Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Date: Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 6h 28m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V2nh8BOWD8
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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[00:02:32] We do the May 21-24 School Board Work Session is now called to order. Ms. Seismohiser has some, we don't have enough to vote. We'll be right back as soon as Mr. Moon enters the room.

[00:02:54] 7, we're going to rock and roll.

[00:04:37] The March, the May 21-2024 School Board Work Session is now called to order. Please note the new time, Madam Clerk. Ms. Seismohiser has submitted a written request to attend this meeting virtually due to a personal conflict. All those in favor of approving Ms. Sizemore Heiser's request?

[00:04:55] I'm sorry, it's due to a medical conflict. Okay, it says personal, so I will make that correction. She has requested to attend this meeting virtually due to a medical conflict. All those in favor of approving Ms. Sizemore Heiser's meeting request, and that is unanimous with seven members in the room. So thank you. Ms. Seizmoheiser, would you please check your microphone? Yes, thank you.

[00:05:21] All right, wonderful. We have a packed agenda, so without any further ado, we are going to go ahead and turn it over to staff for an introduction. Dr. Reed. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. This afternoon, we're going to take a bit of time, not a lot of time since it's not a complex adjustment to the budget, but this afternoon staff is going to present several slides which are posted, if you're watching, they are posted on board docs, essentially outlining my response

[00:05:56] and recommendation to the state funds which we didn't have information about when I provided the original budget proposal on May 9th, I believe it was May 9th, so thank you. With the additional funds, staff are going to explain that my recommendation will be to provide 1% more of a pay increase for all staff in the division.

[00:06:23] This is in alignment with my understanding of our prior board-approved proposed budget was a 6% across-the-board increase for all staff, given that we were not able to make up the transfer shortfall.

[00:06:41] We are able to utilize state funds to make up some of the difference. So I'm keeping, if you will, the same spirit of that proposed budget by adding 1 percent to the previously proposed 3 percent, which would provide 4 percent for all staff in the division.

[00:06:59] I understand that there was a budget follow-on resolution and motion to provide some differentiation and my recommendation and as staff and I looked at what we're able to do with really the funds for honestly one more percent, we did recognize that we are already taking into account differentiation for our teachers who teach special education classrooms by providing the continued 30 minutes extra for a contract which as analyzed is roughly seven percent of a salary for our teachers who

[00:07:36] teach in our special education program. We've also provided stipends both for recruiting and retention for our mental health support staff which have been hard to fill positions as well as special education teacher positions which have been hard to fill. We've been able to provide the

[00:07:54] differentiation in our mental health, social worker, psychologists, counselors, by virtue of a grant that Dr. Presidio's team in ISD drafted, and that's providing federal dollars for several years for us to continue that level of differentiation. And we're working hard to provide stipends that are commensurate for our activities, athletics, and staffing as well, to meet those needs.

[00:08:22] And so, I feel like I have been responsive to the differentiation as well as providing a clear path forward for the state dollars and making the adjustment we're able to make. At this time, I'll turn it over to Lee Burden, our Chief Finance Officer, to walk through the details of the recommendation.

[00:08:39] Thank you, Ms. Burden. MS. Good afternoon. I'm chairing the fiscal 25 approved budget that was proposed on Thursday, May 9th at the regular school board meeting. Today's work session includes a revision to the superintendent's recommendation.

[00:08:55] due to the state reaching consensus on its budget go to the next slide at the may 9th meeting when the superintendent's recommendations to adjust the budget funding levels was proposed dr reed indicated she would to present a more refined recommendation during this work session if the state completed its budget work in time with hopes to increase the compensation increase for all employees since then the virginia assembly and the governor reached consensus and the distribution sheets were provided identifying anticipated state revenue by school division. The result

[00:09:30] is $35.3 million in additional revenue largely due to the reinstatement of the Hold Harmless Grocery Tax funding. So we are expected to receive an additional $35.3. Recall that the recommendation on May 9 included an additional $12 million in unidentified reductions so that placeholder has been restored and further reductions are no longer necessary with the remaining $23.3 million in additional funds. Dr. Reed's revised recommendation funds an additional 1% in compensation for all employees or 4%. Other changes include moving half of the

[00:10:10] achievement gap strategies reserved to year-end and recognizing a reduction in the employer group life contribution rate that was conveyed by the General Assembly of $2.2 million. Next slide. a focus of our budget proposal had been to catapult beginning teacher salaries to number one in the region but as a result of significantly lower than requested funding levels our improvement in beginning salaries will have to be more measured the three percent increase originally proposed on may 9th moved us from seventh out of eight to sixth place and adding an additional one

[00:10:48] percent to four percent will move our beginning teacher salaries ma lane to a rank of five of eight compared to surrounding Virginia divisions. Outside the fiscal 25, next slide, outside of the 25 budget process but still very important are the summary of items that we're committed to funding at fiscal 24 year end and that's scheduled to be presented as new business on July 11th and this includes 30 additional minutes for extended day contracts for special ed teachers, deferral of the

[00:11:20] ERFC legacy retirement option program to year end and startup funding for boys volleyball and girls wrestling where the recurring costs were included in the fiscal 25 budget. These are just the one time costs that we planned all along to cover with year end. And then last slide, the remaining dates for the budget process are listed here as a reference. And we look forward to the discussion today, culminating in approved budget on Thursday, May 23.

[00:11:49] Thank you very much, Ms. Burden. I want to bring the board's attention to the e-mail that I sent earlier. I'm sorry that you didn't get it any earlier than that because the posting was delayed. So please be sure you take a look at that e-mail. It has multiple documents, including the documents that were presented on the 9th, as well as the two documents that are being presented today in addition to two documents that dr reed provided to the board on the 29th in response to the following motion and I added that

[00:12:25] because I realized we did not have a chance to have a conversation so if we wanted to fold that into this discussion that would definitely make sense since it is budget related so at this point if you again as per the email I know there have been lots of conversations flying around with the board if you have motions amendments that you'd like to bring forward please engage and that include that in your conversation today as much as possible so i will stop there and look for placards i'm just waiting for placards to go up i haven't seen any yet okay we will start with mr

[00:13:04] dunn uh thank you um i i believe that the original uh budget resolution called for options to be brought to the board for differentiated pay and to address certain other issues that was not done it's not being done now and that's that's disappointing because we can't provide oversight if we don't have options so i am bringing forth two budget amendments one of which is a five percent

[00:13:38] pay raise for essentially all employees from the principal to the custodian and certainly all teachers that are based in our schools doing that using existing pay scales the teacher pay scales the classroom instructional support pay scale unified scale schedule a schedule h and i have added school-based administrator pay scale and a carve out for school-based technology specialists with the exception of the last two the school-based

[00:14:14] technology specialists and the school-based administrators, my 5% pay raise would be within a million dollars of the 4% across-the-board pay raise proposed by the superintendent.

[00:14:31] My alternative motion, a two-step increase for all FCPS employees based in our schools, teachers and support staff essentially, would also cost within about a million dollars of the cost of the proposed four percent across the board pay raise.

[00:14:49] What I've heard consistently from my constituents and from teachers is that they want the folks in the schools to get the most money. And so in my mind, you know, we have to listen to our constituents. We have to heed their call that if they're going to bear a three cent property tax increase, we should listen to their voices as to where the money should go. We have responses to budget questions that indicate that staff who are operational based at Gatehouse, Willow Oaks, and other administrative centers are paid at

[00:15:26] or above market. At or above market. People in schools are not. We have the data that was just shown there. So if we're going to do a pay raise why would we allocate it to people who are paid at or above market who are providing indirect services to students as opposed to the people who actually teach, care for, feed, and transport our students on a daily basis who are by every measure underpaid and struggle to live in our county to benefit from the quality of life.

[00:15:59] These are the people who are the reason we have a world-class education system for our children, for all students, and I respectfully urge my colleagues to support differentiated pay that focuses on the people who are underpaid rather than the people who are at or above market.

[00:16:17] Thank you, Mr. Dunn. I think there was a question in some of the statements. Dr. Reed? Ms. Burden, do we have any -- I'm not sure what the question was, to be honest. Mr. Dunn, would you repeat the question that you asked towards the end of your remarks?

[00:16:34] Yeah, I think he was asking for colleagues to support a motion. I don't -- He was, and I'm sure people will speak to that when it's their turn, but I believe there was an inquiry at the end there, unless I'm mistaken.

[00:16:48] I've now received the cost of adding school-based administrators and school-based technology specialists to the proposed 5% pay raise, which can be funded entirely with money from last year that was not spent to close school achievement gaps, which is approximately $11 million, according to data received from Ms. Burden yesterday.

[00:17:17] Okay, so there was not an inquiry in that. Are there any other speakers? This is highly unusual for a budget conversation. Mr. Frisch. Thank you. Unusual, I suppose, but we've had numerous work sessions about the budget already and public hearings and board discussions, and certainly we've all had one-on-one conversations with each other. When we passed the initial budget request, I very much supported the 6%

[00:17:54] across the board raised for everybody in our division, which in addition to the 2% that we gave staff in January made us remarkably competitive with surrounding jurisdictions and because we have not received the funding to do that it is heartening to see the superintendent return with a an adjusted budget amount that brings us as close to that as we possibly can get and you know I I feel

[00:18:28] that in what could be our last approach to this way of doing our budget before collective bargaining goes into effect we need to do everything we can to set the right tone and ensure that all of our staff needs are met they're not just in the school buildings they're they're elsewhere in the division as well and I I think that a 4% raise is the right path to do that for everybody in the division.

[00:19:02] In terms of other budget considerations, you know, the current approach ensures that one-time money is not being used on annual expenditures that would be incurred going forward, and I cannot accept a proposal that puts recurring costs on the on the back of a one-time savings because we didn't have all of our staffing needs met this year additionally there is some good news on the horizon in addition to staff receiving a four

[00:19:39] percent raise if this budget proposal goes forward this after this morning the board of supervisors approved a board matter from Supervisor Falchuk, Jeff McKay, and Supervisor Kathy Smith directing the County Executive Brian Hill to investigate the implementation of a meals tax and other revenue enhancements in Fairfax County with a report requested back by September of this year as people know the Board of Supervisors is able to pass a meals tax

[00:20:18] without putting it up as an initiative and so I will look forward to seeing what information they gather I encourage people to read the board matters note from the Board of Supervisors website for more information about that and I would take this final opportunity to finish my thought that anytime we talk about the budget we should be addressing the elephant in the room which is Richmond's failure to fully implement the JLARC recommendations that cost our school division in particular 568 million dollars a year every year thanks

[00:20:53] thank you mr. Frisch miss Marin well during the last two weeks I've acutely felt how much we are not the holders of the funds as school board members in Virginia we have done our best to be thoughtful our superintendent brought a a proposal early this year we talked about it we worked on it when the governor for the third year in a row basically his entire tenure refuses to present a budget on time we are forced to scramble and show our accountability to these public funds I've heard from staff who are constituents I've talked with school-based staff and administrators and asked their thoughts

[00:21:32] about if we had some extra money over 3% what what would they prefer how do you think it would play out if we differentiated. And I do want to recognize Mr. Dunn in trying to be creative. These are untraditional times in public education, and so I really welcome trying to explore different avenues. And in talking with my constituents and school staff, school administrators, I don't think that differentiating is the way to go for a number of reasons. You know, at the end of the day, we're one system, and the buses can't run if someone in central office isn't programming them, and the calendar can't work if the superintendent isn't deciding how it's going to go.

[00:22:11] We all need each other, and whatever divisions there might be, this is not going to help create one system that we need. So I don't support differentiating. I'm thrilled that we were able to get 1% more. 4% is excellent.

[00:22:26] It's not the 6% that we wanted, but it is 4%. AND, YES, WE MUST DO OUR JOB IN THE NEXT HALF OF THIS YEAR, COLLEAGUES, IN GOING TO RICHMOND AND STOPPING THE CHRONIC UNDERFUNDING OF OUR SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA. THAT TO ME IS OUR NUMBER ONE JOB. IT'S LOOKING AT MY NUMBER ONE JOB.

[00:22:43] I LOOK FORWARD TO DISCUSSING SOME OTHER ASPECTS OF THE BUDGET A LITTLE BIT LATER. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS. MARIN. OTHER SPEAKERS. OH, MS. DIXIT.

[00:23:04] THANK YOU FOR THIS BUDGET PRESENTATION. Like my colleagues, I really appreciate the increase from 3 to 4%. I just wanted to know how much would it be additional funding we need to go to 5% if we can't manage 6%.

[00:23:21] Ms. Burton, you want to provide 1% for all staff? I believe we have a number for that one. 28.4 million. So I would just, I know it's a tough time for all of us, but is there a way we could like look into other areas where we can take the funds not from any essential programs but any where the money is parked for any program which is not used for this next year and because we really need to keep our teacher retain our

[00:23:56] teacher they're really being at a very fast pace and they are going to leave so we must do something for at least get to the 5% level so mistakes that what I could say is that right now we had not have not identified another 28.5 million from which to draw there are some one-year only funds potentially at your end but it's not a good practice to commit one-time only funds to ongoing salary expenses that's not prudent for a variety of reasons and I'll let miss

[00:24:33] and elaborate on why that might not be prudent and or if there are $28.5 million that are uncommitted in the budget? Well, there's not $28.4 million that's uncommitted. You know, a budget, as you all know, is just a choice among competing alternatives, and that's not something that we've looked at at this point.

[00:24:57] And as far as the recurring versus non-recurring or one-time funds, it just puts, you know, significant pressure on the following year Because if you pay for something that is recurring with one-time funds, then you have to build that into the next year's base.

[00:25:14] So it's an additional $28 million just like from the jump, from the very beginning, that you would have to add as a required adjustment to the next year's budget. Okay, that answers my question. I may have some follow-ups later. Thank you.

[00:25:30] Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Mr. Moon? Thank you, Madam Budget Chair. It's quite disappointing that I didn't get to see your email until I came to the meeting because I had a meeting outside all day, all morning, and just trying to catch up with what's in the email.

[00:25:50] I'm glad that the superintendents has been able to find additional funding on top of the $35 million from General Assembly to support her latest proposal to boost compensation increase from 3% to 4%.

[00:26:09] What I've been trying to get some more clarity on for the last couple of weeks is on my inadequate understanding of how this labs, it numbers the base savings work.

[00:26:27] I sent in a budget question, and I also sent in a follow-up question for clarification. And, you know, Ms. Mulden replied to my emails, and thank you, thank you, but I still don't quite understand about these numbers.

[00:26:44] And, you know, I may not be the only one with similar difficulties, so if you could go just step by step and explain to us the budget answers you provide has three different sets of numbers.

[00:27:05] You had a turnover and vacancy, and you put them together as a total lapse, which I understand, and you also have a base savings for last five years plus FI 25.

[00:27:22] So base savings is just reducing the overall compensation number from the budget request. That's the base savings. You're reducing overall compensation budget by that amount.

[00:27:37] That's the base savings. What I'm trying to have a better understanding is when you have above that, I'm looking at the budget answer here, turnover and vacancy, those are the separate numbers again on top of that like a total lapse i'm going to give an example of fi 2024 approved you had a total lapse in parenthesis of 65 million dollars and you also we also had base savings of 36.4 million dollars

[00:28:10] the way i understood about base savings was that you reduced the compensation budget by that because there was base savings then what do you do with the lapse amount 65 million dollars is that the further reduction further reduction even though you don't put it in the base savings that's a further with the attorney the base savings um is a reconciliation of the salaries that are the actual salaries in the previous year so it's an actual for the previous year so the on the fiscal

[00:28:48] 24 that you referenced, $36.4 million, was what we reduced the base, and it was just based on the churn. You know, the fact that in the previous year, we budgeted a certain amount for positions, and some of them came in lower because of turnover vacancies. So the base savings represents the actual that we know about. The lapse in turnover is a future number that we also use as a negative against the salary the salaries and the budget to recognize what we think is going to happen in the upcoming year as far as you know the number of teachers

[00:29:25] that are budgeted at the top of the scale but they may make a decision to retire during that year and so then they're replaced by a rookie who who you know costs a lot less and as a result their savings that are associated with that. And then the other item is just, you know, flat turnover that, you know, if I leave today, you will not have my replacement on Monday. It'll take, you know, take a while probably to find somebody. And so as a result, during that time, no salaries are paid. So that's what those two

[00:29:59] numbers represent. But all three of these numbers are reductions to the salaries as calculated by the technology for the next year. Did I use all my three minutes? Somehow it took down to five seconds.

[00:30:16] I was not. I believe you started at three minutes. I think we'll have plenty of time for go back. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I'm going to have some follow-up questions on this because... And maybe also if you give the page number where that budget question was responded to, we could have it on the screen.

[00:30:33] It would be helpful just to have a visual so everybody else can catch up perhaps you could share that with the clerk i'll do that for your next round i will do that should come pretty shortly thank you i don't see a lot of this is my name is still up so uh don't forget me yes you have five more seconds i'll have a follow-up question five seconds isn't enough and i don't want to be unfair to my colleagues much appreciated thank you um seeing that there are no other placards i will then ask mr um mcdaniel do you

[00:31:07] would you like to make some statements i'd like to be brief so briefly um i appreciate the fact that the superintendent has found an additional point for compensation overall it's not six but it's not three i also appreciate the discussions that we're having about being very careful of not adding uh recurring costs to the next year's baseline using one one-time funding as we go through the baldridge process which is going to take several years to accomplish i'm I'm really hoping that that's going to give us the opportunity to dig in in a more in-depth way to how we do business

[00:31:47] and be able to identify ways that we can focus dollars into the classroom, because I think that's the appetite. And over the next five to ten years, that's going to be a, we're going to have to be very intentional about how we do that. So that was all I have. Thank you.

[00:32:02] Thank you. I will take a turn before we go to the go-backs. And I actually want to start with a question. Ms. Burden, last July, well, it was presented last July but not voted upon until the fall, at year-end, item C, the board had approved an achievement gap closing strategies in the amount of $12.4 million.

[00:32:30] Can you outline for the board the expenditures that were drawn from that fund to date?

[00:32:36] Yeah, of the $12.4 million that was allocated at year end in the Achievement Gap Strategies Reserve, at this point, $0.7 million of that has been spent, a trade for the assistant superintendent of strategy planning and learning, funding for the new scope of work for the N4 contract, winter cheer stipends, the Twilight School Program pilot expansion, and a trade for a special programs manager in the superintendent's office.

[00:33:19] and that totals about 0.7 million, leaving a balance of 11.7. And you should also know that the 12.4, as you mentioned, was on year-end, so that is non-recurring dollars. Thank you. One of the things that I think I'm a little confused about, because that allocation for 12.4 resulted in a position, activities, and the Twilight Program, which I think is huge in terms of achievement gap, closing the achievement gap.

[00:33:49] But much of it continues unspent, and yet we're adding another, is it almost 12.4 again in this year's budget, some other number, which is $6 million is what's included in the budget, of which, based on the proposal here today, half of that, or $3 million, will be shifted to year-end, and then the other $3 million will remain as recurring dollars.

[00:34:14] Sure. So, during this year, we've spent very little of that $12.4 million. I guess I'd like to know why do we need to add more funds to that pot, since much of it has been unspent. So, part of the reason it's been unspent is we want to make sure that when we do spend it, because it's one-time dollars, essentially, that we spend it thoughtfully and strategically.

[00:34:37] This is the budget that we're going to be pulling, for example, Spanish algebra texts. This is the budget that we're going to be pulling work around the high school course-taking patterns. This is the budget that continues to expand Twilight and credit recovery.

[00:34:53] This is the fund. I mean, as we have narrowed in on the goal reports that you all have seen as baseline, and as we narrow in on the strategies that we believe are high leverage, we're starting small. and then we want to bring them to scale and this is the budget that will enable us to do that but we didn't want to i didn't feel i felt like it would be reckless to go out and spend those dollars without being really thoughtful about what our best practices were we also have work that we're going to be doing around twice exceptional students and our inclusion inclusive practices work that's

[00:35:28] going to require some outside support to support our special ed enhancement plan which is also a key part of Achievement Gap Closing Strategy. So we have a variety of topics that will far exceed what we've actually put in the budget, but we wanted to be very strategic about that. Our support for multilingual students as well. There are several models, SIOP and GLAD training, which we want to provide to all staff, as well as the Universal Design for Learning Initiative. None of those have a budget category currently, and all of that work will be coming out of this one bucket.

[00:36:05] Thank you. Where did those kinds of training come out typically? Because SIOP has been in the division for a while. Dr. Presidio could respond to that. How were those funded before? Well, I think the main distinction is the magnitude of people that can access the training.

[00:36:26] So we've used Title III funding, which is the funding we get for our multilingual learners. We've used that funding to provide training for some staff members, but not at the magnitude or scale that we're hoping to train teachers across the division. It just wouldn't be a sufficient funding source for that.

[00:36:42] And what's that goal for the increased training plan? Is it all teachers? What Dr. Presidio and Dr. Polio have presented to us is that 89% of Fairfax County public school teachers, 89% are instructing students who have multilingual skills.

[00:37:03] So 89% is significantly higher than historically, the number of teachers that we've needed to train. And we feel if we're going to be effective in promoting inclusive classrooms where our multilingual students can learn alongside students who do not have multilingual gifts or challenges, we need to be able to have the training for as many teachers as possible, our goal being all teachers eventually.

[00:37:30] And that's, we've not ever brought that to scale. And that's what these monies will enable us to do, is bring a number of the initiatives that we've worked on really hard to scale, which I think is the board's intent as we think about how do we make sure that a child in Fairfax County, regardless of the neighborhood or zip code within the county, has access to programming.

[00:37:52] And that's the purpose of these dollars. No, thank you for that. That's very helpful because the SIOP training has strategies that are helpful for all students. And so it is going to be a very impactful use of dollars. We spent quite a bit of time talking about not adding items that are recurring to one-time monies that are provided at year-end.

[00:38:15] But what you used this for was a position. So why can you just speak a little bit about that? This was a, I'm sorry, Ms. Burden, I can't grab it. What was the position that was part of this?

[00:38:31] Assistant Superintendent of Strategy Learning and Planning, I think is what it's called. Right. It was the position overseeing the strategic plan implementation from the ground up. And to maximize achievement gap closing strategies, we need a point person that brings all that data together and tracks the initiatives that we're rolling out.

[00:38:53] We don't currently have an office that centralizes that work. But you anticipate that position continuing? I do. So it'll be moved into? I don't think it'll need to be moved, but it'll, actually, I'll let Ms. Burton talk about it at this point.

[00:39:09] Yeah, we do try to avoid doing recurring costs with non-occurring funds, generally speaking. And, you know, obviously on the previous conversation, something, you know, $28 million, that's pretty big. But we do occasionally have positions that we fund.

[00:39:26] We try to limit it as much as possible because we will have to add that as a required adjustment into the fiscal 26 base. We try to avoid it, but occasionally we're not able to, and this is one of those cases. Well, the other thing, though, we did is we said we wouldn't fill other positions.

[00:39:44] So what we are doing to make it budget neutral to the degree that's possible is collapsing other open positions to retain this position. So it's not actually an add. So we did have several positions, I believe, which is why it was labeled a trade, that we collapsed positions to promote that.

[00:40:03] And Mr. Smith, maybe you can comment on that process, please. 'Cause I know the first few times I heard it, I had to say, wait, what? - 'Cause that's the same thing that I think I'm doing right now. - Right, and so we've done that with, good afternoon, everyone. We've done that with other positions where you've seen additional positions added to the leadership team.

[00:40:22] We've looked to collapse other vacant positions we can create those unique positions and that's something that we'll be looking to do as we move forward with this particular position in FY 26. So this is looking ahead not currently because you've already expended the nearly $200,000 for this position so in the future that's going to be budget neutral so it will not need to continue to come out of any fund is that what I'm hearing I think I'm a little confused. That in the future yes our hope is to find other positions that we

[00:40:58] can collapse so that we can make as many of those additions as budget-neutral as possible. Okay, thank you. Just very quickly, I'll start on kind of my position on where we are with the budget. We've spent several months, pretty much since September, at the first meeting of the Finance Committee to discuss our need to be competitive, our need to be at the top, and trying to look into the crystal ball at that point because we were not aware of what was happening with the

[00:41:30] other divisions and what step increases and msa's they were going to provide so i i definitely have bought into the discussion that i think we've talked about with each other with our counterparts on the board of supervisors that we really needed to be competitive with and without teachers especially our master's scales because we were definitely behind on that and so it is quite a disappointment to me that we could not be more intentional at this point in order to achieve

[00:42:04] that goal and I see that's my point and that's my time so I'll put myself on a go back and I see that Miss Lady is the next speaker and then we will do a second round. Thank you and again thank you dr. Reed and and team for the for the additional 1% I'm gonna start my remarks with a bit of grieving as I just got a text from two of my favorite colleagues and school counseling office who have accepted a job in Loudoun County for next year so they can start collecting their ear FC and get paid more than they're paid here and it brings me to my point which is more or

[00:42:39] less maybe a follow-on amendment and/or an ask for year-end funds one of the things that's very difficult in the school counseling world when there are vacancies is that we redistribute those students among other counselors there are situations where schools have been down to counselors in the fall which means the redistribution of seniors and and obviously counselors stepping up and writing maybe up to 20 additional letters than they would have already written unfortunately there's no compensation for those folks what we do have with AT contracts is if a teacher is going to teach extra students hypothetically 20 to 30 extra students they are paid in AT contract so I would

[00:43:18] like for us to do one of two things. Either we need to figure out a way to compensate the folks who are putting in that time. I'm not sure how you would do that. I'm sure there's a divider of the 30 extra students and the amount of money a teacher gets. Perhaps do that division by the number of maybe it's two students to one maybe in the counseling situation. Or I'm also very interested in a discussion around hiring counselors. I would say, at a minimum one, but perhaps two per region, who can be available to sub, because the other problem is nobody's there for the social-emotional pieces of this. There's nobody

[00:43:55] there, and we call the school counseling office and say, "I'm in desperate need. I need somebody," and they say, "Well, we can loan you, Robin, for Tuesday afternoon and maybe all day in three weeks on a Friday." That doesn't help what's taking place in the student services office at the time. So I just want to bring that to the forefront, because these are daily tasks and there's no way to compensate and counselors they just do what's required because they're not going to let a kid not get a letter of recommendation and to that end you know I don't know what those folks might look like I don't know if they might be folks that are recently retired who would come back and they work whatever percentage it is 67% I forget the number

[00:44:35] but I just think we need to elevate that with year-end funds so that's my ask thank you I can respond miss lady I did meet with the director of student services and they made that request and so I had asked for data which schools and which positions and I think that I'll be visiting with mr. Smith and miss burden further on that because we did already there are funds there that I don't know that we'll need your end for because we budgeted for those positions that in some cases went unfilled. So we're going to take a look at what is

[00:45:12] possible because I agree with you and I think our staff agree that that's a an important move and an equity move so appreciate you bringing that to light. Thank you and I do also know the problem is we don't have a sub pool right so that's why I'm wondering if as we have people that are retiring if we can ask directors hey who do they think might be willing to step in in one of these capacities that we might better work in that situation but thank you very much for for making that a priority thank you very much miss lady and now we will start with our second round because we still have plenty of time will remain at

[00:45:49] three minutes madam clerk mr. Dunn followed by mystics it thank you I have distributed all of you a list of follow-on motions but I'll delay discussion until subsequently I think it's important that if we're going to be having a work session that we speak honestly. And when we talk about a meals tax, the assumption that we're going to get that money or all of that money is mistaken. The county will take a slice as they did last time. We had previously talked about the meals tax funding infrastructure where our

[00:46:24] needs are significant and growing. When we talk about JLARC, I don't know what we did this year to actually go to the state legislature to get more money in a coordinated way with the county. I didn't see a strategy. I'd never heard about a strategy or action. So if we're going to talk about it, we should do something about it. When we talk about differentiated pay, we've already got a precedent within FCPS of differentiated pay. FY20, FY21, FY22, we provided differentiated pay to different groups of employees. And it's also a fallacy to say, we're all going to sing

[00:47:04] kumbaya and be one because we have three bargaining units. And if you look at the different bargaining units in the county they have provided differentiated pay every single year for the last 10 years except for one year 2016 when they provided no or 2021 when there was no raise for anyone at all and you see vast gaps 18 percent one year for the police versus much less for other so going forward differentiated pay will be the new norm because not all the bargaining units will agree with each other we also don't always refrain from using one-time money

[00:47:40] We added 2% raise in mid-year funding last year is my understanding. We don't need to use one-time money at all for what I've put on the table because, again, my base proposal cost the exact same within a million dollars, either less or more, depending if you want to do a two-step increase or a 5% pay increase, as the proposed 4% across the board.

