guidelines. So this is the may to shall, changing mays to shalls. So if you want to provide consensus on that, which is, to be clear, staff's recommendation is to not make the change at this time.

[01:15:54] All right, you have consensus on that. Next is cell phone usage. So this is to change the high school cell phone guidance to match middle school. and staff does not recommend this change. - So if you support staff's recommendation to not make this change at this time, raise your hand.

[01:16:18] All right, so again, this request-- - I'm sorry, Mr. Fresh, for that one, it was hard to see all the hands. - Yep, I'm on it. All right, but it was easy to see the confused faces. All right, so this request is whether or not the board provides consensus to staff, which and the staff recommendation is to not change the high school cell phone policy to that of the middle school policy.

[01:16:49] So if you support not changing the high school policy to the middle school policy, raise your hand. Right, staff's recommendation would mean that we are not changing the high school policy to the same as the middle school policy. - So the status quo. - Status quo, correct.

[01:17:05] All right, can we keep the hands up? Thank you, one, two, three. All right, you have consensus of those in the room. The next up is editorial changes including adding guardian to all parent statements.

[01:17:23] All those in favor, you have consensus in the room. Changing ombudsman to ombuds. You have consensus of those in the room. Change the name of the Department of Primary Responsibility from DSS to, okay, thank you.

[01:17:40] Changing the name of the primary office responsibility, thank you for that. Good. Okay. We're going to do an omnibus. Yes, please. Continued editorial changes, change out the term threat assessment for risk assessment to align it, okay?

[01:17:58] And then change from office of school supports to office of out-of-school support. Okay, then we have our glossary additions. Well, without objection, we will do an omnibus for this, so all of the changes recommended.

[01:18:20] If you support all the changes recommended, you have consensus. And then I think that how would you like us to address the proposed legislation that is on Governor Youngkin's desk right now? Dr. Anderson.

[01:18:37] I actually had a question on this. If I can ask, what is the consequences for us if this were to pass? What would change in our practices? For the leveled administrative response, again, we are ahead of the state in terms of providing professional development to ensure that we have restorative justice practices in all of our schools.

[01:19:04] So the first one, we are, again, already doing it. But this says not just having it, it says that it excludes students from being suspended, expelled, or excluded from attendance without consideration of the level of administrative responses to certain behavior, yada, yada.

[01:19:22] So we don't do that currently, that we have to have it before we have removal. But it's just, it doesn't say that you have to have it, it says you have to consider it. So we always offer, well, most principals offer restorative justice.

[01:19:38] We have restorative justice facilitators in all of our regions. So they have the option to offer it. And this legislation says that it has to be offered or considered. Offered before the removal instead of the removal? Because I thought that was part of the discipline consequences.

[01:19:56] So it's part of the package, the removal and. Yes. And this right here just says that they want us to consider it. Our initiative to have two trained facilitators in every single school will allow us to meet that. I think that we're doing it either way, whether this legislation passes or not.

[01:20:13] Thank you. We just need to include it in the document. Can you address the second? And then with the second? Second one. On bullying. How would that impact our practices? Thank you. Shannon, do you know how that one would address it?

[01:20:31] I actually have a recommendation that we could probably provide consensus on whether or not we know how it would affect things. My understanding is that these would go into effect July 1st. Is that correct? So, and these have already been signed by the governor or no?

[01:20:48] Okay. So what we could do is provide consensus that staff would prepare any suggested alternate language to be in alignment with state code, should these be signed by the governor, and then the board could adopt those changes at that time.

[01:21:05] That's helpful. Thank you. Is everybody in support of that? All right. Even more helpful. Thank you. And then last, we have the next steps from the March 19th work session to include the shall in May. Changing admonition and counseling to admonition and reflection with a student.

[01:21:27] So if you're in favor of making that change, all right. No, the reason I asked for that next step is because counselors are never doing discipline.

[01:21:43] But the word counseling can be confusing to a parent, right? when they see that terminology, they need to differentiate administrators, deal with discipline, counselors work with behaviors and work with kids and support kids in the process of whatever they're dealing with.

[01:21:59] So just the word reflection sort of just doesn't have the confusing language. - Okay, and then finally, progressive discipline for vaping and distribution of vaping. - The board provided consensus on the staff's recommendation for the other two items on this list, so I don't think we need to do it again.

[01:22:24] And then that's it. All right. Okay. All right. Thank you. That is it. We are adjourned, and we will be back together, I believe, at 1230 for Goal 2. We are in recess. Focused on Goal 2, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Reed.

[01:22:50] Thank you, Ms. Leidy. So this afternoon we have an opportunity to review Goal 2, which is going to be exciting. I know the team has put a lot of time and effort into preparing a report. So I'm going to turn it over to Marcy Neal to kick us off. So Miss Neal. Thank you, Dr. Reed. Good afternoon board members.

[01:23:16] Today is the fourth of our five baseline goal report presentations that we'll be making this year. In May, the board will have the final work session on goal four, which will focus on equity and course taking patterns and enrichment and extracurricular activities.

[01:23:32] The purpose of these baseline reports is to let the board and the public know our starting point with our new strategic plan goals with a focus on our year one priorities. So the information we're sharing today is the starting point of this work and not the seven-year plan itself. If the board clerk could click for us, please.

[01:24:02] The board is scheduled to take a vote on the goal two baseline report on April 25th as the division's starting point for this work. Our objectives for today are to ensure the board has the information needed to approve the baseline and to get feedback from the board to determine if what the data is telling us the division is taking the right steps through current and future strategies to move in a direction to achieve these goals by the end of our strategic plan in 2030.

[01:24:29] As a reminder to the public, the board adopted the seven-year strategic plan in June of 2023. The adopted plan includes five student-centered goals, each with equity commitments to support each and every student in attaining the goals, measures for each of the five goals to share our progress and four pillars that serve as the foundation of our division's work towards these goals.

[01:24:50] Again, today we're focused on goal two, which is safe, supported, included and empowered. In our previous baseline reports, we shared a set of our year one strategic plan priorities where we're aligning our efforts at the school and department level to accomplish our goals.

[01:25:07] This set of annual priorities allows us to focus resources in a strategic targeted set of outcomes. Within goal two, we are specifically focused on discipline, disproportionality, and chronic absenteeism in year one. And as a reminder to our public on how we're calculating our baseline data, FCPS uses a three-year average of data when available to provide information as the division's starting point for the work. When the board adopted the strategic plan, there were measures included for each of the goals. Staff then identified a set of metrics or data to use to monitor the progress towards the goals. In some

[01:25:46] cases metrics are still under development as we create new tools or systems to capture data to be able to show how we're doing at a division level. Our annual reports that will begin in this next school year will then report on the progress of the division from the baseline. At this time I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Wright who's going to walk us through our first set of data. Thank you Ms. Neal and good afternoon to the board. As Ms. Neal referred to in this report we're going to be looking at two main topics and the first one will be chronic absenteeism.

[01:26:16] This is a topic that is not only important to us here in Fairfax County, but across the Commonwealth of Virginia and nationally, and ever more so since the pandemic. We know that children who show up for school regularly develop the fundamental reading and math skills while also building a habit of good attendance that's going to lead to their success while there are students here in FCPS and beyond once they enter their careers.

[01:26:39] Regular school attendance, especially at the elementary school ages, improves the chances that our students will read on grade level. And students who attend 90% or more of the school year are more likely to graduate from high school on time. Missing just 10% of the school year negatively affects a student's academic performance.

[01:26:55] And that equates in 180 day approximately school year. That's 18 days over the course of the year, which is just two days a month. And so this idea of being absent for 10% or more of the school year is something that we're going to come back to throughout this section of the report. We talked a little bit about how this is an issue that is something that there's a big focus on across our country and in Virginia and I want to specifically focus on the idea of chronic absenteeism and how we're defining it for the purposes of this report and also how it's defined here in Virginia.

[01:27:26] And so it's important to note that chronic absenteeism is one of our accreditation measures for our division in our school. So the information that's shared in this report aligns directly with that accreditation definition. And that is a student is chronically absent if they miss 10 percent or more of the school year.

[01:27:44] And it's also important to note that when we think about attendance, oftentimes we think about only our unexcused absences or issues of truancy. But for this chronic absenteeism definition, it includes both unexcused absences and excused absences.

[01:27:59] We know this is important to note because each of our students who are having a barrier or challenge to attending school on a regular basis, there's a story to each of those students. There's something that we need to understand about what is that challenge, what is that barrier. And it could be things like engagement and connection to school, finding those relationships with their peers or trusted adults, things related to their social, emotional or mental health or even we have medically fragile, medically fragile students where attending is a challenge. So all of those stories are things that we want to understand as we look into this data. We're going to start by looking at some of the high-level metrics that are in this report that give us an idea of how

[01:28:38] we're doing as a division as a whole. So again with this idea of 10% of the school year, we'll continue to talk about students who are absent for less than 10% of the school year. They're attending on a regular basis and for students that are absent for more than 10% of the school year, they fall into that category of chronically absent. So we can see that 87% of our students were absent for less than 10% of the school year. So a high level of success across our division. But even with that, we're seeing that there are some gaps between our student groups. And from that baseline of 87%, we see the largest

[01:29:17] gap being eight points. And then at the end of this section we'll talk a little bit about how our schools are measured and how this lines up with the VDOE accreditation. But over the baseline years, those three years, we're seeing that 64 percent of our schools were having students meet that chronic absenteeism level one accreditation for the state. So when thinking about how we're doing with this idea of students were absent for less than 10 percent of the year you can see a graphic representation and overall again that

[01:29:52] idea of 87% of our students are falling into this category which is where we want them to be and then as we look at our different student groups we can see that nearly all of them are at that 80% or higher level. On the next slide what you're going to see is just the the exact chart that you just saw the numbers that go with it so you can see the percentages of students that fall into this category and then specifically how many students we're talking about and as Miss Neal mentioned earlier on this is a good time to mention again that this is a average of the three years that are in this this baseline amount of time as we

[01:30:31] look across the student groups we can see that again nearly all of them are at 80 percent or higher and the biggest gap we see is with our economically disadvantaged students which is eight percent lower than the baseline number 87% using that exact same data we also wanted to show how we're doing in comparison to the rest of the state so the top line is what we've just looked at in the last two slides and then it's compared to how the rest of Virginia is doing in these areas and then you can see the Delta so there's a lot of positive trends in that area for how we're doing here in Fairfax County to

[01:31:08] note specifically is that when we think about chronic absenteeism accreditation reporting for the state. They do not ask us to report students with 504 plans, but this is something that we've reported in all of our other strategic plan reports, all of our other metrics, and we thought it was important to include here. In the next few slides, we're going to take this idea of students that are absent for less than 10 percent of the school year and look at it across several of our student groups specifically. So we're going to start by looking at gender, and you can see that again that all student rate of 87 percent, how it breaks down

[01:31:43] when we look at our boys, our girls, and our non-binary student populations. The next slide is a lot of information, I know, and I will admit that, and I'm going to try and help us walk through what's on there, because I think it's helpful to have all this information in one place.

[01:32:00] So one of the things we looked at a couple different ways as we were thinking about this idea of student attendance is some of the pathways to being chronically absent and what could lead to that. And so what you see across the top row of this is the students that were absent for less than 5% of the school year.

[01:32:18] So not only regular attending, but they're there nearly every single day throughout the school year. And you can see for our division, that's two out of three students. And across our subgroups, we see a lot of students falling into this category.

[01:32:33] That middle row is our students that were absent for between 5 and 10% of the school year. still as as we think about it you know attending on a regular basis but they're starting to get a little closer than we want to they're missing a little more school than we would hope and you can see where that breaks out as a division and then across each of the student groups and then that bottom row is the students that would be considered chronically absent so 13% of our students over these baseline years when we think about our entire division and then you can see when we look at some of our student groups it gets higher with our economically disadvantaged our multilingual learners our students with disabilities and our

[01:33:11] hispanic students have the greatest gaps in that area we're going to look at a few other of our student groups around this idea of attendance and and how that is going during our baseline years what we see on this screen is a breakdown of our multilingual learners at the top so in that first column that says all of our multilingual learners our current ones are levels one through four and nine. And nine refers to our kindergarten age students combined with our former multilingual learners. So when we think about it as an entire group, and we're seeing that 81% fall into that category of what we're hoping happens in terms of attendance. But when we break it out into

[01:33:51] our current students that are multilingual learners and our former ones, we can see that our current multilingual learners have that lower rate of attendance. And it's something that we want to focus on. We have a similar analysis on the bottom of the screen for our students with disabilities. And again when we think about students with disabilities all of them we've got that 81% rate but when we break it down into our our level one and our level two students with disabilities and that denotes students who spend less than half the time in a special education setting for our level one students or students that spend more than half the time in a special

[01:34:28] education setting for our level two students we can see the disparities there and then we're going to look at one more piece of information at the student level before we talk about some of our schools and again in the previous slide we talked about these pathways to being chronically absent what you're seeing here is some analysis of how students were doing over the course of multiple years so on the top of the screen and we have students who are chronically absent one year and then we wanted to understand how did they do the next year and we're and this is this shows the percentage of students who shifted from being chronically absent to not chronically absent, making that positive change.

