Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, May 23, 2024

Date: Thursday, May 23, 2024
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 5h 51m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD6COX4Y4dE
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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[00:01:14] - This May 23rd, 2024 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and the performance of the national anthem by the Sangster Elementary School 6th grade advanced class under the direction of Jessica Kuzderman and Diana Cho.

[00:01:33] - I pledge allegiance to the flag.

[00:03:41] - Here another round of applause for our incredibly talented students. Agenda item 2.02 announcements. Ms. St. John Cunning has submitted a written request attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a medical conflict all in favor of approving miss st john cunning's request miss Sizemore hyzer mr mcdaniel mr mckelveen miss lady miss marin mr dunn dr anderson miss anderson mystics mr moon and myself that's unanimous for all those present miss st john cunning would you like to test your microphone we're still working on the

[00:04:19] connection all right well we'll test her when she's connected all right if you would like to review a copy of the agenda and any agenda item that is being discussed tonight that information may be found at the back of the auditorium or on the website at fcps.edu school board board docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps.edu tv ch99 this is a reminder that the school board will no longer make remarks about proclamations when it is presented for the board vote they may choose to make remarks during board

[00:04:56] matters agenda item 2.03 chuck fanshawe appreciation proclamation i call on miss marron for a proclamation whereas charles chuck fanshawe has exemplified outstanding leadership and dedication throughout his tenure in fairfax county public schools leaving an enduring mark on fcps and whereas during his career of over 40 years mr fanshawe provided senior leadership to military

[00:05:35] and civilian operations and facilities engineering and administrative services including at Gwinnett County Public Schools, George Mason University, and the United States Mission to NATO. And whereas Mr. Fanshawe was appointed Chief Operating Officer in July 2023 after serving as the Interim Assistant Superintendent for Facilities and Transportation Services since August 2022. And whereas during his tenure here at Fairfax County Public Schools, utilizing the single-thread leadership theory, Mr. Fanshawe prioritized the reorganization of the Department of Facilities and Transportation Services, FTS, which led to the division of

[00:06:10] FTS into three departments: Operations, Facilities, Services, and Capital Programs, and Safety and Security. With each department now led by its own chief, this has enabled a much deeper dive by each chief into the many complex issues concerning the three resulting departments, and ultimately improved delivery of services for the benefits of students and families, as well as faculty and staff.

[00:06:32] And whereas Mr. Fanshawe played a significant role in the recruitment of two new members of the senior leadership team, Andy Muick, Chief Operating Officer, and Janice Szymanski, Chief of Services and Capital Programs. And whereas since 2021, Mr. Fanshawe has served on FCPS's Facilities Planning Advisory Council, or FPAC, which advises the school board on the development of strategic, comprehensive, and long-term plans for educational and educational support facilities.

[00:06:57] whereas Mr. Fanshawe served FCPS with distinction and retired on December 15th 2023 now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board extends its highest commendation and deepest appreciation to Chuck Fanshawe for his outstanding and unwavering service to Fairfax County Public Schools and to the students and residents of this community.

[00:07:19] Thank you Ms. Marin is there a second? Second. Dr. Anderson I will now call for a vote all those in favor Ms. Sizemore-Hyser Mr. McDaniel mr mckelveen miss lady miss marron mr dunn dr anderson miss anderson miss dixit mr moon and myself that is unanimous for all those in attendance agenda item 2.04 dr sherry agnew scott appreciation proclamation i call on miss sizemore heiser for a proclamation whereas dr sherry agnew

[00:07:57] scott has exemplified outstanding leadership and dedication throughout her esteemed tenure as assistant superintendent of human resources in fairfax county public schools fcps leaving an indelible mark on FCPS and whereas Dr. Agnew Scott has 11 years of high-level human resources experience including serving as a director of human resources with the Chesapeake Virginia Public Schools in addition to previous experience as both a school administrator and classroom teacher and whereas excuse me during her tenure with Fairfax County Public Schools Dr. Agnew Scott accelerated departmental development and improvement by

[00:08:34] establishing processes and standard operating procedures, establishing expectations for continual professional development, and updating numerous outdated or misaligned regulations to align with the Code of Virginia, Virginia Retirement System, and Virginia Department of Education rules. Dr. Agnew Scott's leadership resulted in the Department of Human Resources regularly engaging in data-focused decision-making with every office maintaining baseline key performance indicators to leverage insights to drive results and whereas under Dr. Agnew Scott's leadership the Department of Human Resources identified and implemented innovative strategies to

[00:09:13] improve internal processes and create customer-centered solutions and is well positioned to implement the new human capital management system and other related projects and whereas a graduate of James Madison University Dr. Agnew Scott earned her master of science and education leadership from Old Dominion University and her doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Phoenix and whereas Dr. Agnew Scott served two terms on the Advisory Board on Teacher Education and Licensure ABTEL for the Virginia Department of Education and whereas Dr. Agnew Scott was named to the position of

[00:09:52] Chief Human Resources Officer for Norfolk Public Schools in April 2024 and has recently ended her tenure with Fairfax County Public Schools. Now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board extends its highest commendation and deepest appreciation to Dr. Sherry Agnew Scott for her outstanding and unwavering service to Fairfax County Public Schools and to the students and citizens of this community.

[00:10:16] Thank you. Miss Sizemore Heiser. Is there a second? I second. Thank you. Miss Marin. I'll call for a vote. All those in favor. Miss Sizemore Heiser, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. McElveen, Miss Lady, Miss Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Miss Anderson, Miss Dixit, Mr.

[00:10:34] Moon and myself. That is unanimous for all those in attendance the motion passes agenda item 2.05 Dr. Grace Taylor appreciation proclamation I call on Dr. Anderson for the proclamation whereas Dr. Grace Taylor exemplified outstanding leadership and dedication throughout her 11 years of service to Fairfax County Public Schools leaving an enduring mark on FCPS and whereas Dr. Taylor began her illustrious instructional career as a

[00:11:11] a social studies teacher assistant principal and principal in DeKalb County Georgia and served as principal with the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado and Alexandria City Public Schools and received the distinguished educational leadership award by the Washington Post and whereas Dr. Taylor joined Fairfax County Public Schools in 2013 as the cluster 5 director and was later selected as the executive principal for Region 3. As executive principal, she supported 29 schools by providing principals with support,

[00:11:51] guidance, and coaching. Dr. Taylor worked closely with assistant principals and school-based administrators in the region by facilitating professional development throughout the school year. She spearheaded the development of assistant principals through a robust program that empowered leaders to share best practices in an effort to close achievement gaps and increase the graduation rate of students in Region III, and whereas Dr. Taylor served as interim assistant

[00:12:24] superintendent for Region III from December 2021 to December 2023, leading student achievement, assessment, hiring of principals, and promoting positive, capable, and diverse school leadership in the Edison, Hayfield, Lewis, Mount Vernon, and West Potomac Pyramids.

[00:12:45] She invested in leadership development of aspiring principals in her region, hiring many Region 3 administrators as principals. The fierce pride in Region 3 that is evident in teachers, staff, and leaders who work there can be attributed in large part to Dr. Taylor.

[00:13:06] And whereas Dr. Taylor was a staunch supporter and advocate for military-connected families. During her tenure, she challenged Region 3 schools to seek the Purple Star designation, leading to a significant increase of Region 3 schools being awarded this designation.

[00:13:25] And whereas Dr. Taylor relentlessly pursued excellence for students by maintaining a focus on high-quality collaborative teams focused on strong tier one instruction, finding opportunities to incorporate the student voice and creating a caring culture for all. She cares deeply about those she leads and serves, prioritizes personal outreach to both staff and families to foster collaboration and forges partnerships in the pursuit of enhancing student achievement and development and whereas dr. Taylor earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in

[00:14:04] history from Emory University in Atlanta a master of education and specialist in education degrees and educational leadership from Georgia State University and her doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from Virginia Tech and whereas dr. Taylor was named to the position of Chief of Staff for Alexandria City Public Schools in December of 2023 and ended her tenure with Fairfax County Public Schools. Now therefore be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board

[00:14:39] extends its highest commendation and deepest appreciation to Dr. Grace Taylor for her outstanding and unwavering service to Fairfax County Public Schools and to the residents of this community and its students thank you dr anderson is there a second second thank you mr moon i'll call for the vote all those in favor ms seismor heiser mr mcdaniel mr mckelveen miss lady miss marin mr dunn dr anderson miss anderson mystics at mr moon and myself that is unanimous for all

[00:15:11] board members present the motion passes agenda item 2.06 mark greenfelder appreciation proclamation i call on mr moon for a proclamation thank you mr chairman well as mark greenfelder example qualified, outstanding leadership, a remarkable dedication throughout his tenure in Fairfax County Public Schools, FCPS, leaving an indelible mark on FCPS.

[00:15:44] And whereas Mr. Greenfelder began his instructional career in FCPS in 1992 as a classroom teacher at Mount Vernon Woods Elementary School, Cameron Elementary School, Garfield Elementary School, and Washington Irving Middle School, where he was a former student.

[00:16:03] He then served in school administrator roles as Greenbrier East Elementary School and Robinson Secondary School, and whereas Mr. Greenfelder served as principal of Thorough Middle School for eight years. During his tenure at Thorough Middle School, he was recognized by the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers in 2008 as a top-rated principal.

[00:16:28] Recognized in 2009 by the Minority Student Achievement Oversight Committee for outstanding performance in closing achievement gaps in FCPS and left Thorough Middle School to receive the Governance Award for Educational Excellence in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. And whereas Mr.

[00:16:51] Greenfelder went on to be the first ever alumni from West Springfield High School to serve as its principal. And whereas in 2014, Mr. Greenfelder was named Executive Principal for school improvement. In this role, he developed and implemented the framework for a new comprehensive school improvement model called Project Momentum, which had outstanding success in closing gaps and ensuring schools met VDOE state accreditation standards. And whereas in 2016, Mr. Greenfelder

[00:17:28] was named Executive Director of the Office of School Support to facilitate division-wide school improvement strategies and resources. Under his leadership, FCPS was the first school division in the Commonwealth that was allowed to conduct its own school improvement academic reviews.

[00:17:47] And whereas in 2020, Mr. Greenfelder was named the first Assistant Superintendent for the Department of School Improvement and Supports, a new department that provided division-wide support and excellence in the areas of school support, assessment and reporting, student activities and athletics, and non-traditional schools. Additionally, Mr. Greenfield helped lead the division through the COVID-19 pandemic, helping to create virtual supports and alternative

[00:18:22] pathways for students to receive academic support. Under his leadership, FCPS left Virginia in allowing students to participate and compete in a variety of athletic contests and activities safely. And whereas Mr. Greenfelder graduated from West Springfield High School in 1987, Virginia Tech with a Bachelor of Science in Education earned the Master of Education in Education Leadership from George Mason University and served FCPS with distinction before retiring

[00:18:56] until November 30 to 2023 now therefore be resolved that Fairfax County School Board extends its highest commendation and deepest appreciations to Mark Greenfelder for his outstanding and unwavering service to Fairfax County Public Schools and to the students and residents of this community. Thank you Mr. Moon is there a second? I second. Thank you Ms. Anderson I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, Ms. Sizemore-Hyser, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. McElveen,

[00:19:32] Ms. Lady, Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, and myself. That is unanimous for all board members present. The motion passes. I would like to welcome back Mark Greenfelder and invite all those in support of the Mark Greenfelder Appreciation Proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:20:02] After the photo, the guests and staff will depart the dais and we'll go from there.

[00:20:06] I would like to welcome back Dr. Grace Taylor and invite all of those in support of the Grace Taylor Appreciation Proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:22:01] I would like to welcome back Dr. Sherry Agnew Scott and invite all of those in support of the Sherry Agnew Scott Appreciation Proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:23:34] I would like to welcome back Chuck Fanshawe and invite all those in support of the Chuck Fanshawe Appreciation Proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:26:23] Yeah. All right. We'll pick things back up. Agenda item 3.01, community participation.

[00:26:38] The next order of business is community participation. We welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening. Additional information about signing up to provide comments at school board regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board website.

[00:26:54] During the sign-up process, community members acknowledged they were informed of the school board's expectations for proper decorum when providing comments. these expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful of one another shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats including when recording video or taking photos we are grateful to have those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation school board members will will be listening but

[00:27:34] not responding madam clerk please call the first speaker yoshiko mori thank you very much for this opportunity my name is yoshiko mori and i am a professor of the georgetown university and i'm also at the service of the president of american association of teachers of japanese and i'm here to speak on behalf of the AATJ officers, board members, and board of directors, and members

[00:28:12] in support of the Japanese program at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and TJ hereafter, renowned for its STEM-focused curriculum, which we recently learned is under consideration for the elimination.

[00:28:31] This statement strongly supports the students, parents, and Ms. Fumiko Kuriki, a highly qualified dedicated Japanese language teacher, along with all the supporters of the Japanese program at TGA.