[00:48:05] You have a budget question, question 60, where the budget response stated very clearly that even a 6% raise that was originally proposed will not make a single dent in the arms race that we're in with our neighboring counties.

[00:48:20] It will still leave us substantially behind. We also have a budget question, question 63, that states clearly that non-school-based personnel are paid at or above market. This is data we all have, right? So why are we paying people at or above market 4% more if they're already above market? Why do they need to go further above market? And meanwhile, we have teachers and school based personnel, school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians who are struggling to make ends meet and can't afford to live in this county. From a moral perspective, it's unconscionable. We need to focus

[00:49:00] the money where the pain is, the people who are serving our students. Thank you, Thank you, Mr. Dunn. There were two questions there, and I'd like to invite Dr. Reed to respond to your last question, which is why further move those who are above market an additional 4%, and then I'd like to invite Mr. Frisch to respond to some of the coordinated efforts between the school board and the county in the pursuit of the JLARC funding that we've done as of late.

[00:49:35] Dr. Reed, then Mr. Fresh, please. Yeah, I would have to sit down with the numbers that Mr. Dunn has provided. There are a number of positions that are not school-based that are not at market. So I don't want to make a statement that's not accurate in response, but I'm happy to look at the numbers and run the numbers with the budget office and then provide a response.

[00:50:01] Thank you. Just want to put some information out there which has been shared in communications with colleagues. So in terms of our work around JLARC, Dr. Anderson and I have participated early on in the legislative calendar in phone calls with the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and staff and their lobbyists around efforts to push our delegation in the General Assembly to take action on the JLARC recommendations

[00:50:35] One of the items that stemmed from those two conversations was outreach to various entities in Richmond, which proved difficult to get them to move. But we did end up authoring an op-ed that went out.

[00:50:52] Additionally, and this has all been shared with the board, I spoke at the Fairfax County Legislative Delegation's annual public hearing carrying the message of our board. about the importance of JLARC before they entered session.

[00:51:10] And then at least half of this board visited Richmond during the legislative session to directly lobby our delegation about JLARC.

[00:51:26] Everybody on this board was invited to do that. Some people have been down there more than once to make those calls on our delegates and others. And some of us have also attended the legislative briefings in district of our delegation members to continue that advocacy.

[00:51:46] And most people on this board have, in all their comments, continued to press that point. So I just wanted to make sure that the public was aware of what has been done thus far around carrying the message of the importance of following through on the JLARC's recommendations that would result in $568 million annually for Fairfax County Public Schools.

[00:52:08] - Thank you, Mr. Frisch, Ms. Dixit. - Hi, my following question is about the salary increase and we just said the FI24 beginning salary for all school divisions.

[00:52:24] I believe we have some numbers for at least Loudon and some other higher ones for FI25. I just wanted to see how far back we are, how much the difference is in the starting salary. - This is for a master scale?

[00:52:40] - Yes, ma'am. - Can we go ahead and then put that chart back up, Madam Clerk? - I believe it's page three.

[00:53:06] - And Ms. Vernon, if you wouldn't mind just running through those numbers once more for Ms. Dixitz. - Yeah, in fiscal 24, you can see that, and that's the current year, that we rank seven of eight of the Virginia jurisdictions that participate in the Wavy Guide in master's beginning salary step one.

[00:53:24] Arlington's first, Manassas Park City's last, and we rank seven. The 3% would move us one rank up to six, and then 4% we would be at rank five with eight divisions participating.

[00:53:45] Yeah, I saw that. My question was, what is Loudon's FY's beginning salary? So we can compare Apple to Apple. That's just FY24. 64.033. okay so that's it says fcp is at four percent that's just ours that the the other divisions that's what they have proposed and most of them have adopted already as to what their beginning

[00:54:21] salary is it's only the four percent only it reflects us because all of these divisions did a variety of salary packages so there's not much difference then why is that uh there's so much of transfer like uh i mean if you look at the the price 64 033 and they're 64 076 it's like 30 dollars apart yeah i mean beginning teachers are are just going to accept employment somewhere which that's what this is talking about but teachers that move from our division existing

[00:54:57] teachers that that may be a different that may look differently this is just step one masters and so that's really for all the new recruits the newly graduated and teachers from virginia universities and colleges and nationally as well mystics at one of the reasons if you and i know this chart it's a little i had to look at it for quite a little while but if you look at where um where we were when we were at three percent and everybody else that beginning salary we were further away right so at four percent this gives us you know we were sixth actually because we were

[00:55:37] only at 63 460 compared to the 64 033 at the beginning at three at four percent it moves us we think within shouting distance really um but where i will also say as miss lady just mentioned we have a number of folks who hit a certain point in the career which some have chosen to stay for for the drop program and some have chosen to step away to work because different parts along the salary schedule, there's a less and more or less of a gap.

[00:56:07] This is at the very beginning. So we felt like looking at this, that a 4% salary gets us really a lot closer and the numbers, the Delta is much less than at 3%. We were feeling like that was not insignificant, but I appreciate the question.

[00:56:25] - Thank you. So yeah, that makes sense to me that obviously with the tenure and their step increases and levels. So after 20 years, the salary looks really different. And again, I just want to retain those experienced teacher.

[00:56:42] We want that as a county. So how much do we need to give them a step increase for those who are leaving for, I guess, for a little bit extra? They're getting at Loudoun. A little increase in their pay would help to retain them, and if they can, it's not $24 million, $28 million.

[00:57:04] It sounds like you were in the room as we've been discussing this with staff for the last several weeks as well. Ms. Burden, thoughts on a sort of ballpark of that? I'm not even sure how we would calculate it, which is kind of how we left off.

[00:57:19] Because we'd be on any given year, anybody might look at, you know, I don't know if there's a response, because there would be an almost infinite set of data points. - Yeah, we'd have to do some research and analysis.

[00:57:35] - Yeah, and basically like any teacher who's been at FCPS for more than 15 years, that shows a lot of commitment to the school system. They're committed to stay, hopefully, till their retirement. I was thinking maybe that could be the, maybe data point till their retirement age.

[00:57:54] I don't know if that makes sense, but I'll just wait to get this, my thoughts collected again on this.

[00:58:10] I mean, we can come back. - I will say that we are looking at, and I think we've also talked with staff about the need to do a reset with the salary schedule period, honestly, but that's a much bigger task than the budget at this point.

[00:58:30] At this point, so anyhow, think what we're seeing the biggest decision making is at the 25 year mark i don't know that there's a huge decision making departure between the 15 and 25 when we looked at the data mr smith i think we were primarily looking there's when people are eligible for that erfc benefit at 25 that's where we're seeing the decision making and there's not much salary wise at that point that is comparable to the package that's possible?

[00:59:03] It's the 25 and 55 years of age for legacy eligibility. And as Ms. Lady points out, for those individuals who can make more in other jurisdictions, they will then take their retirement to go and make more. For those who have made the decision that it's more cost-effective for them to go into drop and make their current salary to forego the having to interview, having to pull up stakes, having to rebuild and recreate community, those are individuals who are choosing to stay because of the drop program.

[00:59:35] Thank you. Ms. Dixit, we'll get you back on. If you all do not mind, I would like to give a turn to Ms. St. John Cunning because she has not yet spoken. Thank you. I want to address a couple of issues that aren't being addressed here.

[00:59:52] And look, I'm as disappointed as everybody else is in this room about what this budget was. bare bones 6% when I looked at it and I've said it various times that does not include the extra counselors the extra social workers everything else that we need we didn't get the money we are comparing ourselves to other jurisdictions economically but we also have to realize that there's more than an economic factor there's a lot of people that stay in Fairfax because it is

[01:00:24] the world-class system that it is there's a lot of people that stay here because of the culture that we create here. And those are non-economic reasons that people stay here. I want to address the fact that our central office personnel, many of them are teachers or principals that support our schools and go to schools and support our teachers. So just because they're in central office doesn't mean that they aren't touching students, coaching teachers, or administrators.

[01:01:01] they are still working for our students they are still touching the lives of our students and more importantly supporting our educators and our administrators the fact that Loudoun County invested their money on data centers because they have the land to do it and we don't is why we see the difference but aside from that we have to look at that culture that we create in this county and someone that has worked in this county and has been offered jobs outside of this country county

[01:01:35] at significantly higher pay i did not take them because fairfax county was has the reputation that it has another factor that i want to bring into this is sometimes people move not because of money i mean covet showed us that a lot of people transfer to other areas because it's closer to where they live it has nothing to do with what they're earning now the fact that they can work closer to their home in Woodbridge or Loudon or whatever and earn more money is just a fact but that they may be moving for other reasons and we're saying that all these teachers are moving

[01:02:10] just because they're not getting the money so I just want to look at this realistically and look at the whole picture because it's yes obviously money makes a difference but there's a lot more that impacts decisions that people make and I know from working with teachers and speaking with teachers that they are so supportive as a community to one another and as much as you know people say oh yeah it's one Fairfax where do we see it I see it I

[01:02:41] see it every day this Anderson so this has been a contentious budget season just as our new one on the board but I do have a few other questions that are related to how other counties are responsive to us so when we make a change in our budget I know that I had school board members from other district and other divisions that were contacting me to find out what we were doing I assumed in order to be to have a greater increase than we did and so I was wondering do we often see that as a response

[01:03:18] from the surrounding counties well everybody's us included is relatively cagey at first as far as what they're planning for that very reason that you know we don't want to tell Loudon yeah we're thinking about six percent and the next thing we know Loudon steps out with seven percent and and can happen you're absolutely right so everybody's pretty cagey in fact uh most of them don't provide salary schedules with their proposed budget but you know if they say two percent three percent

[01:03:54] we can do the math um but yeah that can that can happen so if we continue to only try to be responsive to other counties i fear that we will lose the forest for the trees um i would like us to make sure that we create a school system that every teacher wants to work in and i think there are lots of ways that happens beyond financial i know that i know that pay is always going to be part of it but i want us to do all the things that make our lives easier as staff members so having a support you know supportive environment strong leadership teams all of those things those things happen because of the leadership at gatehouse in in our administration that allows

[01:04:32] those things to happen at the lower levels so i am not in support of differentiating the pay the other question that i had for you is when we're talking fringe benefits those are not included in the list up there correct so when we're talking erfc that is not included in what's included in that in that base salary it's not salary it's not so but it is part of the compensation which is could be argued that it is a reason why people are going to other areas because they have that extra benefit and it's something that they can collect on in order to move and it is an amazing opportunity

[01:05:06] But it is, and I love the fact that we were able to figure out how to move DROP forward, because I think that that does give us the opportunity to retain that staff, and it closes that gap. So I think that that's... Yeah, and that's an important comment, because the people that have rejected the DROP program, they have their 25 years, but they're going to work in Loudoun.

[01:05:31] Those people typically need money. They've got kids going to start in college, that kind of thing. Whereas the drop program, which allows you to continue working after 55 and your ERFC pension is going into the fund for you so that you get a lump sum at the end of your drop period.

[01:05:49] That might not be something that someone who is getting ready to face large expenses like tuition, it wouldn't help them. Whereas if they did transfer to another division, then they would receive their ERFC pension in real time and that would help them with whatever financial thing that they're facing.

[01:06:09] So the other point that I wanted to make is that I do understand that a lot of people who are moving closer to where they live, the reason that they're doing that is because they can't afford to live in Fairfax County. And the problem is it's a catch 22 is that we have absolutely no control over home values in this area and we cannot solely be responsive because then it prices other people out in order for it to to hit that percentage.

[01:06:33] So I do want to say that I am in support of a future look at the way we are providing salaries so that we can move people away from the concept of only receiving increases with a step increase. and that causes animosity within the community when we aren't able to do those in certain ways.

[01:06:51] But I am in support of, I love the fact that we were able to get to 4%. I absolutely don't want to incur any future expense that we can't 100% be sure that we're gonna be able to fund. So I love where we are, and I am glad that we got the extra 1%.

[01:07:11] - Mr. Moon. - Thank you very much, Chair. That's project question number 83. So we can post that off for my colleagues. Sorry to confuse you because I still have, don't have enough understanding of numbers that I see.

[01:07:30] This time I'm gonna use FI 23 number, FI 23, because I wasn't talking, I was waiting to see that.

[01:07:47] Could you make it larger so that I could read? Okay, FI 23, we have a turnover vacancy, 27.6, 33.7. You put them together, the 61.3 as a total lapse.

[01:08:05] And then at the bottom, you have a base savings, 21.5, in the parentheses. The base savings, I understood, because that's actual number from prior years, and you're gonna put that as a base saving, you're reducing the amount of expenditure for compensation.

[01:08:23] The numbers up there, however, 61.3, is best estimate, projection. So you still put that as a number to reduce the expenditure as you as we pass the budget for fi23 did i get that correctly so far yes okay with it in mind uh this one i have not given anybody a heads up but i am gonna just read what fi23 year end agenda item says about year end you're gonna use the numbers up there

[01:09:02] FI 23 you have a 61.3 as a projection of a total lapse. 21.5 is an actual number from prior year all together is about 82 reducing the compensation basically cost. FI 23 year end budget review on July 13, 2023 which was passed by the prior board the agenda item for FI 23 actual expenditure

[01:09:32] variance about 352 million dollars the expenditure variance of a 352 million dollars less than budget funding available is primarily comprised of a salary and benefits far out due to vacancy and turnover what i'm trying to get is this probably you are very conservative in projecting the numbers for a ton of vacancy, and then that's how we realize at the year-end, every year, every

[01:10:10] year there's a large chunk of money at the year-end, and that might have been our very conservative approach about budgeting. So FI23 all together, year-end surplus was 127.5 million, FI22 was 160 million, and FI21 to 82 million what i'm trying to get at is this when we first proposed six percent compensation increase and then now it's a better than last week about three percent now four percent i

[01:10:43] bet that many of our employees are disappointing i am trying to find more money to provide even above four percent compensation increase for the next year i think a place that we whether we can get where we can get is out of our very conservative approach of the projecting total lapse amount thank you mr moon we'll add you to a go back because i think you have more there just to share miss sizemore heiser yes can you guys see me okay i just spent a screenshot

[01:11:22] thank you i appreciate the conversation today and i apologize for not being here in person excuse me um i wanted to mention a couple things that was mentioned before first i wanted to thank my colleague who mentioned the issues around counselors and especially subs for counselors it's something that I've heard from one of the number of things I'm hearing when I go to our schools is the need for um either male counselors or better support for counselors or better support for mental health so I think that's an important thing to look at and I would be curious to know um what else we can do to support some of our positions where we don't have easy

[01:12:00] subs available for example I know when some of our APs were in charge of the schools are out how do we support behaviors classroom school management you know I think there's a hierarchy of needs and I think our counselors right now what our students needs are at the top of that need in terms of looking but it's an interesting question that I would look to explore as we build towards next year I also very much appreciate the conversation around how are we advocating for the fact that the the state has chronically underfunded us and their own independent body has shown that we're chronically underfunded to the tunes of millions of dollars, I think half a billion dollars

[01:12:39] if they actually fund us appropriately. We recognize that our county cannot keep raising taxes as well and the county is limited in what they can raise. However, we have zero power right now in what we can get from our allocation from both the state and the county.

[01:13:00] so i do appreciate the thought of looking at alternate sources of revenue but i'm wondering if we can just have a overarching follow-on asking our superintendent to look for alternate source of revenue both for school construction transportation and funding rather than very specific buckets to sort of save on some workload so that's the first question i want to put out there the other thing i want to put out is i've had many conversations with the community who are often surprised when i mention the issues of chronic underfunding when i tell them that we cannot raise our own revenue and i've had many conversations with colleagues about the need for

[01:13:36] somebody like a chief communications advocacy person to help do that coordination of efforts to help get the message out there to help get our public school supporters to go on help share the message and lobby on our behalf but we are not the only thing that we have control over is how we explain our needs and how we advocate for our needs and I think we need more consistent coordinated effort to pull in Mr. Malloy to pull in the state legislative liaison on the board to

[01:14:08] pull in our budget people and to create and craft and oversee doing that advocacy work otherwise it's going to be ad hoc and we're going to be in this exact same position so something to think about for next year I may take a call back but I'll stop now thank you thank you Ms. Seismohyser and now returning to our go back list uh miss marion yes i wanted to comment on mr moon's comments about you know whether we're being too conservative or not i've often wondered that

[01:14:42] actually about the capital improvement bond on the county side and i know from that there's a quite a considerable buffer to protect our bond rating and um you know i'm aware that it seems like we do take more conservative approach so i am interested in learning more about that and i also wonder Dr. Reid if you could speak to whether the Baldrige process that you intend to go through if you could explain would that help us on and reveal some of that tendency that we have yeah thank you Ms. Marin and I think Mr. McDaniel mentioned that at the outset the Baldrige work really is a full

[01:15:18] division wide look at our efficiencies tied to our outcomes and I believe that's going to provide a lot of data and a lot of insights to this board as we think about prioritizing programs and supports resources and initiatives moving forward and that's work actually that begins tomorrow with a group that's going to be learning going to be working on the writing for this particular project so uh yes to answer your question that work over the next several years

[01:15:56] is going to be a very deep look into the entire budget and how it connects to outcomes because i think there are very likely some areas that we will want to realign both our work our time talent and treasure thank you and i do you know there is a difference between budgeting and then actual tracking and the finance and i think my experience has been that we focus a lot on budgeting but not as much as analyzing go to be budget you know what we expected did we meet that and we have our quarterly mid-year reviews but perhaps we can be a lot more focused on that I'd like to be the second point I just want to raise is

[01:16:32] about these budget questions so you know we can present public knows we can ask questions of our budget staff as can the County Board of Supervisors and the response that the team has provided this year is quite voluminous 165 pages of really great information, so thank you, and that joins the previous years, too.

[01:16:52] But there was one I wanted to particularly, one or two I wanted to particularly ask about. One was about, it was question 54, and is a very comprehensive overview of mental health services, which I will actually share with constituents, because I get a lot of questions about what FCPS provides, even though we're not the health department, and would love more health department health on that.

[01:17:10] But it asks about the recruitment. We earned a $5 million grant to help with mental health staff recruitment, and we're two years in and i'm just wondering has that project helped at all so miss marron that's a great question i know i just signed off on another uh year's annual report dr presidio would you be able to comment on the data in terms of the impact of the mental health grant thank you for that question it definitely has helped i don't have the exact numbers i'll have to get you the exact numbers of folks that we've been able to bring into the division or retain in the division using those grant funds, but I don't know that off the top of my head.

[01:17:48] Well, perhaps that could be added to the answer to the budget question, so we have that there for a future reference. I'd appreciate that. Thank you. The other one I wanted to just call as well, also dealing with mental health, it was question 84 about telehealth, and there's a note in there that the contract is approved through June 2024, but it's not clear either what the data are showing about its impact, or if that contract is continuing. The answer to that question number 84 is unclear to me, so I did want to ask about that in here today or

[01:18:21] at other time soon, please. It's okay, it's question 84. It's about Hazel Health.

[01:18:39] Yes, I'm sorry, did I not mention that? It's about Hazel Health. Yeah, it's about Hazel Health, and it's just asking about the cost to it. It's yours, Ms. Dixit, isn't it? about expanding mental health therapy to middle and elementary schools. And so it was about the original contract for high schools, which is extended through this June.

[01:18:58] So that makes me think that that contract is not extending. And then I don't know what's happening with elementary and middle. So I need clarification. Actually, this was a great question because early, early on, Hazel Health worked exclusively at the university level.

[01:19:14] And then we were part of the group that worked with high school. And I think our staff really felt like they weren't excited to move to middle, but Ms. Dixit, when she asked the question, we went back to them again. And in fact, they are working with younger and younger children.

[01:19:32] So we want to take a look at how are we utilizing Hazel Health, right? How many students are accessing services and what is our cost to provide those services so we can do an ROI assessment of that? But you're right, we're going to have to make a decision to fund that for the coming year based on effectiveness of usage.

[01:19:59] Okay. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Seeing no other folks for second round, I will go ahead and take my turn after Ms. Lady takes her second round. Sorry if I should know this in the budget, but what have we decided related to MyTutor.com?

[01:20:17] I believe at this point, that was ESSER funded. It had very low use. I also, very recently, Mr. Sethi and I visited with Sal Khan and looked at some of the options that were free, actually, and both Varsity Tutor, I believe, is a program, perhaps.

[01:20:37] I'm maybe making that up because maybe I can't remember, but there was, I think, a program called Varsity Tutor, as well as, I'd have to look up the specific, there's another one that's online that's free, and we're proposing that we utilize services that are no cost at this point for online tutoring support the cost for the tutor.com dr presidio was quite spendy and it was esser funded and we have no more esser funds so can you ballpark the cost of that

[01:21:08] grant excuse me though yeah i think it was 2.5 million dollars a year right so it was a 2.5 million annual i i believe so i i have to be careful with that i don't know exactly i'd have to i'd have to double check but it was expensive and it was funded with grant funds and So we are looking, as Dr. Reed already mentioned, at low-cost or no-cost alternatives.

[01:21:35] Ms. Burden, are you able to retrieve the exact cost of Tutor.com? Because that sounds unusually low from what our discussions were. No, we don't have access to that here, but I can take somebody and find out. Ms. Lady has more.

[01:21:50] Right. Well, the bottom line is it was ESSER-funded. We no longer have ESSER dollars. We want to provide online tutoring. We think that has great value. We just want to go with a no or low-cost option. - Thank you, my other question. - I was just gonna add, it's in a Friday letter.

[01:22:06] I think it came out to about $300 per student who used it and I forget the total amount, but. - Thank you. My other question is related to Naviance, just when is that contract up and are we looking at other vendors?

[01:22:21] - Dr. Presidio. - Yeah, so we had a chance, I think, to speak about this briefly with one or two board members, but it's good to do it with the full body. So we're in the process now of one year renewals on our contract and we are looking do a one-year renewal for next year while we simultaneously launch an RFP to look at other available products this year we did kind of an RFI looking to see what else was out there and we did see some other products that we're interested in but we need to go through the whole RFP process to look at all the technical considerations and components and then do competitive pricing and negotiations and everything before we would make a decision

[01:23:01] about switching to vendors so we're definitely going to do a one-year renewal of Naviance for next year while we do the rfp process do you know whether or not you looked at college guides and network um i i don't know off the top of my head all the different products we looked at but i could get you all that information thank you about that offline that's it thank you i'm going to go ahead and take my second turn here um again happy to kind of hear the conversation but i want to go back into some of the things that were shared previously i i fully agree with mr dunn in terms of we have begun to differentiate we've differentiated for the special education teachers

[01:23:38] with the extended day contract so that already exists but the point that i also want to hone in on is well let me ask this miss burden what is the average salary of our ias we'd have to calculate that sure or even our bus drivers or even our food and custodial personnel or even our family liaisons

[01:24:09] I raise this because I think these are important data points for us to include in our budget presentations, because we've always only highlighted the teacher salaries, the beginning teacher salaries and the beginning master teacher salaries. I think having a comprehensive presentation of how whatever raises that we propose impact each group, it makes sense to do because I think it sets up our understanding in a better way.

[01:24:36] 4% of $200,000 is a lot more than 4% of $40,000 or $35,000. Hence my great support for differentiation, which this board voted for. This very body voted to have that differentiation as part of our resolution.

[01:24:54] So it's not unusual that we would want the superintendent to carry forward with that. The cost of living, we've talked about that quite a bit, and I agree with some of the statements that were shared. some of our for many of our staff living in fairfax county is just not an option and that goes from teachers all the way down to our food custodians they just cannot afford to live here and again four percent for one group is so much different than four percent of another do i think all of our staff deserve a raise absolutely i think every single person who works in our system

[01:25:32] deserve a raise but do i think it needs to be differentiated yes because we only have so so much so many dollars. We will always have limited dollars, but what we do with those dollars we can be a little bit more strategic and that has been my disappointment with this presentation. I don't think we've rolled up our sleeves to be a little bit more strategic to put more dollars where there's greater need. Again, I'm not a fan of cutting out any groups, but I am a major fan of pushing more dollars where it will mean more to a a greater number of people, and I don't think we've achieved that with this budget.

[01:26:12] One of the things that I also heard that I do believe we can spend a little bit more time to be intentional is highlighting the additional perks that are provided to teachers here or staff here that are not provided in other divisions with ERFC plus their VRS or their FCERS benefits.

[01:26:32] I think we should show that in our charts, because any conversation that we have here is a communication to the public. So the more we could highlight that, the better. While I do not agree that we are, I'm just going to finish a sentence and move on. While I do not agree that differentiation is divisive, not only because it already exists, but I also know when to step down.

[01:26:53] We have received a letter from the teacher leaders, FCFT and FEA, not wanting it. So if they are the representatives of the teachers and they're saying no, it's really hard for me to go to the mat for something that the very people who would be the beneficiary of it are saying it is not something that they need right now.

[01:27:16] So I just wanted to put that in my position. All right, we are going to go to thirds and seeing the time, now we're going to go to two minutes. Please, Madam Clerk, Mr. Dunn, two minutes. Thank you. I'd like to draw, given the conversation, draw the attention to my follow-on motion number eight in my handout regarding recurring revenue, which I believe Ms. Sizemore-Heiser raised.

[01:27:42] Given the discussion from Ms. Lady and Ms. Marin, I also have a follow-on motion number four to ensure that we have options by which to meet the nationally recommended ratios for social workers, school counselors, and school psychologists.

[01:27:58] We need to look not just at employing more people, given the national shortage and our difficulty filling vacancies, but also contracting with third-party service providers. But I wanted to start with Fallen Motion No. 1, which is one of the most critical issues we've been talking about, which is the school renovation queue.

[01:28:15] We have our current queue, which will be essentially fulfilled by 2030, with the last school going into design that year, and the first school of the new queue going into design the same year 2030 we need to be planning years in advance the new queue will only be developed with new criteria and new data we're going to have one vendor develop new criteria we need a second to develop new data back in 2023 facilities leadership at that time requested 8.4 million to conduct a comprehensive facilities condition assessment this will give us the data so we can slice and dice and establish

[01:28:55] different tiers of renovations. It will also make sure that we have good data to guide the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars over the next 20 years. If you look in my notes, you'll see that right now we only have $2 million, which equals seven cents, seven pennies per square foot, which is far below the industry average of 30 cents per square foot.