[01:35:06] And you can see the rate of students that were moving in the right direction in terms of their school attendance. And then in a similar type of analysis, the bottom of the screen is the students who are close to being chronically absent. So they're in that six to nine percent. They're right there in terms of they might be in that category. How did they do the next year? Did they either stay where they were or did they improve? And you can see how that breaks out across our student groups. The last piece of information that we're going to look at around the idea of chronic absenteeism is how our schools are doing. And again, this is one of our VDOE

[01:35:43] accreditation measures. And what VDOE asks us to look at is they want a school to have 85% of their students to be attending on a regular basis. And during our baseline years, we saw that 64% of our schools were meeting that, and we have that eventual target of wanting 100% of our students to be meeting that level one accreditation.

[01:36:04] At several points throughout the year, through in attendance matters and the strategic plan update at the last school board meeting, some of our attendance data from this current year has presented and has been showing a lot of positive work that has been happening across the division and in our schools and partnerships with parents, families and community members to help improve this.

[01:36:25] And we're seeing a lot of positive gains for our students in terms of these accreditation measures. So that concludes the data that we're going to present at this time. Speaking of some of the efforts that we're making as a division, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Ponce and Ms. Lemon who are going to talk about some of the current strategies that are in place around attendance and chronic absenteeism in our division and some of the ones that we are considering in the future.

[01:36:51] - Good afternoon, sorry for my voice. that have been out and was raining on me. So the chronic ascentism data that was just presented showed areas of relative strength and progress that we are making as a division.

[01:37:09] I know that we are probably right now leading and we are very up among other division and also state. But the data also highlights several areas of need that we need to be intentional intentionally address. Currently, there are several high-leverage strategies that are being implemented across FCPS to reduce chronic ascentism. The first, and probably the most important, is to communicate with the students and families about ascentism and develop attendance

[01:37:48] plans as needed to support consistent attendance. I think that building that relationship with parents is crucial and I will say number one strategy that FCPS attendance campaign also that we have launched as an intentional and ongoing effort to raise awareness about the importance of attendance and its connection to academic success I know this addition that we are using is come to school tomorrow and be successful come to school today be successful tomorrow the

[01:38:25] FCPS is focusing on initiative on five core strategies for the reduction of chronic ascentism in the school. Number one, like I said, and I think is the crucial one, engaging students and parents, recognizing good and improved attendance, monitoring attendance data and practices, personalizing early intervention, and addressing barriers as well. I know Dr. Wright was talking about fragile students that we have so that's some barriers that we are trying to make sure

[01:39:05] that we intentionally address. As a part of our attendance effort this year, schools are working with families to hold conferences and develop attendance plans to support the students with consistently attending school. An attendance report card was introduced this year to help keep families informed about the students' attendance and progress.

[01:39:34] Through a partnership with Edo Futuro, we are also targeting efforts to engage with students with high rates of ascentism and their families. Edo Futuro is working with students in 15 schools, three middle schools and 12 high schools.

[01:39:52] We are having a very tight relationship and partnership with the chief experience and engaging office department to engage also family liaisons and community liaisons so we are on the same page to support this work at the school level also we have provided schools with resources to improve and monitor monitor attendance for example we have a attendance

[01:40:24] toolkits, attendance dashboard, and students' mentors. The school toolkit is designed to support effective practices within school buildings, providing staff with resources and tools to address attendance challenges through a whole-shadow lens. Additionally, there is a focus on implemented tier one social emotional learning or SEL practices to create a positive and

[01:41:00] supportive school environment that foster regular attendance. We believe that by fostering that, students get engaged and build a sense of belonging to the school. So they really want to come to feel that excitement to come to school and not miss in schools.

[01:41:21] The utilization of the attendance dashboard and other data source plays a crucial role in identifying the needs of students and tailoring intervention accordingly. The newly updated dashboard allows staff to identify students in need of attendance support earlier, which can lead to more positive outcomes.

[01:41:45] Rather than wait until you are labeled or you are under read, we can see that the pattern is okay. Conce has been absent for two days already. Let's see what's going on. 'Cause after three times, consecutive times, or three in a period of time, can lead to just say, okay, just another one, just another one, just another one.

[01:42:10] So that's why it's very important to identify the students in need of support. By identifying the students at risk for chronic asymptotism earlier, staff can connect students with appropriate evidence-based academic behavioral and wellness intervention to address various to attend.

[01:42:33] Additional efforts at the school level include requirement for school improvement and improvement plan, the SIP, for schools with high rates of chronic ascentism and project momentum support for targeted schools.

[01:42:49] school year any school no meeting level one benchmark for state accreditation for chronic ascentism was required to have a goal and associated an action plan focusing on reducing the rate of chronic ascentism so the school improvement plan are monitored by by the office region offices with feedback uh provided to school leaders throughout the year uh this year we uh changed a little bit

[01:43:23] and it was not only a written style but also dialogues which we have the opportunity to meet uh quarterly and be present as a whole team uh regional by region by region and they have the opportunity to give that feedback and see if we have accomplished that goal very specific chronic ascentism. We have some schools that I would say are on the on the yellow area and we are trying to make sure that we move them to the green area. Project Momento schools are supporting

[01:44:02] and continuously monitoring the attendance status of the students. This data is crucial to support planning and reflection with school leaders and also plan for professional development because sometimes something that we are not understanding is the cultural part of ascentism some in our cultures sometimes we take some things for granted or we allow things to happen easily than others so this is something that we are planning as well bring this cultural awareness

[01:44:42] with regard to ascentism. Finally, we are excited about the opportunities available, flexible scheduling to address chronic ascentism and support students with missed learning.

[01:44:58] I think that you learned a little bit more last board meeting about the Virginia Department of Education recently announced a new opportunity to allow in-person flexible instructional hours to adjust student chronic ascension calculations.

[01:45:16] I think that was the last meeting I was absent, but I was listening. Students can earn up to 15 recorded days based on participation in flexible instruction programs, such as compensatory education, twilight, and after-school Saturday tutorials.

[01:45:39] I want to make sure that we understand that this is not the solution, Because what we are pushing for, planning, and that's going to be our target. If the students are actually attending every single day, it's no remediation that we are going to use this, okay, we got it.

[01:46:01] No, this is just in the event of something happened, you get sick and everything, but not as a solution. This is not our solution. The solution is to make sure that we build that relationship where parents and students attend, well, children attend school every single day.

[01:46:26] These opportunities for recovery days must be thought by a licensed teacher, be held in person, tied to a curriculum the students miss or areas in which the students struggles consistent with regular school day interaction and held outside of normal school hours.

[01:46:47] These are the requirements. Last week, we piloted our Spring Sprout program, five elementary schools, which I was so happy and a little bit unhappy because we have a costume for Dr. Reed, Mr. Murray Smith, and myself, Green Sprout, but you were lucky that I was not here.

[01:47:10] Otherwise, we will be dressing in that way. The program allowed 138 children, students, to participate for four days of instruction.

[01:47:26] Any student attending all four days will recover up to 12 days. Programs were staffed with two general education teachers, one special education teacher, and public health nurse.

[01:47:41] Transportation and meals, breakfast and lunch was provided to attending students. There was a community effort. I'm very pleased to say that it was not only one specific department, but it was an effort, FCPS community, 'cause parents as well participated by bringing the children and everything.

[01:48:08] So that was a really beautiful way to see. Like I said before, this is not the solution for chronic ascentism, but it's a way that we're going to leverage to make sure that we will utilize.

[01:48:25] By combining various report methods, recognition programs, and support mechanism, FCPS continues to enhance overall attendance management and create a collaborative environment between schools, families, and community resources.

[01:48:44] Something like I said, we are pushing the number one resource that we are looking for is building that relationship with the families. And number one is by empowering our teachers.

[01:48:59] Our teachers, they are very engaged with the families. They know exactly what's going on and everything, So we're going to make sure that we are going to take advantage of that and keep pushing. And at this point, I'm going to ask my colleague, Ms. Lamond. Hey, good afternoon.

[01:49:20] Although we have several strategies currently in place, we know that in order to meet the goals for chronic absenteeism in our strategic plan are going to require strategies and other approaches to continue to be developed. And to that end, there are several high-leverage strategies that are currently under consideration for further development in FCPS.

[01:49:42] First, we would like to build and enhance the capacity of families through the FCPS Family Academy. In an effort to enhance overall attendance practices, FCPS hopes to broaden our campaign both within FCPS and the community to increase awareness and learning opportunities on the impact of chronic absenteeism on students.

[01:50:07] Family engagement is a key focus to partnering with families. With the expansion of Parent Project and Loving Solutions Program, curriculum aims to build capacity, connections, and confidence with families, addressing challenging behaviors or barriers that may disrupt regular attendance.

[01:50:29] The Preparing Our Kids for Success curriculum includes ongoing family training opportunities throughout the year and can be presented in various languages, formats, and modalities, fostering really solid two-way communication rather than just one-way interactions from school to home.

[01:50:47] We would also like to expand our ability to coordinate attendance outreach work with community partners. FCPS will build upon our existing family outreach efforts by working with community partnerships such as Fairfax County Government, Neighborhood and Community Services, our Opportunity Neighborhoods, to support efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism.

[01:51:13] Expanded multilingual family outreach, coordinating with faith-based organizations, and enhancing mentoring initiatives through the Belonging Project will help bolster relationships and connections to promote positive attendance patterns.

[01:51:29] Also, we're aiming to develop a division-wide attendance task force. This would help reduce chronic absenteeism in FCPS, and it would require a coordinated division-wide approach, including division-wide attendance team.

[01:51:46] The task force would incorporate inter-departmental insights and expertise into strategies to promote school attendance. It would look at regular analysis of attendance data, a continuum of strategies to notify parents and guardians when attendance becomes a concern, and a root cause analysis problem-solving approach coupled with targeted interventions.

[01:52:11] Another strategy that's under consideration is reestablishing a uniform, division-wide policy for participation in sports games, practices, and other extracurricular activities in relation to regular school attendance. At this time, FCPS does not have an existing policy requiring students to attend classes during the school day to be eligible to participate in extracurricular activities occurring later in that same day. FCPS will re-examine implementing a participation policy to require same-day school attendance to participate in activities

[01:52:46] and athletics. Finally there are several strategies under consideration that will impact the student experience during the school day. First is exploring course offerings outside of the traditional school day that foster student engagement. There are several school divisions out there that offer periods before or after the traditional times to offer elective courses such as jazz ensemble or soccer or other opportunities for students to enroll in highly engaging classes and even earned credits. Classes offered before the

[01:53:25] start of the school day are often called zero period classes. Courses offered at the beginning of the school day can also help support student attendance for the remainder of the school day. Imagining coming to school with something very highly engaging that you're passionate about gets you there and then you're there for the remainder. Additional course offerings outside of the traditional day have been available at FCPS high schools in the passed and a division-wide expansion of this could be considered to support our attendance efforts. Furthermore, establishing a full-time virtual school option for students enrolled in an alternative program. For some students a

[01:54:03] full-time virtual enrollment is a better fit than in-person learning. FCPS currently offers courses through the FCPS online campus for students but does not provide a full-time enrollment option. FCPS is currently exploring ways to provide a full-time virtual program through FCPS non-traditional high schools. And finally, we're exploring utilizing AI-powered tools to support reintegration of students into the classroom following prolonged absences.

[01:54:31] When students have missed instruction for a variety of reasons for multiple school days, whether it be excused or unexcused, sometimes a seamless return to learning can be a challenge. FCPS will explore opportunities to provide students with AI-supported tools that allow them to close gaps in learning that occurred during their absence and help further enhance their support for a successful return to school. Our work as a division to address chronic absenteeism will need to continue to evolve in the response to the needs of our students and our families and community partners. This will require an

[01:55:09] ongoing collaboration with all these important groups to overcome the challenges and barriers that may disrupt regular attendance and school engagement for our students. - Thank you, Ms. Lemon. At this time, we're going to move to the second portion of this report that is focused on in this presentation, and that's the concept of discipline disproportionality. This comes from Measure F of our Goal 2 in our strategic plan. We know that there are lots of components to discipline in our school system, but the specific area that the strategic plan asks us to look at of discipline disproportionality

[01:55:47] is what will be discussed at this time. As we think about this idea and move forward, we want to talk a little bit about how some of this information is going to be presented and how it's in alignment with some of the work that is occurring at the state level.

[01:56:03] When we think about disproportionality, we're going to present relative risk ratios. These are based on the procedures and the accountability methods that VDOE uses. At the top you see an example of how the ratios are calculated and essentially what we're doing is looking at the number of students in a group compared with the number of students not in that group and the discipline actions that occur. We'll look at a specific example with some numbers on the next slide. To note is the range of disproportionality that's on the bottom part

[01:56:39] of this slide. This comes directly from the VDOE methodology when they're looking at the same type of information. So if all things are equal, if we have the exact same rates of discipline actions, it'll be at 1.0. And then as we go above 1.0, we're seeing it's more likely for a student group to experience a discipline action. So if a student group falls into, has a rating of 2.0, it means it's twice as likely for them to experience something as compared to students not in that group. So on the next slide, we see just an example, this is not our FCPS data, it's just an example to help us understand this

[01:57:16] concept a little bit more. And you can see we have 30 multilingual learners that had a suspension compared to all of our multilingual learners. And then we think about the students that were not multilingual learners. And when we look at that, when we do the math on this, we see that for this hypothetical example, that multilingual learners were three times is likely 3.07 to be suspended compared to their non-multilingual learners.