[00:28:46] We earnestly request a reconsideration of the decision to terminate the outstanding and esteemed Japanese language program. And the Japanese language serves as a gateway to Asia, a region with significant business ties to the Washington metropolitan area.

[00:29:05] Designated as one of the 14 critical languages by the U.S. Department of the State, proficiency in Japanese is highly valued across various sectors including government, defense, intelligence, and private and non-profit organizations.

[00:29:23] And the recent events such as high-level governmental meetings between the U.S. and Japan in D.C. last year and then the Prime Minister Kishida's visit to the United States this spring underscores the importance of the language education and the U.S.-Japan cooperation in the STEM field in fostering the bilateral relations.

[00:29:45] the Japanese program at TJ has has been exempt exemplary a model see thank you you can provide your comments to the clerk and she'll share them with the board your time is up thank you ma'am you can give your written remarks to the clerk and she'll share them with the board if you like but your time is up

[00:30:22] thank you very much chair fish that was our last public speaker thank you agenda item 4.01 student representative matters I call in miss cream thank you mr.

[00:30:40] chair. Good evening everybody. Tonight I would like to share why I ran for a student representative. While many perceive this role as a platform for student voice, and it certainly is given that our choices have a direct impact on students, I view it as an opportunity for student empowerment. This means not just hearing what students have to say but also acting on their input. Throughout my involvement in various student organizations from SEALs to SIC and numerous clubs, I've experienced firsthand the focus on student voice in discussions with stakeholders. However, there's often a gap when it comes to

[00:31:17] actual empowerment following those conversations. Recently, students from the Woodson baseball team have been actively voicing their need for change. And as stakeholders, it's our responsibility to empower those students by promptly responding to their advocacy. Although changes can't occur overnight, it's crucial to maintain ongoing dialogues, support their continued advocacy and commit to improving their situations. The reality is repeatedly speaking up without seeing results can be incredibly demoralizing, especially for students. Moving on,

[00:31:52] I would like to address the topic of school security. During my term, I have had the opportunity to visit various elementary, middle, and high schools. One striking observation from these visits is the inconsistency in security measures across different schools. In some places, a simple ring of the bell grants entry while others have a thorough check-in process. It's imperative that we standardize our approach to security, ensuring a robust check-in process at every school, regardless of its location. For example, at a recent SEALS meeting, as some of us entered the school building together, we were surprised to find that there was no check-in

[00:32:31] process. Several students were genuinely shocked at how freely we could walk in without any form of security screening. This experience highlighted a significant concern about the lack of consistent security measures in place. Regarding school security, I also want to talk about another significant issue that came up during a recent discussion, vaping and substance abuse in schools. While FCPS has a robust multi-tiered system of support, also known as MTSS, to tackle substance misuse, the problem persists. Students frequently report incidents of their peers vaping

[00:33:09] together in bathroom stalls leading to the closure of some bathrooms and forcing students to walk across the school to find an open one. A concern I've heard repeatedly throughout the school year. In light of these ongoing issues, I've recently learned about a valuable resource that hasn't been widely discussed among students: the FCPS safety tip line.

[00:33:29] This confidential and anonymous tip line is a tool for students, parents, staff, and other community members to report safety concerns. I've just discovered the tip line and though I don't have specific data on its use, I believe it needs to be more widely advertised among the student body. Its anonymity makes it particularly appealing option for students who might otherwise be hesitant to come forward. To increase its visibility and use, we should consider placing more signs in school bathrooms and around school

[00:34:05] campuses and beyond that something more likely making students use it is adding it as bookmarks on school issued laptops and adding it to the FCPS digital app that is currently being worked on as students would be more likely to see it on their devices rather than a poster this would help promote the resource to ensure that more students are aware of it and can utilize it effectively moving on I understand that there is a recent discussion around the use of phones in schools and I've had the opportunity to converse with several students on this matter, and a reoccurring theme is their desire for adults to trust them. As a student, I find it

[00:34:43] empowering when an adult entrusts me to exercise self-control. This could begin with simple actions such as placing the phone face down at the corner of your desk during each class or placing it in a designated phone jail. However, I believe that a total ban might not be beneficial for students as it could potentially impact our self-esteem. Indeed, phones can be a significant distraction, but the solution might lie in teaching students self-control.

[00:35:10] Although challenging, it's not an impossible task. After all, there was a time where humans lived without phones, so it's certainly feasible. We just need to demonstrate how it can be done and provide them with useful tips. As of 2020, 77% of U.S. schools moved to ban cell phones for non-academic purposes.

[00:35:29] However, 73% of K-12 teachers in the U.S. reported that they and their students use smartphones in the classroom to complete assignments. Moreover, 95% of students bring their phones to class every day, and 92% of them use them to text in class.

[00:35:46] Research has shown mixed results on the impact of phone bans in school. Some studies found a slight improvement in academic achievement when phones were banned in schools. However, other studies reported more harm to students' mental health and well-being when they were subjected to phone bans. It's clear that the issue is complex and requires a balanced approach.

[00:36:04] Perhaps instead of outright bans, we could explore strategies that promote self-regulation. For instance, having the teacher ask the question, "Do you think this is the best time to check your phone?" when the student checks their phone. This approach encourages students to reflect on their phone usage and make conscious decisions, thereby fostering that self-control.

[00:36:23] Ultimately, the goal should be to guide students to develop a clearer understanding of their cell phone use. Lastly, I would like to touch on the AVID program in FCPS. Although this program is not available in every school, its impact on students who do have access is profound.

[00:36:39] At a recent student meeting, a first generation student shared her experience with AVID, explaining how it enabled her to apply to 20 colleges for free, provided her with guidance starting from freshman year, and taught her the intricacies of the Common App. However, during this meeting, another first generation student from a different school expressed surprise and regret that AVID wasn't available at her school.

[00:37:01] She was unaware of the application processes and wished she had similar support. It is currently only offered at 14 high schools, but what about the students at the schools that don't necessarily have resources like AVID? How well are they navigating this complex process?

[00:37:17] This need for guidance has been a reoccurring theme in our SEALS student group. Many SEALS have taken it upon themselves to assist their peers through the college application process due to the limited resources available at their school. While career specialists are extremely valuable, they are often just one person managing the needs of hundreds of students.

[00:37:37] This highlights the need for broader access to programs like AVID that can provide essential guidance and support to more students, ensuring they have the tools necessary to navigate their educational journeys effectively. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kareem. Agenda Item 5.01, Action Item Financial Year 2025, Approved Budget, I call on Dr. Anderson for a motion.

[00:38:13] Thank you. I apologize.

[00:38:28] transcript. I move that the school board adopt the FY 2025 approved budget as modified by the adjustments detailed in the agenda item. Is there a second? Second. Mr. McDaniel. Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, I would. Firstly, I would like to thank the staff, the superintendent and the budget team for their work on this year's budget. Ms. Burden in particular and Ms. Widginton and their team. Thank you for the work that you've put forward to get us to this space.

[00:38:59] The approval of a budget always elicits strong reactions and emotions because as it's been said, and I know we all strongly believe and we've articulated multiple times over, our budget reflects our values.

[00:39:15] The things that are important to an enterprise should be reflected in its budget. This year has been no different. We must acknowledge the disappointment with this budget for this board, its first budget of its tenure, as our full request has not been granted.

[00:39:33] Additional delays from not having an approved budget from the governor cause additional chaos for us here. I do wish to thank our board members who engaged in this budget work and worked hard to find ways to identify how we will reflect our values in this budget.

[00:39:50] Much of that advocacy will be illustrated in the upcoming amendments and follow-on motions. Earlier this year, our board passed a robust budget resolution to communicate to the superintendent the board's priorities, which included the development of a student-focused, equitable and needs-based proposed budget for this year aligned to the division's strategic plan, and inclusive of the board's priorities to focus on FCPS workforce recruitment and retention, include competitive compensation with consideration for differentiated pay for hard-to-fill positions

[00:40:29] such as teachers in Title I schools and special education teachers; to focus on student academic success and access to enrichment and mental health supports and the closing of achievement gaps; to focus on school safety and security; to focus on maintaining or lowering class sizes and accelerating expansion of preschool options including inclusive preschool offerings and lastly to focus on increasing universal breakfast and lunch opportunities and reducing the school meal debt we also passed a

[00:41:05] follow-on motion that required the superintendent to focus and to provide rather recommendations detailing scope sequence and timeline for a comprehensive review and cyclical efficiency review aligned to the strategic plan of all division programs.

[00:41:22] I raise this because this work is going to be integral to how our budget is viewed in the next few years because we expect for that information to inform how we reflect our values in this year's budget. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. McDaniel, would you like to speak to your second?

[00:41:39] I will. Dr. Anderson captured a lot of my thoughts. Budget is probably, I would say, one of, if not the most important things that we do in local government. It's always a delicate balance between competing needs, because there are not unlimited resources.

[00:41:57] And in Virginia, in particular, school boards are not allowed to raise their own revenue, so there's another layer of complication to that that has to be dealt with. But the reason I'm happy to second this and be supporting this letter, I wanted to read an excerpt from a letter that really captures this better than I can say it, and it's a letter that was sent to me and the rest of this board from our teachers associations, the FBA and the FCFT, where they express their support for this.

[00:42:25] They say, and I'm paraphrasing here, they believe this approach is essential for maintaining unity and morale among our dedicated staff. By remaining steadfast and united, we can continue to provide the best possible education for our students, maintain a positive, collaborative work environment for all staff members.

[00:42:43] I trust our teachers associations, I trust the folks that have made this budget, I trust our superintendent and I fully recognize that as one of 12 I don't always get what I want sometimes I do sometimes I don't is this budget everything that I want no but it's also not everything that everybody else wants that's life and I'm happy to support it thank all I'd like to thank all the public that had gave input our teachers associations that gave input and all of my colleagues and staff for all their support in this very interesting long deliberative budget cycle that we've had so

[00:43:17] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Ms. Anderson. Starting my time on the board under the current budget constraints has certainly been a learning process. We have a lot to talk about tonight, so I'm going to keep this short and will likely not speak to specifically to the other amendments or motions that are going to happen. As I said at the work session on Tuesday, I'm grateful that this budget moves our staff to a 4% increase. However, I am reluctant to do anything that may divide our staff or obligate money that we aren't. Sure, we're going to be able to have available to us next year. I also strongly believe that while While our board will provide feedback to the superintendent about our priorities, we should

[00:43:55] not make plans that stretch our year-end dollars without the opportunity to review the recommendations from staff. Finally, I'm extremely concerned about the sheer volume of work represented by the follow-on motions tonight. Time is one of our most precious resources, and if our staff are working on these issues, there are other priorities that may not be able to be met.

[00:44:18] Some of the questions included here were already asked during the CIP process, and the board needs time to consider action on the responses we've already received I've read through each amendment and and follow on motion proposed carefully and I will be making my decisions this evening with all that in mind so thank you to my colleagues for your advocacy thank you Miss Anderson so you know their hands I will call on Mr. Dunn for an amendment thank you I move that

[00:44:49] the school board adopt the FY25 approved budget as detailed in the FY25 advertised budget modified by the adjustments included in the agenda item. A, eliminating the 4% across-the-board salary increase, $114 million.

[00:45:09] B, eliminating $1.9 million in contractual increases. C, providing a 5% targeted salary increase for FCPS employees on the teacher pay scales, classroom instructional support pay scale, unified scale Schedule A, and unified scale Schedule H.

[00:45:29] for a total of $115.9 million, and D, prioritizing the use of $1.9 million in year-end funding for contractual increases. Is there a second? Second. Dr. Anderson, Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your amendment? Yes, I would. I believe that we have a sacred responsibility as elected officials to listen to the voices of our constituents, to listen to the voices

[00:46:05] of FCPS employees and the voices I have heard and I've met with many people across my district and many across the county have been unanimous that the money we have received from the county which includes 165 million dollars the largest budget increased by the county in over 10 years should go to teachers and support staff.

[00:46:33] Every bit of data we have in responses to budget questions asked by school board members and supervisors indicates that central office administrators and administrative staff are paid at or above market for almost every stage of their career.

[00:46:50] We also know from the WAVY study that teachers and support staff are paid well below market, in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars below market at different stages of their career. So we have a very simple choice.

[00:47:07] Do we pay people who are already at or above market more money, or do we take the money and focus it on those who are underpaid and try to get them as close to market as possible?

[00:47:23] We call it differentiation, and we've heard people from the union, we've heard previous remarks by teachers and others that they want to be paid at market. That's a simple demand, and that's what I've heard consistently every day, and that's what all of my budget amendments seek to do.

[00:47:43] It is a fact that even if we achieve the 6% increase proposed by superintendent originally, that we would not be at the top of the market for all positions at all points in their careers. But it gets us closer, and I think we need to take every penny provided through increased property taxes and the increased funding provided by the state to address this critical issue.