[01:29:17] So my first question to Dr. Reed is, would you support the allocation of additional 6.4 million so we have 8.4 million for our facilities condition assessment. - At this time, I would say that after visiting with Ms. Szymanski and looking at a number of the parts of a conditional assessment report that need to be done, a number of those actually are being done in-house, my preference would be to utilize the two million we've set aside to provide the assessment the two million will provide, as well as look at what we've done inside,

[01:29:54] And if need be at that time, go out and add another $2 million or another $3 million at that point. But I think we might actually get close with the $2 million that's been budgeted and the work that the department's doing internally. So I would hate to add $6 million to a task that might actually be accomplished with $2 million.

[01:30:14] I understand the need, but I think that we're a lot closer than when it was initially proposed because some of that work has been assessed since that time. I'd also like to ask, Ms. Burden, in the budget question response, it says ERFC has tripled since 2010 from around $30 million to $110 or $115 million per year. Why is that?

[01:30:37] I mean, are you talking about the contribution rate from the school operating fund to ERFC? Yeah, so it was fairly stable, around $30, $35 million for 15, 20 years.

[01:30:57] And then in 2010, it began almost a geometric increase to where it's around $115, $117 million today. I'm not sure why it started climbing and where it's going to. Well, I mean, the actuarials, of course, developed the contribution rate.

[01:31:16] And then the only other variable is payroll salaries are the two things that would increase that. I'm referring to question number 53. Thank you.

[01:31:39] Ms. Burden, are you looking for something or should we? No, that's it. It's the contribution rate, which is developed by the actuarials every two years, as well as the cost of payroll is what is driving the number that's in the budget that is the transfer to ERFC from the operating fund.

[01:32:02] Thank you. Mr. Frisch, is this your second turn? - This is my first go back. - Three minutes, please. - I don't think I'll need it, but I just wanna clarify that FEA and FCFT do not just represent teachers, right?

[01:32:20] They represent all sorts of different staff members. Additionally, I do wanna pick up where Mr. Dunn left off on his first follow on motion around the facilities needs. Because I think sometimes when we're in the middle of writing it, sometimes we give short thrift the importance of it. And I think, Mr. Dunn, you may have not hammered home enough the importance of the work that this is designed to go after. Not that it indicates a difference with your answer, Dr. Reed, but I think the concern that this stems from is they want to make sure that when we get

[01:32:58] to the point where we are assessing the next cue, we have looked at everything that we possibly could need to look at from the locks to the you know to the hvac systems to the electrical to the plumbing to everything that we could possibly need to have a cue on athletic facilities etc so that um as you know as we look at that cue we can make assessments on how best to position the work and so um i you know based on what uh i look at what fairfax city has done and how they approach the work and I know that we've looked at that. You know I can anticipate that we may need

[01:33:37] more money. We may not need it now. So my question for you is this motion indicates a request that priority be placed on year-end funding this year for this project. Do you anticipate that we will fully staff our division next year and have no year-end money available for potentially goosing the amount that we put into this next year i needed while i believe we're getting closer and closer to being fully staffed i think it's likely that we'll see year-end funds be available to continue this project if necessary next year and can you commit to the board that as

[01:34:16] you and our facilities team work through this not only internally but also with contracted help that as you see the work being done if there's a early assessment that we're not getting everything that we want to get done uh and perhaps this can be defined for the board what we are getting done internally versus what we would do externally um that the board will be notified early so that we can start adjusting or thinking about things next year yes sir thank you thank you mr fresh um miss

[01:34:51] dixit this will be your third round for two minutes i'll be quick um this is for my own understanding i i there was a budget question about reserves uh the cash reserves on page 138 i wanted to know some of the reserves are higher than like you know they're for like 50 million dollars and how much of that is we need to carry forward to the next budget year is that the reason that is kept year after year like in a reserve account what was the budget question number again

[01:35:27] uh but it i don't know the question but actually 81. 81 yeah okay so what was your question my question was how do you keep that cash reserve and for what purpose like does it carry forward to the next year till we get the funding again and it's like an essential cost to keep it to run

[01:36:03] the programs? It depends. I mean the grants reserve six million is basically to to provide some appropriation authority so that if we have a grant that comes in and let's say that at the time that we developed a budget it was a hundred thousand dollars and then we get the actual award letter after the budget's adopted and it's 125 000. Well we would have to go back to we'd have to wait till the quarterly review add 25 000 go back you know send that to the board of supervisors to get that additional appropriation so us as well as other divisions always have a grant

[01:36:42] reserve so that every little tiny change in a grant you don't have to go back to and include that in a quarterly review as a change to the budget so that's what that reserve is for and it's just built into the budget every year and if we you know so that that 25 000 that i was illustrating, you know, that's a $25,000 increase in expenditures, and this gives us the $25,000 in revenue.

[01:37:04] So it doesn't cost us anything. And if the $6 million, if we had every grant come in at exactly what we thought it was going to be, then these funds wouldn't be used at all, nor would there be any revenue associated with it. So it's just a placeholder in case grants come in higher than normal.

[01:37:20] The Food and Nutrition Services Reserve is supposed to be at minimum three months of operating expenses, and that is in their fund and just carries over every single year. The school board flexibility reserve is replenished every year.

[01:37:36] If any of it is used, that's $8 million. It's not budgeted every year. It is carried forward at the end of the year. So if it's $8 million in this year and if there was some initiative that the board supported that was a half a million dollars, then at year end, we would add $500,000 back to it to bring it up to $8 million in the subsequent year.

[01:37:59] restricted reserves are all about workers compensation health care those kinds of things that have to carry reserves to deal with items that we know are coming up but we may not have budgeted for they're incurred but they're not yet reported the school the staffing contingency of course is where we budget for positions so that we can reconcile in the fall with the actual enrollment if we have to add additional positions and actually through it starts in the spring it's throughout the the late spring and early summer that those positions are allocated we also have a fuel contingency reserve of two million

[01:38:38] and that's in case fuel fuel prices spike unexpectedly and you know again we don't use those funds if they are not needed thank you for the answer comes burden I I had another question about hazel health which was my question and I'm just going to say that there it was like the first year to use the service and we only saw a little less than five six hundred students utilize the service out of sixty five thousand high school

[01:39:12] students we have so I mean it's a great program we want to expand it to like with especially the shortage with the counselors and psychologists this will help those even the middle schoolers but how do we encourage students to you know take the service and there's a like they have to opt in and which is i guess a lot of people don't even know about that like so thank you miss dixit i know our counseling staff have been working with our students on that topic parents have been

[01:39:47] communicated with i don't dr presidio i'm not sure all the channels that the counseling team is used for that it's one of the other benefits is the multilingual counselors available on through hazel yeah we've pushed the information out multiple times in different formats to obviously families as well as students you know i don't know that we want to see too many students having necessarily having to access that service it's there to provide the support if students have those mental health needs. Parents do need to provide consent for their students to participate

[01:40:25] in the service because we don't want students just signing up and receiving that service and having a conversation and families aren't aware that they're receiving those services. So that might be part of the process that maybe perhaps more students might access it if parent permission wasn't required, but we feel pretty strongly that parent permission does need to be required for that service so when in-person students I'll school for a counselor do they

[01:40:55] get prepared permission first in schools no but there's a difference probably between school counseling and mental health therapy right and I'm just I don't want to make that up but I do believe there's a bit of a difference dr. Presidio perhaps because I think the services provided are are a bit different but Dr. Presidio yeah the types of services that students are getting there in terms of mental health services would be the type of thing that if a student came to the counselor in the school to raise the awareness that they needed help with that issue the counselor

[01:41:34] would work with a student and a family to make sure that they were able to get the services that they needed not necessarily provide that service directly to the student our counselors are doing obviously a lot of other things academic advising support you know attendance monitoring all kinds of other things. So they're not going to be the direct service providers for mental health services in many instances. Additionally, our school counselors are FCPF staff members. It's not a third-party vendor that we're contracting with. So the families have some expectation of a prior relationship, or at least the opportunity to have a prior relationship with that school counselor

[01:42:12] before the student's accessing services. So again, because this is a virtual service, know we felt pretty strongly that the parent permission is required for that i think there's our high school or our school counselors do a lot of triage right that um and if there's a long term or serious mental health issue that requires even medical intervention right that they're going to make referrals and i think that what we've seen hazel fill a gap in is our community services because often our counselors are referring to community mental health providers who at times

[01:42:51] aren't even in business anymore right like they've or their patient the wait list is for months in some cases so this is really created in fact i might argue that the county might find this a good resource to support right because it's it's filling a gap in community services more than a gap in school counseling services if we're being really I think thoughtful about the topic sorry to interrupt but I do I do want to offer a time check if staff could be super sustained about their responses just so I can get to the last few placards that are up I want to lend my time to miss lady the remaining

[01:43:30] time she doesn't she won't be long the time she'll get time no she want to answer something on this topic oh okay the only thing I wanted to add is it's my understanding when I was a director that if the students come to a counselor like the third time with the same issue at that point you need to get permission to engage in that conversation but that seldom to never happens because things change all the time and usually what counselors are triaging are things need to be referred out so we don't do anything in terms of therapy but more or less we are there to listen and then try to direct and get support, whether it's a, you know, multi-system tiered system of support,

[01:44:10] whether it's referral outside for counseling, whatever it is, they do a lot of triaging in terms of referral out and calling parents in and having dialogues with them in person. The other thing, sometimes they have time to do -- Lady, I am going to ask you to just catch that up during your turn. We're running out of time now. Ms. Anderson? I just wanted to say that first I agree that we -- I am looking forward to the opportunity that Baldrige will provide in in order to be creative because the exact system of using Baldrige forces you to ask those questions that actually digs into all of the different topics.

[01:44:47] So I was particularly excited to hear that we were gonna go through that process because it is the exact type of process that would do the deep dive that all of us are interested in doing. I also wanted to say in reference to the facilities information, I agree wholeheartedly that facilities is an area that I am significantly concerned about.

[01:45:09] I do take significant pause at the idea of spending $42,000 per building in order to do that, particularly when we have so many buildings that have recently been renovated that I don't think that it needs to be an immediate everything done at the same time kind of process.

[01:45:26] It can be iterative so that schools that we know are less likely to be put on a renovation queue moving forward, then we have the time to go ahead and do those things. So I agree wholeheartedly with keeping the 2 million in place, triaging the schools that are, we know, have had the most distance since the last renovation and looking at those, and then using other year end funds as we move forward to kind of look at, and so this can be an ongoing process in order to ensure that we have ongoing eyes on all of our facilities so we can be responsive when we do have a little bit of extra in the budget to take care of some of those issues.

[01:46:04] So I just wanted to reinforce that I wholeheartedly understand the importance of getting a solid queue set up, and I do think that getting started with the $2 million that we have set aside is probably a good place to start. Thank you. Ms. Marin. About the differentiated pay and the conversations about equity, equality, how we treat our staff, I've been going back and forth on this all week.

[01:46:36] We barely had any time to really consider this, given, again, the governor's late budget and, you know, just what's happening, but I think where I've come down is, I mean, we are missing half a billion dollars from the state. We are not going to solve that gap with a few million dollars.

[01:46:53] Not that it would be, it would be significant, I think, to some staff to give them extra money, especially ones that we know are not earning what they should be, but this is part of a much bigger complex problem, and I don't want to create uncomfortable and divisive environments, And if those environments already exist, I don't want to just perpetuate new ones in the opposite direction.

[01:47:19] I don't want to intentionally exacerbate it for a solution that's just a drop in the bucket. And so I'd like to look at some of the alternative, you know, the compensation, the benefits. I've long advocated for making bus drivers full-time, family liaisons full-time.

[01:47:35] I looked at the budget question 99 about our family liaisons. I have to say I don't think it's quite clear, it doesn't say exactly how many family liaisons we employ. I think some of them must be part-time. They're hourly. We talk about how important they are. I mean, I think actually that's when I first met Ms. St. John Cunning, was sitting in the audience advocating for family liaison benefits.

[01:47:56] So how do we do some of that things? You know, we've added maternity, paternity leave. I've asked the superintendent to look into allowing staff to use their time. It doesn't have to be medical time or personal time, but it's let's treat them like professionals. if they need time off to do something you know they don't have to you know go into detail so i think there's ways and i've seen the superintendent do some of that but i'm really eager to get in and figure out the state funding to work with the county to get everything that we're supposed to have because we are missing half a billion dollars thanks thank you besides moheiser actually i would

[01:48:36] say many of my colleagues have stated some of the points i wanted to make but i would be curious um i appreciate all the follow-up motions that just came in i think some yesterday today but i'd be curious it seems like a lot of these are staff time so is there a prioritization of these is there an order to these i want and i wonder if we do all of these what is staff not able to do because i want to make sure that we can focus on supporting our students in the classroom recruiting retaining the best teachers and supporting them to provide that work in the classroom um i do think that there's i really appreciate the thought of being creative and

[01:49:12] looking at um creative solutions to find um funding to look at our renovation cues i think that is also very important and i think it's very difficult where this esser cliff phase where everybody else is we've had a lot of um extra esser grants and we have to make some more decisions and i believe that data is the best way to do those decisions so i don't think i said it earlier But I think we need to wait for what's going on with Baldrige or at least have some initial reports before figuring out where we need to prioritize some of these staff time.

[01:49:49] So what I'd love to see from you, Dr. Reed, perhaps, you know, as a follow on is in addition to Baldrige, what in the more immediate term do you recommend we do to try to either find some cost savings, find some additional ways for recruitment and retention?

[01:50:05] I've longed advocating looking at staffing formulas because I think there's actually a lot of savings to look at how we are currently using our staffing formulas. And I think that would even give us a better sense of what central office staff do to support our classrooms. And I think having a deeper dive of understanding would be helpful moving forward.

[01:50:23] So I don't know, Dr. Reed, if that's a possibility that we can look at, but I feel like we're all understandably trying to find creative solutions to where we're at. but I want to understand how do we do that in a way that's all moving in the same direction.

[01:50:40] So, Dr. Reed, if you have some ideas, I don't know if I made it clear because I'm really not feeling all that great, but I'd appreciate any comments. Thank you. There might be a few more questions coming to Dr. Reed. I'd like to have everybody complete, and then maybe you can. If I could, please, actually, I mean, other people had questions answered, and I would prefer to have my question answered if possible.

[01:50:59] Okay, besides Moheiser. Dr. Reed. Thank you. i do think um as several folks have said i think baldrich will give us a window into that in a systemic way i think what you're asking is there some something we can do more immediately than waiting for the more systemic decision i think we can continue always to look to answer your question yes we can look at staffing formulas i don't know that that will be in time to do an analysis for

[01:51:34] this budget which you know because it's I think we have 15 days of school left at this point but I'm certainly committed to looking at our staffing formulas and how we allocate resources that support the classroom for sure I'm not sure what form that'll take I would need to visit with staff to discuss that but I think it's a fair request I don't know that it will impact this year's budget I guess is what I

[01:52:04] want to say thank you miss lady yeah I didn't have this number yesterday but in light of our conversation around the boundary policy and discussions around saving from transportation if my math is correct we have about a hundred seventy million dollars in the budget for next year for transportation costs I just want to elevate that for the community for a lot of people who are questioning why we wouldn't want to look at the boundary policy there's other layers to that but certainly it is a huge number and in there there I feel strongly if

[01:52:41] we if we've done correctly we might find ways to save in that particular area thank you thank you mr. fresh I want to pick up a little bit where mystics that left off memory serves me in in in the school registration process families are able to opt their children out of cycle services from school psychologists is that correct right every sorry every year i believe so why can't we have them opt them out of

[01:53:18] the telemental health services understanding that school psychologist services are much different than a school counselor service i think we could create i'm just thinking off the top of my head but maybe we could create a line that's exclusive to telemental health um i don't know maybe i mean i think anything's possible it would certainly reduce a barrier to entry so that when a student approaches a counselor they can look up and see if they've been opted out of the telemental health and if they haven't they can direct them to those services the same way they would to a school psychologist it would probably reduce the burden as well i do think and again i would need to come

[01:53:56] back to you with more details but i believe that the telemental health does use insurance as a payment aspect so i think they will want parent involvement very quickly or very early before a young person i believe i'm maybe i'm incorrect but i think that insurance piece might be a part where they were gonna you know they would want to connect with the parent likely prior to counseling with the student having said that maybe a student could connect with them to say i request it and then have that conversation with the parent but i know insurance is a part of that

[01:54:31] conversation i think all of this goes to so we did have a follow-on motion last year to explore expansion to staff and to junior school or middle school and it sounds like some of that thinking has been happening and conversations have been happening so um independent of the budget considerations today and this week i'll circle back to see if we can't get a full update on that forum or on that follow-on thank you okay thank you i will now take my final turn and i want to take my turn to kind of clean up um something that i said earlier i may have misspoken i wanted to

[01:55:09] just explain why I was not going to continue to explore the differentiation but I want to make sure that everybody is clear on what I needed to articulate and I'm actually going to read it. FEA and FCFT expressed strong support for Dr. Reed's proposal to implement a three percent salary increase because across the board for all FCPS employees. They believe this is this approach is essential to maintaining unity and to increase morale amongst dedicated staff so that is why

[01:55:45] i am not going to continue to pursue the differentiation because our folks who are being impacted by it are feeling that it's not the right thing for them at this time so i hope that i've been clear i was rushing through my statements earlier having said that while i'm not pursuing it it is something that i had hoped that we could do thoughtfully and i think we're at this place now where we're trying to piecemeal things together and i would have much appreciated that the superintendent had come forward with thoughtful and investigated and

[01:56:20] researched ways for us to consider as a board rather than us frankensteining this together as we often do when we don't have the information needed um so that is it for me and i see that we have a few minutes left and we have one more placard and mr dunn um well i have multiple motions i do want to address miss anderson and mr frisch's comments we have hundreds of millions of dollars that will be spent over the next 20 years um this is not something you cobble together with people who are not trained in it if we're going to spend you know nearing billion of dollars

[01:56:59] we need to have professionals who do this day in day out i'm a lawyer but i'm not going to go do a class action lawsuit against donald trump not my area of law same thing we can't just take a random staff person and say go do this if they've never done it before bad data leads to bad results leads to frustration leads to wasted investment the time frame which is in the page one of the handout it's going to rfp winter 2425 it's going to be finished within about 12 months which aligns with the time frame for the development of the criteria if you don't have all the data then you can't

[01:57:37] create a renovation queue because you'll have a criteria but nothing to sort it by right so you can't do it haphazard you can't do it piecemeal it's just not possible or i guess fcps has done that in the past and we've been very critical of business as usual with FCPS so I hope that we can all agree to put at least some year-end funding since it's a one-time cost because all the funding from a procurement perspective you put the funding on the contract at the beginning not at the end and if you do one-off projects or one-off assessments that increases your costs rather

[01:58:15] than using our our buying power from being a large school system getting a discount because we're doing a lot of work all at once. So from a term from a perspective of efficiency and actually doing it the correct way consistent with industry standards rather than cobbling together that you know like a high school student turning in a late assignment we should actually be doing it properly so then we can make proper allocation decisions with our renovation dollars and have good data making good informed decisions and also establishing different tiers of renovations some beautification some full gutting. Thank you. Just a reminder folks again as

[01:58:54] per the email that was sent earlier this morning and I apologize for it being later than we intended but all the documents were not ready to be included in that email. If you have follow-on motions we're asking for you to submit them to that one pager just so we can collect all of the information. Our vote on the budget is this Thursday which is two days from today given that there was a lot of communication a lot of conversation here i am asking for us to offer each other some latitude in order to have a little bit of time to respond to the discussion that occurred today because i'm

[01:59:30] sure new things came up in this conversation that were not necessarily um on your minds before you arrived into this meeting so we are asking that by close of tomorrow if you have motions any ideas that you want for the board to consider on Thursday, that these be brought forward by close of tomorrow, which is a little bit outside of what we ask, but we also know Robert's Rules allows us to bring things at the table, but we want to be as courteous as possible.

[02:00:00] So thank you for your time and consideration. Mr. McDaniel, last words. I hope everybody sticks around for our 4.30 update from the Career and Technical Education Advisory Committee. We are adjourned.

[02:00:19] We are recessed until 4.30.

[02:24:52] Okay, thank you.

[02:35:21] - Thank you everyone for being here and making time. Thank you to staff and Irv. Just a couple of very brief comments. I've had the opportunity over the last several weeks to tour several schools across the county with a particular focus on career and technical education and all the courses that we offer, and there's a lot of excitement on my part, and I would hazard a guess on other members of this board's part, of the opportunities that we have in front of us with career and technical education.

[02:35:50] I've had the opportunity to read this report participate in in committee meeting and there's a lot of good stuff in here so with that i want to turn it over to staff alexa and you guys can take it away well good afternoon everyone um some of your faces i'm familiar with and some of you are new faces this is my second year as chair of career and technical education advisory committee it is also my last year on the committee so get some joy but i want to thank everybody here for this opportunity to share what we were able to do this year in terms of recommendations as a committee

[02:36:30] we can go ahead and go to the next slide you know this charge that you see in front of you we have had for a couple of years and we use this year really to build upon our committee charge of last year as we look to put forth recommendations that can ensure all of our students have access to the opportunities that are cte program offerings provide as we go through the review of our activities today we will discuss our recommendations and how this our work aligns

[02:37:04] to this charge i want to give a few moments to my colleague irv if you want to add any additional comments uh as well thank you very much thank you all for being here i have to recognize some of you Irv, can you use the microphone?

[02:37:19] Yeah. All right, that's all better. Thank you for inviting us. It's a pleasure to be here. I appreciate knowing some of you and get to know all of you so much better. And as Alexis said, this is a charge that we have.

[02:37:35] I think that this charge may be undergoing some change. You know, we have focused a lot on the demand side in terms of courses, and we're thinking more and more how we can do more focus on the supply side in terms of doing that and then bring them more into alignment. So, but this is how we, this year, and you'll be seeing some of the comments that I'll have later is how we can also balance in and do more supply.

[02:37:58] It's wonderful to have the demand, but it's even better if you can supply that demand. Thank you. Thanks. Next slide. So, we certainly want to acknowledge all the committee members who worked with us this year, and particularly thank each of you who have appointed members to the CTAC committee.

[02:38:16] and we know that we're going to probably be seeing some changes on the approach to the committees and we ask that you continue to provide individuals who are committed to showing up and being fully engaged as participants. We need individuals who are not only wanting to have an appointment on the record but also those who are willing to take on leadership roles in the future. Now I'd like to turn it over to Whitney who's going to share some of our incredible highlights from this year hi everyone i'm whitney ketledge i'm the cte coordinator i know a lot of you but some of you i'm just meeting so thank you for having us today we wanted to take this

[02:38:55] opportunity to just highlight a few celebrations and there are certainly probably thousands of celebrations that we could share with you of all of the great work that our teachers and students have done this year all of the students have been recognized with awards and credentials and all of these great things that happen but to be brief we did want to highlight just a few things we are excited that we've added new courses in welding aircraft pilot training and remote piloted vehicles which are mainly drones the kids are excited about that we're going to pilot in the coming school

[02:39:27] year and we were able to award 50 recruitment contracts and 153 letters of intent to teachers for tomorrow's students which is a huge accomplishment we're working really hard to build that program and encourage students to hopefully come back and teach with us.

[02:39:43] We have 12 students who were employed in electrical HVAC automotive and carpentry courses that got jobs through our office of facilities management through our trades for tomorrow apprenticeship program and we currently have seven recent graduates of the program who are employed with facilities so just like teachers for tomorrow the grow your own idea with facilities as well has been taking off we were able to partner with our six neighboring school divisions to host the second annual instruction to industry event which is a week-long event career expo for students but this year we were able to bring back a live in-person career expo at the end of the week

[02:40:21] and we had 63 industry partners who showed up and 679 student registrations which was a huge accomplishment on top of the fact that it was a questionable snow saturday so we were really excited to get the participation and and that event continues to grow so we're looking forward we've already started planning next year's event back to the grow your own we also partnered with di t to create nine full year internship and 14 summer internship opportunities for our cyber it students to work with the department of information technology and then finally we work really hard

[02:40:56] with our career and technical student organizations and we're really proud of the future leaders that we are able to help develop through those programs and we had seven students who served as state officers for their ctso and two additional students who served as national officers representing us and the state and at all of their ctso events this year so it was a really exciting great year of accomplishments thank you thanks whitney i just want to pick up on a few things that you talked about particularly the excitement of this is for those of us who've been on the committee for a while this was a year um it had been a while before we had endorsed a new course

[02:41:36] and so we were very excited to add the aviation course in in the coming year but i think it's that particular you know adding courses as we as we think about expansion of programs and as we think about how this articulates against the strategic plan for us as a committee this all comes to some of our recommendations and what really came alive for us as a committee was the ability to tour our schools i think you know seeing the schools seeing the facilities that are at our

[02:42:08] academies and at our traditional base schools and all the programs that are offers is is a valuable tool for us as a committee and this year in particular something that irv will talk about a little bit more you know we invited each of you to attend those tours as well because it gives you a sense of what does it take for an auto tech class to operate i mean it's one of the larger facility takers in in the program and what are those what are those challenges and so for those

[02:42:40] of us who have non-academy based schools as well the school visits are a very important tool to kind of communicate the barriers to our students to get access to programs and so we're very excited about the aviation program but it is as it blooms it is a program that is only offered at one school and so as you as whitney starts to see that excitement grow in that program you know you're going to have students wanting to access it in addition as we go over the recommendations

[02:43:18] we continue to try and think about the student experience and whether that student as i said who already goes to academy that student experience or the student who's located at a base school who doesn't have those offerings and wants to get to those offerings and you'll see those as we think about the alternative ways of you know creating a better experience for career and technical education offerings we also are very mindful of creating an experience for all of our students including our esol students and special education students who often we know have extra

[02:43:55] requirements that they need to complete sometimes limiting their ability to get access to these programs and one other note that i want to make before i turn it over to irv is you know what we now have consistently seen on the tours which i don't think is surprising to anyone here in the room but if you ever talk to the students when you're at the schools they will consistently tell you the most excitement that they get are their cte programs they're like yeah i have my standard classes and then i go to my marketing class then i go to my engineering class and the auto tech kids

[02:44:31] they're like i come back to the garage when i'm off from my classes so you know we want to think about that student experience and that excitement for those students who don't know about the programs and also sometimes they find out too late about cte and when they want to do that cte completer experience and or some of the larger programs so now i'm going to turn it over to irv to share a little bit more about last year and how we're building upon that thank you the last

[02:45:06] Last year when we were here, we had a number of recommendations were here last year. One had been to have two school visits, not only for CTAC members and school board, but also have our local and state legislators, because they will make decisions that will impact us.

[02:45:23] So we were successful last year. We had a number of people, just to name a few, Senator Marsden, Delegate Cohen, and Supervisor Walkinshaw, so we had different representation from our legislators to be there so we're successful having them come where we are successful when they went back then to richmond or to the government offices that is still a work in progress but there was more awareness of them than they had before second also related to that advocacy through these same local representatives to review diploma types that can count towards ct courses toward core graduation requirements

[02:46:00] So that's a discussion on what courses you need to do for the advanced studies diploma versus for the standard diploma. That has been an issue in Richmond. It didn't change last year and two years ago and this past year it was not brought up as well with so many other things there.