[01:57:45] So that's a little bit of the understanding of how some of the data that we're about to look at from our FCPS baseline years, how we got to those risk ratios. So on the next slide, we're going to look at an overview of the data that's presented in this section, and we're really looking at the idea of students with at least one referral and students with at least one suspension.

[01:58:08] When we think about students with referrals across the division, we're seeing that 6% of our students fall in that category. And then as we think about the different student groups, we see that there are student groups that are twice as likely to receive a referral compared with students not in that group.

[01:58:25] For the same approach, when we think about suspensions across our division, 1% of our students had at least one day of out-of-school suspension, and this data only looks at out-of-school suspensions. And then when we think about the student groups, we can find that we have some groups that are three times as likely as others to experience a discipline action of a suspension.

[01:58:48] So to actually look at the specific numbers that we have in Fairfax County, we can see that on the top left, it shows that that 6% of students received at least one referral. There's no duplicated information in here, so that's 11,406 students that received one referral or more.

[01:59:10] We're going to look at how that breaks down a little bit in a few slides from now. As we look across the percentages on the top line, we can see that certain student groups have higher percentages in terms of receiving referrals. And then when we look at the bottom line, we can see our risk ratios.

[01:59:30] So for our economically disadvantaged students, they're approximately two times as likely as students who are not economically disadvantaged to receive a referral. Again that range that we looked at a few slides ago shows that 2.0 to 3.0 is a moderate disproportionality, but we can still see that it does not align with other student groups within our division.

[01:59:53] The next slide that we're going to look at is the same type of analysis again for those out of school suspensions. So we see that 1% of our students in our division across the baseline years received at least one day of out of school suspension.

[02:00:09] And as we think about the percentages, we can see that across the top and the number of students that this impacts. And then that bottom line is those risk ratios. So again, we're seeing that our students with disabilities or economically disadvantaged students are approximately three times as likely as students not in those groups to receive this discipline action.

[02:00:29] You can see that there's groups in that 2.0 to 3.0 range, and you can see that there's groups below that one point, which means they're less likely to receive that discipline action. As we go to the next slide, as I mentioned earlier, we also wanted to understand how many of the students that we're thinking about, is this a discipline pattern that we're seeing repetition or multiple incidents?

[02:00:54] So what we see here is the number of students that had a referral where they only, in the course of the year they only had one referral. So for when we think about division-wide, 58% of our students received a referral, all they had was one referral that year. The remaining students had more than one referral. And you can see what this looks like across our student groups with several of them around that 50% to 60% range and some of them higher, some of them lower, especially our students with disabilities. The next few slides we're going to look at similar to what we did with our chronic absenteeism analysis.

[02:01:30] we're going to look at some student groups specifically so here is this concept of discipline referrals broken down by gender so you can see the percentages on the top and then those ratios on the bottom for our student populations of boys girls and then our non-binary population this slide helps us understand the discipline impact for our multilingual learners and it takes it and it looks at in the first column for all of our current multilingual learners are levels one through four and you can see that means when we think about them collectively ten percent of them received at least one referral and

[02:02:10] three percent of them were experiencing a suspension and then we look at it broken down by our ELP level and when we looked at the same type of analysis for our goal five report which talked about dropout rates and on-time graduation we saw significant levels disparity across these levels where we saw some of the greatest needs in our ELP levels 1s and 2s. When we look at it this way you can see it's fairly consistent across the levels of our English or excuse me our multilingual learners. The next slide is that similar analysis for our students

[02:02:46] with disabilities where you can see when we think about our student with disabilities group 11% received a referral and 3% received an out of school suspension and then you can see the disparities when we think about level 1 students and level two students in terms of the special education setting. The last thing that we'll look at in terms of student data is this concept of intersectionality and in the complete report we present this for all, we present this for our students with disability, our economically disadvantaged students, and our multilingual learners. Here we wanted to show it specifically

[02:03:25] for our students with disabilities and again you can see on the top line referrals and the bottom line suspensions and as a reminder what we're looking at is that you know when we see that top left of the screen ten percent of all of our students with disabilities experienced a referral but when we think about our students with disabilities who are also economically disadvantaged we can see that that increases to 15% and going across you can see some of the intersectionality groups where it gets even higher and and some of them where it decreases.

[02:04:00] At this time, I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. King who's gonna talk about some of the current strategies that we have in place around these efforts and some of the future strategies that are under consideration. - Thank you, Dr. Wright. The discipline data presented shows that while our overall rates of referrals and suspensions are low in FCPS, we see areas of disproportionality that we must address as a system.

[02:04:23] To that end, there are several high leverage strategies currently in place. reduction of disproportionate discipline initiative that we started with our baseline data last fall and implemented this year with schools. FCPS launched the RDD initiative to provide tier three school support with four to five student groups with a risk ratio of three or higher. 19 schools were identified as RDD schools and they were required to create SIP goals and strategies around reducing disproportionality. In addition, these schools receive support through a

[02:05:02] central team that provided coaching, professional development, resources, and guidance to implement evidence-based strategies to reduce discipline disparities. The support team also worked with the region office to monitor their progress. Beginning this school year, FCPS also expanded restorative justice, and you heard me talk about that this morning, training to ensure that all schools have two certified RJ facilitators. The purpose of RJ is to not avoid consequences, but it's to repair the harm when the conflict occurs while also

[02:05:40] teaching interpersonal and communication skills that help students resolve disagreements and make positive decisions. Training for RJ includes two days worth of learning and then 30 days of coaching and mentoring to ensure consistent implementation at the school level. RJ training is ongoing with the last cohort of participants scheduled to begin at their training in the fall of 2024. FCPS offers a number of trainings focused on best practices that foster positive school climates, promote positive behaviors, and creates, excuse

[02:06:19] me, supportive learning environments. These are intended to be proactive and preventative efforts to support students in feeling connected, supported, and engaged. Some examples of these types of training include the positive behavior interventions and support, also known as PBIS, responsive classroom training, cultural responsiveness training, and courses focused on learning environments and relationships and classroom management. New teachers receive additional support with creating a positive classroom and establishing positive relationships with students and families through the Great Begrinnings program and assigned mentors.

[02:06:59] This year, school-based administrators also received professional learning to support positive student behavior and consistent management of discipline, including technical trainings focused on discipline, SR&R, bullying, and the hearings office, summer training for all APs on how to proactively build structured and supportive environments, strategies for managing student behavior, and ways to respond to and support students after discipline incidents occurs. And both all county school-based administrators and school-based administrators induction programs have focused on student behavior and management of discipline-related

[02:07:36] issues. Finally, FCP implements proactive practices to support students in developing skills needed to engage in positive behavior. FCPES uses the multi-tiered system of support to teach all students self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. Students demonstrating behavior challenges are provided additional instruction and practice as well as individual intervention as needed that emphasizes the teaching of new skills. School counselors provide classroom instruction and school-wide programming that

[02:08:14] focuses on empowering students to become independent and productive individuals that make safe and healthy choices. All FCPS schools use the evidence-based responsive classroom model to implement school-wide morning meetings and closing circles and responsive advisory meetings in middle and high schools. These proactive practices promote a sense of inclusion and belonging and are linked to improved sense of safety and support and enhance relationships which provide an improved behavioral attendance and academic outcomes. With FCPS, it's taking

[02:08:54] several steps to support positive school climates and reduce discipline disproportionality. We know that there's work that remains and we also know that some of our current work will need to be continually redefined. I'm now going to share some examples of future strategies that are under consideration or development. Our dashboard tools have been powered have a powerful way of us monitoring real-time progress to be responsive to any needs we are seeing in in a timely manner and we know that recently Dr. Reed ensured that we had data dashboards

[02:09:31] that we review every Monday as a leadership team and we know when we review those supervisors of folks who are responsible for the work can reach out and monitor schools or departments when they're not meeting the goals. Exploring ways to enhance our current discipline tools to provide both schools and division leaders with access to real-time data about discipline incidents will also allow ongoing monitoring and support as needed. Any new tools would also be accompanied by training on data interpretation and consistent actions based on what the data says. In order to improve discipline outcomes across the division, it is

[02:10:09] essential that all schools have consistent practices regarding the documentation, monitoring, and response to discipline incidents. FCPS will develop clear guidance on how and what discipline should be documented in the student information system including what types of discipline incidents should be classroom managed versus formally referred. Staff will develop materials and trainings to support this work. FCPS will explore evidence-based resources such as my teaching partner developed by the University of Virginia to improve student-teacher relationships in order to increase student engagement and

[02:10:46] achievement. My teaching partner is an example of a program that has been shown to reduce behavior referrals and close gaps in discipline disproportionality through coaching cycles focused on student engagement. Research shows that participation in social and emotional learning programs are linked to decreased emotional distress, more positive attitudes about self and others, and fewer externalizing behaviors and discipline problems. SEL focuses on developing healthy identities, managing emotions, achieving personal and collective

[02:11:23] goals, feeling and showing empathy for others, and establishing and managing supportive relationships and making responsible and caring decisions. To support the development of these skills, FCPS will utilize an SEL framework and explore the adoption of a curriculum to explicitly teach social-emotional and cognitive skills. Establishing relationships and classroom management routines is imperative to ensuring students are successful both academically and behaviorally. FCPS will provide resources guidance and training

[02:12:00] in order for all teachers pre-k through 12 to set these expectations in consistent ways at the start of the school year as needed and throughout the year, after breaks when students join, rejoin us. According to the latest review of the National Council on Teacher Quality, just under half of teacher prep programs sufficiently cover essential classroom management strategies. That is despite clear evidence that effective classroom management preparation can lead to positive academic behavioral and social-emotional outcomes for students.

[02:12:34] Beginning in the 2024-25 school year, FCPS will be piloting a novice instructional coach program to provide direct support in classrooms with teachers in their first three years of teaching. In the first year of the pilot, the coaches will support schools with larger percentages of new teachers and focus on classroom routines, positive relationships, instructional strategies, and student engagement, and the implementation of new instructional materials and content. FCPS continues to focus on classroom instruction that is both engaging and culturally responsive. One way to do this is through development

[02:13:14] of an instructional framework. For example, FCPS framework for engaging in student-centered mathematic instruction focuses on instructional shifts for meaningful learning by shifting from teachers to students. This work is done via the learning model which encompasses the best practices of concept-based curriculum, meaningful learning experiences, purposeful assessment, and learning center environments. Another way that we are working to set up student-centered learning environments is through the work of a universal divine, excuse me, design for learning where we are all beginning phases of that

[02:13:51] work. Finally, FCPS is updating existing MTSS tools and will be providing additional training to support schools in consistent implementation. Training will focus on the protocols to review data, determine student needs, and provides support for non-academic areas. This includes a focus on the use of Tier 2 interventions to address student social emotional and behavioral needs. These efforts are intended to mitigate the risk of disciplinary issues. I'll now turn it back over to Dr. Wright. Thank you Dr. King. In conclusion, we know that chronic

[02:14:31] absenteeism, one of our goal 2 priority areas, is closely related to the achievement of our other strategic plan goal priorities such as student academic academic achievement and reading and mathematics graduation equity and so much more so we know that from pre-k through 12 the idea of regular attendance in schools can be considered a precursor for future success for our students additionally the other area we talked about today in relation to goal two is this idea of discipline disproportionality addressing this is essential for creating an

[02:15:06] inclusive and equitable educational environments that nurture the potential of every student. Improving both of these areas requires a multi-faceted approach focused on strong partnerships with families in the community, ensuring engaging and culturally responsive learning environments, equipping students with the skills necessary to make positive decisions, communicate effectively, and manage conflict, and providing educators with the tools to do this work effectively.

[02:15:33] For each of these Goal 2 metrics and all the other goals that are part of our plan, FCPS must be committed on its journey as it is likely to take multiple years for us to fully realize these improvements. But staying targeted on these strategic aims will benefit all of our students.

[02:15:50] At this time this concludes our formal presentation and I'll turn it back over to the meeting managers for the rest of our time together. Thank you Dr. Wright and all of you who shared in this presentation. This is a volume of work, and I know it takes a lot of time, so thank you.

[02:16:07] We'll get to folks' comments, and I'll start with you, Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Please just go ahead and put me in a go back or two. I do want to say thank you for this work. I want to acknowledge that there's a high level of scholarship here, and I appreciate that.

[02:16:26] These are vastly improved reports, and I appreciate that. like probably my colleagues i've dug into the footnotes the references the studies that really helps to at least for me to lend credibility to the work that we're doing so i i want to give kudos to the team on that work um i do also realize that we can't take you know we we have to take this elephant in chunks so while i have some questions regarding why we don't have baseline data in some areas i'm in full support of the two major areas in which you're focusing those are the most

[02:17:00] significant to, which is chronic absenteeism and disproportionality. We have to be able to, one, get them to school, and two, keep them at school. But I am concerned about an area that I raised earlier, and I'm going to just go ahead and start there. The goal for SY2324 to lower the disproportionality rate, Dr. Reed, the goal is a tenth of a point. And by my back of the envelope

[02:17:30] math, because I know we're trying to not raise it for some other groups. We want for those groups that are low to remain there. We want to bring the other groups that are high-low. If we were to continue at the pace of a tenth a year, which what is supposed to be a seven-year plan, just looking at economically disadvantaged students to bring them to the level, this is a data that's on page 26, because they're at 2.9, to bring them to the level of, I believe, Asian students, which are at 0.3, that would take 26 years.