[00:48:10] But in closing, I want to make sure that we remember that the state is underfunding us annually by $568.7 million. That's more than half a billion dollars. And that comes on the backs of Fairfax County taxpayers every year because we're forced to rely on regressive property taxes instead of tapping into the wealth of Fairfax County through for example greater access to income taxes but we have the system we have and we have to work within it and within those parameters I'm advocating tonight through this and other budget amendments

[00:48:45] to put every dollar towards the people who are underpaid the most the people who need it the most and those are our teacher and support staff in our public schools. Thank you Mr. Dunn. Dr. Anderson would you like to speak to your second? Just very quickly I think and Mr. Dunn and I we've spoken about this I'm seconding these motions so we have the opportunity to have the conversation because I know we all believe that we're in a tight place no one is looking to offer division but I think we're in a space where given our limited resources how do we reallocate them so that they continue to push forward the narratives and the focus that we have had since the budget

[00:49:25] season began and so thank you to Mr. Dunn for doing this work and bringing this forward so we can engage in this conversation thank you dr anderson mr moon thank you mr chairman i will not be able to support this motion or even the next one mr don and i have had a chance to talk about this even though a differentiated compensation structure or plan has a certain merits that is why i'll be supporting one of your a budget amendments however having said that

[00:49:58] not giving any pay raise at all while the inflation exceeds more than three percent is not something that i can support thank you mr moon seeing the other speakers will go to a vote all those in favor of the amendment on the screen please raise your hand mr dunn all those opposed ms seismorheiser mr mcdaniel mr mckelveen miss lady miss marron dr anderson miss anderson miss dixit mr moon and myself will the clerk read the vote miss st john cunning is now on oh she is

[00:50:33] Ms. St. John Cunning can you verbalize your vote I'm all right can the clerk read the vote that's 1 11 the motion fails thank you I call on Mr. Dunn for an amendment I move that the school board adopt the FY 2025 approved budget as detailed in the FY 2025 advertised budget modified by the

[00:51:08] adjustments included in the agenda item a eliminating the four percent across the board salary increase, $114 million, and B, providing a two-step increase for FCPS employees on the teacher pay scales, classroom instructional support pay scale, unified scale schedule A, and unified scale schedule H, $112.9 million.

[00:51:31] Is there a second? Second. Dr. Anderson, Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your amendment? Yes. Not to reiterate what I stated earlier, but we have pay scales that were developed not so long ago, within the past 10 years.

[00:51:47] through the use of outside consultants. We're not using those pay scales anymore. And I'm told that those pay scales are broken. Why we are continuing to deny our employees the opportunity to advance up those pay scales makes no sense.

[00:52:08] When I worked for the federal government, I was able to get a promotion. I was able to get grade promotions. I was able to get step increases without going to President Biden to ask permission. There should be no authorization required, no determination required by the school board in order for an employee to advance, to ascend up the pay scales.

[00:52:30] There's no rightly governed, well-governed organization on earth that follows such an approach. If we put pay scales in place, we should have terms and conditions, and it should only require meeting those terms and conditions with supervisor approval.

[00:52:46] This motion attempts to work within the scope of our existing pay scales to ensure that if we've established them, they should be used. If we're not going to use them, and we haven't for quite a long time, then we should get rid of them.

[00:53:03] And so I encourage the superintendent in particular, when she enters collective bargaining, to take a very creative and open conversation with the unions. Not my job, but certainly it is something that should be approached with an open mind because we should not, as one of the largest school systems in the country, continue to rely on broken systems that don't adequately reward our employees and that require the school board to actually allow them to ascend.

[00:53:33] That is the first and fundamental principle of any good organizational governance. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your second? No, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Miss Lady. Thank you.

[00:53:49] Well, I appreciate the spirit and the thinking behind this. I just want to share that unfortunately, if we were to go with steps, there's people who would get very little and there's people who would get a big chunk. We have people that are at the top of the scale who would not see any increase.

[00:54:04] And being at the top of the scale doesn't mean they're at market value and they can make a living wage in our area. It just depends on what scale we're looking at. also concerned and I do hope at some point we might be able to look at this as a board with the reality that we had some people who moved into our system who had taught in other systems but we capped their experience I believe at I don't know at the time what it was but we capped it and then a few years later we changed that cap to something else and unless these people people separate from us they're never catching up so they're they're down five steps from where they actually belong or potentially even more.

[00:54:41] So for those reasons, I cannot support this motion. Thank you, Miss Lady. Mr. Dunfer, go back. Thank you. I wanted to bring just for everyone's attention that when we compare ourselves to Prince William County, the maximum salary we're facing for teacher pay scales, we're facing almost a $30,000 discrepancy.

[00:55:05] At the mid-career level for an experienced teacher, it's almost a $15,000 discrepancy. All that motion, all that data is publicly available on BoardDocs, and I encourage all of you, if you're interested, to go look at it. We need to do more to be able to retain our most experienced teachers.

[00:55:24] Right now, our highest salaries, when you compare to surrounding jurisdictions, are at the very beginning of the career for people who don't have experience coming out of a master's program or coming out of a bachelor's. While I appreciate we need volume in a large school system, we also need experience.

[00:55:40] and we need that experience to stay here. So I hope that as the superintendent enters into collective bargaining negotiations, something is done with these pay scales to reward those who have the experience to encourage them to stay. Certainly the EFRC drop program is good, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to what we need to do.

[00:55:59] Thank you. - Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Seeing no other speakers, we'll go to a vote for the amendment on the screen. All those in favor, Mr. Dunn. All those opposed, Ms. Seismar-Heiser, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. McIlveen, Miss Lady, Miss Marin, Dr. Anderson, Miss Anderson, Miss Dixit, Mr. Moon, Miss St. John Cunning, and myself.

[00:56:19] Will the clerk read the vote? - It's 1:11, the motion fails. - Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for an amendment. - I move that the school board adopt the FY 2025 approved budget as detailed in the FY 2025 advertised budget modified by the adjustments included in the agenda item.

[00:56:42] A, eliminating the 4% across the board salary increase for all FCPS employees, $114 million. B, providing a 3% across the board salary increase for all FCPS employees, $85.5 million.

[00:57:00] And C, providing FCPS employees on the teacher pay scales and classroom instructional support pay scale with an additional 1.454 salary increase, $28.5 million. - Thank you, Mr. Dunn.

[00:57:15] Is there a second? Mr. Moon. Second. Thank you. Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, I would. I'd like to note that we are entering into a period of collective bargaining where we will have at least three bargaining units. If you look at Fairfax County, which has multiple bargaining units as well, they have provided differentiated pay for every year of the last 10 years. So when we talk about let's keep everyone getting the same raise, that's not the reality of the county. In fact, that's not the reality of any unionized environment at any city or

[00:57:54] county government that I was able to find in the United States. The reality is every bargaining unit is looking out for itself, and that's what they're supposed to do. So we can look forward, going forward, that different bargaining units will get different pay raises. And at this time, for the reasons I've mentioned, we should be looking at the people who are the most underpaid. That includes people on the teachers pay scale, which includes, based on the information provided by FCPS, all instructors under contract, regular classroom teachers,

[00:58:30] special education teachers, ESOL teachers, coaches, mentors, vocational education teachers, speech therapists, physical therapists, school counselors, librarians, homebound teachers under contract, music, physical education, and itinerant teachers. It also includes the classroom instructional support pay scale.

[00:58:49] which covers instructional assistance and public health attendance. These are the people based in the classroom supporting the classroom and they are vastly underpaid relative to surrounding jurisdictions. So this motion provides a three percent for everyone which is in alignment with the state legislation so everyone gets a pay increase just like they did last year with a two percent across the board but there's an additional almost 1.5 percent. This costs the exact same as of 4%, but it provides a little bit more for those people who day in, day out are directly supporting the education of our students in various ways.

[00:59:28] So I ask for my colleagues to support this motion. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Moon, would you like to speak to your secretary? Thank you, Mr. Chairman, just briefly. As I stated earlier that the first two amendments Mr. Dunn brought up, I was not able to support because that did not provide a salary increase to certain groups of employees but this amendment as you stated that provides at least three percent increase for all employees which was the proposal

[01:00:04] brought to us by the superintendent to us two weeks ago since then general assembly has given us a little more funding and also a superintendent in our own creative way was able to bring in additional revenue by shifting certain expenditure items to the year end so with that additional funding I think at this juncture with the challenges that we have in recruiting and and retaining our teachers I think we should be putting

[01:00:40] those additional resources to support our teachers and other instructional staff who work directly directly with our students we all remember that you know initially we are all hoping for six percent compensation increase for everybody obviously increasing teachers so that our a we can be more competitive in recruiting especially for teachers and other instructional staff and and if i'm not mistaken that a loudon county is giving their teachers 6.5 percent

[01:01:19] increase next year and prince william county is a six percent so we are falling further and further behind so with that it only makes sense to put in the additional additional money where the needs are the greatest i know that we're not going to be able to raise all the way to six percent or six but putting it as much to the teachers and other instructional staff as much as possible just makes sense to me.

[01:01:53] So I'm supporting your amendment. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I, too, will be supporting this amendment because, as I've talked about many times with Mr. Dunn, it should not be a space where we provide no raises or no adjustments for certain groups.

[01:02:11] Well, we do have to make those adjustments. Even if we go back to one of the very first budget presentations, pretty much all of the budget presentations, the charts that we have compared have been teachers, master scales, teachers, beginning scales.

[01:02:27] We did not provide any additional information for any other employee group outside of those two that I've just mentioned because we wanted to increase our ability to be more competitive. And Mr. Moon just outlined it. In any little way that we can get a little bit closer to the narrative that we've had since the beginning of this budget season, I want to be able to support that.

[01:02:49] In addition, one of my hopes would have been, there's a lot of work that people are doing here on the board trying to figure this out, trying to bring forward some sort of amendment that honors our commitment and that honors the narrative that we've been pushing forward since the start of this budget season within our more limited capabilities.

[01:03:12] I would have preferred as we are offered in many other settings where the superintendent or staff would provide multiple options for us to review with a recommendation of this is what I recommend but these are other options. I'd like to see that happen in the budget setting as well because we haven't had that.

[01:03:31] That would have been a good space where I think we've had really truly more robust conversation. I feel like we are piecemealing it a little bit. Everybody is doing the same legwork. I would like for us to see, I'd like to see us move towards that kind of budget plan when we are crunched that we are provided with multiple options to review and then as a board we kind of wrestle with what is the best for us.

[01:03:57] one recommendation makes it really challenging to ensure that we are looking at other things that may exist beyond that recommendation but for the reasons outlined by both mr moon and mr dunn i will be supporting this motion thank you dr anderson miss sizemore heiser um dr reed do you know if this includes bus drivers family liaisons custodial staff in this in the um higher pay increase um

[01:04:29] are you referring to this amendment specifically it looks like um item c looks like uh all employees are included in the three percent but only the uh employees on the teacher pay scale and classroom instructional support play scale would be included on the 1.41454 which would not include bus drivers or custodians that's correct i think i mean i know there's been some conversation about central office versus teachers but when i read this one of my concerns is that some of our lowest paid

[01:05:05] employees are only getting the three percent and i've heard many stories of how custodians make a huge difference for our students the family liaisons make a huge difference for our students so i'm just uncomfortable with some of our lowest paid employees who while may not be in the classroom make a huge impact in every day in our building for our students are getting the lower 3%. I mean putting aside the philosophical conversation about do we want to sort of create an atmosphere in our schools where some staff are getting paid more than others and that's a philosophical conversation that I think we could have at a different day but I for this amendment

[01:05:43] am uncomfortable significantly that some of our lowest paid staff are getting a lower paid percent increase. So that is one of the main reasons I'm not supporting this. Thank you Ms. Sizemore Heiser. Ms. St. John Cunning. Ms. St. John Cunning can you hear us? I'm sorry I was having problems unmuting um so i also want to address the fact that this is really we're in a position not through

[01:06:19] no fault of our own where we have the solomon's choice decision and um there are so many employees and so many staff and i know that the intent of the original budget six percent was to compensate all staff because they are all valuable in their own way this amendment is also does also excludes office and office personnel that are critical to our to our schools and i just want to address a misconception that seems to be out there about central office staff central office staff are

[01:06:56] critical in terms of supporting our teachers and students many central office staff come out to the schools and work in the schools for extended periods of time i personally have had experiences where there's been a very troubled child or not troubled, but challenging or some challenging situations. And it's central office staff that comes out and supports either the students, sometimes the teacher for extended periods of time. So they are also touching our students and our staff and supporting them. And when we talk in generalized terms about people,

[01:07:33] it seems as if the central office staff is not valuable. And I just wanted to really articulate that point because I know how much people that are in the trenches rely on that central office staff. Again, I will not support anything for differentiated payment right now or pay skills because I think every single employee is valuable and they all deserve at this point THE PAY INCREASE AT 4%, I WISH IT COULD BE MORE, BUT THIS IS WHERE WE'RE AT, THROUGH NO FAULT OF OUR OWN.