[02:46:17] That will have an impact. Part of that impact will be whether we can better connect our state workforce development programs that the governor has certainly advocated for and to encourage students to choose in high school their potential careers rather than waiting for a number of years when they're adults and then we spend the money on workforce development perhaps that can be done earlier and perhaps the way the diplomas are issued can contribute to that and thirdly is a school bus um remembering the school bus that my grandchildren have in their book that that i always think of that that person but we now have a school bus on the way to a school bus to basically

[02:46:55] promote the program but i think whitney may have a little bit more information on that so one of the recommendations from previous ctac round was a career exploration mobile type unit and we there were some examples in other school divisions that we had reviewed so we have worked on that project through the last year and a half and we've been successful working with our transportation office and identifying a bus that is no longer used to transport students and what it would take to have that updated and outfitted so that it becomes a mobile center for students in elementary school

[02:47:32] all in middle school and for summer enrichment programs to be able to do some of the fun things in our different program areas and see what offerings are available to them based on what is age appropriate so it's moving forward and will hopefully be outfitted and ready by next summer so i think thank you very much whitney that we were perhaps two for three which is not bad batting-wise and hopefully the recommendation we'll be sharing with you today will be equally as successful. Alexa. Thanks, sir. So we'll go to the next slide. So the three areas that we

[02:48:04] focused on as subcommittees this year start with capacity and learning opportunities. So as we talked about, if you think about the programs and the space that that is needed, how can we provide our students with opportunities to explore those CTE programs while facing the capacity challenges that Whitney and the team face so we'll go a little bit and we'll go in depth into those recommendations the second area that we looked at was aligned to measuring what we called measuring for success focused on how do we provide CTE programs and tools it needs to deliver on our

[02:48:43] strategic goals and finally how can we continue to provide access to CTE opportunities for all students via the course planning and advising process. So Irv, you want to hit the first set of recommendations. Next slide please. So the first is in terms of capacity learning opportunities. As I mentioned the outset, we have a demand challenge as well as a supply challenge. Our first recommendation was to look at increasing capacity through increased industry partnerships and utilization space in Northern Virginia Community College. Those two are

[02:49:19] dovetailing one is that in terms of enrollments nationally and certainly affecting NOVA as well a declining enrollment that they may have and to the extent where facilities they have planned for are not being utilized as much so there's a supply there and then the part is a demand for particular areas they will need some of those potential facilities that currently we don't have enough of space for so we can bring those two together and demand a supply through our partnership with NOVA.

[02:49:47] We have a couple of people on CTAC who are part of that, and I think we'll be very happy to try and lead and assist us in doing that. Second, in terms of increasing staffing and transportation for CT Academy programs to create specialized centers and base schools.

[02:50:02] So we have a number of academies, but not everyone can get to the academies, either because of the time they would take. Part of that is if they want to get the advanced diploma, they may not have enough time. So we have a resource issue. So the more that can be done to, in fact, bring more of our programs to our base schools would be helpful.

[02:50:20] And in terms of increasing staffing, well, I'm sure that's a topic you've all discussed in Apple Amounts. But just in comparison to the staffing we have for CTE programs, maybe to some other school districts, such as Falls Church, it does seem that there's room for FCPS to consider that.

[02:50:36] Having that combination of staffing and more base schools will certainly increase the opportunities that we have. for our students to be able to enroll in our programs. And lastly, a suggestion we'd like to make, we don't have a specific tool, but developing a cost benefit analysis that will help guide resource allocation within CTE, aligning core students with student workforce demands.

[02:51:01] So how do we decide to have courses? How do we decide which courses should we have? How do we decide in person putting staff and teacher resources? How do we measure those? There are certain tools that certainly FCP has CTE has but we'd like to look at a closer amount of that and one of that is in terms of gathering data having more data so there are school systems that will have folks who are exclusively working in gathering and looking and preparing for that data I'm not aware that we necessarily do at least for CTE so the ability to work with data and in my profession and supply chain that was certainly data was our number one it is hard to make the decisions or provide

[02:51:38] the services without having the data and have the data we need that expertise and and tools to be able to do that so we'd like to suggest consideration of a cost-benefit analysis that could help in terms of doing that next one's yours measuring for success again that is a data related first recommendation is providing permanent funding for two work-based learning specialists and consider adding regional work-based learning specialists so the opportunity of work-based programs where we are bringing students into contact in terms of exposing them to the world

[02:52:14] work through a sequence and coordinate activities is so very important. We need individuals who are expert in that who can guide our students. So this is a budget item but certainly having those work based learning specialists would be helpful in terms of guiding our students and developing those programs.

[02:52:33] Secondly is creating or perhaps adding a tool for academic and career planning along with a survey instrument to capture stakeholder perception of a preparedness of students to address industry needs. Do we know where the students want? Do we know how they see themselves in that career?

[02:52:50] But do we also know enough about the industry? I know there are tools that we have, data, Bureau of Labor Statistics and those, but we think that maybe more that we have. We have other units who are working with our industry. Can we get more data from them and we can match that?

[02:53:06] But each of these comes up to getting the data and then be able to use that data for these purposes. But being able to do that, if we can measure how we'll succeed, that will go a long way to helping you in terms of decisions that you need to make. And finally, our course planning and advising focused area.

[02:53:26] This area was really focused on how we talk about graduation requirements and help students learn about the opportunities available early on in their course selection process. So the first recommendation, provide communication and education, not just to the high school students in the way that we do, but to the middle school students as well, and expanding that conversation about what's available in the academic catalog and talk to them in terms of not just the diploma approach, but the pathways-based approach.

[02:54:01] You know, what are they thinking about career-wise at the various stages, and what may be the best path? What we're finding is, I myself as an example, if you call a college, they do not know about the advanced diploma.

[02:54:17] They know that they want you to take four years of English, four years of history, and for their minimum requirements, two years of a foreign language, and it's a per-college basis. And yet students will come back and say, well, my counselor told me I should path for the advanced diploma or I should path this way, rather than taking a more nuanced approach with students to explore where their interest and where it may make sense to allow them to open up their schedules in different ways.

[02:54:48] So, it's a two-pronged communication approach about how we talk about the career pathways-based approach, moving away from the diploma-based approach to both the students as well as also to the parents, and opening up those communication opportunities, again, to start at the middle school course selection point in time.

[02:55:14] And finally, what we discovered in our research, we just happened to fall upon this, is that in the state standards, seeing that certain courses like computer science are recognized as carrying a math or science credit to it for high school graduation.

[02:55:34] And so when we started to look at this, it started to make us scratch our heads and say, have the state really done an analysis of what's in a CTE course that could be viable to carry a math and science credit and therefore opening up opportunities while still promoting what our students need to graduate.

[02:55:56] So again, if you think of the special education student or the ESOL student who may have additional requirements, that's where that recommendation is coming from. So with that, let me see if there's anything else. So what we're really asking with these sets of recommendations is that we think about the consistency with which our counselors and our staff are communicating the course planning and advising process and provide those touch points with parents and students,

[02:56:28] as well as our ability to work with the state and push the state to recognize the academic credence that CTE programs carry with them to make it more available to students.

[02:56:47] With that, I believe we are done with our remarks and we'll take questions. Okay, so before we get started, if you could flip your tags up, and I'll write these down as they all go up at the same time.

[02:57:06] So just bear with me. We'll get to everybody. I wanted to hit on a couple of really quick things that I think is really important to keep in mind. It was said, this career in tech, there's a couple different reasons for it, but I think, in my view, one of the most important reasons, especially as we tackle chronic absenteeism, is that for some kids, this is the purpose.

[02:57:28] is their purpose and this is why they go to school and everything else is secondary to these courses for them and as we can continue to offer more diverse courses and more resource courses and more schools that's going to be a very positive thing for for our kids so with that i mr dunn you were you were the first and i'm going to write them down in the order in which i i saw them mr dunn um uh well this is obviously my first comment but not the last because

[02:58:02] i like to talk a lot um so how how can we put cte or how about i'll start with this how can we call it something other than cte because i just feel like inherent in that term just like there used to be inherent in vocational work a certain amount of um discrimination i mean maybe that's not the right word but people look down on vocational and so we change it to cte but i'd really like to understand your thoughts and how can we put on an equal level with higher education because um and and maybe even a higher level than higher education because you're going to earn a living wage right out of the gate if you earn one of these certifications and avoid of course the

[02:58:42] trap of student loan debt and give my yeah no it's a great question and for those of us who've been on the committee for five ten years it's something that we've dealt with quite a bit and originally if you talk to us i think about five to seven years ago we were very focused on that exact question um but as you go out and talk to the students um they're not i don't want to say they don't care but that's not how they're internalizing it they're internalizing it as

[02:59:18] they do have a passion and all of our students do have innate passions and things that they want to do they just need help on how to get there and so every time we've gone on the tours and we've talked to the students, we say how did you find out about this, right? How do you know about this?

[02:59:36] How do you internalize it? None of them will tell you that they internalize it as CTE. They internalize it because my friend told me about this great marketing course or I've always wanted to work with animals and so I was excited to go and to learn that we had the vet tech program.

[02:59:55] So I think that's that's part of the thing is establishing how important is it that it's the the brand of CTE, rather than talking to students about, you know, the what do I want to grow up conversation, and also this notion that you're never going to be done with school, right? You're never going to be done with learning. And so in that continuous learning mindset, to me, it's how do you find the pathways that fit your passion? And I mean, Whitney and the team

[03:00:31] have had the path the the notion of the idea of pathways and discovering who you are as a student through things like naviance have been around for a number of years but what we consistently see in here is that the consistency of teachers to be able to utilize these tools in an even based way doesn't always happen i know i had to push my son to go take a summer to take six weeks in middle school because they were doing that our school did an after school career exploratory and it was

[03:01:06] through that kind of experience of where they got to go into naviance where they got to explore career clusters where they got to go through that experience and that is such a fractured experience across the county it's do you have the resources do you have a teacher who's going to do that after school moment all of those things so what i would encourage and irv may dissuade me differently is spending time on whether they know it as cte i feel like has been done i think it's more about

[03:01:40] talking to their passions and giving the schools the resources to help the students figure out what's in their head and bring it bring it out to them is what i would say irv very similar to that it's important i think there's also a legal requirement it is it is we're federally funded through federal legislation that calls it career and technical education however what we internally

[03:02:14] call it can vary um i think most students wouldn't necessarily say i'm in a cte class they would say i'm in a marketing class or a health class or whatever which is fine um because that that's the program area that they know just like in other disciplines they probably don't say they're in a world language class they are passionate about the language they're taking but we have been fighting the mindset of the vocational versus college kind of thing for forever and that's why it changed

[03:02:46] from vocational to cte um and there's still that that mindset there because many of our cte programs are not vocational and do require higher education some you can go straight to work with the credential and the idea is that a student has multiple exit and entry points on whatever pathway they choose so so what we call it can can vary but the idea is that career pathway piece that alexa was speaking to and i'll just bounce back to something that i saw just recently so i perused

[03:03:21] and i came across an article right i think we can sense that things are changing a little bit in terms of what it means to go on after high school. College tuition costs are high, to say the least.

[03:03:37] And companies are picking up the ball with things like tuition reimbursement. The article I just read was somebody's career story at Amazon who went there out of high school and is like a senior manager, right?

[03:03:53] Why is that? Because Amazon puts things in place. I know at my workplace, I get $10,000 a year to go to college if I wanna go back to school. So I think there's modeling that's changing out there. So I think the role of FCPS is something that we've put in our statement, which is, what's your pathway?

[03:04:16] Which way are you going to go? And have we created it so that you love learning because you know that you're never gonna stop? - Just real quick, I love the conversation, but we've down to 27 minutes, give or take. So I want to keep us focused on a true Q&A.

[03:04:35] Mr. Dunn, did you have any other questions or comments? Yes, but I'll be super brief. Just ask one more question. Do you, I have a perception, but I don't know if it's accurate, that the programs are somewhat randomly geographically distributed within the county, and we're a big county, like West Potomac High School, we have the Health Sciences Academy.

[03:04:54] Do you, do you have, or have you ever discussed establishing like regional clusters of programs to ensure greater access given the geographic distribution and also increasing class sizes because every CTE program I'm aware of seems to be, I have a lot more people wanting to get into it than there are available seats.

[03:05:14] Yeah, this is something that we've focused on for a while and I'm going to defer a lot of my minutes to Whitney because she actually brought the spreadsheet of the distribution of classes. Two years ago, we looked at the distribution. I also am in what I call a CTE desert in Woodson.

[03:05:32] Yes, we have CTE programs, but for the programs that I will likely go after, I will be going to an academy. So I'm going to let Whitney talk about the logic of how it happens. That happened before I was here.

[03:05:49] But I think the idea was, if you look at where the health and medical programs are, for example, they are spread so that students from all the high schools have an opportunity. so west potomac falls church chantilly trying to make that that regional approach um and spread the resources and also considering what the future job availability is and student interest that student demand piece plays a big part in that and what we can accomplish so um how they are spread out i think initially was done very thoughtfully with that purpose and then maybe there are some and things to look at now as demographics and things have changed.

[03:06:27] - Thank you. Ms. Dixit, I'm just gonna go from my left to right. - Thank you for the presentation. This committee and the work we do at CD, it's very close to, I think, a lot of us.

[03:06:43] It speaks to us because ultimately, we are preparing our students to go to career, right? That's after education. My question is about all these different courses students do and my son has done that so I there is like there's a missing link so the missing link with between doing the course getting the credit which is great but actually applying that in industry like getting internship I should say so basically what is going to be helpful for this school high school students is if they're finishing a course as a cyber security or

[03:07:22] anything like that then they can do a right after that or maybe a summer internship and there are so many companies out here there are so much opportunities and i think there's a the missing thing and i've talked to dr reed about this and and you know that transfer the technology transfer can happen and even in for instruction and for internships so what's your thought on that i'm I'm gonna let Whitney take that theme.

[03:07:52] - So thank you. We are so supportive of any opportunities for high quality work-based learning experiences connected to content. It has been one of our biggest challenges in the region to find placements for high school students, especially in that field that you mentioned because of the requirements to be over 18 and get security clearances for IT and cyber.

[03:08:13] However, we are doing our absolute hardest work trying to make partnerships come to life, so that we can expand these opportunities for students. And in the absence of having high numbers of internship spots for students, we're trying to build in other work-based learning experiences along the continuum, so bringing in guest speakers, making connections for mentorships, doing our Grow Your Own program here at Fairfax, working with partners who have a little more flexibility.

[03:08:42] And we hope over the next few years that we can truly see that number of students grow, because absolutely applying the learning would be what we would want for each of our students. It is definitely a challenge for the region. - I think the challenge is there because there's no intention behind it right now.

[03:08:59] Once we put intention, I think it's not that challenging. There's a lot of opportunities to place the students. TJ does it because they are intentionally doing it and a lot of their students go for internship to NASA and NRC and AFL.

[03:09:15] I'm not just talking, you know, just the companies, also a lot of federal agencies have those programs, but it's not accessible. It's not, the local schools, the high schools are not really engaging in that. And I think it's a lack of resources simply.

[03:09:32] So again, we have to be intentional about it to do it. So I guess we all have to work together on that. - We would love more resources to focus on that and to support schools with those partnerships students can access at a commutable distance from their high school absolutely great thank you mr. Frisch just have one question because a lot of the times we get mired in big topics that will take years to accomplish right if you could swipe away with a magic wand one obstacle for RCT programming

[03:10:08] what would it be I mean I think from what we've we've been a part of you know space is I would say probably space and staffing the right staffing it's a very interesting question currently the the FCPS offers opportunities for students in different diplomas but the schools are certainly set up to a great extent

[03:10:43] that we can to guide our students so they can go on to more learning perhaps at the college level if not most of that I'm wondering whether or not if I had one opportunity to swipe away something is that where we may in my opinion tilt the field more toward the students who will seek to go to toward institutions of higher learning we can balance that field to those who do seek to go into work after high school. College enrollment as we all know is is while it's increasing it's increasing at a decreasing rate and high school students who are graduating are at an increasing rate moving into work based

[03:11:21] programs in part because the labor market is strong and they can make good money and they don't have to spend the zillions of dollars on college I don't know whether or not FCPS right now culturally or otherwise is aligned with those types of changes so if I could do one thing call it be till that I bring balance to that thank you Dr. Anderson thank you one of the things that you mentioned earlier was the committee I think for the first time endorsed some

[03:11:55] courses what weight does that bear i am just a little unclear in terms of the impact onto fcps programming it's just part of the process when we request new courses there's a there's many steps that we take with the fcps course review with vdoe course approval and having the advisory board endorse any courses that we want to put forth has been part of our process okay thank you one of your recommendation the recommendation regarding capacity and learning opportunities

[03:12:28] the second bullet you talked about um increasing staffing and transportation can you say a little bit more regarding what you mean by transportation i can i could talk to him yeah go um the students have challenges based on where they are where the base schools are to actually get to academy classes there are minimums they have to do and they have to also work out in terms of their their class schedule but it's just a physical lack of transportation to be able to get to that some parts of the county really very difficult based on the maps that we

[03:13:05] have so that just makes it difficult one there have been solutions or some other school systems have done there's something I don't remember the name now but it's so like an uber for CT type things where you can put those programs together and then you don't have to worry about the length of time it takes for the bus to get there or if you don't have enough of minimum students But that's the part we're talking about. And then staff, there's just a lack of those staff, lack of those work-based folks who can, in fact, give those exposures to that.

[03:13:36] No, I appreciate this because I know I have a lot of students who are not able to access CTE programming at academies because there's only four, and I think the minimum was five students that were required for transportation. um i know we have to you know be thoughtful in terms of how we spend money but it's really hard for students to understand why they're one short of the needed minimum in order to participate in what we consider to be very impactful programs one of the things you also talked about here is the cost benefit analysis and i think this question is really more for the superintendent

[03:14:12] do you see this as a component potentially in that bell study that we're procuring or is it a little bit outside of that scope well i think this is an interesting when i saw it on the slide because it talked about to guide resource allocation within cte so i'm not i think um we had a cte report an audit done i want to say just as i was coming in so it was maybe the fall

[03:14:44] of 22 good i'm on it the fall of 22 that actually analyzed i think um some of this data I think when we think about guiding resource allocation within CTE and aligning course costs with students, I'm not entirely sure what the intent was there.

[03:15:07] I don't know if that's like ending some programs maybe and starting others or, you know, at the end of the day, we have, if I just make this up, if we have 2,000 students in a high school and we do a master schedule, right, students are all assigned to something each hour of the day.

[03:15:24] So if we're going to assign them to new CTE courses, that means they're not in something else. So I think it's not an adding on of more courses and all of the courses we're already doing, because that's not going to be financially possible.

[03:15:41] So if the part of this cost-benefit analysis is to determine what courses, you know, I would need a little more information to answer the question. I think I can add a little bit of context because as we were going through this year, you know, one of the challenges of our committee is sometimes we're very ambitious and excited and we'd like to, you know, as Irv alluded to the supply versus demand, we're assessing, you know, giving recommendations versus actually doing something.

[03:16:11] And so, for example, the matrix that Whitney provides now on an annual basis, looking at a course and saying, okay, is marketing the highest demand this year, right?

[03:16:31] Excuse me. I didn't think you were going to get that out. Is what we have on the charts where we should be focusing, say, for the next five years? Can we remove some courses?

[03:16:48] Thank you. can we remove some courses that are not value to industry for say the next five years right um and we just haven't had the bandwidth or the ability to help whitney kind of dive into that uh like we had hoped sorry that's very helpful thank you and i wonder sloan just kind of as an aside where this kind of analysis that's being recommended dovetails with a report with the report that we already have did it have those consideration considerations i don't recall that being a component

[03:17:20] because board members we were interviewed for that study yeah i don't think this i think the study was at a higher level than course by course analysis it was really looking at kind of the career pathways and trends on a national level and local level in terms of where the industry needs and how does that match or not match with the current career pathways that we offer and the study actually found that we had pretty good alignment but again we have access barriers right because we've got a lot of these programs specialized just in our academy high schools and

[03:17:55] not everybody can access them equitably so that was the big thing that the report talked about as well as maybe bolstering our information technology pathway and our education pathway so those were some of the big findings from that report but not at the course by course level analysis at a higher level analysis um dr anderson one thing we could do which would be i think fairly simple is there are course signups that students do at every high school right so you could request to look at those and that would give you your uh interest what students are interested in it's not what the final master schedule looks like but it would give us or give whitney a very

[03:18:34] clear idea of what students are asking for and that would be a place to start and i'm sure we have that data and just quick we are down to 15 minutes with four more hands up so well i'll be super quick with my last point of advocacy because everybody's just talked so far about how impactful this could be with our students even helping to reduce chronic absenteeism i wonder if the recommendation on slide nine regarding the work-based learning specialist could be a consideration for um the strategic closing of the gap achievement bucket that we just discussed

[03:19:11] during the budget i would just advocate for maybe for this to be included as a consideration i think there i would say that there are quite a few positions currently that could be used to do that work and i think we could sit down and help uh identify that i know i've seen some transition staff in schools um so maybe it's just a matter of aligning the work that we're already staffing people to do great thank you miss mirin yeah so just for context i was um delighted to be the ctac board liaison for the prior two years so um i'm wondering now that your tenure is is ending alexa

[03:19:50] what and irv as well um your input what have you seen kind of transpire over the last two years that's a particular note like something that's grown or something that's become really clear like what kind of big takeaway can you share with us as you depart I think over the years you know I think as a committee we've sort of aligned with how the school system works and I think that's been important and I

[03:20:27] I think Whitney has been an instrumental partner in taking us through that process so that ideals are matched with what will have the most impact.

[03:20:42] I mean, it took us years, for example, because I've been on the committee now for, I think, since my son's been in kindergarten. It's about 10 years now. And way back when, you know, we were advocating for the recognition of CTE programs, for example, to get the honors credit and the academic emphasis that those courses carried.

[03:21:08] And that took us about five years to get done, right? I feel like that was a long journey. And I think with Whitney's partnership, just to watch how we've gotten some things done in a tighter time frame, because we've gotten educated as committee members about how to do our asks.

[03:21:33] And Whitney has taken us through that. I mean, like the journey of the bus, like that's been an incredibly fast project. And just advocating for this idea that CTE starts, let's not get them in ninth grade.

[03:21:48] let's not get them in 10th grade, let's get them earlier, right? We've spent the last couple of years going backwards. Where's the right point to get a student engaged? Where do they start thinking about these things? And how can we align with what the school does to plant the right resources at the right time?

[03:22:10] - Great, thank you. Is that, anything else? - I just wanted to reinforce the commitment of the committee around the communications. I remember when we were talking about auto tech rebranding it as computer science on wheels and so the more that we can move away from the typical you know it was blue-collar years ago vocational and you've also talked a lot about how to communicate and communicate it consistently so all students are hearing about all the opportunities so I think that's also been a really great contribution so thank you thank you and

[03:22:40] Miss Lady there's not enough time so I just want to mention a couple things First of all, when it comes to transportation, I would like for academies to prioritize the admittance of at least probably seven, but to get to the five people every block from every high school into a program because then they get a bus.

[03:23:08] If their teaching of this depended upon that, they do it every year because I know how to build master schedules and I know how to get through who asked for what. And I understand it's like a lottery system, but we have to fix this because we don't have equitable access, so that's one suggestion.

[03:23:25] Secondly, the public-private partnerships, I mean, just as an aside, and Marcia's, we went to a great business partnership thing with Dr. Reed yesterday morning, sat with a guy who worked for Porsche, general manager, works for Penske Company, 150 dealerships. I said, hey, can we just teach level one? You'll teach level two and three at your dealerships.

[03:23:45] He was like, I don't see why not. So we have to take action on ideas Nova's great, but we've got all these bays in our backyard. The other thing I want to say is You know CTE is amazing But so are fine and performing arts and so are other programs that that we have but it's Perkins loans Is that where all the money came? What is it? What is it? Yeah?

[03:24:05] It's it's a lots and lots and lots running money has been rolling into CTE for years And I will tell you that as someone who worked in the academy at a base school, when you offer new things you cannibalize something in the base school. So to Dr. Reed's point, we have to think about this.

[03:24:21] And I think we need to pay attention to it. And I'm just going to, you know, at the risk of, you know, being attacked, I'm going to uplift, for example, the idea of two courses that were added, Exploring the Language of Medicine, and What are the two? Language of Medicine, Exploring the Medicine, whatever, okay?

[03:24:39] You know, what do those lead to in terms of industry certification? I'm aware of nothing, okay? Those kids in my opinion think they're college-bound. Let's put, let's take those classroom spaces back because it doesn't lead to something and perhaps put HVAC or augmented reality around auto technology, which could be classroom-based and to a certain extent, in some of those rooms and let those kids take AP Bio or AP Chem or Human Anatomy or other courses.

[03:25:02] But I do think that there can be an analysis done of what we're teaching and what is actually leading to a work-based industry. 100% support. I agree with Irv. 100%. The Ferris County has to accept and own and embrace the fact that we are not 100% a college-bound county anymore. Done. I've said it at the dais before. We have to meet the needs of our students and what our students are asking for. And what we've done is amazing work. The other thing I'd like to ask around CTE is if we can ever get a contractor on aptitude testing. We've done interesting and exploratory things

[03:25:39] with career clusters, but we, other than the ASVAB, which I talked to Dr. Reed about perhaps offering our seniors on that PSAT day to either take an SAT day or if we can with the services, offer the ASVAB to our seniors that day, I think that would be amazing.

[03:25:55] Great. Thank you. Mr. McElveen. Thanks. Well, I just want to take a moment during what is your last presentation to acknowledge the two decades worth of experience sitting here. And we're very, very grateful to both of you.

[03:26:12] I'm a bit biased 'cause Irv has been my appointee on numerous committees over the years. Thank you both. So I just wanna briefly touch on the space issue. So you've, I'm not quite sure I understand the recommendation. Are you recommending that we use space at NOVA?

[03:26:29] And then the second part of the question is, to Miss Lady's point, are there other community venues where we could potentially find space? - The answer is yes, NOVA has facilities, and with a declining enrollment, they're not using those facilities as much as possible, so they will be receptive to that.

[03:26:48] Yes, I do believe there could be other facilities as well, including the private sector, as you were mentioning. Indeed, why can't we have Porsche or someone do that kind of a class? There are situations, I think, within FCPS that have to be met and overcome to be able to do that part, I think they are.

[03:27:05] But third, in terms of the private sector that's out there, and I can understand budget limitations, but Fairfax County is doing very well in terms of how the business community is. So how can we do more with that? Well, we do have folks who are responsible who work with the business community, and one has a great saying in terms of the job that he's got.

[03:27:25] At the moment, it will go nameless, but I'll say it later. He's so busy with the fish that are going into his boat just to handle those requests, He doesn't have time to go out there and we go fishing after really big boats, after really big fish. So what do we do that?

[03:27:42] That goes back to our recommendation we're talking about staffing and so forth. To be able to really take advantage, we can go to a private business community and get those things, including those facilities. Thanks. And just the last point I would add is that, you know, I think there are a lot of these kind of potential business partnerships percolating out there.