[02:18:08] And if we were to do something similarly for our students with disabilities, that's 27 years. And I could go on and on on that. How did we land on a 10th? Because for me, that does not sufficiently raise the alarm over this very important component.

[02:18:25] - Yeah, fair point, Dr. Anderson. And I'm gonna let Ms. Neal explain a little bit what those charts are describing, and we certainly are not wanting to leave the impression that we think 26 years is a reasonable amount of time, so I want to make sure the public hearing that understands that that's, I'm sure, not your intent or expectation, nor is it mine.

[02:18:47] So let's kind of explain that, and perhaps we need to craft a document that better explains our thinking moving forward, but Ms. Neal, would you respond, please? Certainly Dr. Reed, so the risk ratios the intention is to get as close to one for every student group as possible So in the way that we try to do that is by reducing the Disproportionality so the groups that are having higher discipline rates to bring those rates down Because it's a mathematical equation where you're comparing one group to other groups You're not you're not going to get below the 1.0 for all student groups you're trying to get everybody closer to that 1.0 by reducing the groups with a larger discipline

[02:19:27] disproportionality. I don't know if that, and I agree, Dr. Reed, because this is a trickier one, we might need some supplemental documents to help explain risk ratios. Well, I think even for our staff, I mean, we're, the idea of one, so there's a one-to-one rather than any kind of, it's disproportional if it's anything other than one. It's better disproportional if it's less than one, and it's worse if it's more than one, but one is the target.

[02:19:54] However, I think we're struggling to explain that. So I think finding some -- maybe creating trajectory lines for groups that get to no disproportionality by 2030 really is -- and I think then different groups are going to require different slopes on the line, and maybe that's a different way to represent that data, because I think Dr. Anderson's point is well taken.

[02:20:19] We don't want to leave the impression with someone reading that, that we were implying that long to address this issue. And I think, thank you, Marcy. I think I have clarity in terms of where we're heading, and I appreciate you explaining that we're going to get to 1.0.

[02:20:36] What I am really concerned of is the pace at which we are going to get there. Because if we're doing a tenth of a point this year, this is a seven-year plan, what is going to be the goal in the out years? the low-hanging fruit exists now. It only gets harder. So I would be looking for a more aggressive schedule in this year and the next year. A tenth is minimal. Again, if I were to go to 1.0, that shaves off 15 years, but that still gives a lot of years left that I don't think sufficiently

[02:21:11] connects with what we're saying we need as a division. I'd like to bring your attention to, Oh, shoot, look at the time. I'm just going to stop. I don't have enough time to get to the next point. Thank you. Ms. Anderson?

[02:21:28] Okay, so I have lots of questions about this one. The first thing that I want to ask is, do we think this is the right data set for these two particular issues? I went into VDOE's accreditation information. They have excluded the two COVID years.

[02:21:46] And so it significantly concerns me that we are utilizing data related to discipline when the kids weren't in the building. And so I think that gives us, I am concerned that these numbers are actually worse than they are appearing. And so for this particular goal, I'm wondering if we're using the right data set to give us the baseline that we need.

[02:22:07] And so that's the first question that I had. Specifically, I think that at the very minimum that we need to exclude 2021, particularly if we can pull up that data and figure out that it's an outlier in itself. We should be able to compare it to the total and see or compare it to the average and see if it's a significant outlier.

[02:22:29] So that is extremely concerning to me that we're utilizing the wrong set of information. I mean, I think that's a fair question. When we started the baseline reporting, we sort of had shared that we were going to use those three years of the baseline.

[02:22:47] There are variances throughout the VDOE allowed different allowances for things like SOLs, graduation, right, that are all included in some of our reports. I think it's a fair question whether or not we want to isolate out a year's worth of data and provide the board with some updated information that's looking just specifically at that, pulling that information out.

[02:23:06] Well, and it would be interesting just to see it as one year. So even if we just used last year where a single baseline, just particularly related to absenteeism, because I do understand that absenteeism and discipline have both increased and become more problematic since COVID happened. And so even if we utilize the two years or, you know, some, some different formula, I'm not, I, I have mentioned before that I am concerned about utilizing COVID numbers related to any of our data and the fact that the state isn't doing it with their accreditation information tells me that that inclination is correct and so I am concerned moving forward particularly

[02:23:43] with these two things that are so specific to having kids in the building so I would like us to think more about that or at least have the data on hand so that we can move forward appropriately we've already talked a little bit about the differences in suspension or the the discipline risk ratio I'm happy to hear that we're trying to get to zero or to one for everybody I was a little concerned when I was looking through the report and I'm seeing that there are some that we're trying to hold for that aren't already at one so that that's a little concerning to me particularly when we're talking about 504 that group is already a little higher so I was I was wondering

[02:24:23] kind of why we were maintaining on that one the other question that I had though is specific to the flexibility that we have related to absenteeism for students disabilities is there some flex within the state requirements related to absenteeism that kind of would would take that group maybe out of the data set in a different or in a different way are you asking if video we has some specific allowances for students with disabilities with regard to attendance yes and I and I I'm I'll give you the answer is yes so like there is I try not to ask questions that I already know the answers to but I guess my question is

[02:25:01] from what I've heard anecdotally is that principals are having a hard time getting that information so I would really like us to make sure that we are giving it to them appropriately for the number of if they have a certain number of programs or things like that then then there are different flex rules this is Anderson would you clarify what information principals are struggling to get they're struggling to find the information related to the state rules how they're supposed to be reporting attendance for students with disabilities. So I'm Betris Huffman is here and I think Betris was nodding no there are not separate roles but maybe she's nodding no there are separate

[02:25:38] rules there are not separate roles. Okay then that is a misunderstanding that some of our principals have. I was gonna say because we can't provide what doesn't exist. So maybe we need to be clear that it doesn't exist. And I'm kind of wondering why it doesn't because those students that are either level one or level two have a higher need for for outside supports and I think that it's it's unrealistic for us to create that strain on those families. Thank you Miss

[02:26:10] Anderson. Miss Marin. Okay I'm gonna try and bucket my questions into two main themes. So I understand that there had to be a reasonable scope of work for this huge undertaking of the measures and when I look at what measures we're looking at for each of the goals, for this Goal 2 one, this Goal 2, the discipline, the discipline piece, some caffeine, and the chronic absenteeism. To me, that is attached to so many other of the measures that are in

[02:26:49] the strategic plan. So we know that when students feel safe, they will want to come to school. When they have extra clicker activities they like, they are going to want to come to school. So my question is, first off, that if we don't, Well, okay, first of all, you might, some of the strategies that were mentioned would also seem to be strategies for some of those measures.

[02:27:09] And I'm wondering, one, are you collecting that seemingly baseline data? Because otherwise then we're starting to do these implementations of strategies that could actually influence that baseline data, and we haven't even measured that baseline data. So that's one piece. And the second is, can we really, is this one so clearly clean cut that we can't look at some of those other school climate things that are, again, such a big indicator for absenteeism and discipline.

[02:27:36] So I think there are intersectionalities amongst data points. And we are collecting data that we will be utilizing in the forward years. These two topics are taking a lot of on-the-ground work at the school level, both on attendance and on the discipline disproportionality.

[02:27:56] I think as Dr. King mentioned earlier, this is our first year of essentially saying we are going to have two staff members in every school in the division who will have been fully trained in restorative justice practices, which are an underpinning to disproportionality and honestly addressing discipline as well as the teaching objectives of the SRNR, which we just finished a session on.

[02:28:20] So I think when we think about, plus our academic work for those school staff, so I think when think about the goal work, I want to take us back to the chart that I could jump up and draw, which is each year we're going to be developing and crafting the strategy for a measure or several measures. At the same time, we're going to be implementing other measures. At the same time, we're going to be monitoring still other measures. So eventually, all will be monitored. We won't be developing and implementing new ones. We just can't develop

[02:28:54] and implement strategies on three or four measures times five goals in one year effectively. Because what we want to do is deepen that work. So when we move to the implementation, like we're developing next year's strategies while we're looking at the implementation of what we're doing now and not feeling like the schools are having to do all of that simultaneously.

[02:29:20] So the central office is working on the development as the schools are implementing with support report, and then next year what you're going to see is not the drop off of the ones we did this year, but those will continue to be reported on as well as the new ones that we implement next year.

[02:29:35] So several years out, all measures are going to be reported on, and we believe they'll be sustainable and fully implemented by 2030, and we should see the data that we expect to see by then. And now I'm wondering if I'm seeing the chart that you said you could draw, and that was the one that had the color bands going, and I'm wondering if that should continue to be included in these reports because that is helpful, so thank you for that reminder and that's a helpful graphic. And I know that the attendance work is already working because you sent us data and so I've got a shout out to two of my elementary schools. Dogwood Elementary went from 28% chronic absenteeism this time last year to 11% this year. McNair Primary

[02:30:12] is at 13.5 from 29%. I mean that's not even a full school year. So I get that that's working and so we've got the baseline data, and that's great, but I'm interested in the other stuff. Dr. Reed, why is data provided across all -- why is data provided across all K-12 grades and not grade level by grade level, especially for the discipline data?

[02:30:38] Dr. That's a great question. It could be. We just provided it that way, dare I say, because that's how we've always provided it, which is not what you want to hear, and I can't believe I said. So the team will take that back.

[02:30:56] Mark that down, Marty. I don't know -- I don't even know that that came out of my mouth, but I think we'll -- it's being recorded. Great. All right. Anyhow, we can certainly adjust that, because we've had that conversation in particular about the transition years, you know, are we seeing different data in those transition years to new school buildings and levels in terms of your point around feeling safe, secure, connected. So I think that's something we can take a look at, right team? Oh yes, there's a renewed energy to do that.

[02:31:28] Well, great. And I do wonder if it's just because things, it's how it's always been done. But I have to say, seeing chart after chart of data by ethnicity and race is really not the level that I want to see our school division looking at our children through. We know that that's not what drives outcomes. We know that special education, economic advantage, multilingual learner status intersected with some of those things, but I just am quite fatigued at looking at our children by their racial composition. I think knowing grade level is infinitely more helpful for this, because do you need to provide your training

[02:32:07] to elementary or to high school? Having online course options, well, that's only going to help as a strategy for your high school students, not your elementary school students. Extracurriculars, we have data, we should be able to pull it on middle school, after school activities, we have a whole program that that data should be there. So and on that point, you know, even things like online availability, well, is Schoology fully loaded so that people can access, the kids can access that content when they're out. So I just, I don't think it's deep enough at all and clear enough to the board about what strategies are going to be needed because it's very different than just lumping all 180,000 kids together for discipline or attendance needs.

[02:32:44] Well, the other reason that I think the data is reported in this way is because VDOE for the disproportionality reports actually require us to look at the data in the sorting mechanism that we've sorted.

[02:33:01] I mean, that's the way the state is -- That's what we always -- we go above and beyond the standards quite often. Well, we do. We do. We do. I'm just saying that part of the question was why do we do it? And these are the categories of disproportionality that the state has provided us, therefore that's how we report and look at that.

[02:33:20] I do think the grade level helps us in our strategy on addressing the issue, for sure. And not just by grade level, but likely by region, which we're already doing that. But I had to head off the question at the end of the table that I know is coming.

[02:33:37] So predictably, I read your notes, but to just the larger categories are state required. So thank you for that clarification. Mr. Frisch. Thank you and kudos for all of the work that went into this.

[02:33:56] One thing I'm curious about, so I think the school board started really taking an earnest approach to disciplinary disproportionality and our returning board members can correct me if I'm wrong, but like 2016-2017 in terms of a real focus on that equity work. I'm curious because it's not in the report, it's not in the presentation, but the report does say that about 6% of the student population is referred and 1% for suspension. How does that compare to

[02:34:29] a decade ago? Because if all we're doing is lowering the number of referrals and not actually addressing the disproportionality, then I think that maybe what we're doing to address the disproportionality is not working. I think that's a good point. And I think what we do see is that the lower the number of students in any group, the more volatile that data becomes in terms of potentially being disproportionate. Because if you have 20 students, fewer students can impact the entire group than if you have 2,000 students. So what we've seen is sometimes it can be two

[02:35:04] students at a particular school that are creating what is referenced as disproportionality. And we've also seen in difficult conversations with our principals that principals will say, well, look, we have very little discipline. And in some ways, very little discipline creates potential disproportionality because the total number of students in any particular category are so small. I will say, Dr. King maybe can speak to how things might have been, i don't know if you have access to any kind of reports that were done longer ago um we do not

[02:35:39] so maybe those don't exist or we haven't found them um but i also um you know i i think that the uh there's been a lot of work across the entire country on this topic and where we see uh to miss maron's point looking at grade level looking at demographic what we also i think even more importantly is which offenses are creating the disproportionality and we really are dialing that down to get really tight on to be blunt it goes back to the may and shall

[02:36:14] conversation we just finished at noon there are some areas where there's a lot of oh a lot of room for interpretation which is where we in some cases see the most disproportionality so um to your point mr first i think we have to be really thoughtful about the strategies not to create a different problem downstream you know along the lines of what you were just mentioning um and tying it back to um videoe's standard of what we're collecting information on you know one of the the assets of collecting this information is when there is a

[02:36:53] outlier at the school level if you see a school that all of a sudden has an ups a new administration for this is all a make believe example but like a new administration comes in and all of a sudden there's an upswing in disciplinary referrals for one of the categories that we're monitoring that might be an indication for the school system that something is amiss and the need to go in there and so while i i you know i do agree that there is other information that would be of great value to the board when looking at this and seeing how um how we're doing

[02:37:28] I think that race and ethnicity are are also important and you know part of discussing these these items should center in how much one or two or three depending on the the school referrals can swing the disproportionality you know measure in the same way that when we were talking about recovery from COVID you might have a school that over one year improves SOL data among students with disabilities by 30% and then you look a little more closely and you realize that perhaps it's because

[02:38:07] they had such a small population of students with disabilities that it only took improving one or two kids to move the needle. We can't have these conversations without being explicit about what we're looking at, and explicit about our expectations.