[01:08:08] THANK YOU, MR. MCELVEEN. FIRST OF ALL, THANK YOU TO THE MAKER OF THE MOTION AND THE SECONDER FOR THE THOUGHT THAT'S BEHIND THIS, WHICH I THINK IS IMPORTANT AND VALID. SO I'M GRATEFUL FOR YOUR EFFORTS HERE. ALONG THE SAME LINE OF QUESTIONING AS MS. SIZEMORE HEISER, I DO NOT WANT A SITUATION WHERE WE'RE PITTING PEOPLE IN SCHOOLS AGAINST EACH OTHER.

[01:08:34] SO WE ASKED ABOUT A COUPLE OF CLASSIFICATIONS OF FOLKS, WHAT ABOUT T-SPEC, ESPETS, WOULD THEY BE INCLUDED IN THE ADDITIONAL -- I DO NOT BELIEVE SO, I DON'T BELIEVE SO.

[01:08:51] OKAY. SO THAT WOULD BE A SITUATION IN WHICH IN THE SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT WE'RE GIVING DIFFERENTIATED PAY AND THAT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT I'D LIKE TO SEE. SO AGAIN, I APPRECIATE THE INTENT BEHIND THIS, BUT WHEN YOU GO -- WHEN YOU START TO differentiate it becomes very challenging and you end up pitting people against each other. Thanks. Thank you Mr.

[01:09:13] McElveen. Miss Marin. I want to start by saying that I appreciate all of our staff from the people that work in our own school board office to the people that work in the front office at my children's school and everywhere in between central office. I will not walk the superintendent's proposal backward from the four percent that she presented earlier this week. It was presented only days ago because of the repeat failure of the governor to deliver an on-time budget which is literally the only job that is supposed to be done with certainty that's happened every

[01:09:49] year of his tenure and yes I think more understanding needs to happen between and among staff working in different places I have heard the idea of having job details central office to school schools to central office to not only understand one another's jobs but to improve our instructional practices for students any way we can but salary is emotional this is people's livelihoods and there's no way I will support walking back what has already been set forth on the table which is a uniform 4% raise I will entertain creativity in the appropriate place in the process when full information is available and that wasn't the case in this situation due to the constraints placed on us by

[01:10:28] the state so I think it's imperative that we keep mentioning that we are not the same as Prince William nor other surrounding counties that have been mentioned. We are chronically underfunded because we have old funding formulas that deny Fairfax County schools our state money. Just the three percent alone, the state says they're offering a three percent salary. They are not offering a three percent salary. They're offering a portion of a match that we have to pony up. Every time I hear someone say the state's offering a salary,

[01:11:00] I must correct them so the numbers are astounding we are putting up was it we put up a lot of money more it's not an even split and other states other counties do not have to do that so we just can't compare ourselves to other school divisions not to mention that the next smallest division after us is Loudoun which is half of our size so I look forward to voting on the main motion for the 4% across the division raised. Thank you Ms. Marin. I'll take a quick turn. So that math that Ms. Marin

[01:11:39] was looking for for every percent that we raise salary in Fairfax County Public Schools it's 28 million dollars. So the the three percent raise is three times that and from the state we get 0.4 percent of the full three percent raise only if we come up with the 2.6 percent to match. Now you YOU MIGHT BE ASKING YOURSELF 2.6 AND .4 ARE NOT A MATCH BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT THE SAME FIGURE AND YOU WOULD BE RIGHT. WHEN THE STATE TELLS THE PUBLIC THAT THEY HAVE PROVIDED A 3% RAISE FOR TEACHERS AND STAFF WHAT THEY NEGLECT TO TELL FOLKS ESPECIALLY HERE IN

[01:12:19] FAIRFACS COUNTY IS THAT MORE THAN 80% OF THE MONEY HAS TO COME FROM THE STATE IN ORDER TO COME FROM THE SCHOOL DIVISION IN ORDER TO ACCESS A TINY FRACTION OF THAT MONEY. And, you know, you add that to what Mr. Dunn and others have mentioned tonight, the state's failure to meet the full financial obligation they have just to make us average, just to make us average, would be more than half a billion dollars more, 568 million.7 dollars every single year, just to make us average, just so that we can compete with West Virginia and Kentucky and our

[01:12:58] other neighboring states um and so i won't be supporting this motion you know um just for some context and along the lines of what some have said about the dynamic it creates in the school um uh when we differentiate um we're different it would be differentiating on a tiny scale and i don't think that we would be getting the benefit um you know if a teacher who makes 77 thousand dollars a year gets an extra point four five four percent i think that's twenty nine dollars

[01:13:30] a paycheck and that is less valuable to them than an extra point is to somebody at the far lower end of that pay scale so i can't in good conscience support that although i do appreciate the work that went into coming up with the numbers and looking at everything else and communicating with colleagues to see if there could be agreement found besides we're heiser thank you i apologize for taking another turn i just forgot to mention also i believe this doesn't apply to principles also in the building is that correct yes ma'am so I don't belabor the point I also again really appreciate the hard work and I know that in these tough budget

[01:14:10] times trying to be creative for solutions is very important and I appreciate the effort to be creative for solutions but especially in this day and age where our students have social emotional needs or we're dealing with perhaps increasing challenge for our students and the principals are in their buildings keeping them safe and keeping them taking care of I just don't think it's right. I also agree with Ms. St. John Cunning that we talked the other day at our work session about the need for more trauma-informed specialists and more trauma-informed care. Those are central office staff, and I don't want to send the message that we don't value that work. You know, we've

[01:14:47] talked about how amazing it is that we're the first division in the country, from what I know, to have a neurodiversity specialist. That's central office staff. I don't want to diminish the value of her work. So I appreciate the thought of Creative Solutions. I know we're in a bind between the state underfunding um and just the tight budget times that we're experiencing in the county but i think we just need to be careful that we do it in a way that unites us and unites our staff thank you for the thought and the work thank you miss sizemore heiser mr dunn i appreciate the

[01:15:20] conversation and i appreciate the kind words um let's start with reality we pay different people different amounts of money that's just the reality some of the conversation would seem to indicate we're paying the same amount of money to everyone which just isn't reality. Let's also start with the reality that FCPS for many years has paid differentiated pay increases across different groups of employees. I'm looking at the history 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. It has not

[01:15:58] ever been kumbaya everyone gets the same pay increase across all employee categories. If I I went back 20 years or 30 years or 40 years, I have no doubt that differentiated history would continue into the past as it will continue into the future. So let's just be honest and not try to pretend that we haven't differentiated before. We have. And in this case, we must, because respectfully, we have a great superintendent, but she's paid more than the president of the United States. We have a great chief of staff paid more than the secretary of defense. We have great

[01:16:35] administrative assistants who are paid at the beginning of their career 110 percent above market. We have great central office staff who are paid above market. They don't need to be paid even higher above market. It doesn't diminish their value, but it does say to our brothers and sisters who are in the classroom dealing directly with the kids, I'm going to say my job as a school board member is much easier than that of a special education teacher. I get paid 48,000 a year. It's right that a special education teacher makes way more than me. It's just a fact. And for those

[01:17:14] people who are underpaid relative to market, who have to deal with the high cost of living in Fairfax County, who aren't even able to afford to live in Fairfax County, we should focus the dollars on them. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Seeing no others, we will vote for the vote on the amendment on the screen. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Mr. Moon, i can't see miss st john cunning miss st john cunning will you verbalize your vote i i'm opposed to the amendment all others who are opposed please raise your hand miss sizemore heiser mr mcdaniel

[01:17:52] mr mckelveen miss lady miss marron miss anderson miss dixit and myself will the clerk read the vote that's three nine the motion fails thank you all right we will now uh go back to the primary motion UNAMENDED FOR CONSIDERATION.

[01:18:27] MS. LADY? CAN I MOVE THAT WE CALL THE VOTE? WHY DON'T YOU GIVE PEOPLE AN OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK? THERE'S NO MOTION TO MOVE TO CALL THE VOTE. ALL RIGHT, I WILL TAKE A TURN.

[01:18:49] SO THIS 4% PAY INCREASE THAT WE'RE CONSIDERING TONIGHT, IN ADDITION TO THE 2% PAY RAISE FROM JANUARY, BRINGS US TO 6% INCREASE FOR THIS YEAR, WHICH IS SHORT OF THE 8% WE'D LIKE TO BE AT.

[01:19:09] THAT SAID, THE BOARD'S WORK ON THIS BUDGET, I think shows how committed we are to turning over every rock to find more pay for our hard working staff all of them and I appreciate the superintendent's work and that of our budget team and our budget committee to find those resources to add an extra percent beyond the tiny portion of the match that we're getting from the state to get to three percent because it matters and you know I think I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the conversation that is swirling around

[01:19:49] out there about the profession of working in our schools year after year we tell people it is a rewarding job you will love it you will love working with the kids but you will not get paid well for doing it and that is the message that our kids are hearing in the classroom every single day when it comes to the profession or even working in any facet of our schools and so we need to do more to change that conversation and I think it starts with the commonwealth of

[01:20:26] Virginia stepping up and following through on the recommendations of our JLARC which clearly showed we are far underpaying for public education at the state level to the tune of nearly two thousand per student, and in the case of Fairfax County, that comes out to $568.7 million every single year just to be average, and no one in Fairfax County wants to be average.

[01:20:53] We should be aspiring to far more than just being average, and so I will continue to have my advocacy focused on the state to bring in that extra funding, and I appreciate the Board of Supervisors this week indicating that they will explore a meals tax, something I campaigned for in 2015 I think knocking on doors to talk to voters about we should be exploring every opportunity we can to bring in additional resources to make sure that our schools are are fully funded and meeting the needs of our students so I appreciate the conversations our board has had over these past many months around the budget and I look forward to casting my vote in favor of

[01:21:30] this budget. Mr. Dunn. I first of all I appreciate my colleagues patience as we work through multiple budget amendments as i sought to prioritize our investments for those most in need i wanted to say that you know this is going to be a very different year next year we'll enter into collective bargaining and that's a wonderful thing for our employees because for the first

[01:22:08] time we will have them have a full seat at the table treat us as partners and no longer treated as cogs in the machine so i look forward to hearing their voices I encourage their active participation, and I look forward to sitting side by side with our unions to determine how we can make sure that our pay and benefits are the best in Northern Virginia, the best in the DMV region, and making FCPS the best place to work.

[01:22:42] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Dr. Anderson. Yes, very briefly, I do want to say thank you as well to the Board of Supervisors for their consideration of the meals tax because as as we've been going we can't continue along those routes. I'm hoping those discussions are fruitful and will lead to some of the plans that were discussed back in 2018 with this board in terms of the allocation of those potential funds. I'm very grateful for the work that has gone into this budget. Miss Burden, Miss Widgerton again Dr.

[01:23:16] Reed and of course and I forgot to say earlier Mr. McDaniel as the Vice chair who's come on and has done so much work on this budget he jumped in during the resolution phase and just really got involved so thank you for your work unfortunately for me this budget is too far apart from where I was hoping we could land so I will not be in support thank you dr. Anderson mr. moon thank you mr. Sherman even though what's not included in the budget has been very

[01:23:52] disappointing in my 21 years of service as a board member i have never not supported the budget because i need to have a budget to get the system going to continue paying for the employees so i will support the motion main motion and i want to thank hard work done by budget chair and vice chair and also i want to thank mr dunn your your your nine different or ten different amendments including the followers to come follow us a little bit later on really gave me a time

[01:24:31] to think about reflect upon you know potentially what additional work the board or system is to engage in so i appreciate that uh again it's a disappointing that budget does not include that everything that was we were hoping for especially compensation increase and when that doesn't happen we tend to point fingers toward the General Assembly. Sometimes we point fingers at another

[01:25:02] governing body. But as Mr. Don pointed out, we have to work with and within the system we have. It's going to take a number of years before we expect to see much more funding directly from General Assembly. But until then, we have to come up with our own revenue to support the high-quality education and be able to recruit top-notch teachers and retain them here in Fairfax you know when I was doing a little research earlier today

[01:25:39] about Loudoun County and Prince William County they are local governing body I know they they have up to front LCI but their local governing body fully fully paid fully accepted school systems budget request I mean if we don't have Additional funding from outside our local governing body must fund us fully. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Miss Dixit. I'm going to be quick.

[01:26:17] Thank you for the budget All the hard work which went went into this As a new school board member and I realized that this quickly that when the funds are not in your hand There's not much you could do if you're depending on the state government and local government You can do the best you can with those funds, but unless we have our own ways of increasing the revenue source, it's always going to be like this.

[01:26:45] We are depending on others to give us funds. So Fairfax County, one of the wealthiest, sends the most amount of taxes to the state, and we get a fraction of that. That is unacceptable. But this is the reality, and we're living in it. Our county is getting more and more expensive to live in, and we are not able to meet the needs of teachers and other staff members.

[01:27:06] So local government, including our Board of Supervisors, I hope they are seeing this. And what is going to happen in the next few years to come is going to be the reason of not meeting the needs of the budget today.