[03:28:01] I have never felt that we have done our best due diligence in terms of capitalizing on those. It would be nice to have some sort of parking lot centrally where we could feed those. And because Education Foundation is great, J. Grant is great, but, you know, that's two people, and there's a lot out there.

[03:28:20] Thanks. Great. Thank you. Ms. St. John-Conning. First of all, I want to thank you for your work, and I'm a huge supporter of this kind of programming. I would just like to ask you a question if you would just elaborate a little bit more on the bus plan that you have, because I concur, getting kids at an earlier stage is really important.

[03:28:42] Yeah, so we can share, there's a couple examples of what is out there, and we can share those. It's kind of hard to picture without the picture, but the idea that we kind of borrowed from another division is they gutted a school bus, painted it, took off all the things that, you know make it a legal school bus and they would park it at different sites so then the students on rotation would come out and get to experience parts of say a culinary experience or an augmented reality experience or something around the construction field big big cluster areas of

[03:29:19] here are the things and then as they're going center to center we get to talk to them about you know what are you interested in here are the programs as is age appropriate based on where we are at that time so they get to have a really fun experience maybe they're out there for half an hour an hour it moves from school to school some of the divisions that have similar items use it at different like pto events throughout the year or community events things like that things in the summer where we have our cte enrichment programs already and different summer camps the idea is just to give the kids a quick exposure to some of the things that are

[03:29:58] possible that they might not see in their school every day and use that opportunity to talk to them about their future course options. Thank you. And last, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser. Thank you. I apologize for not being there. I'm a little under the weather and I'm sorry to hear you say that you're leaving. I know your expertise and voice has been very valuable on the committee and thank you for all your hard work for all of these many many years. This is something that I'm a huge

[03:30:33] supporter of along with as this lady said the arts i think providing these pathways for students it's something i talked about even before i was on the board is how do we provide multiple pathways to success right and so um and as we're looking at that you know i think there's a few things that really do need to happen i think the state advocacy piece needs to happen right around graduation requirements and creating those pathways so students have the ability to include some of these classes as part of the graduation requirements not layered on top right which I think ends up becoming a challenge um Dr. Reed I know you had mentioned in one of your

[03:31:11] recent about the CCCRI assessment requirements and how that might relate to CTE classes I don't know if you wanted to talk about that a little bit in relation to the report and maybe expanding our programming and I apologize if I get the acronym wrong I think you got it correct um I think Jen actually has been working really closely on that project and it's it's essentially the college and career readiness index which is a requirement for accreditation for high schools and involves a slate of courses primarily around a goal of dual enrollment

[03:31:45] so i will defer to miss glazer to clarify cte's role within that because i know that they may have i think i know where you're going this size more because some of the courses we would like to offer students aren't able to take because of the need to accomplish both diploma requirements and cccri but i'll let miss glazer talk about what's possible there great thank you and it is you got it right it's triple cri so college credit readiness and it is a new accreditation indicator for our high schools and it will again count for this cohort that is graduating

[03:32:22] in and there are a number of ways that students can get a qualifying experience one of which is So there are a variety of ways that students can gain one of these experiences, positively count towards our school's accreditation, and many of them are a lot more important. So, there are a variety of ways that students can gain one of these experiences positively count towards our school's accreditation, and many of them are a lot more important.

[03:32:53] gain one of these experiences, positively count towards our school's accreditation, and many of them are tied to CTE. So the more opportunities that our students, especially those who are not yet accessing AP, IB, or dual enrollment classes can access CTE, the greater the chances of them meeting one of those CCCRI experiences.

[03:33:14] - That's great. Now I'd like to lift up again the importance of having people help with those internships. I know some of my colleagues have mentioned that as well, because this actually becomes a barrier certain students who don't access AP, IB or dual enrollment and also because I mean the CTE certifying exams do not allow for IEP accommodations. I don't know if you knew that but it's it's they have ADA accommodations but not IEP accommodations. So those become a barrier as well and this is actually one of the barriers for students receiving a standard diploma which makes that workplace learning experience that third prong really important. So I just wanted to mention that as

[03:33:53] we're looking at access for all students that we look at this the other thing i wanted to mention again i think miss um because i mentioned it but there are you know i appreciate learning how these were originally set up and the thoughtfulness that went there but it has created islands a lack of opportunity to access the cct or more difficulty opportunity whether it's transportation or dislocation there isn't one um within the back district at all and i don't think it's doing this especially doesn't have one.

[03:34:21] So I think I would love to have maybe a future report look at accessibility from where program location is and some ideas of where we wanna expand if we're able to expand some of these. And the last thing I wanna mention is I think as we're looking at advising students, I'm wondering if you all have looked at whether we should look at a sort of survey course, or I'd love that you mentioned that six week middle school course or some additional options for middle schoolers to kind of learn about these before quote unquote, everything counts right to gain that interest before they get into high school so I'm just curious if you guys have looked at that as something to kind of expand a middle school

[03:34:57] survey or interest kind of course if you could pause my time that'd be great just really briefly on the the last one there is a career investigations course being launched next this coming school year for seventh and eighth grade students predominantly aimed at seventh graders for them to work on their academic and career planning and there's a number of modules and online resources and Naviance and a bunch of different things that will be embedded into that course. But middle schools right now have the option to pick up and offer that elective. Thank you. I guess I was thinking more of actual

[03:35:35] experience rather than kind of online modules. But I appreciate that there's something being out there to raise some interest. Not just online modules. The idea is that they have a hands-on experience for every career cluster as they move through the course. But then they work through the online modules for the career planning and future pathway planning well in my nine seconds I would just say that I know this is we mentioned CTE access as one of the goals in our strategic plan so I think it's really important as we move forward to look into access and how we can sort of market this to our students and families for whom college is really important as a unique experience that might make

[03:36:11] them more you know competitive for college as well as all the other benefits we've already talked about I know my time is up so I'll stop there but thank you very much for all your hard work and it's because i'm sorry to lose you thank you and uh mr moon if you can wrap us up thank you i'm gonna be just very brief i think this came up as part of uh conversation yesterday in the morning with the business community as well but so this is for something not just necessarily for your committee but for my colleagues and superintendent for consideration is you know in order for us to

[03:36:46] explore a possibility of expanding opportunities for our students take more CTE or other electives whether you should be looking at the graduation requirements advanced diploma or regular diploma I know that those are you know requirements generally come from State Board of Education whether for our needs whether we should be asking for some changes to the State Board of Education So that our students could consider some different options. That's my pitch. Great. Thank you. And

[03:37:23] with that, I think we that was a barnstorm, which is funny because we have a new pilot program in our high schools, and I'm looking forward to that taking off. So with that, thank you. And closing comments from Mr. Frisch. All right, a few people have asked about next steps for these committee reports.

[03:37:51] not the next six document the governance manual is silent on how We how the school division responds to committee reports That said policy 1710 states and I'm going to read the whole thing So sit down for a moment the division superintendent shall provide the school board with a staff response to each committee's report With the exception of a pack and shall take under consideration committee recommendations. So we will get a report back from the superintendent And I think this speaks to one of the reasons that our board is pursuing changes to the way that we do this

[03:38:27] So we can provide more substantive feedback to our partners on these committees and follow through on recommendations wherever possible Thanks all and with that

[03:38:39] We're done. Thank you fate. Hey, is everyone?

[03:42:38] Ready? Well, I'd like to welcome two of our community members. Hi, I'm gonna sit over here not move around Thank you so much for your time. Welcome. So mr. Craig Lewis our manager is Yes, you're good to see Greg and then mr. Johnson at Johnson our fate president and fate again is our foundation for applied Technical education, so they're going to give us an update on on what they've been doing and I always enjoy it So please go ahead

[03:43:11] And madam clerk do we have a time limit? What's the what are we shooting for here? We have scheduled 30 minutes Okay. All right. So we'll leave us questions. We would like our question time, please. Well, thank you guys for having us this evening. We always like coming here and telling you about the wonderful things that we do.

[03:43:28] And hopefully you guys feel the same way at the end of today's presentation. But I always like to start off that I was a product at Fairfax County Public Schools from kindergarten all the way through high school. Was in the FATE Construction Technology Program when I was a senior in high school at Oakton. And my mom was a special ed teacher in Fairfax County for about 25 years.

[03:43:47] And so we are all very well, you know, part of this community and have been a part of this community for a long time. I was on the phone with my mom on the way here this evening, actually, because she always wants to know what we're doing and why we're coming here and how fate is going. And so it's been a family project for a very long time.

[03:44:03] I've been a part of the board since 2006 when I graduated college. And so it has been a long road and we've made a lot of advancements and a lot of changes in the program along those last 18 years or so. And so I plan on being here for much longer, you know, and hopefully get to spend some more time with you guys as a result.

[03:44:22] But tonight we'll try to make it relatively quick. We'll give you guys an update on what we're doing as far as our programs, some of which, if you guys have heard from us before, are probably familiar. But we'll give you an update nonetheless and happy to answer any questions at the end or along the way for that matter.

[03:44:37] I don't know what's easier. What's protocol here? We'll let you speak first, otherwise you may never get to the end of it. Perfect. Okay. All right. Let's see. - Yeah, so this is our board. I won't run through everybody. What's that? Oh, there you go. I won't run through everybody so we can flip to the next slide.

[03:44:53] And so our construction program, and we can get to it at the end if there's questions, but for any of you that are new and haven't seen our programs, I can talk about more in any level of detail that's needed. But I was a part of the construction program where we were finishing our first job site out in Spring Hill where we were on since the 1970s.

[03:45:10] Since the mid 2000s, we have now been in Springfield. So some of the conversations that were happening earlier, one thing we certainly struggle with, but I think we've made some advances around and I know all of our colleagues from the Fairfax County side of things are working this following year to try to improve on that is locational access for students.

[03:45:28] The job site has been one of those things that unlike the academies, we can't serve students broadly across the county. It's been hard to get to certain geographic locations for them, but nonetheless, being able to move from generally the Tyson's area of Fairfax County to the South County area has helped a lot.

[03:45:45] We obviously are now serving schools that historically we didn't really get to serve for a long time there. So that has been a great advantage for the schools down in that district. Now coming up in probably our last five or six lots here, and I don't know how many were here when we went through this process in the early 2000s.

[03:46:01] I was not part of the original process, but towards the end of it, I got involved with the board. We will be looking for our next job site. The process typically takes us about five to seven years from identifying the site, getting through the zoning process with Fairfax County, and then ultimately being able to set up shop on a new job site.

[03:46:18] And so we are gonna embark on that in this coming school year to start that process. So we will be back, I'm sure, to some of you all and your partners of the Board of Supervisors to start that conversation in the coming year as well. But nonetheless, we're on our 13th home right now out of 18 homes.

[03:46:36] As you guys can see here, the last one sold for about $1.3 million. The students get a full hands-on experience with this program and it's probably the most intensive of any hands-on experience I could imagine within the county education system. What changed over the last 20 years in this program substantially is we used to do everything at the job site with the students unless it was required by code or for liability reasons we couldn't do it.

[03:47:03] That led to my entire year when I was in the program framing the house for the entire year. I showed up and they were pouring concrete, I left, we were swinging roof trusses. Now the students between two houses get to see the entirety of the construction project. They work side by side with our subcontractors and ultimately get to see every aspect of the construction project throughout one school year.

[03:47:22] So it is now a much more real-life learning experience for them in two ways, not just to be able to see the entirety of the construction process, but ultimately they now get to see how long it takes them to do something in the field versus how long it takes a tradesman to do that. As they think about moving on, if they're not going to college, ultimately, what does it mean to be in the industry and the efficiency at which those trades have to work?

[03:47:45] In past homes, we did not do it on this home as we're going to flip things around a little bit, but we've had the students frame the basement walls and the first floor truss, and then they get to see that, and that takes them a month, and then they get to see the framing crew come in in a week, finish the rest of the house. And so it is really a good experience for them to be able to work side by side with these trades.

[03:48:04] We do have a lot of very good trade partners, as you guys were talking about before, that have been involved in this program for some time now and have committed a lot of time to working with the students while they're on the job site. So they're not out there just to finish the house, but they do teach modules along the way as they do that.

[03:48:21] And as technology has changed and as the advancement of our industry has changed, new components of that are now involved. The latest site survey we did for the site, we had drone technology come out and fly the site for grading purposes. So the students got to see that where 20 years ago that was not involved in our business at all.

[03:48:37] And so there's a lot of advancement that has changed and a lot of these students now get to see and a variety of jobs and aspects of this industry that they get to be involved in throughout the process, which is great. So student auto sales, this is a program that probably touches the most students that we have in any aspect that we work on.

[03:48:56] Obviously, the auto repair and the auto body programs are exclusive to the county system itself. We don't work within those, but what we do do is allow for those programs to be able to generate proceeds from profit of cars so they can turn around and make sellable back to the market.

[03:49:12] And so we have a Virginia State dealer that allow cars, as soon as they are roadworthy and have gone through inspections at the school level and necessary repairs have been made, they'll go back out to the street. And fortunately enough, that system's worked very well for us for many, many years now. As you guys can see, and I don't know if it's on there.

[03:49:29] Yeah, it's on there. To date, we've had $225,000 in sales this year. I think our illustrious leader, Lyman Rose, is working on getting past $300,000 this year. And his goal is loftier for next year. A lot of that money goes directly back into the programs at the schools.

[03:49:45] To some degree, some of the more successful programs have become, to an extent, self-sufficient on parts and needs and training mechanisms and things of that nature. outside of big equipment purchases within their programs as a result. So it's a great program that's been working very well for a very long time. It is at 13 high schools across the county, which is fantastic.

[03:50:05] So we are always involved with them. But frankly, that program has worked very, very well, and not a lot is needed from the FATE board on a day-to-day basis, except for the management, liability management, and the dealership. All right, next slide.

[03:50:22] Entrepreneurship. So this is not a historical program that FATE has been involved in from the beginning. This is a program that we've become more involved in as we have issued more grant and financial support to business-level programs within the county that need them, that don't have funding otherwise.

[03:50:39] Compared to our grant program that we'll talk about in a second, the entrepreneurship side of things, we call it entrepreneurship grants here. Many times our entrepreneurship programs are investments that we make. A lot of those dollars are returned back to FATE. we require the students to come up with a business plan, ultimately present that business plan to the FADE board or to a smaller subset of the board that will make some of the decisions.

[03:51:00] And then many of those dollars are then put into programs in the schools where there are school-based businesses that they want to start, run, and then ultimately refund those dollars. Some are done within a year, some are done over the course of several years. But Chantilly is probably one of the first programs that we had involved in this.

[03:51:17] And it has now spread to a variety of other schools throughout the county, who's been great to work with them, they really get a full business understanding their obligations to not just take dollars in, what it requires them to do with those dollars, the reporting they have to make to us and what they're doing with those dollars, and ultimately the profits they have to generate in their school-based businesses to return those dollars to faith.

[03:51:38] So it is a full circle program for them from a business standpoint, we've been doing for some time. From a, so next slide here. From a grant perspective, maybe 10 years ago or so, We recognized there were additional needs throughout CTE that we were able to support that weren't necessarily business-based needs, which is primarily what FATE has been focused on.

[03:52:00] And so for the better part of the last 10 years, we have been asking within the CTE realm, and we've pushed it out through a variety of sources. We want applications from programs on what they are looking for and what they need in the classroom. One of the first program grants that we issued, and I will not remember what high school it was, but it was the paramedic program where they were working out of the back of what was...

[03:52:24] Yeah, they were working out of the back of a program or a field-framed ambulance that was made for them in one of the shop programs in the county. We were able to buy a decommissioned ambulance from Fairfax County and be able to put it in the classroom for them to work within an actual ambulance.

[03:52:40] So things of that nature, down at the middle school level as well, we've participated. We are always trying to find and fund opportunities within the CTE program that we can further help and advance the mission of what we have, which is really just work-based employment opportunities for students when they come out of Fairfax County.

[03:52:57] And the last thing we do is scholarships. That has been around for a very long time. I was actually recipient of one of the scholarships as well. And so we do this every single year. We have expanded scholarships in a variety of different ways. For the last couple of years, we have now started to issue apprenticeship scholarships as well, as we do see a lot of applicants coming out of, particularly some of our trade-based programs the county electrical probably being the largest that is looking to move out of that program and into real world employment almost immediately to an extent we also see it coming out of automotive we have tool scholarships as well for some of those applicants that are looking to move into tool-based businesses where they need to provide their own tools to get onto a job site and so

[03:53:36] we've tried to find and adapt our scholarship program over time so we can find opportunities to push as many dollars as we can for students where they need them post-graduation whether it it be academic based or not. That is the most we had today. I said I'd get through it quickly so we can't answer any questions, but that's our run through. Okay, great. Let's start with Ms. St. John Cunning followed by Mr. Frisch. Okay. All right. Mr. Frisch followed by Mr. Moon.

[03:54:06] Thank you. This is always one of the, you know, more exciting presentations that we get to hear about each year. And for anybody who's been to one of the builds, it's always a credible experience. I will say, one of the parts that has been concerning the last couple of years is that we're running out of the houses, right?

[03:54:26] And so we've got, what is it, five left? We have five left, yeah. One thing that we discussed at last year's report was maybe diversifying the approach to that work. And I renew one question for the edification of new and returning board members.

[03:54:45] We are always building something in FCPS, right? We have one school or another at any stage of development in a construction project. Do you see a way for FATE to plug into that work and benefit from the extensive contracting that we do for school renovation projects?

[03:55:03] So I'll answer from the industry perspective I'll let you guys say from the program perspective but we I will say on site we have always had a challenge with small projects and trying to get students to other locations so we've we've been asked previously to go build things at other schools or small projects or whatever may have you and so that that's been a challenge for us in the past because we can't really have continuity of education when we do that on the job site they get to see the continuity of the process along the way and we then also have to repot the plan every year as we think about what is a student applying to do and then also in which they could get to the to go do from a training perspective and then i know on your guys side we didn't think

[03:55:41] about transportation and everything else and how we kind of make the logistics work from that perspective one thing to maybe go to the first part of your question and then back to the last we are now looking at various different programs that we can put into the academies also because we know from an access perspective that will allow us to get to more students than we previously have as well on the job site our hope is that we can continue to run a job site but we have looked at parallel tracks we looked at modular housing we could go down the rabbit hole on that probably not a forum for this evening but there's some challenges in that industry that make it very hard for us to get involved but there are other aspects of that that we are looking at we looked at tiny houses same thing there's you know there's some challenges within each of those but there's

[03:56:20] certainly are opportunities that we are looking at right now and we will continue to look at particularly as we explore new land opportunities to try to get into more programs and find access for more students recognizing the fact that eventually in fairfax county we're getting very close we are already out of land and so you know finding it we aren't going to we know already we won't find the next site that's going to be 18 homes the next site may be five homes and so we're going to have to kind of change the aspect of how we do things but we certainly are looking at all those options okay yes can i add to that from the instructional standpoint um yes we want to look at different opportunities but we also have to be mindful this is an instructional class where we where we have to meet Virginia State Standards

[03:56:59] and meet the prerequisites for the course. So whatever our next venture is, we also wanna make sure that aligns with what the course is. And if it doesn't, we have to figure out how we're going to make sure that that does happen.

[03:57:16] - Thank you. - Thank you, and Mr. Johnson, can you just pull the microphone a little closer, please? - Sure. - Thank you. Next we have Mr. Moon, followed by Ms. Lady. - Just one quick question. Do we, okay, what's next? Okay, good, thank you, thank you.

[03:57:31] Do we have any data regarding what students post-secondary pathway might be, whether they are going to colleges, job directly, or do we ever track that, the students who are going through these programs?

[03:57:48] So we do conduct our overall senior survey. We have not broken it down by students who participate in the construction technologies program or the auto technology program or other programs related to FATE, but certainly could explore looking at it by course enrollment in the future okay thank you we anecdotally i will say there's a variety of students who take the courses obviously some are going direct to college some are going direct to work it's a mix and it it works very well okay thank you to give you a sense just from a scholarship perspective at our board meeting this afternoon we approved four tool scholarships four academic scholarships and one apprentice scholarship so we have a variety of

[03:58:23] student needs coming out of these programs for sure hey um mr lady followed by miss dixon i guess my main question is it and maybe this has been asked but is is can you expand into something like a larger project like uh i understand i guess as you're explaining you know the instruction but maybe you know like affordable housing for for members of fairfax county who can't afford to live in our area or something else that people could be a part of in different pockets of our county yeah so the the answer is twofold we absolutely can and have started to look at that

[03:59:03] already i think one of the challenges we have is just land values in fairfax county making that math work is really difficult to date land has been donated to the program which is where the profit margin comes from that allows us to be self-sustainable so going to an affordable housing model would eliminate for the most part any profit margin that's associated with the program so we'd really have to find some additional funding sources to help manage that over time but it's also figuring out where we can find the opportunities to deploy that product type within the county so we've also we've asked historically in the past now that we don't have clean easy sites where are the problem sites where are the sites sitting at the board of supervisors that have

[03:59:39] challenges that are probably not right for market rate development and can we get access to those can we make accommodations through affordable housing or other means to be able to develop those sites if they're not needed for other needs we certainly do have some funds available but the reality is we would not be self-sustaining in the future if we weren't able to create a profit margin in the program so two other comments and again this is coming out of um being at a business partnership yesterday which we met a guy from porsche um and a couple comments one he said that you'd be shocked there are people who absolutely abandoned cars um and they petition for the titles and he said we've never asked them for cars um but their big owner is penske

[04:00:17] and 150 dealerships around so i don't i know we wait on donations but i'm happy to share that his contact information always take cars yeah well i'm just saying like i don't think we've ever asked in that capacity around what's sitting on their lot also when they sell are they build a new they move they said they don't take their lifts with them I mean like can we look at purchasing of lit like what's the cost for us to put in you know auto tech at Herndon if we've got a location like how much of it is buying the equipment that perhaps there would just donate because they're just going to demolish it is what it sounded like just thinking we you know equipment and facilities

[04:00:56] are part of the equation if we want to add. So getting a lift into a place that's not equipped for a lift would have additional facilities costs. So we haven't explored yet getting a lift as an example, but we can certainly talk more about it. I guess my question is, as someone who has Drainsville and Herndon, the facilities has already been out to Herndon to look at whether they can put Auto Tech in there because the wait list of those kids is ridiculous, that maybe we can look at this as a sort of partnership with fate.

[04:01:21] I don't know. I mean, you've done other things. I don't know what that cost would look like and connecting with whether or not what can be donated would just be sort of an ask instead of us just saying, oh, this is what it costs to us to do it independently. Interestingly enough, though, in your first point about the cars from Porsche, we got a bunch of cars from the airport that people abandoned this year.

[04:01:39] And so we are reaching out in a variety of different ways to try to bring in whatever we can from wherever we can. If anybody has any suggestions for us, we're always happy to take them. But we are getting very interesting ways to access user tools and things that we need within the classroom from different sources right now.

[04:01:55] I'll send that contact to Jen Glazer. Okay, Ms. Dixit, followed by Mr. McElveen. Thank you for the presentation. So we have built our own house, so I'm a little familiar with the building process.

[04:02:11] So the people who are, are you able to build on people, other, I guess, homeowners lots, or it just has to be through the Fairfax County government? Are you asking if we would build custom homes for somebody?

[04:02:27] I don't think we'll ever get involved in that program. I mean, I think it'd be very challenging for us to build for a consumer. Right now, we build a home, and it takes us longer and more money than anybody would ever expect. We do it wrong three times, and we take it apart and put it back together three times until it's right.

[04:02:46] And so that's the educational component. Whether it takes us 18 months to build a home, it's just not a process that a consumer can rely on in any way until we are finished with the home. and so it's it's kind of the macerations in between is just not appropriate for a model like that unfortunately okay so then my question is that how are you getting funded like how is this uh a self-sustained program so historically our lat so our job site the first job site that started this program in the 1970s was donated to the program and this job site also from the school board 20 years ago or so that was a old a school site that was split in half by fairfax county

[04:03:22] Parkway and ultimately was no longer a school site had bad soils and other things of that nature that we ultimately just assumed responsibility for but as I said earlier the donated part of that land is the profit margin we are able to make to keep the program self-sustaining over time. So this is a part of the FCPS or county government like historically it was part of FCPS land sat at that level that we had access to in the last since the last land acquisition process that we went through that program has now changed a lot of this lay it now sits at the board level and so we will be having to kind of have that conversation at the board level this next go

[04:04:00] around okay so basically our students are getting the experience in building the homes and and if they want to go in that trade later is there a they are also learning because before the house there's a lot of feasibility study and like soil testing are the students getting knowledge of that as well yes they're getting every aspect of the project so for example on our next house we have a very it's probably the worst of the 18 we're going to have we have significantly bad soils we have probably 75 to 80 thousand dollars of sub foundation issues to deal with we've got 57 piles to put in the ground to build the house so students are seeing aspects

[04:04:38] of home construction even they probably typically would not normally see as a result of some of the issues we have out there but they're involved in the scoping of each subcontractor the bid process with these subcontractor takeoffs responsible for that contracting and then management in the field and coordination with the field employees when they come out on top of their responsibilities to work with them and ultimately quality control management all the way until punchless at the end of the home and so they get to see every single aspect that goes into building these homes okay thank you thank you i have mr dunn um i went out to the spring hill site and uh for the open house

[04:05:16] and it was so exciting to see not just uh the program but the legacy which was reflected in all the photos on the wall um i wanted to mention uh two two opportunities that you might be uh wanting to explore one uh miss maron had mentioned to me that there's 1200 homes or 1700 homes going up somewhere in her district is that right i don't know if that's the exact number but a lot in vienna in the town of vienna indiana yeah so i mean there i mean it'd be a shift right from where it is now um but uh maybe for tax reasons or proffer they might be willing to offer and then the franconia uh government center um they're looking to shift that over entirely to affordable

[04:05:56] housing is a giant site and certainly um maybe the county could set aside a little portion of it for fate to to move there for you know the next 20 years um so that that i love please let us know more about that i i was just there the other day like you look at it it's very close to roads you think is small but then behind is where everyone parks and that's a giant well i mean and to some of the points where we're heading we have explored townhome construction also so we can do more on a smaller site because we sit with large single family which we've historically done we just need a lot of land to do a little bit of work overall even though it's a long period of time for us 18

[04:06:35] homes is not a lot of homes and so we've looked at doing duplexes or triplexes because we're building the same amount of square footage doing that as we would building a single family home they just get to see a different type of construction and so on more urban sites or where the county is trying to get more homes deployed are certainly good opportunities for us and we can mend our model to fit those sites if we need to thank you and and so you just have the spring hill site right um so have you ever spring hill was the spring village is the new one but yes okay so have you ever looked at establishing a second site elsewhere in and if you can find two sites for me at the same time then we can talk about instruction stuff but

[04:07:12] the answer is we'd love to you know we looked at it when we moved to spring hill uh or to spring village but you know historically it's been very very hard for us to find land and then it comes down to can we add a whole net another set of instructional staff and everything else that goes along with that to be able to support that program okay thank you we actually have a question from our superintendent dr reed thank you miss marin i you know when you were talking about space i just had a wonder i coming from divisions where there often wasn't space either in addition to like the automotive we created courses called small engine repair right so we're kids like riding lawnmowers

[04:07:50] and motorcycles and things that aren't like as large a need and the same with the construction trades there were like decks or sort of lawn type or yard fencing like how do you put up a fence how do you build a pergola right like how do you do things that a lot of people do as a vocation and that didn't require the full space or another lot but it provided uh maybe a a step in that uh or a part of the continuum and just wondered if we've thought about that or if we have that on deck or

[04:08:29] kind of what our thoughts are for that yeah we have a a car one carpentry program at chantilly actually and they um they build sheds and picnic tables and things along those lines so it's certainly something to look at if that could be expanded i know the county had small engine repair and it kind of faded away my understanding was right before i got here it was at edison i'm not sure if it was at other schools but it was something that was not successful students were

[04:09:02] not enrolling in so it didn't but we can always look at bringing it back as kids have changed good mr mckelbeam just very quickly i just want to foot stomp um what what you were talking about when you you mentioned uh tiny homes i think finding a way to adapt this to other parts of the district in a sustainable way would be great because obviously we cannot accommodate huge lots and expensive homes everywhere and i think that goes along with what miss lady was saying as well

[04:09:38] about affordable housing and just thinking about kind of the next generation so thank you for all all you do. I just build on that briefly and then I will stop but the hydroponic gardening work that's going on around the division in particular Luther Jackson Middle School recently the creating of greenhouses that actually are able to sustain that body of work to me like we don't really have like urban horticulture here that I've seen or those types of courses which or aquaculture which I'm familiar with those types of CTE courses that are really timely around sustainability right like

[04:10:14] you can grow vegetables in any climate because it's indoors and controlled and the food deserts that we have in so many places uh it's funny i just don't know where that sits within the visioning and i don't know if it's this group maybe or a different group jen that is might be working on that but i i see those as high interest for students and high need for us as a as a country and maybe not a huge amount of space right it's just the dedication to that programming so just curious about where that sits. I don't need an answer at the moment, but I think that's work that I'm very, aquaculture also is extraordinarily, I think, interesting. And to that, Dr. Reed,

[04:10:53] along with the FATE school year program, we do have a FATE summer program where some students are hired by FATE to go work on the site during the summer, but we are going to support, I believe it's Irving Middle School this year, with their greenhouse construction, where we're going to send them over there and we're going to help them build three greenhouses in their courtyard so that they can use that next school year as instructional purposes so we collaborated with them and got the sign off by fate to be able to bring those students who are now in the construction to go over there and build the greenhouses for them so that's a great we were out on the job site the other day and the students were building they were framing walls to send to the electrical programs the electrical program has framed walls to be able to work through when they're there and they burn

[04:11:32] through those we frame more and we send them over there so we we try to get it as involved as we can across as many programs as we can from the job site staff i'd like it at every middle school right Because when you think of what they set up with the tilapia fish tank to fertilize, right? I mean, it's the ultimate complete ecosystem, the lighting.