[02:38:22] I continue to worry that we're not actually addressing our goal with addressing discipline disproportionality, right? That we're doing things that don't actually address the problem. And the problem is that a student is treated differently than another student would be in the same circumstance. Simply removing referrals does

[02:38:50] not change that. Thank you. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Mr. Lady. I sent in a number of questions. Sorry that I did not give you more advanced notice of my questions, but I try to do as best as I could.

[02:39:14] And there are just so many questions out on the way to begin. And out of 13 questions that I submitted, each of those questions probably require a number of minutes for discussion. So I am not going to be able to ask all those. You'll probably be happy that I'm not going to be able to ask all those.

[02:39:31] but let me start with something a little more on a global scale is we do want our students to behave well. And that premise is probably should be applicable to all our students, no matter in which group a particular student belongs to. And probably one of the major reasons why we want students to behave well is because that's going to have an impact on the particular student's

[02:40:06] student achievement and also other students student achievement as well, and also to the ability on the part of classroom teachers to deliver instruction as well. With that said, with that said, how are we going to be able to measure whether our students' behaviors are improving i mean how how do we do we just count the percentage of referrals going down as a measure

[02:40:46] to see student behaviors improving because we can arbitrarily not refer students and also we can arbitrarily not suspend students so if the bottom line is not just a number of referrals or number of suspension but rather improve the student behaviors and positive outcomes from those improve the behaviors. How are we going to be able to see those? That's my very first question.

[02:41:14] Well, I think traditionally our measure of improved behavior is fewer fights, for example, fewer incidents of misbehavior, right? If we have less misbehavior, we would argue that we have better behavior. So traditionally we've measured data around discipline. Now that goes to our earlier conversation around the srnr as well because i think it was miss st john cunning that mentioned that uh there are school staff that don't like to report the behavior because then they feel like it's creating a narrative about perhaps their school or their program that they

[02:41:53] don't want to have be the narrative because they want to have schools or programs that are demonstrating excellent behavior right and outcomes i think student achievement data as to your point should improve if behavior is improved but traditionally we've measured behavior i think around data about misbehavior but um miss neil is that correct here in fairfax yeah i i would just add dr reed i think some of the other ways we might consider thinking about looking at student behavior is getting perception data from teachers and perception data from students themselves as

[02:42:30] well which our student health survey I think does which we recent the oh it's every two years from the county they use survey so that's probably a very important piece of data that it's a missing at least on in the report so we may have those data out there but we might not have assembled for our consumption our our review not for disproportionality purposes probably no which I think was this presentation but we certainly could assemble that information. I would love to have those data and secondly I don't see anyone from

[02:43:10] Division Counsel's office in this room but I if there is one please raise your hand because I don't see anyone. No I shared with Mr. Foster that he could be there are a number of cases right now of needing his attention but I can text him If we need to have a therapy.

[02:43:26] Sure, sure. So what I understand, in as much as I do not want to see disproportionality among different groups and I appreciate the fact that video is requiring us to report in certain ways and we are doing it and you're sharing those data.

[02:43:48] In terms of, I'm asking this question because I think this question needs to go to the Division Counsel's Office is in light of recent Supreme Court's decision on Harvard admission case, whether school districts throughout the country are permitted to look at, permit to set goals in certain ways including including racial groups goals. I mean that's a concern I have on our part as we have this public

[02:44:21] discourse. So did you want us to take that concern to BDOE who's asking us to report in that way? I want to text you to take the Division Council's office whether whether we can set a goal based upon racial groups. Okay I will check in with Division Council on that question. Thank you.

[02:44:45] Okay thank you. Ms. St. John Cunningham. First of all I want to thank you for this work. It's really important work. I really want to thank you for the spring sprouts. I hope it becomes our summer blooms too at some point and for the restorative justice that we're putting in all of our schools. My concern about a lot of the solutions that were mentioned including you know increasing the capacity for social emotional learning which we all know we need, the non-academic supports, the family engagement and outreach with community partners is who is going to do this work.

[02:45:24] we are severely understaffed and putting more on the teachers plates is a concern for me we don't every school doesn't have a family liaison where a lot of this work falls into and it's easy to identify problems and it's also easy sometimes to identify solutions but I think where the rubber meets the road is the staffing and I know that as a board we're collectively working to try to ensure that we have staffing um and i just want to put that out there uh we just need to be

[02:45:58] mindful of how we move forward um to where we don't overburden our teachers um and i do think that you know engaging an organization like a jifutudo who has proven success is really important and can teach us a lot um but i just want to be very honest about our lofty goals if we are not fully staffed thank you mr. McDaniel question on slide 25 where it shows

[02:46:33] referrals by student groups the should those numbers should a combination of those numbers add up to the total of 11406 not in this instance because we could have students that might be in more than one group so you might have an economically disadvantaged student that's looked at specifically in that column but that student could also be a student with disabilities so they would

[02:47:02] be in that column as well. What about just the demographic columns? So the last five because there's 500 off. Slide 25. Yeah that's something that we could look at. There's those 500 might be another category. It might be a rounding with the three-year baseline. Okay but that's something that we can investigate. Gotcha and a similar I want to make a similar point that Ms. Mirren made

[02:47:36] in addition to grade level it may also be beneficial to look at this school by school instead of aggregating it division y looking at it school by school you're welcome uh because if and then you can overlay on that a an economic a socioeconomic factor to see if the disproportionality is the same in schools that are of a certain socioeconomic level versus those that are not in that level. So that was a thought I had yesterday looking at this data. And lastly,

[02:48:09] there's a group of kids that are disproportionately impacted in discipline in K-12 education. It's not in here. And I would like for staff to speak to that, and that's LGBTQ kids. So can you please speak to why that data isn't tracked, what we do track, and what type of anecdotal trends that you notice in this specifically relating to that community and whether or not in the restorative justice process you're seeing LGBTQ kids more heavily involved

[02:48:43] in that I can I'm gonna let dr. King speak to the restorative practices pieces of it I can specifically say that in our student information system we don't capture that information at an individual student level obviously there's national data that speaks to some of those trends and some of the impacts for our students, I think Dr. King can probably speak to some of the local things that we're seeing. So I'm going to defer to Dr. Anderson, whose team is working very closely with this RJ

[02:49:13] work. Dr. Anderson, can you respond? Yes, thank you. So we just recently added the non-binary section to collecting the data, so we have maybe one or two years of that in there for comparisons,

[02:49:36] And so as you saw in the data and also other data that we have that this group, in our school system, I guess the risk ratios are growing a little.

[02:49:54] But as Marcy stated, across the nation, we're seeing the same trends. I'm not sure if that answered your question, but let me know if it did or not. I think you confirmed what I knew, but I guess if we know that this is a challenge, what are we doing to address it?

[02:50:17] If we're not going to collect the granular data, which I could accept that as a premise for now, what are we doing and what are we seeing? That's kind of the question. You want me to respond to that as well?

[02:50:34] What are we doing? Okay. So specifically, we are collecting data for any type like hate speech and things like that, as well as the equity and culture responsive team is providing support with schools around that anytime someone had does anything or a slur for, you know, in those categories.

[02:51:01] So as far as looking at the data as support and aligning it to if it's making impact with our discipline data, we have not gotten there specifically to draw a straight line from the support to our discipline data.

[02:51:20] Again, we just start collecting in that category about two years ago. May I ask for a clarification, Mr. McDaniel? Are you talking about students who are LGBTQ students who are engaged in activities where they would be disciplined, or are you talking about activities where students are victims, and then there is discipline meted out for those individuals where those students are victims?

[02:51:47] Yeah, that's fair. I think both is the answer. Yeah, I think both. Thank you, and we can go back and take a look at some of that work I just wanted that clarification because there are two different streams there Thank you miss st. John Cunning. Just kidding. I'll take my turn All right first thing I want to address and thank you for putting it in there And I believe it was slide. It doesn't 20 maybe

[02:52:22] Is the participation policy that you must be in school for you to compete or practice or to be on school grounds? Can we do that next year? What's the timeline for that? And why did we ever take it out? Sorry, that's a rhetorical question because it was there for a long time and then someone thought it was genius to take it out I'm not sure who but we need to put it back Yes, I agree as a matter of fact. I contacted my department sports and

[02:52:55] Mr. Bill Curran, we're going to be implemented that and making sure that we work with all schools because the word is consistency because not all schools will follow the same so this is what will be what we're going to be working making sure that we implement that so it is on the way. I want to make sure that we manage expectations and I think we certainly will we can address this for the

[02:53:28] coming school year. I think I want to make sure we drill down because children young people have appointments sometimes, and we're talking an entire season, which people need to be able to make appointments in physicians' offices or counseling offices or other offices aren't always open on a weekend or other times, right? So I just, I think it's, we're going to have to look at the details of the policy, but in general, essentially, we want kids in school on days they're practicing or competing, unless there's, you know, an appointment they need to be at or

[02:54:05] Something they need to be outside the devil's in the details. We'll come back with some language around that But I think there's no reason we can't begin that work in the coming year and that was the case I mean obviously it was not you had to be there a full day But you had to be there probably two-thirds of the day I believe is somewhere around a time range which allowed for exactly what you're talking about The other thing I want to drill down on is you know the reality from my perspective is that a lot of acting out is because children aren't being it aren't able to keep up and follow what's going on educationally with what grade they are

[02:54:44] and so it's it it's all back to numeracy and literacy if we are meeting the goals we have in place as part of the strategic plan around numeracy and literacy then it would be my hope in turn we would see these numbers change because I and that's why I think you see more disproportionality the older a child gets it's just without drilling down by grade level it would be sort of what I would think we might see the other thing I want to commend you on is the dashboards I just want to say as someone who was in the system forever we didn't as an administrative team sit down and look at any dashboards they

[02:55:23] weren't there was all of this opportunity and it was my experience that oftentimes directors of student services were in that data and working with counselors around that data, but bringing it to an administrative table or administrative team meeting was just adding more work on an admin team.

[02:55:40] So thank you for those dashboards and for, it's my understanding, requesting schools tell you their five or eight data points that are most essential to their improvement around different areas and that they be reviewed on a weekly basis. I also want to go back to something that Mr. Frisch said, which is I think it -- I mean, if memory serves me well, I want to say it was like 2015, 2016 when the state started asking or tracking disproportionality.

[02:56:06] And so I guess I'd want to go back and look at data if we could pull it from whatever year we first had to report disproportionality to the state and see where were we then and then where are we now. And the other thing I wanted to touch on in my 26 seconds, when we talk about behavior which Mr. Moon referenced, our definition of behavior has drastically changed, my friends.

[02:56:31] I mean, there was a time where if you cussed out a teacher, you were going to be sent home probably. I don't even think you get a referral for using foul language at an instructor or certainly at another student. And I think that, you know, we talk about perception data, even students' opinions of how they're supposed to behave has changed drastically.

[02:56:53] So I just think it's something we need to reflect on, because we're seeing fewer referrals. But at the same time, what we are referring people for are things that are pretty egregious, because we're letting a lot of things go that are very disruptive to learning environment.

[02:57:11] So Ms. Lady, to your point on if students are feeling confident and capable, you'll hopefully see more attendance and better behavior, I happened to be speaking to some colleagues on the other side of the country last evening as we were watching an amazing women's college basketball game.

[02:57:27] Actually, there were several last night, but in particular, the Iowa LSU game was amazing. And we were commenting how we didn't see one of those student athletes running up and down the court with a cell phone in their hand. Not one. You know, they were really focused on what they were doing. And I think the cell phone in their hand would have gotten in their way, just like it gets in the way sometimes of learning.

[02:57:47] But they were so dialed in and had experienced such a level of success that they could put it down on the bench and leave it there for a while or wherever they left it. So I just, I kind of think about that as being my standard for like if our classrooms and our learning spaces have that level of energy and passion and commitment and sense of confidence that we're, you know, at that level, all of these other rules are going to, you know, not be as necessary. Thank you for that. I think we now are on go back. No, we're not.

[02:58:20] Mr. McElveen, thank you. Thank you. Thanks to everyone for the presentation. I concur with Dr. Anderson that it's very fulsome and lots of good information and analysis. One question about on the chronic absenteeism piece, the partnership that we have with EduFuturo.

[02:58:43] Can you tell us what they're going to be doing for us? Actually, I can tell you what they have been doing and what they'll continue to do. We have a five-year commitment contract right now, but they are working with our families and students to make sure that our students finish school and stay engaged in school.