[01:27:22] And I would personally would want to see if more money could be allocated for the teachers and other staff members, maybe the full 6%, but unfortunately not today. So I'm supporting of this motion, but this is definitely not what we wanted.

[01:27:41] We wanted to do the best we can. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Ms. Marin? I don't usually recall stories of the past, but when we were celebrating Mark Greenfelder who retired, I couldn't help but remember when he took me on a tour of a school where we were starting to do the Hybrid learning and we were walking through schools with a mask I think someone who does that kind of work in central office deserves a raise as much as anybody else who deserves one When I think of what we did during COVID in the hours on online I see faces here of what we did and staff in central office

[01:28:20] Deserves a raise as much as anybody else and all the people who worked hard to get here So I'm very pleased to support a 4% across-the-board raise. I also, I'm not thrilled because I know that our staff deserve more. All of us want our staff to have more.

[01:28:37] And the thing is this, it's not a very exciting prospect in some ways, but it's about diversifying our tax base. It's about taxes. It's about a state budget. It's about funding formulas. I support the meals tax. I'm glad that the supervisors are moving forward on that because we must diversify our tax base.

[01:28:54] But that is, again, one more burden that we in Fairfax are going to have to bear when the state is holding our money. If you remember any number, the public remembers any number from tonight, it's $568.7 million. That is half a billion dollars.

[01:29:11] Think of what FCPS does with what we have now. What could we do if we had half a billion dollars more? I am ready to go and get the money. That has become my mantra. Get the money. I look forward to working with as many partners, my board colleagues, colleagues around the state, other elected officials, because we cannot continue to try and hold our schools down while the state holds our money.

[01:29:35] 568.7 million is due for our schools. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Seeing no others, we will vote for the main motion on the screen, the financial year 2025 approved budget. All those in favor, Ms. Sizemore-Heisner, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Lady, Ms.

[01:29:55] Marin, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Ms. St. John Cunning, and myself. All those opposed. Dr. Anderson, abstentions. Mr. Dunn, will the clerk read the vote? It's 10-1-1. The motion passes.

[01:30:11] Thank you. We have a budget. I call on Mr. Dunn for a follow-on motion. I move that the school board direct the superintendent to prioritize additional funding from year-end funding in addition to previously allocated funding to conduct a comprehensive facility condition assessment of school buildings facilities to include athletic facilities and infrastructure to include tracked and untracked which shall be used to inform the development

[01:30:51] of one or more queues for the repair and renovation of school buildings facilities and infrastructure is there a second second i'm sorry who was that miss lady miss lady thank you all right mr dunn would you like to speak to your follow-on motion yes please so in my role as a As a school board member, I serve as the liaison to the Facilities Planning Advisory Committee.

[01:31:25] I also serve as chair of CPDC, which overlooks school construction renovation. And what we know is it's fairly broken within FCPS. Not for lack of efforts, not for lack of leadership. We have a 42-year renovation cycle.

[01:31:43] If you think back 42 years, that's 1982. Think about all the technologies that exist today that didn't exist then. about all the technologies that have come to exist and don't really exist anymore, CDs, DVRs, and so forth. We need to be in our buildings more often than every 42 years. The industry standard is 20 to 25 years, and that's what we should be aiming for as well. The purpose of some of these motions is to look at how can we do better, how can we bring in more money, how can we make sure that as we move forward and develop a new renovation cube, the current one expires in

[01:32:19] they're about 2030. How can we make sure that we are having good data, good data to inform the ranking of schools from 1 to 199 so that we can be confident in those rankings that the ones at top need the renovations most critically. The ones at the bottom can go 20, 30 years into the future, maybe 42 years in the future without being touched. In addition to getting good data, we need to make sure that we're able to have criteria that allow us to distinguish based on

[01:32:56] equity, based on other factors, and perhaps establish multiple tiers of renovation. A beautification, light touch, new paint, all the way to comprehensive gutting. This is fundamental because we have hundreds of millions of dollars that we invest through school bonds that all taxpayers vote on to fund construction renovation projects. And yet many of our facilities are found to be dilapidated. We have repeated testimony by students from the Woodson High School baseball team talking about one baseball field, but that's representative of a broader trend we see across

[01:33:30] FCPS. Many of our buildings are in fine shape. Many need a lot of work. And so as we move forward, we must allocate additional funding because we only have two million right now. That works out to something like ten cents per square foot no it's seven cents per square foot that's ridiculously small amount of money it won't result in good outcomes it'll just result in a lot of fights among school board members over which renovation should take place so to eliminate that drama to prevent that drama and make sure we're making good decisions good investment decisions going forward for all of our students to learn and world-class learning environments have access to world-class athletic infrastructure and have

[01:34:10] equitable outcomes in terms of our facilities across the county we need good data and that's what this uh this is what this additional funding is intended to provide thank you thank you mr dunn miss lady would you like to speak to your second yes i would um most homeowners check out the roofs and hvac systems of their homes every other year or so we see for ourselves whether it's time to repave our driveways or sidewalks that surround our homes we monitor the effectiveness of our security systems and invest in upgrades if necessary we may even explore whether we can add on or expand an extra room so we can finally get rid of that shed in the backyard that's become an eyesore. Well as stewards of FCPS schools and properties we must do the same. Conducting a

[01:34:48] facilities conditions assessment is just a fancy way of saying we must get eyes on the buildings and grounds of every single one of our schools to identify and prioritize the most urgent maintenance, renovation, construction needs of our schools. After spending 27 years walking the halls and grounds of many of our middle and high school facilities in Fairfax County, I have firsthand knowledge that most of our schools are fortunate to have beautiful impressive campuses.

[01:35:11] I also know firsthand that many of our classrooms, gyms, libraries, cafeterias, and athletic fields are not equipped to meet FCPS academic goals, student enrollment needs, or are extracurricular programs that are so vital to our students' mental health and well-being. While I was on the campaign trail, I was often asked about the condition of McLean High School and the need for renovation, and my response was that I'm not an expert I did I did work at McLean I've been in McLean I've walked in the halls of McLean but I also walked the halls of Chantilly for 15 years and basically what I what I told them was that I would prefer to have an outside consultant

[01:35:50] come in and do the evaluation and create a queue for us and priorities versus me fighting with my colleagues to jockey for position for a school that might be in my magisterial district so I urge my colleagues to support this investment in a facilities condition assessment because once WE'VE CHECKED THE CONDITIONS OF THE ROOMS, BATHROOMS, SECURITY SYSTEMS OF OUR SCHOOLS.

[01:36:07] ONCE WE'VE WALKED THE ATHLETIC FIELDS, PARKING LOTS AND SIDEWALKS, OUR FACILITIES DEPARTMENT WILL HAVE THE INFORMATION NEEDED TO MAKE STRONGER RECOMMENDATIONS TO ENSURE THIS BOARD WILL BE IN A SMARTER, STRONGER POSITION TO PLAN AND PRIORITIZE OUR CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT AND RENOVATION PROJECTS NOW AND IN THE FUTURE. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS. LADY. DR. ANDERSON.

[01:36:25] THANK YOU. I'M HAPPY TO SUPPORT THIS AMENDMENT. back in 2020 coming in as a new board member it was shocking to me to hear that it was essentially up to school board members to elevate issues and then jockey for position to elevate their schools in the queue. So going forward with an external body to really offer a comprehensive evaluation of our facilities and organizing that in a way that prioritizes what which schools need to be moving forward for renovations i think is really key and it's an equitable way of having that

[01:37:03] assessment of our buildings i also know that this plan has been supported by fpac we just celebrated one of their own earlier mr fanshawe who has served on fpac for a number of years and it is a group of highly skilled professionals who are supporting this action and so i do want to take that expertise under consideration as we move forward with this measure. So I'm happy to support this motion for the reasons that both Mr. Dunn and Miss Lady have stated. Thank you, Dr. Anderson.

[01:37:39] I will take a turn. Almost had me with limiting drama. Almost. But a couple points. We do need a comprehensive facilities assessment what I'm not comfortable with is prioritizing funding before we have a report back from the superintendent on what our year-end funding picture looks like it's very possible I would support this in that conversation but I do not want to presuppose

[01:38:17] what that decision should be by the superintendent because I'll tell you what if we tell the superintendent this is a priority that's what she's going to present this is the priority she could come back to us and say x y and z are more pressing and then our board can weigh that so I think this conversation and anything else that is prioritizing or dealing with year-end funding among these follow-on motions should be left for the for the year-end budgeting conversation and that's how I will vote tonight I think it is extremely important that we do this work

[01:38:53] AND I'M HAPPY TO CONSIDER SUPPORTING IT ONCE WE SEE WHAT THE FULL YEAR END PICTURE LOOKS LIKE. MS. SIZEMORE HEISER. THANK YOU. I THINK YOU STOLE THE WORDS OR I'M IN COMPLETE AGREEMENT BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE I STAND TOO. I THINK AND I SENT AN EMAIL TO MY COLLEAGUES EARLIER TODAY STATING SOME OF THIS. I THINK MOST OF US, I'LL SPEAK FOR MYSELF, CAN REALLY STRONGLY SUPPORT A FACILITY, A COMPREHENSIVE FACILITIES ASSESSMENT. I THINK FOR ALL THE REASONS STATED, IT IS VITAL, IT IS NEEDED. I FULLY RESPECT F-PAC AND THEIR

[01:39:29] their assessment that we need this; however, I will say that FPAC's job is to look at facilities, and so I respect, but our job is to look at the big picture. And within that big picture, I don't have that big picture yet because we don't know all of the priorities we may need at year-end.

[01:39:44] And so until we get there, until Dr. Reed looks at the year-end money, until her staff have time, especially with a new HR person coming in, to say, "What are the priorities? Where do we need to spend our money?" I think this should be an important part of that conversation. And until I know all of the different pieces that might be priorities, it's hard for me to say this is the priority.

[01:40:04] And I think once we tell you this is the priority, then we don't know that it's going to automatically rejigger the list that you bring us. I do know we already allocated $2 million to do this renovation queue. So I guess my question would be, the other piece I'm struggling with is I think it's hard to know without getting some sense of how much it might cost, right?

[01:40:23] To know, like, maybe it's just going to cost $3 million. And so, therefore, it's not that much coming out a year. And so it's easy to make it a priority versus 10 more million, in which case that might start changing what we can spend year-end on. So I guess my question for you, Dr. Reed, is if we were to try to put out an RFP, would we be able to get some information about how much it might cost in addition to that 2 million by year-end so we can make a little more of an informed choice?

[01:40:47] You know, I think we could, I think the RFP is quite close to being ready to go. I know I've spoken to Ms. Szymanski. I could get you a timeline, but I'm not sure we would have the exact numbers by year end. But we might have a better idea by year end than we have today.

[01:41:07] Yeah, I don't have much to add to that, except we're in the process of writing the scope and trying to write it in a creative way that it can be phased. So even if we don't have certainty by year end, I think we should at least have some more information to share to kind of point us in the right direction.

[01:41:25] I so appreciate this being brought because I think it's, again, I said this earlier. I feel like we've been in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and we finally have coming out of that, coming out of COVID, and can focus on some of these really important things. I just think this is a little premature until I really get a good sense of all of our priorities at year-end.

[01:41:41] I'd hate to close the door on something. You know, I've kind of heard we might be using some of the money for boilers or HVAC systems, and I would hate to tell a school, sorry, you can't have an AC because we prioritize this. And I just want to have that conversation with the full information. I think we had a conversation with my colleagues about that a few weeks ago and said, I just need to know what the priorities are.

[01:42:00] So I think if we can bring this conversation back at year end, I'm really excited to have that and really supportive of this work. And hopefully we'll have a little more information by then, too. So I look forward to having that conversation then. Thank you, Ms. Sizemoreheiser. Mr. McDaniel. Ditto to what was just saying.

[01:42:19] Those were the notes I had here. I support certainly the spirit of the motion and having to develop, having resources to develop a renovation queue by experts. I know Prince William County is doing this now with outside consultants. So I think that's where we'll end up. I just don't think that this is the right vehicle at the right time to accomplish that.

[01:42:40] But certainly at end of year and if an RFP does come before us for a reward, I would be supporting it at that point. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Ms. Dixit. I think this is a great idea, but the timing wise, I would like to get some numbers back after the RFP goes out.

[01:43:01] I just wanted to ask how long the RFP will be out, and when do you expect this to go out? So I think we're hopeful to get it out sooner than later. I also know that we have some other ideas, too.

[01:43:21] I know athletic facilities are listed here, and we have plans to have, I believe, an intern this summer spend a lot of time sort of making the rounds of those fields. So do we have a final date yet for an RFP if it went out?