[04:11:50] We'll build as many as you guys would like. Well, we have 25 middle schools, but I think if you think about the lighting practice and the electrician work, I mean, it's at a very basic level, but it's still, you know, you learn. You have to start somewhere. And the system of the fish and the fertilizer and the, I just think there's a lot of math in there, which is maybe why i love it and science but you know i'm right there with you all right thanks well i will wrap us up as a facilitator and also ask you some of my questions we have our next set of community uh committee members here so oh no oh did you speak already marcia

[04:12:25] okay please go so just i i just wanted to ask a question line you know kind of piggyback on what mr mckelveen asked like have you also looked what what is a big trend too is the adus the uh you know additional dwelling units um is that something that you could do we so we have i will like i said i won't get down the rabbit hole everybody tonight the biggest issue we struggle with is permitting and transport on anything that is going to be built on our job site and then move to another location and then when we get into consumer side of things when you don't have a fixed house versus a mobile house we have warranty issues that are very different we have implied

[04:13:03] warranties we've we spent time with legal we've spent not just fairfax kind of legal but industry you're legal. And there's a lot to work through there. And so I don't discredit anything anybody is saying. We have to try to find a way to do more in different realms than we're doing. And there's a lot of things that the program is well equipped to do that practically is needed in the community that we'd love to do. We just have more hurdles than probably is known at the surface to try to solve that problem. Like I said, we have, practically speaking, probably seven years left on the job site where we are today so we have some time to solve some of these problems but as we

[04:13:40] work through the land acquisition process in parallel we are looking at some of these alternatives as well well i will wrap this up but i first want to say i'm sold on fate i mean no pun intended but the first time i went to the project it was a no-brainer the only criticism i continue to have is it has not grown and i think that's on us and i think the keyword for today is adapt we have all this commercial space that is empty can we do commercial electrical commercial construction we just featured the other week lewis high school where the students are building garden beds

[04:14:16] with wood and carpentry so i find it hard to believe that we only have one carpentry teacher and kids aren't interested because they were ecstatic to be doing stuff outside regarding the permitting and zoning i'm personally all over that because it's a big hang up in our county I've seen a big stopgap in the county offices when it comes to permitting and zoning for our own classrooms for our stadium bathrooms and we've got to figure out how to prioritize our public schools so that our facilities can get out there faster and serve more students so I think there's a lot of interest around the table to continue this conversation so perhaps

[04:14:54] what I can do is follow up with the school board members and figure out what a next good best, next best good step is because there's lots of stuff here and this is just a start of a conversation. I do want to mention for ROTC though, for ROTC I know that we have to pony up funds and the Army does not cover that and I've been advocating for those funds previously before the Army sent the superintendent a letter telling us that we have to finance the raises for our ROTC teachers on top of paying for a portion of the teachers. So it's just Army, it's just ROTC. So I have tried to advocate with Senator Warner, and what's

[04:15:32] all JR, can I continue? Thank you. So I have been advocating to Senator Warner to fully fund those positions. There's no reason why we have to foot any of that bill when that budget is a million times over what ours is. So that's just an update. So with that, well, good speed talking, everyone. I guess we're happy to be with any of you guys at any time, but we really do appreciate the partnership we have with you all, so thank you.

[04:16:00] - Fantastic, thank you. So we'll reconvene in five minutes. We'll recess and reconvene at 6:20 with our Title I Advisory Committee.

[04:21:37] All right, so now we will be hearing from our Title I Parent Advisory Committee, or TPAC, which I have the pleasure of being the board liaison to. So welcome to Noel Clemenco, Amy Miller, Courtney White, and a special welcome to Mike Waltz, our chair, who will be, after this year, stepping down from his long tenure on TPAC, and he's been a remarkable volunteer and advocate, so we just want to thank you for all your service.

[04:22:00] Your work will live on. Thank you. Thank you. At least I got one clap tonight. The floor is yours, and Madam Clerk, can you just clarify our time frame again, please? Just so we can, because I know we always have our questions, and we can go a little later.

[04:22:18] We are scheduled to go to 7, but we need to go a little bit. But we're going down to two minutes, correct, Ms. Marin? Yes. Let's try and do that. Okay. Great. Please go ahead. Can we go to slide three, please? Is this slide three or four? Slide four, sorry.

[04:22:42] I can talk while it's loading up. Just to give a little background on the TPAC and even how I ended up here, I was appointed by my principal at the time at elementary school to the committee and I missed the first meeting. Then I ended up on the executive board.

[04:23:00] Don't miss your meetings. So 10 years later, but actually when I first joined, it was called the District Advisory Council, and I had no idea what that meant. And I actually went through the first meeting saying I did not know what it meant.

[04:23:17] After talking to the staff liaison, I kind of understood and got a sense of it. And by the end of the year, I was like, well, could we then maybe change the name so people will know at least outwardly what our target group is, what our focus is. So that's why the FUN acronym TPAC came about.

[04:23:36] And I don't need to read what's on the slides, but what's important is that it's supposed to provide a mechanism for parents and teachers as well to have a role in Title I as it's being developed and implemented and to give regular feedback on how it's going, areas of improvement.

[04:23:55] And for representatives, what it allows for them, you know, very different from the PTA, it gives us, for one, a direct line to the school board, but it also allows them to build a relationship with the administrators in their school in debriefing and learning more about the school, just discussing and understanding ways that you may have this conversation at a meeting and then talk to the principal about what does that look like here?

[04:24:20] what does it look like there and it's always going to look different in every school but it allows them to build a stronger relationship and it helps the members of our committee in their own right become stronger advocates and more knowledgeable about what goes on in the county I'm just someone watching me turn pages okay so our charge for this year was a continuation from last year we champion literacy by reviewing the implementation of science of reading and And it's reviewing materials, implementation strategy, and fidelity of that implementation.

[04:24:53] Just because this is a multi-years effort, so it only made sense that our oversight was going to go along with that for a while. Meeting topics, we had the Title I overview, which is always a really good 101 or 301 maybe, because Courtney Swite does a really good deep dive into it.

[04:25:14] And I think every time folks walk away with something new, even if they've heard it before. And we had a discussion about trauma-informed teaching practice and social-emotional learning, a meeting focusing on the Virginia Literacy Act and its requirements, and then just about communication about this paradigm shift in general.

[04:25:34] So I want to give time for the questions and discussions, so get right to the recommendation, first one about student wellness, and it's requiring schools to include that goal in their school improvement and innovation plan. I think last year it was a requirement, this year it is not, And we just frankly didn't think that was the right move because COVID is over, I guess people say, but the impacts of it are still here.

[04:26:01] And even before COVID, student wellness should have been a priority because you cannot show up and expect to learn anything if you're not in the right state of mind and being. It doesn't matter if you're sitting at a desk or sitting on a screen. If you're not well in a hole, then you're not going to be able to take in whatever you're trying to learn.

[04:26:21] but even something as life changing and opportunities opening as reading. I understand the budget is extremely tight. We know that, and you've heard it from everybody who's said, you know, we need more resources, we need more resources, but three and a half staff for trauma-informed instruction, social emotional learning in a school system of 180,000 plus students and 25,000 staff, because student wellness is not just about students, you have to have staff who are also in the right state of mind and body to be able to teach and instruct and learn and then teach the students as well.

[04:27:02] It's a small number. I don't know what can be done to leverage some other resources to help increase that, but we think that there should be, that that goal should come back. It's going to look different in every school, but student wellness still has to be paramount.

[04:27:19] And last year was more, as we were tracking this charge, it was more along the lines of technical aspects of science of reading. This year, I don't want to say it's speed bumps, it's just a reality. Like what happens when you have a good idea and if it's not able to go as fast or as far as you want it to go, where does it, where are the gaps, where are the obstacles, stumbling blocks?

[04:27:43] It's just in conversation and talking. It's how are we as students and staff showing up? And we need to make sure that they're able to show up to take this in, or it's just not going to make the impact that we want it to make, that it needs to make.

[04:28:01] In terms of recommendation 2A and 2B is tied to communications. It's about consistent practices and implementing structures and processes for caregivers to give input and feedback on school programming.

[04:28:19] So I'll take them in separate parts. In terms of consistent practices for communication, it's now I have a soon-to-be two high schoolers. So a lot of that will no longer be something I've received.

[04:28:35] But I think that during COVID, and for those of you who were in the school system during that time, I think we took for granted that folks would read an important communication or receive and respond to important communication. It was the fall of 2020.

[04:28:52] FCPS wanted to know how folks intended to come back, whether in person or virtual or hybrid. and there was low feedback not because people didn't care but because for the longest time folks would either you know they would respond or they wouldn't and i don't know you all can inform me if otherwise but i don't know if communication as a practice has been studied analyzed measured and tailored to folks styles habits whatever seems to be really working for these groups people either text straight text message email a text with a link to an email

[04:29:28] whatever it is don't know that that's happened regarding science of reading if it's come out apologies that I've missed it or maybe go to elementary schools but I have not seen a district wide message about this yet I saw way too many last year about the national merit issue it's the nicest word I can give to it but for something so positive so necessary with a little bit of history on how we got here and just so families can have an expectation what to look out for we know it's going to be different in the timing of when this school might have this and two weeks later this

[04:30:07] school will have that, but just giving parents a heads up on what's coming. Since our kids are so great at telling us what they learned at school every day, it'd be nice if we could know, have that heads up, and then know how to support it. That messaging hasn't gone out. I don't think it's too late because our committee, our committee members, usually are on the edge of whatever's happening we're able to get information and go back to the benefit of being on this committee get access to information a little faster at least more focused than you may as a parent who's just getting the paper i guess we're more digital now just getting messages constantly i don't think

[04:30:46] it's too late at all and i think folks really need to hear that and know it so they can understand what's happening in school with k through five six through twelve or k through six and then seven through 12, just so we can be more partners, more of a partner, or families can partner more with schools in making sure that this has the impact that we want it to have. Now, in terms of structures and processes for feedback, I think information, and again, going off my experience, I remember the

[04:31:23] family engagement survey and the principal survey, principal feedback survey. I don't know many other opportunities, regular opportunities that as a parent I had to give feedback and input and whether it's happening at the elementary school level or not, I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem like there's as many opportunities for folks to do it in different ways because not everybody goes to a PTA meeting, not everybody goes to an event at night, schedules are what they are, they maybe can make a morning or afternoon event, whatever it is. I just think that clearly not solved, but we

[04:32:02] me to think creatively about ways in which there can be more two-way communication and more intentional ways that caregivers can give feedback and input. Good evening my name is Maria Worthen I am the vice chair of the executive committee of TPAC and I have a second grader at Beachtree Elementary School who has an IEP because of difficulties with reading so this This process of science of reading has really been near and dear to my heart.

[04:32:40] And I think one of the benefits of TPAC is we can kind of compare notes of what's happening at your school or what's happening at my school and seeing the very big disparity. So I'm going to go over the third recommendation we have on communications, 2C.

[04:32:57] And this goes to an issue of equity, recognizing that we have many languages in our district. And when it comes to the special education process, yes, there are interpreters at meetings, there are web pages and boilerplate language and parent brochures and things like that that are translated into different languages, but when it comes to the actual content that is specific to a child, like the local screening reports, the eligibility reports, the IEP,

[04:33:36] Those are only provided in English, and so our recommendation is to ensure that important documents such as IEPs, as well as the individualized reading plans, which are going to be required next year under the Virginia Literacy Act for students who are not reading on grade level, making sure that those are, and it should say they're available to be translated.

[04:33:58] We don't want everything to be translated into every language, obviously, but that there There is a way for parents to get those things translated in an accurate way, not just relying on the inaccuracies that might come up through like a Google Translate cut and paste.

[04:34:14] And for parents to also be able to understand in their native language what significance those documents have for their child. Okay, and then finally, we'll go to recommendation three around the individual reading plans.

[04:34:30] As I said, the Virginia Literacy Act will require individual reading plans for students who struggle in reading starting next year, TPAC members are, I would say, in equal measure excited and concerned about the implementation of this requirement, excited because for parents like me who do have a struggling reader, I think having that information before we were able to get him qualified for an IEP would have been so helpful to me to understand where he was, what was being done for him, and whether or not those things were working.

[04:35:05] so i think this is a really exciting development at the same time we are concerned about the burden that this will place on teachers who are already very burdened we have teachers on our committee but we also as parents who may not be teachers recognize that our teachers do a lot for our kids and we don't want them to have sort of a huge bureaucratic requirement that they have to do on on top of teaching our kids to read.

[04:35:36] So we wanna make sure that teachers are really, really supported and caregivers are informed about the individual reading plans and the role they can have in the development and progress monitoring of the plan. I think our concern is if those communications aren't going out broadly, then people may have either unreasonable expectations about what these plans can do or just not know that it's something that they can access.

[04:36:05] And we wanna make sure, at the bottom line, is that there are interactive feedback opportunities throughout the year, and we think that these plans can help us get there. With that, those are all of our recommendations, and we welcome any questions that you have. - Well, first, Ms. Worthen, I have to apologize profusely.

[04:36:23] I, in my haste to start our meeting, I did not get to introduce you, so thank you for all of your work and being vice chair. I've been to the meetings and you have been very valuable, so apologies. With that, I have Dr. Anderson, who's ready to ask questions.

[04:36:39] - Thank you. First of all, thank you both for your service and Mr. Walz as my constituent. I know I'll continue to hear from you even though you're no longer on this committee. Well, both of you are my constituents, actually. But really, thank you, because you've been a force. I definitely wanna make sure that I say that.

[04:36:55] I wanna go in here and speak about a couple of your recommendations. The student wellness goal that you talked about the sit plants i'm trying to rock my brain a little bit trying to pull up very quickly because it was a couple of years ago what did those goals look like what did they entail because i i want to get a sense of their continuing utility in this moment as i know we're pivoting into other um into other goals as priorities and must-dos um can you just give me an example if you could

[04:37:29] recall any i cannot i just knew that if staff can i i know i ran over here very quickly um so i'll start and then you all can add in um and you know of course on the spot i'm trying to think of specific goals that i remember from plans um but i'll give some broad ideas so these are really about goals about developing those social emotional learning skills with students which are essential for their you know collaborative work on academics you know how do i interact with a group how do i

[04:38:06] problem solve if something doesn't go the way i expected how might i respond emotional regulation so i'm feeling frustrated how can i handle what are some proactive ways and productive ways to handle um those emotions um so schools set goals you know in those broad areas and um you know develop some strategies and actions for their teachers as soon as you said that i remember because my daughter came home with the zones of regulation chart because that was part of the of

[04:38:44] the instruction dr reed those have not gone away those lessons continue while the schools may not necessarily have a goal about establishing those programs and utilizing those strategies because i don't think they were necessarily student outcome goals they were ensuring that we provided certain strategies and opportunities for the students to learn certain skills that currently continues yes ma'am that's correct and if you remember when we talked about the strategic plan we talked about there would be some years we would be developing certain things other years implementing and then monitoring and i would say that the dr presidio staff they've had several

[04:39:23] folks that were esser funded that provided lessons for social emotional learning which still exist and are still being utilized okay so maybe it's not necessarily a goal that is needed but some sort of reporting on the monitoring stage so that t-pack can have that information to better inform its advocacy. Secondly, on recommendation three, you talked about the individual reading plans, and this is more of a question for staff, and if you don't have the answer now, that's fine. I'm very curious in terms of what measures will be utilized to identify a

[04:40:01] struggling reader, and whether that's going to be consistently applied across the division. Well, I could share briefly and then turn it over to Ms. Klimenko, so I'll give her a minute, but I believe that the state is coming out with some screening tools that will be directly linked to these reading plans but Ms. Clemenco you could elaborate I'm sure. Yes starting this fall our students in grades K through three will be participating in a new screener so iReady will be sunsetted for those students and we'll be moving to it's called the VALS which is a one-on-one

[04:40:36] assessment and the the results of those school of those assessments will indicate whether or not a student is required to have a reading plan and so reading plans are not k-5 so reading plans will be k-5 but because the screener is only going to k-3 the state's only requiring the reading plans at k-3 we're going to continue to use our MTSS kind of strategies but as far as the official video e reading plan it is k-3 following the assessment thank you just a wondering as you mentioned one-on-one assessment. That's a lot of teacher time. I just want to just put that in the in the air

[04:41:16] and just my last question is regarding communication that you guys talked about with Title I. I know this has been a particular area of concern in our community because we have one of the first high schools to be a Title I high schools and there's no blueprint in terms of how that works is to be conducted at that level. So ensuring that we have a blueprint that is going to be followed and improved upon i think will be very helpful so thank you for raising that as a point of concern miss dixit did you have a question and mr dunn do you have a question as well okay so mr dunn and then miss dixit thank you oh and then ms seismorheiser after that

[04:41:59] all right miss dixit floor is yours thank you for the presentation and title one schools definitely have everybody's attention and we need to do uh put more resources in the schools I have met with some principals in title world schools in my Sully district, and one of the things they have told me that their languages have become so diverse.

[04:42:28] Like at one particular school, I believe they have 60 different dialects. So how does a school system can cater to all the needs of various, and I think we don't have a translator for some of those.

[04:42:46] languages. So our recommendation does specify the top eight languages. So yeah, recognizing that there is a logistical barrier. But yeah, I would defer to staff about how you could make that work.

[04:43:05] I know there's the language line that's used that where there are more languages available than the ones that FCPS interpreters cover. Maybe there's a similar service for translating documents. But I agree, even in making, we had some debate as we devised this recommendation that it might be logistically impossible.

[04:43:25] At the same time, we felt that it was a necessary thing to address and put out there because it is an equity issue for access to being involved in one student's education. And I can just add on, we also have been working very closely with the principal at Center Ridge due to some of the uniqueness of the needs of her community.

[04:43:50] we have not yet fully resolved the problem, and we will continue to work with her. And I do think that many of our schools, including Center Ridge, do access many of the language line tools that are available for when teachers reach out to parents.

[04:44:10] You know, the written communication piece, we're still looking into, but I have to say at our last TPAC meeting, there was some brainstorming of possibilities, principles were part of that conversation too, so we're definitely gonna explore to see how we can do this in a reasonable, timely manner.

[04:44:31] - Thank you for the answer. Just follow up on that. So I understand the top eight languages can be picked and that makes sense, but then there are other languages which are obviously, we need to figure it out. So I guess community partnership is where I think the way to go is find some translator within the area and I could, you know, work with in that area by finding other people speaking their language and maybe help in that way. So I guess in general the locals, residents, if they can help, they should be able to help. But I feel like the

[04:45:10] communication piece is very important because the parents are really not able to come to school and and have a conversation in English. So they are, the students are struggling there with parents, I guess. So, thank you.

[04:45:25] - Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Mr. Dunn, followed by Ms. Seismerheiser. - One of the statements made was that there's only three and a half trauma-informed specialists, I think, is the title. - I thought there was one, and then three and a half, four SELs.

[04:45:43] - I think it's like two SELs. - Maybe. - Yeah. - It's like two and a half feet total for both. I think so, yeah, like three and a half combined. Three and a half trauma-informed specialists combined? Slash SEL. Okay.

[04:46:00] What is the, or do you have a recommendation on the desired staffing level? I would say at least that for each region as a start. I know we can't just, you get one and you get one, but just thinking about, I mean, having a conversation with them, seeing the things they're working on, it just kept getting hit in the face by 180,000.

[04:46:23] So if we at least had that at a region level, they could more easily support schools, at least through those structures, as a start. And is their job function to provide training to staff? Or if the case is complex, then they get involved?

[04:46:41] Or what is their, like, day-to-day function? I think they work with staff and students. So I can speak to this, and I want to preface this by saying I am an FCPS social worker. Anything I say represents my own opinions.

[04:46:58] so not, but I do know a little bit about how this works. So those specialists provide professional development and consultation with schools on developing plans for how they will implement those lessons as well as incorporate more trauma-informed practices.

[04:47:14] And then it is the school staff that actually implement and intervene and work with students. So whether it is the instructional staff or the clinical staff assigned to the school are the ones that actually intervene implement it. The specialists are, as Dr. Reed said, developing lessons and materials that may be evergreen, but they play an important role in helping the school understand how they'll incorporate it locally. Thank you. Ms. Seizmerheiser, online. Thank you, and thank you for this report. And I just wanted to pick up, I appreciate you saying that there's only three and a half

[04:47:54] staff for trauma-informed slash SCL because this is very important. In fact, I think it was Ms. Pekarski and I on the previous board that brought the forum topic and the budget amendment to add a trauma-informed specialist and add trauma-informed work so I'm really glad to see that I just wanted to mention that those folks and Dr. Lee please correct me if I'm wrong those folks are considered central office staff are trauma-informed folks so when we're looking at what do our central office staff do that's some of the work that they do so even expanding it to being embedded in the region office I still would be considered central office staff so I know Ms. St. John Cunningham mentioned earlier about some of the good work that our central office staff do to support our teachers

[04:48:32] and support the students and the classrooms i just wanted to mention that um i i think it's important to have more um folks who really understand this embedded in the region office to be able to support the principals in this work it's very important i also really appreciate um it's going to seal again and i apologize i'm pretty sick which so i'm not there today in person but i i really appreciate you mentioning the iep process and i knew you mentioned that parents should be informed why they're getting these documents i would maybe lift up that they should also help be giving some support and understanding how to be effective team members because parents

[04:49:09] are supposed to be team you know part of the iep team so you know in addition to understanding the why of the documents maybe under helping to understand the why or how to be an effective team member my parents were immigrants did not and luckily for me they were they were fluent in English and both had PhDs, but they didn't understand the US school system either. And so I think just providing some of that support would be helpful so we can make sure that our students are supported well. So I just wanted to mention that. And if you have any thoughts on that, I'd love to hear it. I appreciate that. And while I have not on

[04:49:45] my own children behalf participated in them, I've been in them for other people. And we've even had a meeting, a TPAC meeting several years ago. And in too many cases, it's adversarial. it's confrontational it's emotionally charred from the time they sit down and that is just not the right way to start an engagement on making sure student has what they need so I absolutely I mean recommendations are already set but I mean we could even standardize the process for IEP meetings I think that would go a long long way because I've been in some that have gone left

[04:50:24] and it's been really whether student was part of it or not at the end of it they're the ones who suffer the most because if you can't come to an agreement you can't move forward then they're stuck in limbo for a certain amount of time great thank you i appreciate that and i know our parent um our family resource center does have some support but i think trying to find ways to get that more embedded within our schools especially our title one schools so it's um easier for folks to access or even be aware it's very important so thank you for this report thank you for those

[04:50:55] great recommendations i appreciate it thank you miss st john cutting sorry um thank thank you very much for this report from someone that spent most of my career in title one schools I know how challenging some of the issues that are faced by our students and families can be I wanted to ask just a question of staff but just to clarify just for clarification an IEP that is for a particular student is a legal

[04:51:29] document correct okay so when we talk about the recommendation for translations then you're talking about a translation that is at a legal level, and I think that would be cost prohibitive. I just want to put that out there because I know it's a recommendation.

[04:51:47] I will say that as a family liaison, as an interpreter, I would sit down for hours with parents, and I think this is where we can lean into our family liaisons that also have those skills, and I would also prepare parents for the IEP process, and as you would say, I would also, you know, in conjunction sometimes maybe with a social worker talk to the parents and say this is what you what you are going this is what's going to happen this is what's what you should expect because particularly for our immigrant families you know they're used to coming in for the parent teacher conference and then they walk into a room like this and they're like I didn't know all those

[04:52:22] people were going to be at that table and it's very intimidating so you know when we prepare our parents and explain that you know when you're going to walk in these people are there to support you they're not going to be there to interrogate you they're not going to be there to you know um be getting on you about things so i think that as you move further in your work we can look at the resources that already exist in our school at schools and i just want to do a shout out for family niazons because because they're great at doing this kind of work and building those relationships um i also appreciate what you said about student wellness and i think again what we

[04:53:02] don't name we don't focus on and i do think it is critical and important that that should be a consideration particularly with our title one students i'll go back or go back great i'll go ahead and take a turn um just regarding the iep process i think i mentioned this maybe the last report out but there's a book by a local author called voices around the iep table that a colleague of mine who's an assistant principal recommended, and I think it tries to get at some of those, the issues about, you know, where everyone's coming from, so I do always like to recommend that.

[04:53:37] So at the final TPAC meeting last week, the committee really elevated the communications piece, and for me, that's such a big thing, and it weaves into so much that the board has talked about on a number of things, how we communicate to families, a number of emails we send out, the new website, you know, there's a lot there, and so I know my colleagues and I have talked a lot about how to streamline and especially for families that don't have a lot of time or perhaps aren't experienced with the system.