[02:59:06] Ms. Youngblood-Hall, actually, your department works directly with them. Do you have anything you want to add to that partnership? They actually had some significant data success last year, and I'll make sure we include that in a Friday letter. But, Ms. Hall?

[02:59:22] Yes, thank you. um so they are working uh with the schools in a number of the schools they're working directly with the families and the students to get the students who um are not in school regularly back in school there's a you know they're targeting uh certain students certain families they're in working directly with the families it's also providing them and the students with resources beyond just getting back uh into the schools they're also working directly with staff in the schools to make sure there's good collaboration um so that you know we're continuing to strengthen

[02:59:57] that collaboration as well to make sure that all parts are communicating with one another so that we can see success beyond graduation so i can be very specific um mr mckelveen the they had a chronic absenteeism reduction program over two years um that increased we had and they They worked with eight high schools in 21-22 and 13 high schools in 22-23 for a total number

[03:00:28] of 433 students, which is they actually, when you look at it in financial terms, in terms of students that they were able to bring back to the system and then support graduation-wise, over the two years, we went from 1.3 million in terms of student enrollment and attendance brought back in to last year 3.1 million for a total of 4.48 million dollars with a positive impact of 66% of the students returning to classes and

[03:01:02] successfully moving to graduation for a total of 248 out of 376 students okay great well thank you all for that information is this focused on one subset of students one ethnic subset of students or does is it broader than that it's focused on students who are not in school regularly so I don't believe it's on any particular demographic other than those who nominate themselves by their attendance dr. Ponce that is correct what what you said okay great I

[03:01:39] just want to make sure we're getting ROI on this because it's a very significant investment we saw the contract come through for 1.5 million dollars extension so thank you for that okay now I believe we are at go backs dr. Anderson Thank you. Just a process question before my time starts. Being that we still have two hours left, can we continue with three minutes? Because I'd rather have fewer go-go-go backs.

[03:02:08] Sure. That works for me. Thank you. Appreciate that. I do want to start with the point where I was, which a few members touched upon, which there is a lack of transparency and lack of clarity in this report. And, Dr. Reed, it's exactly where you were foreseeing, because I think we can disaggregate this data in clearer ways to really hone in on what is going on.

[03:02:32] I mentioned at the dais when we had this report be presented that I would be very interested in seeing if the data points as provided are consistent across our schools. I think that's important information. Definitely in terms of our levels, as Ms. Marin said, I think that's really important as well.

[03:02:50] as well as is this a regional thing? Is this a pyramid thing? I think we need to slice and dice this in different ways in order to really hone in as to what could be the potential remedies because it might give us some information regarding the root causes. So I would be very much interested in that and to want to hear from you what could be a timeline by which this information could be provided to the board and into the public. And if it's too small or will allow us to identify certain children, then just to the board. I think it's available probably very I mean, we're looking at it right now.

[03:03:23] We just have to pull it out of the dashboards to get it to you as the board. But it is true that in some school-by-school pieces, the sample size is really too small to be publicly sharing it. But I'd be happy to make sure we share it with the board.

[03:03:40] Thank you. And the other piece of data that I don't see anywhere here is the referrals to the hearings office. How do we make sure that we have a sense of what that is? Because I know as a board, we get to hear the appeals. But I don't know what that N is. So I thought, Dr. King, we just sent the hearing's office report this last week, but maybe it hasn't come out yet.

[03:04:01] The hearing's office report was based on another subset of data, but we can get you, yes, we can get that information. And perhaps that can be embedded here as well, because it's a point. Because we typically are reporting on the aggressors, not necessarily the victims. Do we collect that data, like students who are the recipients of acts, rather than the person who's the aggressor, student who's violated the SRNR rather than the one who's had the action be placed upon them.

[03:04:29] All right, we do not collect data on target victims. Thank you. And also, I'm still very much interested in seeing the data that is sliced by ethnicity, because if you look across this information, if you're a black student, a poor student, a student with students with disabilities, it's really hard for you to not be represented in this data set. So I wanted to make sure that that I highlighted that as a very important piece for me.

[03:04:59] One of the things that really has stuck out to me as I'm reading this is on page 26 of the report, the last two paragraphs that you have there under discipline disproportionality, that speaks to the impacts of exclusions in our school's division and their impacts to student outcomes.

[03:05:16] I think this was a very powerful piece and I'll wait until you find it. And Dr. Reed, I think this is probably a question for you. this to me really encapsulates the approach we should be having to discipline yet i don't see this carried over into our work with the srnr or even in our policies as miss marion shared earlier because this gives us a lot of information that i don't think is necessarily aligned or rather rather me giving you my opinion how do we align this with the rest of the work

[03:05:53] because i i've not seen that clear connection well i think it's timely that we're having the conversation on the same day honestly and I think probably also goes to Mr.

[03:06:11] Moon's question about how are we defining effectiveness right but I'll I'll ask Miss Neal to take a stab at it and then let me take a quick look at it we're talking page 26 sorry slide 26 no the report page 26 Dr. Anderson are you talking specifically about what where the report speaks to the negative consequences related to students being out-of-school suspension so the increased risk of dropout and academic out poor out academic outcomes and I think what you're I think what I'm hearing is how are we working to align our SRNR to minimize those out-of-school suspensions for students because we are

[03:06:51] responsible for some of this you know this is part of the excuse absences but it's still having the same impact I would have to defer to dr. King to speak to the SR&R? I think that the SR&R over the last several years have worked very hard to decrease the number of out of school suspensions, right? When we talked about the pendulum, right? The SR&R was very strict many years ago and then over the years through advocacy of many board members we've seen the pendulum switch and then we have, you know, concerns or challenges from both principals, students, and even community members about are we applying appropriate

[03:07:30] consequences to students so I think that this is very important information and I do believe that the goal of the SRNR was to do this exact thing it's just that we're at a point now with is it effective on changing student behavior in our schools I'm gonna stick a pin in that I'll be back to this okay I'd like to also speak to all of these strategies that you're talking about from edu futuro to some of the others I want to be sure that we're not just throwing things at a wall and hoping that there will stick. What have you set up in terms of

[03:08:06] evaluation of the productivity and effectiveness of these programs? Because as the document says, some of these strategies you will abandon, some you'll readjust. What are you using to make that determination? What's the framework that you're putting forth? Well, I think we're looking at research best practices. That's where restorative justice practices came. We said restorative Justice may not stop an initial act, but what we do know is it positively impacts a decline

[03:08:41] in recidivism. In other words, part of the discipline cycle has to include some form of making it right or some form of reparation for students, some also a recognition of empathy so that the same behavior doesn't continue repeatedly and we know that research best practice says restorative justice has a positive impact on that therefore we said okay um last year i think it was kind of a new topic and was voluntary if people wanted to try it and we realized that it's not going to work if we don't have someone at every school that has

[03:09:18] the training and expertise so dr king took this work on with her team And I think we all sponsored this work. I was clear at an ACPM meeting that we're going to have two educators in each school that are trained in restorative justice practices because we know this is best practice.

[03:09:36] So we will look at the data as we move forward and find out if, in fact, it's going to have the impact we expect it will. I think if we implement it with fidelity, it will. We've looked at attendance practices. We looked again at best practices. There are a variety of them.

[03:09:51] Mr. McElveen asked about it, which was one we implemented last year. Also looking at check-in, there are a variety of attendance connections that Ms. Youngblood Hall's team also were active with, and our office of school supports were active with, and we've seen some tremendous gains in, I don't know, what was it, 190 of our schools out of 200, a significant number.

[03:10:18] we're seeing improvement when we use research best practice strategies if we don't we won't continue that strategy but we i think when you look at best practice research which has been looked at across the country and has an end size that is meaningful those are things we need to pay attention to i'll follow up thank you thank you mr frisch thank you um on the topic of restorative justice students who are the aggressors are not required well they can opt not to take part in

[03:10:53] restorative justice, correct? The aggressors? I'll defer to Dr. King. I think we're certainly correct. In order for restorative justice to be effective, both parties have to agree to participate. You have a ballpark on the percentage of instances where they're not receptive? I do not, but I can get that information for you, Mr. Frisch. I think it would be not just informative, but you know, if we're putting a lot of weight in our ability to use it to really move

[03:11:28] the needle the fact that it's quasi optional should be something that's addressed and you know like it's not just the school system's responsibility to help address these issues right we could probably do a better job of explaining what restorative justice is to parents who did not go to school when restorative justice was talked about you know so I would just put that out there and I look forward to getting that information on page 36 of the report it says provide formalized and consistent expectations for school leaders and then it goes on to talk about how teachers

[03:12:08] will be trained for addressing issues in the classroom as opposed to having them referred formally. That concerns me a great deal because the implication is that teachers should be addressing something that is worthy of referral at the classroom level instead of referring it which it's worthy of being referred, right? Are teachers capable of referrals that are not worthy of referral?

[03:12:39] I think sometimes, Mr. Frisch, maybe out of frustration, teachers might refer something that's very low level to an administrator to address. And we recognize that discipline should happen at the lowest level of where it began, right? So if there's a student that is maybe talking too much in the classroom and the teacher's in a frustrating moment.

[03:13:04] They may just write a referral. And I know this from experience, write a referral for the administrator to deal with. And I don't want to minimize it, but this happens, right? So we have a referral in the system that could have been addressed by calling a parent, engaging parent, you know, with the student on the behavior that's happening in the classroom to try to redirect the behavior.

[03:13:26] So it does happen sometimes. And so I think it's important, you know, the last several years since COVID, we have all kinds of new teachers that are coming to the classroom, right? Some that have gone through formalized education programs and some who are career switchers.

[03:13:45] And I don't know if we have done the best job at ensuring that we monitor and address how to manage a classroom with all of the teachers who are in our schools. And sometimes when we don't do that, we don't put in the work to do that, we see an increase in those types of referrals.

[03:14:06] Well, and I worry that we're not minimizing, we're maximizing, right? And so, you know, we also have an entirely different crop of students in our classrooms than we did pre-pandemic. And so my question is, like, if you went and talked to teachers in the classroom, they would tell you, probably to a T, that they don't believe that they're allowed to refer people and that, well, that when they refer people, students, that they don't have a lot of trust that the

[03:14:40] system that we identify in the SRNR will take place. And so one of a couple things happen. They do it with no expectation that it will happen or they don't do it because they have no hope that will happen. And so what this reads like to me in that environment is an attempt to lower the referral numbers by trying to get educators to handle things that are worthy of referral in the classroom. And if it's not formally referred, then those don't go towards the tally of referrals. How do we ensure that not only are teachers being properly trained to make

[03:15:16] sure that they're managing things that are specific to the classroom and not worthy of referral and that administrators are taking seriously referrals and not simply rejecting referrals or saying that it's not appropriate because they're worried about their numbers. Anecdotally, you hear about schools being told that their referrals are too high.

[03:15:34] So this reminds me of a conversation I had in the early 2000s, and it was with a group of people from around the country discussing effective discipline. So it's probably, I'm dating myself, That's 24 years ago-ish.

[03:15:54] And there's this circle of chasing the tail, is I think what we called it right at the time. Because if you increase sanctions to address behavior, then you may have more referrals, in which case then people are going to bring reports to the table that show greater discipline issues.

[03:16:15] So then people say we have a discipline problem when the discipline actually may, or the decorum, I think is how we talked about it back in the day, decorum and discipline. Decorum might be improving, but the discipline doesn't make, those data points are not looking good. So then we address those data points, and to your point, people then feel sometimes like we can't write a referral about the discipline, so then the decorum deteriorates, but the discipline data looks better.

[03:16:42] Does that make, I mean, so what we don't want to do is get into that unhealthy cycle. So I think today's conversation is really helpful and very informative. What are we going to measure success here by so that we don't inadvertently create expectations that actually make the situation worse?

[03:17:01] Because that could happen so that the data looks better, the classroom feels less better, and we don't want to do that. Is that kind of your point, I think? I have three minutes. Okay.

[03:17:18] Mr. Moon? Mr. Chairman, that's my three minutes. Would you like to borrow some? All right. You know, first of all, next set of questions deal with the report, report itself.

[03:17:36] Obviously, for EU board members, including myself, this is a second report on the goals. And I find second report better than the first one. And I'm hoping that this will continue to be better.

[03:17:52] but there are still certain areas either I don't understand or I have at least questions or some concerns. When we are setting a 23, 24, you call that goals or targets, and also with a 20, 30 in mind as well, I saw, for example, some like the page six, we talk about anything less than five

[03:18:25] percent a five percentage point change being trivial whereas on another page like page 13 we have you know for certain groups three you know three three point percentage a three percent point is good enough or four is good enough which is definitely less than three so i am trying to have better understanding of why it is this in certain places and it is we have

[03:19:02] something else and for some other groups some other locations etc and also going back to dr. Anderson's question about point one that's a different number obviously we're not talking about five percent we're talking about for the disproportionality, 23, 24, a target being 0.1. If we assume that our ultimate goal in 2030 for that

[03:19:31] one is 1, where there's no disproportionality at all is a 1, and groups we see is 1.7, 1.8. We see the difference of 0.8 or 0.8.