[01:43:38] We do not, and I'd actually need to talk to procurement on what they recommend for how long out of the marketplace they'd like to have it to ensure optimal competition. So I can definitely get back to you with that. SO BECAUSE WE HAVE ALREADY PRIORITIZED SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS FUNDING FOR NEAR-END AND DROP PROGRAMS SO WE DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH OF IS GOING TO BE LEFT AND SO I WOULD JUST WAIT TO IF THIS MOTION COMES BACK AGAIN WHEN WE HAVE SOME MORE NUMBERS AND BACK FROM RFE ILL SUPPORT IT RIGHT NOW IT'S A BIT WAG AND I'M JUST NOT SURE THIS IS THE RIGHT TIME TO DO IT.

[01:44:18] THANK YOU MS. DIXIT. Given the enormity of the investments we have in our facilities and what we know is needed I support this motion or this follow-on although for me it's very tentative.

[01:44:35] It's saying that we would like the superintendent to prioritize use of year-end which could mean that a priority is set for a million or priority sent for six million. I generally don't want to prioritize and give signals for year-end until we're closer and WE'RE ACTUALLY GETTING PRETTY CLOSE TO THAT TIME OF THE YEAR.

[01:44:54] BUT GIVEN THE WORK THE NEW DIRECTOR OF FACILITIES IS DOING, THE FOCUS ON OUR FACILITIES, THERE'S A LOT OF MOVING PARTS. AND I ALSO LIKE THE IDEA OF ELEVATING F-PAC'S WORK BECAUSE THEY ARE REALLY HARDWORKING TEAM THAT DOES A LOT OF DETAILED ANALYSIS.

[01:45:09] SO I WILL SUPPORT THIS AND PROBABLY ANOTHER ONE THAT'S RELATED TO THE CIP AND FACILITIES IN TERMS OF YEAR-END. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MR. MOON. THANK YOU, MR. CHAIRMAN. motion as far as actual cost is concerned I mean it's gonna it's gonna depend upon RFP and the bidding from our contractors and then subject to our board's approver of the contract and also this this motion sets a limit no more than 6.4 million dollars it's not directing superintendent to go and spend

[01:45:47] that either and so I mean this is something we need to do and this is subject to our action on the year-end, a budget review anyway, and also subject to our approval of the contract after RFP process you're done with.

[01:46:08] Also put a motion. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Mr. Dunn. I'll start with, as a government contracting attorney, you probably want to issue a request for information before you issue the RFP, because in RFI you can set a two-week or three-week or four-week turnaround time, ask for what is the range that this would cost.

[01:46:34] You get that back before you issue the RFI and you can bring that to the board for how much it should cost or how much should be allocated in year-end funding. That being said, I have to say, I just shudder, I absolutely shudder at the thought that we're going to have an intern this summer walk the fields and tell us, you know, the condition of our athletic facilities, the condition of our buildings.

[01:47:01] That intern's determination is going to guide hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. That seems to be the worst decision I've ever heard in my life. I mean, I'm sorry, but my God, if we're going to have hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars guided by an intern, I can't be a part of that.

[01:47:19] We have third party service providers who do this day in, day out. We need uniform data. We need data integrity. We need data fidelity so that we have an accurate ranking of our schools from one to 199. And we can go into the marketplace and see what it costs, but there's no question that if we don't have the internal capacity, if we don't do this on a day-in, day-out basis, we shouldn't be doing that.

[01:47:43] We should hire professionals. I'm not going to go out there and assess the condition of our facilities. Never done that. I don't have the expertise. I really want someone who knows what they're doing, who can ensure uniform data from all of our different sites so that it will guide hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in funding.

[01:48:01] That's what Facilities Planning Advisory Committee has advised. They provide a range of 22 cents to 42 cents per square foot as the industry average which works out to 6.3 million to 12.1 million. So we already know the range and we already know they recommend the use of a third-party consultant and these are people who do construction every day for their day jobs and hold senior positions in local governments.

[01:48:25] They dedicate their time, they're experts in their field and we should listen to them. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. st john cunning i i was prepared to vote for this motion um but after listening to my colleagues i do believe that we have it's not an issue of how much this is going to cost even if we have the ballpark it's how much we're going to have and where i'm having a problem is that we're wanting to prioritize this as additional funding um i do think this is critical i think it's a good motion

[01:49:03] i just right now don't think the timing is right if this comes up later for a year end i would definitely support it but i fear that i fear and i hope that we won't have other priorities to supersede this but that may be the case thank you miss st jen cunning all right we will vote for the on the motion on the screen all those in favor of this follow-on motion please raise your hand

[01:49:27] Mr. McElveen, Ms. Lady, Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Mr. Moon. All those opposed? Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Ms. St. John Cunning, and myself. Will the clerk read the vote?

[01:49:47] It's 6-6. The motion fails. Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for a follow-on motion. I move that the school board direct the superintendent to present to the school board as part of the school year 2024-2025 executive limitation 11 EL11 monitoring report a benefit cost analysis and legal framework for using public-private partnerships to design, build, finance, and maintain FCPS school buildings and infrastructure.

[01:50:25] Public-private partnerships shall not be used to reduce or replace FCPS employees or outsource functions performed by FCPS employees. Is there a second? I second. Ms. Dixit. Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion?

[01:50:43] Yes. Through FPAC and CPDC and through a recent 186-page follow-on motion report prepared in alignment with the CIP, We have received abundant information on public-private partnerships, which are used by local school systems, including PG County, which recently built six schools in two years through a public-private partnership.

[01:51:09] We also have the county, which has used public-private partnerships for decades to build things such as the Fairfax County Government Center. It's an innovative way to access additional financing outside of bonds, outside of taxes, in partnership with the private sector, to bring in outside experts, to bring in outside investors, and establish long-term contractual arrangements where they assume the risk and responsibility of maintaining our buildings, not including custodial functions.

[01:51:39] And in this fiscal environment where we are being underfunded by half a billion dollars a year, where we're constrained in the amount of bonds we can issue, where we have a maintenance backlog in the hundreds of millions of dollars for our infrastructure and other things.

[01:51:55] We must be creative. We must look outside the box. And public-private partnerships are something being used locally. It's something used by the county for decades. It's something used overseas in Canada, UK, and Australia for everything from hospitals to highways. And it's something that should be explored here.

[01:52:13] So what this motion seeks to achieve is a benefit-cost analysis, the pros, the cons, and a legal framework so that we have an option that we can undertake that would require further decision to undertake for one school building, a number of school buildings, and have that option on the table.

[01:52:33] because what we know about next year is that the budget will be much worse. The collapse of the commercial office market has not dented this year's budget severely, but next year it will be severely impacted, and we don't have much hope of a significant budget increase at a time when we've been already talking about our salaries for teachers and others are falling far behind our surrounding jurisdictions.

[01:52:57] So we must look to see what we can do in partnership with the private sector to maintain world-class facilities and learning environments for our children and staff. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Ms. Dixit, would you like to speak to your second? I think Mr. Dunn has covered it all.

[01:53:13] I would just say this is a very -- it's an interesting concept and federal government uses this as well and Department of Transportation has this in place. So we do have to manage our budget, but then this privatization of -- the private relationship If it helps us, we want to explore it.

[01:53:38] We are not, this is more of a cost-benefit analysis at this point. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I will be supporting this motion, but I want to be clear to those who are listening in terms of what this is asking for.

[01:53:57] This is asking for information, and formation within a structure we have already set, which is the executive limitations. And that is their whole purpose. So for me, this dovetails very nicely and I hope we can have full support of this. This is not encumbering any funds.

[01:54:12] This is not prioritizing anything in particular. It is asking for information to be included in the superintendent's regular reports to us at whatever that time is determined, whatever that time will be next year as the schedule may change.

[01:54:28] So this is a no brainer. This is an opportunity we have to explore and if we are not able to have those discussions during the superintendent's presentations with the executive limitations when will they happen otherwise so thank you Mr. Dunn and Ms. Dixit for bringing this forward thank you Dr. Anderson Ms. Marin first I want to say I really appreciate that the motion does tie to the executive limitations this is where our board should be going and tying the work to that framework so that we can hold the superintendent accountable in some kind of orderly fashion and have that record

[01:55:05] for all time and keep us going but like I will apply to many of the other remaining follow-on motions I don't support this and here's why the division is already that the school superintendent is already committed to using the Baldrige framework for an analysis of you know focusing the divisions work on what really matters and what's going to produce results so I think it's fair to ask the superintendent for more information about the Baldrige work and the time and funds needed for that but I think it's It's late in the budget process now to analyze that info alongside these other asks.

[01:55:38] Relatedly, the people being asked to do this work are the financial and budgeting staff. When I look at this follow on and the additional follow ons, that's a lot of additional work to ask of the budget staff. The superintendent has also put forth some other frameworks. We've got our strategic plan. We've got those ELs I mentioned.

[01:55:55] This Baldrige framework, we're pushing out, you know, the new reading program. a lot of big things happening and I don't want to encumber the superintendent and staff time on different projects. We need to stay focused and strategic on what's most important. I think that again the director of facilities is taking stock of facilities in the situations division-wide and working under those ELs.

[01:56:20] We've already got an athletic facilities queue process lined up. We're making movement. I DO THINK THAT THE BOARD SHOULD HAVE A FURTHER DISCUSSION ABOUT THE MANY PAGES OF REPORT THAT WE GOT ABOUT THE FOLLOW-ON MOTIONS TO OUR CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM EARLIER THIS YEAR.

[01:56:38] IT WAS, WELL, ALMOST 200 PAGES. I THINK THAT ALONE WARRANTS A WORK SESSION TO REALLY TALK ABOUT WHAT DO WE WANT TO DIRECT THE SUBMENT TO PRIORITIZE BECAUSE WE CAN'T HAVE HER PRIORITIZE EVERYTHING. SO I WILL NOT BE SUPPORTING THIS MOTION. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS.

[01:56:54] MAYOR. MR. I was not quite sure what I was going to do in this motion, and I've appreciated the back and forth, and I will support it because there is a very important caveat in here that really needs to be said.

[01:57:13] Shall not be used to reduce or replace FCPS employees or outsource functions performed by FCPS, and with that, I'm comfortable moving this forward. Absent that, I would not be voting for this. I do think looking at Triple P's in terms of capital infrastructure is important.

[01:57:30] neighboring jurisdictions do it. It's innovative and as a business owner I know that if you don't innovate you stagnate and we cannot afford to stagnate. So I'm okay looking at this with that caveat and with the intent that this is for how can we better build buildings in Fairfax County.

[01:57:47] Thank you Mr. McDaniel. Mr. Dunn. Thank you. There is mention of the Baldrige efficiency review which I support as a general matter but which has never been presented to the board, never been approved by the board, and if it's going to encumber the leadership and staff to such an extent that they can't undertake other board priorities, I must register an objection and respectfully request to the chair and the vice chair and the superintendent to present it in proper order under new business and to have a vote taken on it.

[01:58:24] Since it is a two or three year process, that's nearly the entire term all of us were elected to. Second, I just wanted to say, I understand that we have to make judgments on priorities, but we can't make judgments without information. And this information, as Dr. Anderson rightly said, is intended to provide us with an option set, an option set not currently available to us.

[01:58:50] The follow-on, the CIP follow-on motion report, 186 pages, I've read multiple times by now, has a lot of favorable things to say about public-private partnerships. Our county partners have been doing them for decades have a lot of favorable things to say, as do surrounding jurisdictions.

[01:59:07] So I hope we can explore this so then we actually have a full briefing in such a way that we can take action on it if we decide that it's something that's actionable. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Ms. Sizemore-Hyser? Thank you. I'm also torn on this one for many reasons.

[01:59:29] I'm very supportive of looking at additional ways for Financing especially our infrastructure because our bond funds just do not cover our needs where 42 year renovation cycle and best practices are 25 We don't have Funding set aside for athletic facilities. There's just many reasons why I think this is important to look at However, I will say I am concerned Let me just back up.

[02:00:00] I really appreciate, again, like I said, that we finally had the space to breathe and look at some of these things we wanted to look at for a long time. What I'm concerned about is that in five months, we have put a lot of different things on staff. And I think it would be beneficial for this board, perhaps in a retreat, to have a conversation about how to align all of that work.

[02:00:23] Because one of my worries is I don't want to send staff here, then there, then here, then here, then here. Because that is what, to be honest, my experience was when I first got on this board. And when you send staff all over the place, they don't actually, aren't able to move anything forward.

[02:00:41] I'm not necessarily saying this is doing that at this point, but I'm feeling like we're reaching a tipping point of that. And so I feel like in some ways we would be better off having retreat about what are the things that we want to address and how do we as a board prioritize them?

[02:00:57] How do we align them with a strategic plan? How do we align them with the work we're already doing? Because the hard part is almost all of these ideas are great ideas and things that need to be done and some of them need to be done for a long time. And in isolation, I could probably vote for all of them.

[02:01:14] But I don't think we've had the conversation about at what point are we putting so many different things on staff that it's diminishing returns on quality work on top of the work we're doing. We're still trying to make sure we're dealing with an opioid crisis.