[04:54:03] So as I said to TPAC, I have a whole group of recommendations and things to bring directly to the superintendent to make sure that she hears it a bunch of times in different ways. I also did, I think I just sent it to you, as part of our budget process we get to ask questions and have them costed out and you had asked a question about mental health which which I submitted, but it's finished, but it's so big, it took so long, so I just sent you the -- and that's what I was scrolling through to see if they said it was three staff or not, but you'll see it's pretty comprehensive, but I don't know that it says how many staff.

[04:54:37] It speaks to different programs and funding and levels of service, but I do wonder if we could get an update at some point from the superintendent on the work of that trauma-informed specialist, which we approved in the last term. was the trauma-informed specialists and our neurodiverse specialists. Those are really big deals, and I can't say that I know what that position has produced. So I think that's a valid question that we'd like to hear more on in the future, if not now. Okay, all right. I've got, did you? Okay, so Ms. Lady, and then we'll go back to Ms. St. John Cunning.

[04:55:18] Again, I appreciate the work. I guess I just want to, like, talk a little bit more about the trauma-informed reality. You know, the changing situation of our students as they arrive at school. It's essential that all of our teachers are trauma-informed, right? I mean, there are certain things, and again, I know they feel over-PD'd and over-trained, but I, and sometimes I wonder how we deploy PD. I don't know if you start with, you know, smaller groups who can then say, listen, like,

[04:55:52] wow, what I got out of this helped impact me in recognizing things in my students in a classroom, right? Like, it can sell itself kind of thing. But I do think that it's important, and it's not just with our Title I schools, but we obviously have a lot of other issues that are elevated there.

[04:56:12] But I think it's across the system, so, you know, I'd like to see that. I think the communication thing, you know, that's just tough. we push out so much. It's just where people see it, how they see it, how they read it. I don't know where that captive audience is, especially when we've adopted a brand new curriculum, you know what I mean, to try to explain. And I mean, I will say this, I think we need to push something out about that, because there's a lot of people who want us to do more to be quite direct, paper, pencil, and, you know, type learning, and not just devices. And I think

[04:56:49] there's misunderstanding about how often our elementary kids are utilizing devices. I think it's a lot, lot fewer hours than some of our community thinks, and so I'd love to get some of that data out there. The only other thing I'd say is I just want to uplift the fact that, and I just met with one of my Title I principals this past week, the turnover in staff. You know, that's a trauma. A lot of kids who have experienced trauma, and then we have a situation where they're tired, they've put in two or three years, and they're going into a different demographic.

[04:57:21] And whether or not we need to consider in a future paying our Title I employees a better wage. And that's great, you can transfer to a Title I school if you wanna be eligible for that better raise, right? Just like you can go get a certification in special education at this point. But I think we need to think about that because that's a tough population to have the turnover we're having.

[04:57:41] - Thank you for reminding me. First part you said about training, that was something that, maybe in the report, but it's worth mentioning again, staff needs paid time for that professional development dedicated time that they don't have to negotiate with something else in order and you all do the calendar so I would dare to tell you how to do it but it's just something that works with schools and staff so they can get that meaningful time and in terms of compensation one of our recent meetings a teacher was talking about and one of her colleagues is out in Manassas and has to come out here and doesn't

[04:58:18] have time for maybe some of the support that is needed for students because you can't afford to live here. And I'm hoping there can be creative ways that teachers can actually live in this county and not just work in this county. And for comms, you reminded me of something else. You brought everything back. So if there could be, I think as parents, I think what we pay attention to, or as caregivers, we pay attention to who's the sender. Usually principal message or a classroom

[04:58:51] teacher message will get our attention and so if messages could be tailored not something that teacher has the individual teacher has to do but something where their name can be slapped in the front of it that will i think get more attention from parents than just a general message or a general newsletter and i think john cunning to your point about iep being a legal document i mean all the one reason why people need to know what they're agreeing to before they do it so those resources and that support and preparing them and making sure they

[04:59:25] understand is paramount. Thank you, Ms. St. John Cunning. Ms. Dixit, followed by Dr. Anderson. So, uh, didn't go yet? Oh, I'm sorry, you weren't done with your turn. My apologies. Okay, Ms. St. John Cunning, please continue. I completely agree with you. I just know that it would be cost-prohibited because I've had documents legally translated. And I usually like to ask questions and say very little but I'm going to pontificate here because this is something that's really close to

[05:00:01] my heart and the student wellness student wellness piece is so important not just in our title one schools but particularly in our title one schools the trauma that so many of our children have faced and I worked at an elementary school and you would not believe the stories that I've heard that some of those kids have lived through and some of those families and as he said if the student is not mentally well or emotionally well they're not going to be prepared for learning and that goes through the continuum all the way through high school.

[05:00:28] But as my colleague said, I think it's not just our underserved communities or immigrant communities. I think overall we've seen the need for all of our students to have that kind of support. If it was up to me and if we could afford it, I'd have a trauma-informed specialist in every school because that's how great the need is.

[05:00:47] In terms of the communication piece, what you said was really important. And I think, you know, working locally and going from the person at your school that the parent feels that they can connect to and look at that message but you know when we're talking about everything that we push out we've got to remember that some of our parents can't read and so that's another i mean we take a lot for granted and say oh we're sending it electronically we're sending it this way but not only is it that some of our parents can't read the language sometimes they can't even read so it's really important that we take all of these nuances into consideration when we consider how we're going to communicate with our parents particularly things that are of high importance

[05:01:27] and sometimes it just requires that phone call, you know, so I just really want to thank you for your work because I know it's so important, and that's really about all I had to say. Thank you for that, and it's a very delicate way to approach. If somebody can't read, it's a shame.

[05:01:46] You have to be able to very definitely navigate that in a respectful way, and I don't know what the answer is, but you're right. There are folks who may just need an audio message or something, and we may have to have the students as a partner make sure your parent is able to hear this thanks for that thank you i think i'm just getting a little bit tired sorry and next we have miss dixit followed by dr anderson yes i'm going to address something uh i know we discussed a lot of the feedbacks you have provided and the actions um i was very i was in bull run elementary my

[05:02:23] when my son that went were there um and we were very involved with the pta and all the after school programs um and i know a lot of ptas are responsible for these after school programs like enrichment spelling bees and myatholumpiad and lower robotics we got them all started even bullrun didn't have them um i i don't know if there's the same thing in title one school because i don't think london town had those which was like literally a mile away from bull run and again this is again parents are doing it in some schools and some schools not happening and kids don't get access to these great

[05:03:00] programs like geography b so it's such a great program which kids just came to do for fun so my question is there is a because we know title one schools have additional funding and some resources and also some of these clubs can be teacher sponsored is there a way we could do this across the board and look into it that these schools also the kids also get that opportunity thank you so much for that question so we are actually essentially funding after school

[05:03:35] activities for all of our title one schools so math olympiad and science olympiad all of our title one schools will participate in the science olympiad competition next year we've been working with our principals to ensure that they have staff members to coach we have central office staff who have offered to coach dr reid has partnered us with a great community organization who is supporting so we're really excited about that opportunity so math and science olympiad will be content across all of our schools.

[05:04:09] We're looking into robotics options for our Title I schools. And then in addition, we know that each Title I community has different interests and areas they wanna focus in on. So we're also funding three additional afterschool teachers to meet the needs of each individual community.

[05:04:30] We will also provide transportation as well as support with the administration of after-school programs. - The other thing can be done, and we did that at Bull Run, we had a chess club for over 100 students. We would open it to other neighborhood schools, and then the parents would drop them off.

[05:04:49] That was the only thing parents had to do in the evening once a week. But then the students were all from different area neighborhood school, and they loved the experience of learning and playing chess, and then going from first grade sixth grade and they kept growing with the with the club as they progressed so it really helped them to even if the ptas can work on bringing the students from opening up their clubs to other schools as well what you've highlighted is two things for one ptas are generally if it's a

[05:05:27] diverse school community they don't encapsulate all the families all the perspectives all the students and parents, caregivers. And the other is the inequities are laid bare from PTA to PTA.

[05:05:44] My past life, I was PTA president, and we did an audit swap with another school, and their yearly budget was $100,000. Yeah, that's what I said. So if that's what you're doing in elementary school, I mean, you have the whole world for those kids to engage in. So I appreciate you're saying what PTAs can do, but it's more what is that school community? What is the community like? What are they dealing with? What is the demographics? What is the socioeconomic level? I mean, I'll never

[05:06:21] forget that one because you're almost like PayPal account. You have this. I was like, okay. I mean, it's a salary for the year. So we definitely should, I think, as often as possible, you know, maybe community partnerships provide opportunities for extracurricular involvement for all students.

[05:06:38] I just wanted to applaud FCPS, Dr. Reed, that the math Olympiad, science Olympiad, in all title one schools that's a great achievement and hopefully more programs thank you yeah we're thrilled and uh dr miller and um dr white have been great about making sure this happens and rajeef sharma and his group of volunteers have been very helpful this is critically important because the trajectory for education starts very young great and dr anderson i think you will

[05:07:14] finish us up for the evening okay just picking up on that last point i am very excited that we have the math and science olympiad in our schools that has been a point of advocacy with dr reese and she got here but i wanted the five math olympiad science olympiad spelling b geography b and odyssey of the mind so i'm waiting for those other three to come to fruition but i do have to say when i put this in my newsletter this was a piece where i got a ton of community responses they were so excited to have that happen because our schools can't carry the burden because of the current structure so having staff and resources to make it happen i think it's going to be really really

[05:07:52] great um i really want to support some of the comments that i heard miss lady said because her her statements regarding how difficult it is to work in a title one school is it's it's right on and i i really also very glad to hear that you're talking about perhaps differentiating the package the compensation package for people who work in those schools which is also part of our budget resolution that was right in there it said title one teachers and title one staff and special education staff so i'm hoping that that's a piece that comes to fruition very very quickly

[05:08:29] my last thing that i wanted to share was regarding the communication again miss cunning st john cunning hit it on the on to hit the nail on the head we do have student parents who are not able to read i know one of the ways we've tried to address that is by having that audio on our website but there still has to you still have to be able to access to just hit that button and to select the language so it's going to be helpful but it still needs a little bit of facilitating but i really wanted to hone in on just the more traditional communication methods we have families

[05:09:05] that will turn out but for them it has to be in person they're not going to be responsive to to an email or to a text but you bring them in and you know it's connected some other activity for their children and it's at it's a convenient location they will show up and they will engage and if we think that this information is really important for them to have then we need to make the space for them to be able to engage in that discussion and those discussions with us thank you I will say about, before you jump in for compensation, public education in this county has been so drastically underfunded.

[05:09:41] If we funded the school system where it belongs, the police wouldn't need, need is a very loose term I put, wouldn't need the funding level they have. Yes, we've certainly talked about that a number of times today, and it's not just Fairfax, it's the whole state of Virginia is chronically underfunded.

[05:09:59] Well, with that, we're just a few minutes over before our final presentation for the evening, but thank you, as always, for the deep thought and commitment. And again, Mr. Walts, thank you so much for all that you've done. Ms. Worthen, thank you. And let's take a five-minute recess and reset.

[05:10:17] So 7.13, okay, we'll go quick. Thank you.

[05:10:20] That's the funnest part that board gets engaged discussing is free care recommendations.

[05:19:19] Yeah, but we all need to contain our joy and excitement because we only have an hour. And 20 minutes of that will be used by staff to make a presentations. And basically by the end of tonight's discussion, today's discussion, what the staff is looking for, what we want to get to is, we'll go to the slide number 17 later on.

[05:19:46] There are two recommendations. The first recommendation is actually with a unanimous support from committee members, but the second recommendation, there was a little division among the committee members of this where a staff wants to have a board's guidance so that they could prepare an agenda item to be posted for the meeting on June 27th.

[05:20:12] So keep that in mind. With that, let me introduce Noel Klaminka. Good evening, and we recognize this has been a long day, so we're very happy to have so many of you here with us. I'm going to not take any time with preamble because it's late, and I'm going to just turn this over to Carrie Reynolds.

[05:20:31] She is our senior manager. We changed names from coordinators to senior managers, and we're all getting used to it. So senior manager of health PE, driver's education and family life education. she has lots of things in her purview and she will be leading the presentation tonight thank you good evening happy to be here to share the recommendations from the flea cat committee with you this evening um go to the next slide so our objectives for this work session thank you not

[05:21:10] used to sitting at the head of the table um to provide an overview of the recommendations that flea cat had from this current school year and there were a few recommendations that are carried over from last school year that i'd like to review as well as mr moon referenced there is a recommendation related to grave 4 media on slide 17 where we're looking for the preference of the board and i'd also like to just provide an update of work to enhance the fle curriculum for students with disabilities i know that's something that's been of concern to the board and while it doesn't directly fall under the work of flea cac this seemed like an appropriate time to share that

[05:21:49] information with you as well. So, just very quickly, we're going to just give a background on the recommendations, the committee itself, and then go through an overview of the recommendations that are being made. You'll see at the end of the slide presentation there are quite a few recommendations for either new or revised objectives and descriptive statements at all of the grade levels, K through 12, and those are all provided for you at the end of the presentation, although we're not going to go through all of those recommendations individually this evening unless

[05:22:20] you want to spend three hours here instead of one all right so the background on the recommendations the recommendations for 23-24 are brand new they've not previously been presented to the school board and then we have the continuation there were a couple where in the past the school board had asked for additional information and there has been no action by the board on those recommendations our timeline for approval you did receive the report as new business last week no two weeks ago on may 9th and the community review period opened on may 10th and is ongoing now through

[05:22:59] june 10th and this will be on the for vote on june 27th following that we would work on curriculum development and professional to learning professional learning ongoing through school year 25 24 25 with full implementation by 25 26 and i've tried to identify there in the chart how we would break that down so some recommendations we would be able to complete and implement for this coming school year the remaining we would continue to work on with implementation during the 25 26 school year we do the reason that we can't implement

[05:23:38] everything next year's we do have to get everything posted for families at the beginning of the school year so that they can access and review the opt-out forms and opt-out letters are translated and sent out at the beginning of the year so it is challenging to try to implement mid-year with the FLE curriculum so in Fairfax County we have the option to have a locally developed curriculum so we use the standards of learning for FLE as a foundation as a basis and a reference but we do develop our own curriculum and because of that it does require school board approval and a community

[05:24:13] review and input process so each year flea cat comes together they we have about 30 members on the committee they talk about recommendations or topics that have brought forward by the school board by committee members it could be by staff family members students and they build those recommend their recommendations around those different topics once the school board receives it as is happening now we have that 30-day community review and input period followed by the school board vote all of the data that's collected through community review is summarized and provided to the board in advance of that vote and then we work to create everything so that it

[05:24:52] can be implemented for our students this is regulation 1708 different than i think other committees you heard from this evening i do chair the committee it's not chaired by a community member, and the committee really is advising me as the content coordinator on what they would recommend for development and inclusion in our curriculum. You can see there the makeup of the committee. I did put that was as of April of this year. Our committee was a little bit fluid. We had some members get appointed later in the year, some other members that had stepped off of the committee

[05:25:29] for different reasons, but at the end of the year, that was the makeup of the committee. We meet monthly. We have to meet at least three times a year. We generally meet about seven times a year. Our meetings are open to the public, although we do not take public comment during the meetings. All right, so now back to what we actually did this year. So the first piece that I want to talk about are recommendations around the instruction of boundaries and consent. I think that our committee has done a really great job in looking at this over the last couple of years and has well-developed recommendations K through 12 to support learning of students in this area.

[05:26:03] who we actually began this work in school year 21-22, where the committee began to review what was currently in place and start to make some thoughts about what they would like to see in the curriculum. And we also at that time gathered input from some various groups, such as a school counseling, our Office of Equity and Employee Relations. We worked with Fairfax County's domestic and sexual violence prevention services. So we've gotten input from several places.

[05:26:31] In the last school year, the committee received some information from the youth survey and used that data, and they were able to make recommendations K through 8. This year, we continued that work in 9 through 12, and they also received information on teen dating violence from the domestic and sexual violence services with Fairfax County government.

[05:26:52] So as a basic overview, the key ideas in K-8, helping students differentiate between trustworthy and trusted adults, using concepts of body autonomy and body boundaries with students, inclusive ways to help communicate no for nonverbal students, so using things like sign language, nonverbal communication, actually moving yourself out of the situation, using language of safe and unsafe with comfortable or uncomfortable to help increase understanding by our young people.

[05:27:25] students, introducing consent earlier, hearing and respecting no, so not just how to say no, but also if someone says no to you, how you can respect that. And then the committee felt it was important to introduce sexual harassment as early as grade seven. In nine through 12, we looked at developing and maintaining healthy relationships across a variety of different settings and relationships students have, identifying unhealthy relationships and strategies to navigate those relationships and end the relationship, the importance of setting boundaries and respecting

[05:28:02] the boundaries of others, including the need to give consent and the ability to withdraw consent and the idea that just because you give consent doesn't mean you can't change your mind at some point, and the recognition of sexual violence and resources that are available for assistance both in the community and within the school. So we're going to, I'll break these down just a little bit further into grade level bands. So looking at our earliest learners, kindergarten through grade three, They are learning how to say no, how to respond to behaviors that make them feel uncomfortable and unsafe. And those can be from a variety of different individuals. They're understanding

[05:28:41] characteristics of trustworthy adults and then identifying the adults that they trust, helping them understand like a teacher or a coach or a parent is a trusted adult, but really who is it in that child's life that they can trust and they would be comfortable talking to. We talk about expressions of affection and differentiating when those expressions are appropriate and when they're inappropriate and introducing and responding to inappropriate electronic messages or pictures introduced in grade one we know our students are on the internet social media and getting

[05:29:15] inappropriate messages and and use of the electronic media and then setting communicating and respecting body body boundaries introduced in grade three and at the bottom it just references the slides where you can see those specific objectives and descriptive statements.

[05:29:31] We have one example here just so you can see what it looks like and all of the slides that have the objectives and descriptive statements are set up the same. So on the left hand side you would see what's currently in place. The right hand side is the strikeout document with the new information and what is being removed. There are some that are brand new and they'll reference there is no current objective or descriptive statement and there's a couple of places where we've taken some things and either split them apart or combined a couple together into one larger objective.

[05:30:05] Moving on to our upper elementary, looking at warning signs of threatening or uncomfortable situations and how to respond. Child abuse and neglect is introduced into fifth grade and specifically social, emotional, physical, and financial abuse. Consent and bodily autonomy is also introduced in fifth grade and still looking at those trusted adults and resources that are available to help we move into middle school the as i said the introduction of sexual harassment in grade seven talking about respecting someone when someone does not give consent or when they

[05:30:45] withdraw their consent exploitation and situ situational awareness is introduced in grade eight and throughout we continue to help students with the resources that are available to help them and as we move into high school developing and maintaining healthy relationships in a variety of settings so this could be with family with friends a dating or a partner and also employment settings where they may have an employee or a co-worker relationship recognizing unhealthy relationships and how to navigate or end those relationships identifying different forms of

[05:31:22] sexual violence risk reduction prevention strategies and resources for help and assistance we do include in that sexual violence you've probably seen in the news sextortion is we're getting a lot of attention so that's been included as well as strangulation which is also being seen by Fairfax County Government Sexual Violence Prevention Services. Affirmative consent and withdrawal of consent. We do have the opportunities to practice communication and conflict resolution skills and in 12th grade there's a lesson very specifically on Virginia laws that are related to

[05:31:59] family life education topics. So that can be marriage, divorce, child abuse. There's several different laws that the students are looking at understanding for Virginia great so moving on the other area that where we have a couple of recommendations is around puberty instruction which is elementary and middle school so this is the one where we're looking to see if there's a preference for the board currently there is a piece of media in grade four called my changing life the complete guide to puberty and currently there is a boy's version and a girl's version so

[05:32:37] at the elementary level and the middle school level students are divided into boys classes and girls classes to receive this instruction so what was brought to our attention by a parent was in the boys media at the end there were diagrams and some more specific information about the male reproductive system that same type of information was not included in the girls media related to the female reproductive system. What I know is this video was introduced originally into the curriculum in 2010 when we first added instruction on puberty, and at that time the committee chose to

[05:33:16] remove that information from the female version of the video. I don't really know why I wasn't able to access that information in the documentation from that time, but it was taken out. So the The committee, their first recommendation was to add that content for the girls back in so that they would also have the visuals and the media that talks about the female reproductive system.

[05:33:42] And there was a little bit more information about the menstrual cycle as well. So that was the unanimous vote that Mr. Moon referred to in the committee felt was important for all the female students. The second recommendation the committee made was to create a combined version of that video, which would include both the male reproductive system and the female reproductive system, and all students would see that same video.

[05:34:07] They would still be in a boys' class or a girls' class, but within that class, all students would learn about the male reproductive system as well as the female reproductive system. and that was the vote that was a little bit closer and there were some varying opinions about what to do with that video a second piece of media is being recommended for grade seven this was originally recommended for grade six and seven in school year 21-22 after reviewing community review

[05:34:41] in the fall of 2022 the committee revised its recommendation for only grade seven they felt one that using the same media two years in a row really wasn't the best instructional approach and they also felt the content fit better for seventh grade students than they would for sixth grade students. The way that the information is presented is a more inclusive approach and a more current approach talking about puberty related to changes in hormones and how the body develops and responds to those hormones. The intended audience of this video is for parents so if you view it you

[05:35:18] will see that it's directed towards parents but the committee believed the video would be accessible and appropriate for students in grade seven now if we do change the video at grade four currently instruction does not include the external female genitalia in grades four through seven that's currently introduced in grade eight but the media would introduce the external female genitalia in the fourth grade. So that would require some small changes to our objectives

[05:35:53] and descriptive statements in grades four through seven. Some of those grade levels are very specific that the students are going to learn about the female reproductive system, and that's going to include the uterus, the ovaries, the fallopian tubes, the internal organs, but not the external. So to make sure that we're being very clear of what's being instructed, we would need to make some changes to those objectives and descriptive statements. Our next section, this past summer, we had a summer curriculum development team who read through the entire curriculum both the general education and the modified curriculum they had many recommendations for changes to improve the

[05:36:32] instruction and make it more accessible for students but there were a few recommendations that would require changes to the objectives and descriptive statements so it's those things very specifically that we are asking the board's support for those changes so we can make the changes to the lessons. That's going to be in kindergarten, grade five, grade 10, and an elementary modified emotional and social health objective. And just as an overview, there's three places in kindergarten. One, there's a lesson on families where we help students look at different

[05:37:10] types and makeup of families, and there's some language to be more inclusive of the different types of family structures that our students may be experiencing. A change to add language that terms appreciation and respect will be defined in examples provided. Those are terms that are used in the lessons but are big words for kindergartners so we want to make sure that they understand what those words mean as we're using them. And then adding a review of good and bad touches to a recommendation that had currently been made. So when you're looking at the recommendation in the end of the report you'll see that added as well. In grade five they wanted to add more information

[05:37:49] about where abuse and harassment may actually occur. In grade 10 in a human growth and development lesson adding a review of affirmative consent and the importance of setting and respecting boundaries so that would be another place where students could be exposed to that information and reinforce that. And then in the elementary emotional and social health unit for the modified curriculum adding a couple some language around communicating no as opposed to just saying no but some other ways that students could communicate no and then to review a few things that are still

[05:38:29] held over continuing from the previous year in 10th grade there is a piece of media testicular cancer and the importance of testicular self-exam tsc which is currently used in a lesson where in this lesson all students are learning about both breast cancer and testicular cancer but there is a small section of the lesson where students are currently split and the boys are watching this video and girls are receiving more instruction on breast self-awareness this video

[05:39:03] unfortunately is an older video which is only available on dvd many of our schools either no longer have dvd players or they don't have the dvd anymore it's broken it's lost whatever and it's no longer available for purchase so we're looking at removing that video because of those challenges for several of our schools we would still teach about breast cancer we would still teach about testicular cancer we would teach that to all students in the classroom and we know that this is an important topic so we have been looking for replacement media we have not found anything

[05:39:40] currently we do have the breast and testicular self-exam models available in the classroom so students can receive instruction that way and the models give them the opportunity to do the like a self-exam feel what a lump might feel like or an irregularity might feel like so they have some idea of what they might be looking for if they were doing a breast or testicular self-exam again in grade 10 this is really just a change to make more transparent what is already in the lesson the recommendation is to add in gender identity as part of the objective

[05:40:20] the lesson already includes instruction in gender identity and it's been there for several years So it really is just to make it a little bit more clear to families who might be reviewing the objectives and descriptive statements to see what's in the lesson. And then there has been a recommendation for the committee to consider teaching gender identity, the gender spectrum at the elementary level.

[05:40:48] Currently, Regulation 3204 does not allow for sexual orientation and gender identity to be instructed at elementary. But this is something that the committee feels they should be able, they would like to be able to have some discussion about to see if that would be appropriate at elementary and what it might look like at elementary.

[05:41:10] What grade level could it be at? What instruction would be included? They are not making a recommendation at this time to include that instruction, just simply to further explore what that might look like at the elementary level. And along with that, to be more inclusive in general, we have students with a variety of disabilities in the classroom, multilingual learners, diverse backgrounds, and we want to make sure that our curriculum is accessible and is approachable for all of the students who are receiving the instruction.

[05:41:39] Okay. So those were the recommendations that are being brought forward. To give you an update on where we are with the modified FLE, we began this work last summer. As I mentioned, we had a team of teachers that included both special education and general education teachers. And they came together to review the entire curriculum, both general education and modified.

[05:42:06] And when I speak about the modified curriculum, it's a curriculum for our students with low-incidence disabilities that's based on the general education, but modified to be accessible to those students. They did receive some professional development at the beginning around neurodiversity and UDL as a reference for their reading and recommendations.

[05:42:31] Using those recommendations, we'll continue work this summer with more curriculum teams to actually begin working on changing the lessons and making those available to teachers. And then we had those few objectives that you saw earlier that we would like to change so that we can make changes to the lessons that were recommended as well.

[05:42:59] We also, during this year, staff, not FLEACAC, staff learned about the EASE program, which is a special education sexual health program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

[05:43:15] So we've had a small team that has come together from Instructional Services, Special Education, and Title IX that met with EASE to learn more about the program and made some initial recommendations about how that program might be used in FCPS.

[05:43:31] There are a couple of other programs that I am now aware of that we are trying to learn more about, so it might be one option as a way to help support our students with intellectual disabilities and their understanding of sexual health topics, but this isn't something that has currently been funded or approved for use with students.

[05:43:53] And then looking forward into 24-25 and 25-26, we'll consider any recommendations on the committee for new and revised objectives for the modified curriculum that might come forward from additional work this summer, and then planning to implement the revised curriculum over the next couple years.

[05:44:12] We're anticipating a phased rollout with some of it coming up this year and some the following school year. And just to review again that timeline -- oh, sorry, we're at community review. review is ongoing right now. It'll be open and through June 10th. It's a web form on the on the FCPS website. There are I think we came up with 41 recommendations that are out there for the community so they can identify just through checkboxes specific recommendations they're commenting on or all of them. They have a free response to fill in their what they would like

[05:44:52] to share, and there's demographic information that is optional for them to complete. So that information will be summarized and shared with you prior to that June 27th vote. And there's the final timeline as just a review. Thank you so much.