[03:19:46] If we divide it by seven years, perhaps that's a 0.1. But on the other hand, 0.1 out of 0.7 is more than 10%, 15%, close to 15% if you do the math that way. So I am trying to basically from a board, one board member's perspective, want to have a better understanding of how staff sets these targets and goers, and whether they are just some sort of rules or it is just on an ad hoc basis.

[03:20:19] That's a difficulty that I have as I am reading through these reports. With eight seconds left, I would like to have another go back. Okay, I think next is...

[03:20:35] Oh, sorry. Okay. So we had set general targets this year being at 5%. When we initially set all those targets, we were looking at a 90% overall end-of-year target in our last work session clarified that for our 20-30 targets, we were looking at 100%.

[03:20:57] So the targets for this year that we're set, we're all looking at getting students at 5% increases or for student groups that were already at 90% to continue to improve. So that's, Mr. Moon, a little bit of the discrepancy you're looking at.

[03:21:12] In terms of what you and Dr. Anderson have both brought up with the risk ratios, we know that we're going to have to accelerate targets as the years go on. And so at the end of this, we're certainly going to take stock of where are we with all of our student groups and where are we going to need to set more aggressive targets in the out years.

[03:21:32] I would like to go back. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I'm just going to keep running down my list here. Well, I think I'm going to go back to the point that Mr. Moon just raised, because for me, it is a point that is going to stand between me being able to approve this report whenever it is that we have to vote for it.

[03:22:04] I think one-tenth is essentially way too low for this first year, because what will be the target if we have some groups that are at 3.0 to get to 1.0 in seven years? I just don't see that being reasonable.

[03:22:20] So that is a sticking point for me that I just cannot get past, Dr. Reed. So I want to be sure that I put that to you. I've got some things regarding just the ease of the report, but I will send that to you. I don't think that needs to be discussed here.

[03:22:40] One of the things that I wanted to raise, I've got so many I'm trying to identify. If I look at the last page of the report, the B1, where it has all five of the goal reports that are outlined and just the general areas of priority, there are some themes that really stand out.

[03:22:59] If you look at every single one of them, you have students who are multilingual show up in goals 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Economically disadvantaged students show up in probably four of those five categories.

[03:23:16] How are you using that data? What does that mean to you to see this? What does it mean to the division when we have such a clear list of where our issues are? Just trying to get a sense of the talk around the table when leadership is discussing these.

[03:23:36] Well, I know that the economically disadvantaged conversation was inherent in our reallocation of Title I dollars very recently. We know that there are times that we need to differentiate the supports while we don't change our expectations for young people.

[03:24:01] So I know we added some middle schools and I think our first high school for Title I status as a result of recognition around the need to differentially support economically disadvantaged students.

[03:24:16] I think the other types of the multilingual approach, that's part of why we're looking at the GLAAD strategies, again, a research best practice. In looking at some of our students with disabilities in terms of the data, that's one of the reasons we're looking at universal design for learning as well, which will support both our multilingual learners and our students with disabilities.

[03:24:41] So I think what we're trying to do around the leadership table is do a match for best practice strategies and if you will the major themes that we're seeing for students to be successful. Thank you. I just want to put it on the table. This is hard work. We're asking you all to get to that sweet spot of nobody being suspended but yet we have supports for we have you know things in place so that teachers are feeling supported, administrators are not frustrated. I want to be sure that we put this on the table. Some of these things are not in direct correlation with each other, but I think there's a piece that we have not talked about in

[03:25:19] this conversation at all when it comes to the referral of students, whether it be by teachers or how administrators pull this conversation, the implicit bias that lives in our work. Where is this in this report? How is that being elevated in your discussions? Well, that's in the, in particular, in the disproportionality conversation. I mean, that is the conversation. Dr. King, I don't if you want to address that, but that's what we found, I think, recently, in fact, is our largest disproportionality are in our least clear discipline codes, if you will, where

[03:25:57] judgments involved. I think we see more differentiation that runs along lines of bias, to be quite honest. I don't know how else to say that. How is this tackled in your training, in your optional mandatory trainings that Ms. Lady did or did not engage in in her years here?

[03:26:15] Well, when Ms. Lady was here, they might have been optional, although she did not know that. But they're not currently optional. And I think the trainings have been clear, and I think we continue to work on that. And it's our trainings as well around the leadership table, right? It's not only... Anyhow, Dr. King, do you want to add anything to that?

[03:26:40] I just want to say that the training is ongoing that's um you know our equity team is constantly putting out pd for our schools around this you know we have a standard in our evaluation process that compels teachers to create culturally responsive classrooms that will address some of the biases but it's work to do and it's it's ongoing work that's why the work of equity is so important in our system and what happens when you find a classroom where that work is not happening what's the accountability dr ponce you want to talk about what happens in the classrooms

[03:27:15] um no i thank you dr king i was just going to mention also the equity leads right there's a whole build-out structure that's focusing on equitable practices but dr ponce please um yes actually i want to say there is a relate correlation something that you were saying about new teachers and how they feel supported and classroom lesson engagement all of that is correlated so we are taking that in consideration something that is being implemented

[03:27:53] and that's going to answer a little bit about Mr. Fresh and and some questions that you and Mr. Moon as well is um uh out of the 14 000 teachers that we have here in fairfax a little bit more uh we have a 6 000 teachers that are between the first year and third year so every year we receive about 2 000 teachers uh and like we know after the pandemia we are receiving teachers from different background not necessarily just teaching and that is very important to us because as we get more

[03:28:31] those new teachers probably we need more intervention more professional development something that we are implementing this year in collaboration with department school improvement and support and marcy team i said as a coaching this year we're going to be targeting and be intentional how the coaching the coaches are going to address new teachers because in the past it was just uh you receive this and based on equality not necessarily in based on okay the school is having

[03:29:10] more new teachers than others and so that's how we're going to be implementing uh coaches so they will be able to provide that kind of support because as new teacher you know that they do not receive clashes management they read a book but not necessarily they don't have a practice so this is something that we are doing it I'm very pleased that we are addressing the three I know the three concerns that were raised this afternoon we are on it and pretty sure I'm know

[03:29:49] that there's going to be uh you're going to see uh the level of engagement be higher and if the rigor goes up that behavior goes down this is this is a reality so we are working on it no glad to hear that because it's always saddened me when you have classes where students are learning language and they never get to speak and so that doesn't seem to be an alignment so dr reed is this do you have a dashboard for that where you check to see where our new teachers are because i'm particularly concerned in the schools that always have new teachers? We are taking a look at teacher experience

[03:30:23] by school and that is a dashboard Gotham is working on as well as we're working on a dashboard for students who've had two consecutive years of a long-term substitute or disrupted a teacher residence and a substitute or not two years of an experienced teacher. So we know that in that third year they need the very best teacher at that third grade level year because of the data around what happens with consecutive years of interrupted instruction so I think we're staying the course with best practice and I think to

[03:30:57] your point around bias and equitable practices the attitude of the division reflects the attitude of the leadership so if we're just going to talk about equity and policies then people know that's just talk we are drilling down and wanting to make sure that this is real this excellence equity and opportunity is something that's a core value it's something we're going to act on the data points are things we're measuring and that's our work it's not just something we're talking about so I think the work we're doing around this table and the work that our regional assistant superintendents do at the

[03:31:33] direction of the senior leadership team it matters and I I believe that our Our staff believe that and I believe they do care about that. If public education is going to flourish in this country, we've got to make it work here.

[03:31:50] Thank you. And my last question in this round is regarding the equity commitment, which speaks to amplifying student voice. I find that to be fairly missing here. What is the plan moving forward? And I know earlier somebody had said about a student perception data and there was a reference to the youth survey, which, you know, we don't own that. We don't control that. I think that's out there. It has its space. But I'd like for us to probably put something in place to amplify that voice that we own and can control and is not as limited as I think the youth survey has been because of its participation rates.

[03:32:30] I think that's a fair point. One of the things I will tell you that gave me the most hope in the last month is our superintendent advisory council presentations. And Ms. Youngblood Hall was there with me. And I know our Razz has heard them. But I think we can make space in our future goal reports for that group to also provide some guidance. They had some fabulous ideas around some topics that we've been wrestling with. And they're, I think, harder on themselves than we are on them, quite honestly.

[03:33:00] is there a reason why we didn't have that be embedded in this goal for right now uh probably because it wasn't directly connected to attendance or disproportionality we'll get you for a go back okay um i'm going to take a go back as i skipped myself when i went to a third um i one thing i would love to see pulled um and this is based on my experience but also just recently i have a former colleague who is filling in for an admin who's on short-term disability and was shocked to find nothing entered for that person's student caseload.

[03:33:38] No follow-up on tardies, no follow-up on absences. And then once this person started to do those things, then to Mr. Frisch's point, referrals came in because teachers actually believed something was going to be done. So my ask is, principals, at a minimum, need to be pulling this data.

[03:33:58] If you're sitting in an administrative team and you have expectations of everyone around that table, then you need to check to make sure this is being done with fidelity. And I worked several years, the bingo card says 27, so I'm going to try not to say that anymore, in the system, but at four different schools, five different schools if you count one of my internships.

[03:34:22] And this happened across every school. There were people who said, "I'm never writing referral because that person never does anything." So you kind of looked at the alphabet, so I kind of beat that to death. The other thing I want to say, back to what Dr. King talked about, is we get the outcomes based on the system we create.

[03:34:42] So several years back, the board at the time loosened the SR&R, and here we are. We had disproportionality then, we have disproportionality now. But we need behavior and decorum back in our classrooms, because that's when learning takes place.

[03:34:59] We've got to figure out how we're going to address those distractions. In regard to the fact that it's a shocking statistic, but it shouldn't be to me, that six of our 14,000 teachers are new, which in the first three years is almost 50% staggering to me.

[03:35:15] But I also want to talk about the fact that what we allocate teachers to teach are newest teachers. Right? I've lived in situations where, you know, I loved this about IB when it came into Marshall high school was if you were trained to teach IB you were also going to teach you know standard college prep if you will. And then it evolves to some people who teach five AB classes.

[03:35:36] Well behavior is easier in that room. We need to look at what we're allocating to teachers I'm sure in elementary, middle and high but we have to try to set our newest teachers up for success which means that some of our more veteran teachers are going to have to tackle some of the more challenging situations that we have educationally. And I don't see that being done either with fidelity across schools.

[03:35:59] The other thing is I'm not sure that every administrator consistently offers RJ. And so I would love for there to be some sort of notation in CIS that RJ was offered, or else somewhere on some documentation so that they're reminded that that's an expectation.

[03:36:19] And I'm out of time, so I'll do another go back in a minute. Ms. Levy, I just want to share that sometimes RJ is not appropriate in the moment, right? And so we've heard some feedback from parents that, you know, their child was harmed and then we're calling them the next day saying, do you want to do RJ?

[03:36:39] And they're not over the incident. So sometimes the timing of that might attribute to the data. Excellent point. Ms. St. John Cunning. so i really want to go on a positive note where when we first started our you know equity team i and this goes to what dr anderson was saying what is the training i wish every school board member would go through the training i went through because it was very thorough it was very eye-opening i thought that i was very open-minded and i discovered my own implicit biases um it was

[03:37:17] a it i went through the intense training which required uh i think it was almost a week uh that we that i was out of out of my day job at the school and so if we're going to commit to this we also have to commit to that time but that was so life-changing for everybody in that room and i know that the work that this school division can do and has done is up there i know we've had to scale it back um and i think that's something as a board we have to look at you know if we really want to address systemic racism then we have to address it and address it with fidelity and put

[03:37:55] the time into it that's required which does require providing the time for our staff but i wanted just to complement um the work that you have done with that well i was actually under dr um oh i can't remember his name yeah yeah who who had started that program but i know we've scaled that back And I wish we hadn't and I wish every school board member would attend that because then you would understand what we are trying to do for our teachers.

[03:38:23] And I know we're doing it on a level that is not as intense, but it's still as effective. And I do know a lot of the equity specialists that are on the team and they are personally know them personally work with them. They are fantastic. So I just want to give a very positive shout out to that work.

[03:38:41] Mr. Moon, I think it's your turn now. thank you uh mrs say john conning just remind me of my very first budget amendment i proposed three decades ago back in 1995 was to put back money for the diversity training and we did require all the leadership starting with the school with the members to go through training there was three decades ago though okay with that said i would like to support the policy

[03:39:20] advocacy on the part of Miss Lady to require attendance of a student on the day of their participating the extracurricular activities on page 24 of the report talks about mentioned that as a division-wide policy not existing I don't know when that was taken out whether there was just a matter of regulation changes while policy changes if i was a part of the board

[03:39:53] that made the policy change i am guilty of making the being a part of that decision making but i just don't recollect that but uh but i would like to support that being put back whether it's a regulation or policy with that with that said also on those very high number of new teachers wow 6 000 out of 14 being within first three years that's such a high number we obviously for you know brand new teachers so we need to provide them with the best training possible

[03:40:31] but at the same time i want to see whether we have a data broken down by the number of years of experience whether a number of reformers from a you know teachers with the less experience is higher and also why we provide this training i don't want to put pressure upon you know d is untrained teachers not to seek out support from administrators whether that is you know doing

[03:41:07] through referrals or just you know just reaching out to them because i don't want them to feel pressure to having to suffer their what they are not either properly trained to handle or just simply don't know how to handle or just just not in proper behaviors as a sunday school teacher dr reed i'm not a i'm not a new teacher i've been doing this for a number of years i know how

[03:41:38] important it is set the right tone in the first two Sundays of my class. Thank you. I also, Mr. Moon, I just want to clarify, we do have, we hire about 2,000 teachers new to the division each year. That doesn't mean they're new to the profession, which I think is your point. They have varying years of experience, but they are new to FCPS. So, And I do agree, there are several strong books, actually, about the first days of school that are critical because you have one chance to make a first start, right?