[02:01:33] We're dealing with closing achievement gaps. dealing with student mental health issues we have a future that's very different and we've talked about steam and all these are the priorities at what point do we realize they can't do it all and either we're gonna get subpar work or we're gonna lose our staff or we're gonna spin in circles and nothing will move forward and I'm feeling a little bit like we're getting there and I think all of this is about such great intention and great ideas and work into it that I'm struggling to say no but I'm struggling to say yes without maybe

[02:02:10] having a maybe a joint retreat with with Dr. Reed and some of our staff to say all right here are the 15 or 20 or 30 things that really need to be done to make things better how do we prioritize them so they're all done well when we did our strategic plan that was one of the biggest impetus for the strategic plan is to align all of our work in the same direction I think we need to pause and do that now thank you Ms. Sizemore Heiser Dr. Anderson thank you one of the things that I wanted to raise in this conversation was several months ago i had the opportunity to meet someone who was

[02:02:47] doing this work and engage miss saminsky in that conversation and i think those conversations have been going on for multiple months now so there are these general attempts at this work and i think this is very much aligned and this also dovetails so very nicely with the past five years that i've I've been on this board that we've been looking at the unfunded CIP, the billions of dollars that we need, that beautiful circle that you like so much, Mr.

[02:03:14] McDaniel, that shows how much need we have. We must take a look at this. This is something and we do. You're right, Miss Sasmo Heiser. We have a lot of initiatives, but we also have a lot of different departments that are taking care of this initiative of these initiatives.

[02:03:32] This would not necessarily be falling under Dr. Presidio's shop because he has a lot there. This is with Ms. Zeminski's shop and with some assistance with budget. I just think I don't want us to short ourselves because this is a great need.

[02:03:50] And we're talking about literally billions of dollars. We're talking about falling buildings that we don't have any capacity of doing anything any more quickly than what we have going right now. For me, this is a high priority.

[02:04:05] Just kind of outline this also with what Miss Marin said earlier with the billions of dollars that this could possibly be in this division. For me, it is very high priority. And it's an investigation. It is looking for information.

[02:04:21] It's not even encumbering dollars. It's just finding out what is possible and for us to really have a thorough discussion. So I'm really hoping that those of you who are torn can find a way to engage in this conversation, because I think it's really a priority.

[02:04:38] Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson, besides all right, we will go ahead and vote for the on the follow on motion on the screen. Follow on motion number two. All those in favor, Mr.

[02:04:53] McDaniel, Mr. McIlveen, Miss Lady, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Miss Anderson, Mr. Moon and myself and Ms. Dixit. Ms. St. John Cunning, I don't see a vote. Yes. All those opposed. Ms. Marin, abstentions. Ms. Sizemore-Hyser. Will the clerk read the vote?

[02:05:19] 10-1-1, the motion passes. Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for a follow-on motion. Thank you. I move that the school board direct the superintendent to present to the school board as part of the school year 2024-2025 Executive Limitation 11, EL11 monitoring report.

[02:05:39] multiple options for the reduction of annual leasing expenses and the consolidation of administrative staff. The option set shall include, but not be limited to, the renegotiation of existing leases and the negotiation of new leases for commercial office space.

[02:05:56] Is there a second? Second. Dr. Anderson, Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes. We are a very large school system that occupies very many buildings, most of which we own, but some of which we do not.

[02:06:14] I'll offer Willow Oaks as an example. That is commercial office space. And we have sought to use some of that commercial office space for certain uses which have been denied by the landlord. I don't know if that's a building we want to be in. But more importantly, we are witnessing a historic collapse of the commercial office market.

[02:06:36] And it is a buyer's market right now. We should be, at a minimum, going out into the marketplace and for our existing leases, renegotiating them to reduce the rent we pay. because there are landlords so desperate that they will accept lower rent just so you don't move out.

[02:06:54] In addition, we should be looking at all of the various leased office properties we occupy and seek to bring our staff together into a smaller footprint. With telework and other flexibilities, maybe we don't need all the office space we have now.

[02:07:11] In addition, many landlords in the market right now, and I know this from personal professional experience will be willing to offer significant financial incentives. They will pay for your furniture, so free furniture if you move in. They will also offer to redo conference rooms or build a conference room or build a cafeteria. All kinds of opportunities exist. If you haven't negotiated a commercial lease, it's a lot of fun in a buyer's market, not so much fun in a seller's market.

[02:07:38] And it's something we should do to be prudent with our money because this comes out of operating funds so when we talk about we don't have enough money for a six percent pay raise this is one of the reasons why because we're paying too much for leased office space i'll also submit i think there's a legitimate question should we have any leased office space period we have so many buildings at least 25 buildings i understand that are not used by students maybe we should look at moving in there we have some operations folks based there i.t and others but this is an opportunity to save money at a time where there's rich opportunities.

[02:08:13] It's shooting fish in a barrel, so I ask for your support. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your second? Oh, very briefly, because I think Mr. Dunn covered it. I just wanted to reiterate again, this is an ask for information. This is a request for information for us to have a discussion and to be thoughtful about how we spend our dollars.

[02:08:32] This is, again, just so key to our work that I would have no hesitation in supporting this. This already exists. Parts of this are already included in our CIP discussions and parts of this will be new. But it's also already aligned to the work.

[02:08:49] It's aligned to what the Superintendent presents to us in this public forum. And if there's any opportunity of saving dollars that could be reallocated and repurposed to our most critical needs, I would love to have that information to act upon. Thank you, Dr. Anderson.

[02:09:05] Mr. McDaniel, Mr. Dunn is correct. the office market right now is such that if you have cash at a reasonable rate you should be buying things it is also such that if you are locked into long-term leases and inflated rent you should be renegotiating those and forcing a conversation he is not he's not wrong that that is completely correct the concern i have with this motion and why i i will offer a fix to get my vote there is a clause in here it's the same reason why i supported the previous motion

[02:09:39] But there is a statement in here, multiple options for the reduction of annual leasing expenses and the consolidation of administrative staff. I don't want to put that out there and imply that we're going to do rifts and cut down administrative staff. That's my concern with this.

[02:09:54] So if that's removed and that sentence ends annual leasing expenses, I'll have my vote. Can I move to amend my motion? Not at the moment.

[02:10:09] You've not been recognized. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Mr. Moon. I think Mr. McDaniel made a good point and hope that somebody will make an amendment to delete that few words in there.

[02:10:26] With that said, I'll be able to support a Mr. Dunn's motion. You know, having been in leasing business myself for my own business for 40 years, having represented a lot of tenants over the years, I know right now time is good for tenants.

[02:10:47] Thank you, Mr. Moon. Ms. Sizemore-Hyser? First, I'm a reader at the same point. I totally agree. This is an opportunity to save money. There are lots of opportunities to save money. There's lots of burdens we're putting on staff.

[02:11:07] Which ones are we going to prioritize? I'm going to tell you right now, we are going to torpedo work if we keep doing this. And I don't think we want to torpedo work. So I guess on this one, I'm wondering why we need multiple options. This is a deeply operational thing to do. If we want to direct the superintendent to look at renegotiating leases, I could maybe get behind that but why do we need multiple options we don't vote on the renegotiating leases necessarily do vote on contracts so I understand that piece of it but we should I don't know why we need multiple options take

[02:11:42] even more time to develop so why don't we just say the school would dress the superintendent to present a plan for the reduction of leases and if she wants to have multiple options in her plan she could do that but we're getting really deeply and directive and operational here on how we want to save the money in multiple I mean when I look at this consolidating an administrative draft bringing us multiple options how about we want to save money in our leases go figure out whether we can but this is a lot of work the way this is written and

[02:12:20] I am having come from a place where I feel like we were all over the place in our alignment and working having worked very hard the last few years to bring our system into alignment I cannot help but raise the flag that we're going in the other direction so if we can find them and I'm happy to offer some friendly amendments to this a way to reduce this so we're not trying to direct her to bring all these options for us to vote on and just trying to get to the core of I think what we're trying to do which is reduce leasing costs I could maybe support it but I would beg my colleagues before

[02:12:55] we do 10 more at the next two weeks vote let's stop and think about what we're doing to the 10 and 20 things we've already asked to be done and if we want those to be done well we've got to be strategic in how we do ask going forward. So I'm happy to offer some additional multiple suggestions if it's appropriate. Do you have an amendment to offer? I would like to offer an amendment to say direct the superintendent to present to the board as part of the executive limitation monitoring report her plan for reduction of annual leasing expenses period.

[02:13:32] And the rest of it is her operational decision. We'll let the screen reflect the suggestion just A PLAN FOR THE REDUCTION OF ANNUAL LEASING EXPENSES. A PLAN FOR THE REDUCTION BECAUSE WE'RE ASSUMING SHE CAN REDUCE THEM, A PLAN FOR EXPLORING THE POSSIBILITY OF REDUCING OR EXPLORING THE REDUCTION OF ANNUAL LEASING EXPENSES.

[02:14:08] I DON'T WANT TO PRESUME SHE CAN REDUCE THEM. PLAN FOR EXPLORING THE REDUCTION OF ANNUAL LEASING EXPENSES. GOOD POINT. WE'RE NOT TELLING HOW TO OPERATIONALIZE THIS. JUST A SECOND. IS THERE A SECOND?

[02:14:23] I'LL SECOND. I think I've spoken to it. I appreciate the thought of asking to look at saving money here but I don't think we should be so prescriptive and asking for so many options that's just going to take extra work when the goal is just to reduce our leasing expenses if possible.

[02:14:45] Thank you Miss Sizemore heiser. Miss Marin would you like to speak to your second. Yes please. So thank you to my colleague for raising this point. I don't usually play the card of I've been a school board member last term. term but we did work really hard to set up processes and what's different now is we have a superintendent who has a strategic plan strategic governance she wants to do this Baldrige framework it is not our job to tell her how to do her job we have to hold her accountable we have the ELs we can measure what what she does but you know who would be really good at this work is our County Board of Supervisors because they manage the revenue generation from our

[02:15:25] commercial taxes why do we have to do the work of analyzing commercial real estate taxes when that's actually happening somewhere else so or the base I will support this motion I still think it's way too in the weeds but it is definitely better than the one proposed thank you all right if you are not raising your hand to speak to the amendment please lower your light or turn off your light all right miss st. John Cunningham I will also support this

[02:16:04] friendly amendment I feel that a lot of the follow-on motions just go too deeply into the operational realm and it's really hard for me to pull back because I come from the operational realm. I appreciate this friendly amendment because I do think there are opportunities there but I think we need to let staff figure it out and the superintendent figure it out the way they can figure it out. Thank you Ms. St. John Cunning. Mr. Dunn. Just a question about the friendly amendment which I just for the record there is no such thing as a friendly amendment this is just an amendment well an amendment from a

[02:16:42] friend then I want to stay friends that's why I called it a friendly amendment understanding that the middle the first sentence was amended is the amendment does the amendment include the last sentence or we're not not saying it changes my opinion one way or the other no because I feel like that's telling her how to look at different options I think our staff can figure out whether renegotiate or new leases I don't want to be prescriptive and telling them I think plan is the plan and how she if it's not if it's the plan isn't

[02:17:20] sufficient when she comes back that's our oversight point to make those comments at that point it isn't our way to tell her all the different things to do and I support the amendment Thank You mr. Dunn I will take a turn on the amendment I can now support the motion as amended all right and perhaps during the exploration of that work maybe we'll stumble across some buildings that want to be sold to us for really cheap all right um seeing no other hands um we will go ahead and just to make clear

[02:17:59] it hasn't been amended until you voted on whether to make the amendment correct we're voting on the amendment the amendment on the screen as written uh and highlighted uh we are voting on that if you'd like to support that amendment please raise your hand miss sizemore heiser mr mcdaniel mr mckelveen miss lady miss marron mr dunn dr anderson miss anderson miss dixit mr moon miss st john cunning and myself that is unanimous so the motion is amended and now with no hands up

[02:18:30] we can vote on oh miss anderson we are now speaking to the amended motion i am um i was hoping to ask dr reed if work has already been done in the division to reduce the costs of lease Leases and to reduce the amount of lease space that we have. Thank you for the question. Mrs. Anderson We've already been discussing this because we do have Cyclical leases that do come due and we also have Staff in locations that we are working to consider consolidation of to Bring folks

[02:19:10] Together for a variety of reasons, but yes, we have already been Undertaking those conversations we want to maximize every dollar that we are stewards for. I am assuming that if if you were able to accomplish those things that you would also bring that information back to the board so that we can all celebrate with you. Yes ma'am. Thank you. Thank you Miss Anderson. All right. Seeing no others we will vote for the on the follow on motion number three which is on the screen as amended. All those in favor. Miss Sizemore Heiser. Mr. McDaniel. Mr. McIlveen. Miss Lady. Miss Marin. Mr. Dunn. Dr. Anderson.

[02:19:49] - Ms. Anderson, nope, sorry. Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Ms. St. John Cunning and myself. All those opposed, abstentions? Ms. Anderson, how do you vote? Opposed, Ms. Anderson opposed. Will the clerk read the vote?