[05:45:12] I'm going to start with just one question before I ask Ms. Anderson to call other board members. When you say a community feedback will be summarized and shared with the school board prior to June 27th. Could they get a more specific day by which day? Because both members may want to have enough sufficient time to leave those. Yes, so we know it closes on June 10th, so it really depends how many responses we get, but I would hope to have that to you by the start of the following week, which I think would be the 17th around that time. Okay, that will give us

[05:45:51] about 10 days all right thank you Ms. Anderson we're gonna start with Ms. Lady thank you Carrie that was a nice lengthy long presentation I'm curious I haven't heard any mention and perhaps I missed it of co-ed teaching of classes I know that there was lots of discussion and it felt like it just sort of fell and we're not I mean are we where are we with that everyone I saw that so I looked this way, too? So, no, I thank you, Miss Lady. We, last year, after a lot of discussion, decided to do a

[05:46:31] pilot of what we called a pilot of the enrollment for courses. And I, yeah, Miss Clamenco, if you want to, we're, that pilot project is moving forward. Before, we wanted to make sure that the modeling that we were envisioning was possible because there had been a question about whether schools would be able to staff the model that we were contemplating. Although we're really talking about three to five lessons at the most. So Ms. Clemenco, do you want to sort of remind us of what that pilot project looks like? Absolutely. So we've been working with the regions and we have

[05:47:08] approximately 15 schools who, some elementary and some middle, who will be piloting lessons next year for us the way that the pilot is set up it is gender combined default so we'll be communicating with families both through a letter and through meetings that if they do nothing their child will be in a gender combined setting for particular lessons and we're doing about two at each grade level if they choose to stay in gender separate that is perfectly fine and or if they choose to to completely opt out. So schools, this is the model that Dr. Reed's kind of speaking of. We're

[05:47:46] used to having a boys' room, a girls' room, and an opt-out students. Now we will have a gender combined room. So we're just testing what that's like to staff and what that experience is like, what the families and students and teachers feel about the whole thing, and then hopefully to prepare kind of a report to see if this is how we want to move forward. So we gender combined nine through nine through twelve already all lessons right okay thank you for that um thank you for mentioning the strangulation um is that something that is in the curriculum now or no it's not

[05:48:23] currently in the curriculum so that would be something new we do talk about sexual violence but we have not included strangulation to this point yeah because that i send an article to my colleagues that i read of late that just is very very sad um so thank you and hopefully that'll make it in and then the other thing is that you know it's just sort of like a like everything we've talked about the multiple languages that our students speak I'm just not sure how we sort of address that when it comes to some of these things but even some of the questions around what a family looks like even that can be interpreted in a very different way than kind of the I

[05:49:00] think the intent behind the writers of the question just something to reflect on I don't know how we have we have we address that when working with our kids And then the last question, pregnant teachers are not allowed to teach FLE? Is that still the case or has that changed? I never even heard that.

[05:49:17] I thought at one point they weren't allowed to. It's very possible, but no, that's not the case anymore. I was like, that never made sense to me, but thank you. Dr. Anderson. But I do remember Marianne Lakos, who used to be a school board member many, many years ago, when she was a teacher here she was not allowed to teach period as a pregnant person so that was very a long time ago I'm surprised that Miss Lady brought this up as a current issue well I have two

[05:49:54] primary questions in a couple of pages where you talked about where certain concepts are being introduced I didn't get an understanding as to where they're coming from like for example I think this is slide 13 where you talk about child abuse and neglect being introduced in grade five.

[05:50:12] Where is it currently? Is it just the grade above and I would actually have to go back and find specifically where it is but it would be a later grade than grade five currently. If you can provide that information because I think there's at least five to six instances where you've introduced the new grade level at which the concepts will be presented but not where they were coming from.

[05:50:43] And my second question is regarding, I remember a couple of years ago when we had very intense discussions regarding the gender combination and the parent feedback, et cetera, and what we struggled with at that point, which I did not see how we've captured here, and I've lost my papers, is the opportunity for parents and family members, caregivers to really have a chance to engage.

[05:51:11] we only have a web form here we've already discounted a huge group of our community we just talked about we have parents who are unable to access the written word how do they give feedback we also talked about not just today but over the course of all of the time that i've been on this board that we have parents who are not going to be the ones who are because they're on for whatever reason there's obstacles with them responding to an email how do we get their perspective to be included in this community review because all of our parents care they just

[05:51:46] can't respond in the same way so i'd like to hear a little bit more of that plan i'm thinking i'm thinking on the fly here right because um i think dr anderson you make a really good point i think this is the process that we have used to collect it electronically for easy synthesis but how would we go out and have schools collect that information and then us collect it back and synthesize it I'm not sure the best way to do it.

[05:52:18] I think our best bet maybe is to talk with Ms. Hall and communications to see if they have some strategies that will help us with this. It's a, yeah, I think that's our best bet, is to see if they could come up with some ideas that would allow us to really reach those families.

[05:52:35] I know it's a challenge in a lot of areas, but this is certainly important and we wanna make sure people have voice. - And my concern is that the survey, this community review has been open 11 days and we have people who can't access we've had open 11 days so i i would really like to see some sense of urgency about ensuring that we are capturing a full scope of our community and also i i'm very glad to see here that you've asked for the demographic information because i think that was also a huge point of discussion um the last time we were discussing this as a board but what i don't see here is the opportunity

[05:53:10] for individ well it's not having the opportunity to provide multiple responses because we've had that issue before in this web format are people able to submit more than one response or do you have a means to limit that i believe they are able to submit more than one response we use the same categories and format that we did last year where students were individuals were able to select multiple responses i i guess what i what i'm trying to say is to respond to the survey multiple times because that could also sorry i thought you were speaking specifically to the demographic

[05:53:45] information no just to submit multiple times because if i have a particular perspective i can just sit there and skew the data if i if i just want to lean the survey in a certain point to a certain perspective so i always wonder when we do provide just kind of links that can be sent across the country as we know has been done before and so the data is not as valid as i think we would like it to be and I don't think I'm hearing about those guardrails. I'll just chime in that again I

[05:54:19] can go back with Ms. Hall because we're using the the county system to do this so I I'm not as familiar whether we've corrected that or not but maybe we can put something in the Friday letter if we can come up you know at least provide you the information the status quo and anything that they can suggest for us to do. And if we can't do this and again the survey's already been open 11 days if we're unable to do this then how do we treat that data how do we have

[05:54:44] some reliability to what's being presented thank you Ms. Seizmerheiser I apologize it took me a minute to get my um camera on thank you for this report and for um the all the work that you've done I'm really excited to see that we are using UDL and neurodiversity as you know I've been advocating for probably four years to take a look at our FLE curriculum um so I wanted to to ask you a couple of questions on that first. When you say that the gen ed teachers and

[05:55:23] special ed teachers got together and were given some sort of training on UDL or some information on UDL and neurodiversity and then looked at the general education and modified curriculum, did they also use, make changes to the general education curriculum with that lens in mind or is it just kind of looking at the modified curriculum? I'll pause there.

[05:55:42] They did look at both. They were provided with a framework to review those curriculums using the cast framework um and so we had teachers who were looking at the general and the modified so there are recommendations for changes to both curriculums okay that's that's great to know because that was what i was advocating for and as you know i even came and spoke to fully pack a few years ago about the importance of this and we see um a lot of our special education students and the risk with 909 and we want to of course give them the right education right to prevent problems

[05:56:15] SO ON THAT LINE, I APPRECIATE YOU TALKING ABOUT REALLY HONING IN ON TEACHING BY CONSENT, BUT ARE YOU DOING LESSONS ON SORT OF IMPLICIT CONSENT OR IMPLICIT LACK OF CONSENT? BECAUSE I KNOW GOING INTO COLLEGE IN THE WORKPLACE, THERE'S A LOT OF CONVERSATIONS AROUND EVEN IF SOMEONE DIDN'T SAY NO DIRECTLY, YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO INFER IT. SO I'LL PAUSE THERE AND ASK THAT QUESTION. SO WE ARE INCLUDING SPECIFICALLY affirmative consent and the idea that the consent has to be clearly communicated um and i think if

[05:56:49] we look back to how we say no um you know we are recognizing that not all individuals can verbally communicate no so we need to have other clear ways to communicate no which is not necessarily implying but being very clear that your choice is is no um i appreciate that i think i was looking not so much for non-verbal communication but in terms of um there seems to be an expectation that even if someone doesn't say no that people can read when they're uncomfortable and so how are we

[05:57:25] preparing our students for that world that they live in i'll pause there i think that's the affirmative consent piece so it's not so much that you can imply that somebody is saying no it's that you really need to hear that person say yes and give consent to engage in the behavior okay i just I just wanted to make sure because I want to, as soon as we got in the real world, we want to prepare them for the expectations that they're moving into.

[05:57:48] I want to switch also to social media. When you talk about harassment and stalking or, again, consent, how are we ensuring that, because so much of our students now communicate, right, on all these different platforms and messages and things, how are we ensuring they understand what harassment looks like, not just, I mean, I think we all know harassing words and things, but for some students, sending 10 text messages a day is considered harassment.

[05:58:12] like how are we making sure that in the world they live in now by the rules that they live in they understand that i'll pause there so that those are i'm sorry no that's fine um so yes we we're still we once these objectives and descriptive statements are approved then we'll be developing the lessons and we want to make sure that we're using real world real life examples and authentic um authentic examples that students can relate to sorry no i appreciate that i just you know as i think through these things and talking to a lot of high school students right it's the

[05:58:49] world is changing and we need to make sure that they're fitting into their world as opposed to what we consider so that's why i'm asking some of these questions i think that social media aspect is very important we had a one of our high school students that served on the committee gave us some really great ideas of things that she felt should be included in what she and her peers are seeing so we definitely have that noted um as a reference to make sure we're including those things in our our instruction as well okay and then um i would encourage i appreciate that voice is in there and that we're looking at that i would encourage that when we do that we're looking and i guess i'll

[05:59:24] ask the question are we also looking at how to then have appropriate ways to interact right so we're giving replacement as well as just saying what isn't appropriate yes we're trying to create a skill-based curriculum where students are learning those skills whether it's interacting online or how to communicate problem solve resolve conflicts so that they're not only learning those skills but also having opportunities to practice and can transfer those hopefully into real life real world situations thank you i'll just mention one last thing just generally um to miss komenko mr smith and dr reina and doctor you know i've talked about this a little bit but there are some students like i'm very familiar with the ease program and i'm glad you're working with these

[06:00:04] folks i think it's a great program so and if there's some funding you know concerns around that maybe we can look at year end because it's probably a little late for this budget but i do think that's a great curriculum um i do want to mention that for some of our students whether modified or not modified curriculum who need more direct instruction in some of these things especially as we're going into non-verbal consent um i do think we should look at the use of our technology tools like vr for example and dr reed knows i know someone who's working in this space right to give students a safe way to practice this because obviously you can't practice what is sexual harassment and not harassment to students but you could do it in a vr world that you could actually have that direct instruction so as you're looking at modified

[06:00:42] curriculum and the real need for direct explicit instruction take a look at technology tools i know i'm out of time but for us i wanted to add so i appreciate it if you have any comments i welcome that mystics it thank you uh i'm still going through the lot of details here but i um on grade 11 um if the slide said on it's on page 51 that that's where we talk a lot about uh review type of sexual violence um assault abuse strangulations extortion trafficking is it um anything beyond

[06:01:21] before that that students are being taught or is it uh maybe it's grade 9 to 12 but it's under grade 11 that's where you put it so trafficking is introduced in grade six and continued all the way through grade 12 exploitation and those topics are also introduced in middle school and continued through high school you're only seeing it in grade 11 because that's where happens to be one where there's a change being recommended but those others would continue at those grade levels the other thing i wanted to see there is the phone piece here that everybody

[06:01:58] has phone in school and there have been incidents when students record other students and then post it and send it to other you know their friends and it come it can become really complicated the discipline comes later but the education comes first you know prevention so are there lessons for the both male and female students for what to do per law and the virginia law is very specific about that are they being given some legal advice so that they don't get

[06:02:31] into those traps later and make a mistake yes we have several lessons on internet safety internet use social media use many of them fall outside of fle and are in the general health curriculum but the students are receiving that instruction no i'm not i'm i'm so sorry i was referring to students taking pictures of other students or sending pictures to other students that's yes that's also also included and we have lessons on sexting and would include taking pictures of

[06:03:05] others and sending it okay um are they uh aware that that um recording some you know without permission can be a felony i mean are they really told the consequences is is is that bad because there are students who really get into that and then they are getting arrested yes the legal consequences are also included um beginning in middle school all right thank you miss marin

[06:03:41] okay we've officially crossed into eight o'clock it's been six hours so but i do have a few questions and comments um a real simple basic one so with your new uh adjusted title miss reynolds does regulation 1708 need to have a title change because it references your title so something tiny Just to refresh, and sorry if I missed this, what gets posted on June 27 that the board votes on, it's the original and then the comments, or it's going to be what you present to us as the comments?

[06:04:14] Because you've already posted for New Business, so how does that work, and maybe that's more of a clear question, I don't know. I just want to know what we need to read before we vote. Right, so typically what was posted for New Business was the report, right?

[06:04:33] And that's what you're actually voting on, like you're approving the report. As an addendum, we include the public comment. Now, depending, and certainly we would take your input, but we're collecting all this information, and typically we kind of summarize it and synthesize it for you.

[06:04:52] And we've had, I can't remember, I feel like one year we've had 7,000 comments, and some years we've had three comments, right? I mean, the range is great. So because it's just a matter of how people feel about the change, whether they feel really compelled. So what we will do is we'll repost the report, and the public comment is really just to help you all with your approval process.

[06:05:15] So we don't really vote on the public comment. That's just information for you. Does that help? I think so. So it seems then if we would like changes to happen as a result of the comments, would we then offer amendments or follow-ons? Yes. Okay.

[06:05:31] So that is also what we'll be voting on. Great. Thank you. That's helpful. I wanted to state that I am very interested in the curriculum touching on eating disorders. I hear about that challenge in my community, and it's very different than those of us who grew up with like 90210.

[06:05:47] It's not that kind of eating disorders anymore. and I think, Carrie, we've talked about that, I can't recall, but just really addressing that it affects kids of different genders, different ages, it looks different, so I really think that families need that support. Sex trafficking, human trafficking, we've heard a lot about that at our school board meetings as well, and so I know I've connected a person who spoke with some resources, they want to be sure that kids are understanding that in terms of, you know, maybe that's in the harassment section, you know, of the curriculum, and I also wonder, do we teach self-defense, like a self-defense course either offered by FCPS or in partnership with a community you know on

[06:06:25] provider um we do not currently teach self-defense it's come up a couple of times and we did one of my colleagues owner the specialist did look at a program last year but we did not move forward with it at that time but it's come up a couple of times um to teach self-defense yeah i've only seen it offered it's offered quite a bit like the Girl Scout troops I see but when I try to get a provider it just doesn't seem like it's offered a lot so even if it was a extra class or something I just think that might be of interest but I'll leave it at that for now and I just want to share

[06:07:05] the the eating disorders is something that we've been talking about it is included in both in our general health curriculum and I have been talking with our school psychology staff about some other ways that we might approach that topic as well yeah i think it's really fascinating it's like trauma-informed you don't really realize the things you say that could trigger things and so i find it quite interesting um but yeah it's just a newer way of thinking about it than i knew i grew up with so thank you miss st john cunning um thank you for the report um i just do want to

[06:07:43] echo my colleagues saying that the eating disorder um situation where i'm you know my lens is more elementary and seeing it as young as you know 10 years old having eating disorders so that's something that resonates with me um i want to thank you for your work i want to thank you for for this because you know dr reed often says that you know people in schools have the power to change the trajectory of a person's life and i have seen how this information has actually done

[06:08:17] that because students have felt safe and have been able to come forward about situations so i want to thank you for that i think sometimes we lose sight of how impactful this is i do have a question in terms of how do you determine when sub subjects are introduced i'm looking at page 14 when you say introduce sexual harassment in grade seven and the reason i ask that is because working in an elementary school and i mean i didn't go through all of the the areas where i saw you were

[06:08:51] introducing it like at grade seven but i know that because of cell phones there are these are issues in elementary schools many excuse me the committee did spend quite a bit of time talking about where to introduce that and it really came down to where they felt it would be most supported by the community as a whole and there was some concern that putting it at the lower grades may not be as acceptable i'm certainly open to looking at doing that earlier and i know

[06:09:26] excuse me in conversation with our title nine office certainly younger grades are seeing that as well um and the other question that i have and you kind of answered it a little bit when We were talking about, you know, the survey that goes out.

[06:09:44] In terms of, I know you said it ranges from 3,000 to 7,000. Do you have an average in terms of more or less what the responses have been? I really don't. Over the years, we've changed the format so many different times, so it's a little bit hard to predict.

[06:10:02] I know that Ms. Reynolds checked today, and we have 124 comments so far, which is not a lot. It's not nothing. but it's not a lot. So we could look at what the average is to kind of give you some context of is this a lot or a little. We can definitely do that. We have the records. And I may have missed it because I heard the demographic. Do you capture the demographic information on that?

[06:10:27] Because that's also another concern of mine to make sure that what we just I just like to look at that data. And again, thank you. Thank you for your work. Okay, we're going to move to go backs in just a second but I'm gonna go ahead and take my turn first it's probably fair to say that you're the number the amount of feedback that we received is also generated directly by the number of changes that we're making correct like so on years that we're making a more significant change we'll have more feedback it's really not the number but sometimes they've been more controversial exactly so this so it may not be an apples to apples comparison as

[06:11:06] we move through just because so we can't really tell how much feedback we're getting based on the change. I would really like to thank you guys for the work that you've put in. It's very thoughtful and I appreciate the work of the committee. What I will say is I wholeheartedly can't tell you how much I support making sure that our female students understand what's going on with their bodies just the same way that we're ensuring that the male students do, particularly in the scope of what's going on in our country right now.

[06:11:35] So I am in very much support of that particular aspect of the discussion. and Dr. Anderson. - It's very quick, I think one of the things, and we had some discussions about this last time, it was quite the controversial year when we were here last.

[06:11:55] So it's kind of burned into my memory. I don't want it to come across to our community that these decisions are being made in a vacuum, or these suggestions and recommendations to move things from one grade level to the other are just arbitrary.

[06:12:10] So I wonder, how can you assert to our community that there are some research there's some research behind this and best practices again i'm not a fan of just saying it's best practice we have to show why it's a best practice or the research that has led to it becoming a best practice because i think that will be very helpful in terms of creating a little bit more understanding for parts of our community that may wonder why are these things happening in the places where they are because we i have elementary parents who are like nope this cannot come into my child's world at all at this point because they're too young so i think having

[06:12:46] that kind of information might be very helpful just to kind of strengthen the positions and then my second question i'll let you answer just a second my second question is related to what mr moon shared earlier are we providing feedback in this room about something or this is for the uh tonight if possible we get some guidance so that they can properly a address in in putting up agenda item uh i think earlier there was a question that that whole report has been already posted

[06:13:21] as a new business at the last meeting and the report includes recommendations for both of them recommendation number and number two which are seen our slide number 17 if there is a strong feeling against that we want to let them know i mean i mean you know nothing we say or we do tonight is a binding on our final vote but i think staff wants to know which direction

[06:13:51] they should go and that's what's on page seven slide 17 slide 17. thank you for that i was just going to say that I think Ms. Reynolds and FLECAC really take time to bring in experts in the field right to to help them understand the the issue and the topic and then I don't know if there's research about the best years to introduce any things but maybe you're speaking more of data that shows that these are issues that need to be addressed. I think all of the above because

[06:14:27] for the most part our families don't sit in FLECAC and so they are not privy to some of the experts you have coming into the room just finding some way to indicate that in the report because this is primarily what most people are going to be accessing maybe this meeting but most likely not okay we're going to go to Ms. Seizmoorheiser and then to Ms. Dixit thank you I just wanted to um don't you know generally to repeat what my colleagues said but I feel like this is important enough to repeat it to show this more than one board member and I know there's more at the table

[06:15:07] but i wanted to just raise my voice in support of what miss um anderson said about if we're going to teach men about boys about their body parts we should be teaching girls at the same time and i think that's very very important so i don't want to be playing my other colleagues but i do want to just say that was on my list and it wasn't there and i want you to know that i also really support that um and in general i don't think we should be i think information should be given right to everybody because information can help them understand themselves better so i just wanted to raise my voice and support that too now that i have almost no voice i'm going to say thank you

[06:15:45] very much for all your hard work i appreciate it so i'm also a big proponent of equal rights and women girls everybody should have the same as men and girls should be taught the same way boys are taught uh no discrimination um but i wanted to raise another topic about self-defense we we said discussed earlier uh fcpd does uh self-defense trainings um and the federal agencies do that too we can partner with them without any cost to us they'll do a free training for the girls and boys

[06:16:20] both and especially for the you know girls they uh not just physically how to fight uh within you know somebody's you know attacking you or you know but you could actually physically be sorry mindful of like these days kids have their headphones in and they're walking and walking on the street don't know and what's happening so just to be very so the police officer have gone through the trainings and they basically tell you to watch your surrounding when you're going into your car when you're going walking the street I think our high school or middle school students should start getting that it's going to help them to even their college where

[06:16:59] there a lot of campus violence happens later to them so so I think we can partner with these organizations okay so I think that we're done with the before before I ask for boards guidance one comment you know we even though a our family life education curriculum is a locally developed curriculum but we still must follow a state guideline developed by a Virginia State Board of

[06:17:35] education there are guidelines they want us to follow so so that is where if somebody asks where is that coming from it's a largely is coming from State Board of Education but we have a local components as well so with that could somebody put up slide number 17 just to be clear what you are doing try number 17 on the screen again this is just to give you a guidance it's not final vote

[06:18:07] okay so current report which has been posted as a new business includes both recommendation one and recommendation number two recommendation number one is with a unanimous support of a FULICAC members recommendation number two came with a division there was a nine to six division and nine supporting recommendation number two six opposing it so that's where we are staff is

[06:18:43] seeking you know tonight board's guidance whether they should change their report their agenda item or just keep it as is right now it includes both of them in the report so can and we want to go ahead and clarify we're not taking an official vote no we know we are just taking a consensus vote in order to give staff direction to ensure that we are presenting the the um everything for a vote correctly on the 27th right and we've heard from several of you that you support adding in the female information into the female video what we really want to know

[06:19:23] is do you support adding the male and female into both the female video and the mailbook should everybody see everything or are we or should we just keep the boys seeing the boys parts and the girls learning about their parts it's not very official language sorry it's late no you're fine i think you're heading towards the question that i have when i and please correct me if i'm wrong when i read recommendation number two that says everybody gets everything everybody gets everything yes and the recommendation number one is you add just the

[06:19:56] what the the girls would put the female reproductive system for everybody no the girls right now the boys are seeing the boys um parts but the girls are not seeing anything so we just want to ask okay right that's where your colleagues are coming out to everybody gets everything i'm clear thank you okay can i ask a clarification question just real fast you're you're talking about we're still we still have this is this is a video that we're adding it is not necessarily discussion the discussion includes male and female i'm correct right in fourth grade the students are only

[06:20:34] learning about either the male reproductive system if they're in the boys class and the female if they're in the girls in fifth grade is when they are introduced to the opposite i got you so this would be an advance of this yes so it would move that a grade lower correct and i think flicac um the vote was much closer that um it was it was nine to six so nine people thought it was a good idea um for everyone to see everything and six people weren't so sure um so it came out positive but everybody was in favor like many of the people who spoke here of recommendation one um but not as not as clear so if you would like to give us some guidance so we can clear you know

[06:21:14] we can put forward one specific thing when you do the vote to just kind of keep it clean that would be great if you're not comfortable tonight you'd rather wait and see what the public says that's fine too we will so the so the video just has a diagram right it's yes there are diagrams they're in of the external female genitalia it's more of drawings um but yes it's not it's not like real people okay okay yeah that that's um when you say video and i just i just want to make sure it's a diagram yes okay dr anderson can you speak a little bit can you say more and

[06:21:52] more things that are causing me to have more questions can you speak a little bit to the committee's rationale for bringing it down from fifth to fourth the committee felt that all students should learn about everybody and i think it's also some of the inclusiveness we when we're dividing our students into boys and girls groups we know some students are choosing a room based on how they identify which may not match their sex assigned at birth so it allows students to and ensure students are learning about the reproductive anatomy that they have without

[06:22:31] having to be uncomfortable necessarily in a setting i will add that some of the the recommendation to vote i think the biggest concern of the people who voted against it was that they were concerned more parents would opt their student out altogether and not receive any of the instruction and that's always the rub because we want for students to have access to this but if they're not even in the class therein is the problem okay thank you i think i've got clarity mystics it so like I earlier said I support women girls to see their

[06:23:10] and to their video but at the same time they the current recommendation one is where with the consensus just wanted to say that that's where I am going with it okay so mr. moon would you like to go ahead and let's vote on yes if you could go around just to see where we are today and it's not final vote so if I could hear from uh vice chair mary well i'd like to see the comments so okay you want to wait until you

[06:23:43] see the comments okay miss lady i'm in the same place i want to wait and see the comments wait okay miss marcia saint john cunning yeah miss mercy is perfect um i i'm also in the same place and just um just to address dr anderson when you say why did they move it to the fourth grade we have fourth grade girls starting their periods so they need to know about it yeah so can we clarify for recommendation number one just to give some sort of direction recommendation number one

[06:24:19] can i just have a quick show of hands this is not an official vote it's just consensus um can i understand are we in agreement with recommendation number one including guards parts of the guards no record no these are not either or it's both oh it's not one or the other i think i'm confused do one without two we can do one without two but but it you can't do two without one so okay no i guess i just what's the vote on i guess i'm confused with that we're just trying

[06:24:55] to to gain some consensus that we can move staff forward to make sure that we're we're moving forward the recommendation on the 27th that the that the board at least we've given some indication that this is the i get that i just wasn't sure whether we're raising hands for recommendation one or both of them that's what i was confused i'm getting the sense that you're going to say with recommendation number two that we're going to hold off to see comments which is perfectly fine um recommendation but i did see here a significant support for recommendation number one so i wanted to go ahead and catch that one if we could so recommendation number one if

[06:25:29] you agree can you raise your hand you said you did that just okay okay so we have a recommendation so that's you okay so yes it's supported from all eight and i guess and then recommendation i'm sorry the sense of the bowl seems to be we're going to wait until we hear from in our community on recommendation number two with that my recommendation to you is to go home and watch

[06:26:07] the video there is a 22 minute long video if you watch it you will see what you're talking about if you haven't all right oh there's a link in the report okay can i also confirm um particularly since we have voted that we would like to see that that feedback is on if we can aim as close to the 17th as humanly possible so that way we can have some discussions before we get to the meeting that would be great miss dixon thank you uh miss anderson i did want to know when recommendation

[06:26:40] one the is the menstruation will be also included if say you know because it says only in second two number two but what about in one in fourth grade there's a little bit of information on the menstrual cycle in the girls version of the video currently but if there was a combined version there would be more more information around menstruation the girls will get the more information around menstruation with recommendation one so it's really a question of if the boys are receiving that instruction as well okay so they're getting their information so that's what i was asking we

[06:27:17] just not clarified here so that's what i'll say okay thanks yes from what i understand they're receiving the information they just don't have a coordinating video at this point yes now they're going to be getting the video so recommendation number one is that girls will also receive the video that boys are receiving thank you thank you both members and staff that gosh we're able to to finish this just a little more than an hour.

[06:27:42] That's a record breaking. Okay, thank you, good night.

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