[03:42:16] So, thank you. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. One of the things that you talked about is providing attendance toolkits to school staff. What does that entail, and what is the feedback from staff regarding their usefulness?

[03:42:36] I'm not sure who this goes to. attendance toolkits. I think that you talked about that on page 20. That's one of your high leverage strategies. I know Dr. Axler could not be here today. I don't know Dr. Presidio if someone from your team wants to talk about that. We have Laura in the audience who could provide a lot more detail if she would like to since she's managing our attendance program. We'll keep passing the baton. But I think largely what we're trying to do is provide a set of strategies and and resources to support schools with developing a better understanding

[03:43:16] of what some of the root causes of why a particular student might not be able to attend on a regular basis, right? So students have a variety of different issues when it comes to attendance challenges. Some of them might be medical, some of them might be mental health, some of them might be motivation, engagement, issues that they're struggling with just in terms of inclusivity in the school community.

[03:43:37] So we're trying to equip our staff better understanding of how to support students and families that getting at those root causes and then developing the right solutions to help them get re-engaged with school so it starts with that root cause analysis we're providing supports and resources obviously just on better communication with families we're also developing individualized attendance plans for students to figure out how to best address those root causes so all of those are the types of things that are included in the attendance toolkits as well as more programmatic supports and resources so like check in and check and connect programs

[03:44:17] for students that just need that mentor or positive role model in the school who's an adult who's going to support them and in helping them attend on a more regular basis so it's a lot of different types of supports and resources but a lot of it is getting at that initial root cause analysis and then targeting the the supports based on what that particular student and family needs in the second part of my question because i know sometimes we create a lot of things centrally but staff don't find it as useful as we think they could or should sure are they finding it to be helpful the people who are using these toolkits yeah i mean i think we've gotten good feedback

[03:44:53] on it again and laura's really you know leading this this effort up and i mean she's spending most of her time in schools working with you know staff members uh that that are trying to support our students uh and families in these ways but i mean we can always you know improve the supports and and resources that we're providing.

[03:45:10] So, you know, getting that stakeholder feedback, that school-based staff member feedback is helping us and they're gonna continue to help us refine those supports over time. - And can you speak to also another data point that I thought was quite surprising, which was the attendance of kindergarten students, multilingual, the number nine, they were 70%, quite the outlier.

[03:45:29] And I thought for kindergartners, this is a preschool or kindergarten. I wanna say kindergarten, thank you. What is happening there? What are some of the root causes you've been able to identify? Well, I think a lot of the, well, I mean, again, there's so many different issues, but some of this is actually easy in some ways, right? Like, I think part of it is better communication about expectations around attendance post-pandemic and understanding that you don't have to stay home if you have the sniffles, right? And sometimes I think those parents, particularly in the primary grades, who maybe have only heard the message that if you're

[03:46:04] sick, you have to stay home, you have to quarantine. And we know that, I mean, even quarantining for COVID is not something that's even required and recommended by the CDC anymore as recently as, you know, I think two weeks ago. So part of it is just making sure that parents understand when do you have to be, you know, when do you have to be really cautious about keeping your kids home?

[03:46:25] When can they attend? And sometimes I think at those primary grades, getting that messaging has been something that we've seen as making a difference but of course when we're talking about our multilingual families getting that that message is even more complicated to make sure that they really understand and have a full appreciation of what our expectations and procedures for attendance are so I think it's kind of a combination of those early grades in some of the misunderstandings about attendance expectations as well as some of the challenges with multilingual communication thank you and miss Neal and Dr. Wright, were you about to add something to that as well? Oh, I could add. I just wanted to

[03:47:04] share that. It's also, it's a national trend. It's not just here in Fairfax where kindergarten and some of our youngest students are one of the ones that are most chronically absent. And one of the things I'll say just anecdotally that we even found with Spring Sprouts is so many parents came to be chaperones on the field trip day, and it really is a nurturing piece. It was almost like, You know, this is my baby. My baby's now big enough to go to school, but, you know, if she's not feeling well or if we have something special planned today, it was just a very, or if it's really cold, you know, it's a real nurturing piece.

[03:47:40] So for us, it really is a strong point of communication on our part to share with parents about how important kindergarten attendance is. And that's one of the things we were able to do with those, you know, personalized touches with Spring Sprouts and hoping that and looking at that data throughout that says, OK, we've made this real intensive support.

[03:48:01] And I know that with Lisa Hall's office and Renee Luffman Jackson, working with our family liaisons, making that intentional conversation and support with our family, specifically at that kindergarten level, that we'll see great returns throughout their entire K-12 academic years.

[03:48:19] Can I just add one thing real quickly? Because Marie did a great job with the Spring Sprouts program, and she mentioned the national data. And I was just looking at an article yesterday, the national data on chronic absenteeism is that 26% of students nationally are chronically absent.

[03:48:35] So, you know, obviously we've got a lot of work to do here, but we're nowhere near that national average at this point. No, thank you. I appreciate that. And thank you for foreshadowing my next question. I also just want to throw this out for conversation. As we're campaigning with parents, I think using that 10% of absences can get blurred.

[03:48:55] I mean, the more that we can hone in on 18 days of absences or two per month or four or five per quarter, just really being explicit so that they could also kind of track a little bit. Because I speak with many elementary parents who, oh, we're just going to take off because it's elementary school.

[03:49:12] It's okay. We can't do this in high school, but we can do it now. And I think they're not seeing the pattern that this may set for their students. My last piece, and then I won't need a go, go, go, go back, is regarding some of the targeted strategies. On page 18, you had a chart that really showed the intersectionality between certain groups when it came to attendance.

[03:49:36] You have your students with disabilities, economic disadvantage, 72%. I can go on. It's all listed there. Do we have specific strategies for these groups because they show the greatest need? or are we relying on what I believe I heard was individualized plans?

[03:49:57] Is everybody who's chronically absent, does each student who's chronically absent have an individualized attendance plan? Okay. Thank you. If the student is excused or unexcused, that determines whether a plan is required.

[03:50:16] But I would say at the school level, we do have multi-tiered systems of support meetings, and attendance is a factor. of that. So as you're looking at a child and a child's needs and the team is meeting and you're looking at attendance, you definitely do take the child's whole, you know, perspective into consideration when you're looking at what strategies should we try first and then tracking, see if that works. And then if it is, you know, we're good in that area. And if not, then we try a different strategy. So if a child has 20 days of excuse absences, because as the parent, I called

[03:50:53] it i called it and we went to italy um what would that mean not that you went to italy with your children that did not happen it was just you i would say that child would still show up as a high absence when you're looking at mtss and you're looking at your school and student by student so that child with that high elevated number would show up and so it would be a variety of things to choose as a principal one piece that we already have in place is if a child is going to go on a prolonged absence the parent is required to fill a form to share that they're going to be out and

[03:51:28] then the parent comes in for a meeting so probably with that situation the um first thing that the school would do is have a meeting with the family to talk about it and it could be you know once in a lifetime trip and this will never happen again you know we would look at the year before where there are a lot of absences the year prior and then let the parent know because of the 20 absences your child would be on the sheet next year to start the year for, you know, who we're going to be monitoring for absences. And then, you know, it would be monitored throughout the year. So if it's just a one-time trip, then, you know, we're expecting next year to be good and we'll be

[03:52:04] monitoring that to make sure that the child's back on track. And is that a recommended practice or is that an expectation that all of our schools will engage in what you've just described? All of our schools have been asked to engage in MTSS and I guess that parent conference that you're talking about but that's one time you consider that as part of the MTSS process I would consider that and Laura team and can share probably more too but that is part of our operating if a child is going to be out for an extended amount of time for prearranged parents do have a form that they're

[03:52:40] expected to complete and then have that meeting with the principal or school staff. Okay. My final, final question is you have 85% as kind of a target for schools. 64% of our schools had 85% of less than 10% absences. How do we land on that number? That's the VDOE requirement for level one accreditation. 85%? Yes, that's correct. That just seems a little lower than I would have imagined. And so our goal to raise from 64 to 69 gives us how many new

[03:53:17] schools? I'd have to do the math and get back to you on that one. Dr. Wright, can you do the math? Three to four schools, I would estimate. So again, I think it goes back to that idea of these were some general targets that we sent as we were collecting the baseline data.

[03:53:35] As we get all this information in here at the end of this year, looking at our targets over the course of the time, we know that we're going to need to have ones that are more aggressive to meet these targets. Yeah, and I do want to say with my last seconds left, I fully agree with what Ms. Anderson had said earlier because I had the same questions regarding using the COVID year data for attendance and discipline because they just were not there.

[03:54:04] Thank you. Seeing no other placard, oh, Mr. McElveen, thank you. - Just to follow up on Dr. Anderson's questions, I know there is a practice which seems to be new, which is to unenroll students after a certain number of days out, right?

[03:54:30] It's 15, 15. When did that practice start, does anyone know? - I don't know if it's, it's not new for sure, because in 17 years as a principal, know it's been in place okay okay for some reason I think it's being communicated out that it's it's shorter than 15 days because I think that that makes sense I had heard something on the range of five to ten days so thank you

[03:55:00] for the clarification all right thanks if you're out five days you automatically get a letter but you're not unenrolled 15 days is the unenrollment and it's 15 consecutive thank you so I'll go again I'm curious to know if we have ever looked at or maybe it would encourage you to look at data if there's any differences between schools with sub schools and schools without sub schools

[03:55:36] and I bring this up because having spent half my career where there were no sub schools and the second half my career where there is a sub school you know when you come into your sub school that's your attendance person your counselor's office is right there and your administrators office is right there so if you're coming in late a lot your counselors like hey Robin what's going on you know okay let's talk is there something going on if you're being brought in for discipline you know sometimes the administrator says starts to learn as they peel the onion like something's really going on with this kid that's really counselor oriented they'll go see if the counselors free and bring them in the office it's that proximity to those supports that I do

[03:56:13] think is a natural intervention process. And I went into this scenario thinking, gosh, I wish all my counselors were on the same hallway, right? I had to go five different places to check in with my folks, which kept me out of my office a lot. But I think it was more productive. So just a thought. I just don't know if you've ever looked at it that way. And going back to the kindergartner situation, I brought this up before, but I'm curious if we've ever studied how we do kindergarten orientations with parents.

[03:56:43] Do we need to do something? Do we need to create something? Do we need to better train elementary principals and their staffs on what are the messages that we really need to be sending in this time and space? I can tell you that when I would do my course academic advising nights for rising 9th graders, one of the best compliments I ever got was from Dr. Goodloe who came up to me after her Upcoming ninth grader and she had just been through it said wow we blew it with our curriculum night And at that point she was at middle school and I said what are you talking about because it was only about curriculum you

[03:57:21] Embedded all these things about how You operate as a school what supports are in place for you as a school? What are the expectations of parents or the expectations of students? So it's sort of that you your most captive audiences are always in the transition years from a level And I'd actually like to look at all of them to be to be honest with you The other thing back to mr. Moon, I think maybe that participation may have been a VHSL change But then we went along with hypothetically. I don't know for sure And the last thing I want to talk about is teacher prep at colleges because I think that is actually a clear oversight

[03:57:56] You know my wife's daughter and and boyfriend just finished going through a program at Mason. They're both employed in Fairfax County They got no almost no classroom management work And I don't know what we're doing and whether the Superintendents Association can address that with our, at least our public colleges or our private colleges, but I will also share that I, back to my wife, she had a great idea, which was when you're doing your lessons with your peers in class, that you hand things out that say that you always talk to your neighbor and you are always on your phone and you interrupt the teacher, right?

[03:58:34] so you're almost doing a role play there and in your college level work where you're experiencing what could possibly take place in a classroom so miss anderson i just have to give a little plug because as someone who sat through nine years of kindergarten orientation last year was the best one that i ever saw and what they did is they actually set it up as a as the morning meeting would go and so they walked through every step of what happens in the morning meeting and de-stigmatized all the scariness of what happens when you drop your kiddo off to school

[03:59:12] but they use that opportunity to explain each each section so it was it at i mean i've watched it happen for nine years and i i gave them huge amounts of kudos when i saw it because it was literally the best one i'd ever seen miss st john cunning so from an elementary school again the consistency of how it's done and maybe providing a template for what we want to see because i have seen off the charts kindergarten registrations i mean yeah registration processes and where they actually sit through the whole process and then i've seen some that are just very much like you

[03:59:51] know abc you know have your popsicle and whatever and then just so i think if we have templates it would be really good particularly we have new teachers but there are some um some of those transitions that are just fantastic and it is exciting and that's also that's also a great opportunity to have your family liaison your uh pta all these all these uh other community opportunities where we're going to start engaging the families so and there's some some schools do it very very well um and some schools need help and that's okay you know we can help them okay

[04:00:31] seeing no other go back or placards this meeting is adjourned

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