[02:20:07] - It's 11-1, the motion carries. - Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for a follow on motion. - Thank you. I move to direct the superintendent to present to the school board as part of the school year 2024-2025 executive limitation EL11 monitoring report, a benefit cost analysis for achieving the board's Joint Environmental Task Force directive of replacing the school division's diesel school bus fleet with electric alternatives and building any additional charging infrastructure required.

[02:20:37] This analysis shall be accompanied by a plan for achieving this transition as efficiently and expeditiously as possible to include, among other potential options, the use of management efficiencies and other strategies. - Is there a second?

[02:20:52] - I second. - Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your follow-on motion? I would. Briefly, I had the honor to participate in a recent ceremony at Lorton Station Elementary where we, FCPS, received a grant from the EPA to purchase, I believe, 42 electric school buses.

[02:21:17] I think that's a great, great accomplishment. But we have something on the order of more than 1,500 school buses. Is that right, Dr. Reed? 1,600. I believe it's 1,625 if my memory serves. So that's a huge amount of pollution every year.

[02:21:36] And we know that pollution affects minority communities more than any other, causing incalculable damage to their lives, higher asthma rates, higher lung cancer rates, and all kinds of maladies. As an elected official, I feel at this time of the fierce urgency of now to address climate change. We need to do everything within our power to reduce our carbon carbon footprint and to make sure that we are environmentally responsible. Moreover, the market within the United States for electric school buses, having worked at the U.S. Department of Energy where they

[02:22:14] funded renewable energy research into electric vehicles, batteries and such, I know for a fact that the market has matured far, far beyond what it was only four or five years ago. And in this environment, there is an opportunity to leverage our buying power, our market power as the 10th largest school district or thereabouts in the nation to buy in volume over time with a contract for multiple years so that we can reduce our approximately $170 million I believe we spend on

[02:22:50] fuel each year to near zero, because electricity is far cheaper. And to do it in a way where we're training our technicians, training our workforce in the technologies of the future, upgrading our charging infrastructure, helping to spread the word, spread the benefits of electric vehicles, of which I am a proud owner.

[02:23:11] So for all those reasons, and because I believe this is cost-effective, will actually save us significant money that, again, can go to teacher pay raises and other priorities, I've put forward this motion. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Frisch. Thank you. So this board and its predecessors have really moved forward on electric buses.

[02:23:35] We have increased the number of electric buses in the school division by 80-fold in the last five years. Of course, we started with none. So it's pretty easy to have a remarkable statistic like that. But the Joint Environmental Task Force made its recommendation that we transition to a fully electric fleet.

[02:23:56] We are one of the largest school division fleets in the country. And this board made a directive that we would follow through on that recommendation. And so we have been working hard as a school division to apply for every grant imaginable TO FUND THE PURCHASE OF THESE BUSES, BUT GRANTS ALONE WON'T GET US THERE.

[02:24:17] IN OUR FACILITIES WORK WE HAVE A PLAN FOR GETTING TO NET ZERO WITH OUR SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION. WE NEED A SIMILAR PLAN AS IT RELATES TO OUR SCHOOL BUS FLEET. I WILL SAY THAT THIS MOTION DOES NOT CHANGE THE FACT THAT THE BOARD HAS ALREADY APPROVED THE FULL TRANSITION OF AN ELECTRIC FLEET BY A UNANIMOUS VOTE.

[02:24:41] simply asks for a plan to do so. I was able to visit a neighboring school division which has begun the work of transitioning it's rather large but not as large as our school bus fleet and visit one of their electric bus depots and it's an interesting way that they're doing it they have because they are there is a big curve to actually saving money on electric buses right now that curve is getting flatter and flatter as years go by and so the way that school divisions are replacing their fleets and saving money at least

[02:25:16] right now two ways getting grants to diminish the cost of a conversion or entering into a leasing relationship with a provider so that they are not taking on the cost of the the equipment and instead are just paying for the use OF THE EQUIPMENT, WHICH HAS ENABLED MANY SCHOOL DIVISIONS TO MOVE VERY QUICKLY TO TRANSITION THEIR FLEET AS THEY OFF-CYCLE DIESEL BUSES. SO I'M SUPPORTING THIS FOLLOW-ON MOTION BECAUSE IT'S ASKING FOR A PLAN WITHIN THE WORK THAT WE'RE ALREADY DOING AND IT'S IN FURTHERANCE OF

[02:25:54] THE BOARD'S DIRECTIVE THAT WE DO THIS TRANSITION. THANK YOU. SO WHEN I TALK ABOUT TIME, it also includes board time we passed the joint environmental task force goals that had electric bus feet in them currently in the el monitoring report is to meet the county's environmental plans so we already have that asking for a plan is again getting into operational as part of the current el we are asking for her to report to us what she's doing i don't know why

[02:26:32] on top of that report we need an additional plan i appreciate that we're all i think passionate about these goals it's why we passed it previously but I don't know why we're having a conversation of something we've already done and I think I would love to focus on things we need to do it I think to my colleagues point from the last follow-on where I believe I think staff are already looking at how to consolidate leases and how to consolidate staff I appreciate the thinking I appreciate all the work but let's focus on things we're not already doing and I don't think I

[02:27:07] can support a motion for something we're already doing okay I will take a turn I I support transitioning to an electric fleet. I support environmental education. This morning I began, I'm just remembering a long time ago, shoveling soil at Terracet Elementary from the parking lot to the rooftop garden so that our children could have instructional time on outdoor learning. And that's the thing. That is our lane, pun intended. Our lane is instruction. You know whose lane is transportation? That's the county.

[02:27:44] I have an electric car I cannot charge it at my home my husband has to go to Target to charge our car if the county is not going to set up EV stations and put in the infrastructure I don't think it's prudent or even appropriate for FCPS to be the leader on this the buses are exorbitant I'm all for it but if we're going to prioritize making a change in environmental situations and combating climate change it's got to be through educating students who most of the time honestly could probably be educators to adults on how to foster sustainability.

[02:28:21] Just last week, we also, I attended the middle school start time community meeting, we've had several of those. A big component of changing middle school start times is going to be transportation. And our transportation office is going to be pretty busy trying to figure that out.

[02:28:36] So again, we can't keep splitting the same staff's time on multiple projects. I think what we should do is call upon our County Board of Supervisors to work with us and include our metrics further in their sustainability goals, because that would really be a one Fairfax thing to do, and work on providing the infrastructure so that we can plug in our buses when we can get that money from the state, that half a billion dollars.

[02:29:02] Thank you. I see Ms. Anderson's light. No, Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I know one of the concerns that we've had with the buses that we do have that are electric is that none of them are in the Mason District because we do not have the charging stations.

[02:29:25] They can't make it up from Lorton or even as close as Springfield and be able to sustain for the entire day. So I do know we do require some more charging stations in order to operationalize this. But my question is for Dr. Reed in terms of what is the work that is taking place in this realm with your staff at current?

[02:29:49] So Dr. Anderson the current work is there's a great deal of grant writing to acquire electric the EV buses they're quite a bit more expensive than a traditional diesel bus and I think continued work with the county get to green program around advocacy for charging stations so I think that's where the work currently is centered.

[02:30:17] you I and as Mr. Frisch mentioned this board has already made it known that we want to transition the you know this as a superintendent the prior superintendent knows this what I see this motion asking for is for us to be a little bit more intentional when you are discussing el 11 to include some of those discussions that you are having with staff that's what that's how I'm reading it unless the motions I'm sorry the makers of the motion see see this differently I don't necessarily see this as additional work do you engage do you anticipate something new beyond

[02:30:53] bring us some of those discussions that you are having as a staff in terms of how you are furthering this goal can somebody answer that I think that would be second please Dr. Anderson may I recognize Mr. Dunn to provide an answer yes Mr. Dunn I believe that you're right that there has been the direction. This simply, as Mr. Frisch Chair has said, indicates that we are seeking additional information to be apprised of those discussions and have information such that we might be able

[02:31:28] to actually achieve that objective. And these are the things that we're utilizing these executive limitations for. At the end of each of those votes, we have a conversation in terms of what else, what changes do we want to have added to the executive limitations. We haven't had any to date. I think there was a conversation once about a potential idea. I just see this as a potential idea that could have come when we discussed EL11. It didn't it's coming now because we're just in a different space. So I'll be able to support this because I see it as part and parcel of the work. It is our job to do the monitoring not to tell them how to do it but to evaluate the plans that will

[02:32:08] get to the means and the outcomes that we're seeking. Thank you Mr. Fresh I believe you have a second turn. ms dixit i think uh what i interpret from the electric plus transition is that it'll be years till this thing program will go on it'll be 2030 or 35 where even california is not there who's so

[02:32:39] advanced than us in the electrics infrastructure we are very limited uh infrastructure here like like dr anderson said and the same time we it has to be at the same aligned with counties doing so we cannot get there earlier than them so i i believe this motion uh is trying to get us when do we get there but um it's really uh the the language is a little complicated for me to you know, comprehend until the end of it, I would just keep it as a direction of just

[02:33:18] like we did in the previous motion that cost benefit analysis and then stopped at infrastructure required and then Dr. Reed can then just present that in her EL11.

[02:33:35] Ms. Dixit, are you offering an amendment then? Yes. can you please restate your edits and the clerk thank you for please putting that up on the screen I'll just say we can stop at charging infrastructure required period thank you let's give the clerks a moment I can second thank you dr. Anderson seconds mystics it would you like to speak further to your amendment I think this is a again continuous improvement year after year

[02:34:14] We just have to see when we get there and this is again with the grants with the county infrastructure this is not going to be a one-time thing. We'll have to kind of I guess revisit this every year how we progress.

[02:34:31] Thank you. Dr. Anderson speak to the amendment. No thank you. Are there other members wishing to speak to the amendment? Ms. Sizemoreheiser. I appreciate the amendment and I appreciate Dr. Anderson bringing up that we have a process for bending the EL11 report so it seems to me that this would be better brought there as part of that process instead of separate from that because why else have the process to amend the reports and if we didn't think of it then then we didn't but it seems kind of odd to amend the report through this process but

[02:35:08] again it's already in the EL11 we already have a joint environmental task force I don't see the need for this and I don't think we should be being duplicative in our work so I will not be supporting this thank you miss Sizemoreheiser is there anyone else wishing to speak to the amendment which is on the screen perhaps the clerk she can scroll a little bit so we can see the beginning of the amendment if possible on a page break okay I will call for a vote to vote on the amendment adopting the amendment so all those in

[02:35:47] favor of the amendment to the motion as written on the screen please raise your hand that is miss Sizemoreheiser mr. McDaniel mr. McElveen miss lady mr. Frisch, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Ms. St. John Cunning and myself.

[02:36:05] I believe that's unanimous. Great. So now the board will vote on the amended follow-on motion. Does anyone wish to speak to the amended follow-on motion? I see a few lights on Ms. Dixit. Okay.

[02:36:31] Anyone else wishing to speak to the motion? Okay. Great. So I will go ahead and call for a vote to adopt the amended follow-on motion it's just hold on the thank you Clark Jackson okay so that is motion thank you for your patience I just want to get on the screen okay a follow-on motion number four just again I move to direct the superintendent to present to the school board as part of the school year 24 25

[02:37:09] executive limitation 11 monitoring report a benefit cost analysis for achieving the board's joint environmental task force directive of replacing the school divisions diesel school bus fleet with electric alternatives and

[02:37:19] building any additional charging infrastructure required all those in favor please raise your hand that's Mr. McDaniel Mr. McElveen Miss Lady Mr. Frisch Mr. Dunn Dr. Anderson Miss Dixick and Mr. Moon and Miss St. John Cunning all those voting against the motion Miss Sizemore Heiser all those abstaining Miss Anderson and myself will the clerk please read the vote the vote is 9-1-2 the motion carries. Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for a motion.

[02:37:59] I move that the school board direct the superintendent to conduct a survey of FCPS teachers for the purpose of determining the approximate amount of money that teachers spend out of pocket on classroom costs, such as school supplies and snacks, each year.

[02:38:18] The survey shall differentiate between teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools, teachers in Title I and non-Title I schools, and teachers in schools in different regions. The superintendent shall present to the school board as part of the school year 2024-2025 Executive Limitation 5 EL5 Monitoring Report, a draft plan to establish classroom budgets or augment school budgets so teachers are not required to purchase school supplies out of pocket.

[02:38:47] Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Is there a second? Second. Dr. Anderson, Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, please. Go ahead. One of the tragedies of public schools in the United States is that every year I see on Twitter, I see on Facebook. I see on other social media teachers from within my district, from across the county, from across the United States, asking for strangers to donate dollars to enable them to purchase books, crayons, chairs, a variety of basic items so that their children can, their students

[02:39:24] can learn. I personally have donated thousands of dollars in recent years, both in my district and elsewhere to support teachers who I've never met. It's absolutely heartbreaking, some of the appeals, and it's not just in Title I schools, it's all schools, all teachers, and there are entire software platforms that are dedicated to this, which is shocking. The fact that we're asking teachers who already work longer hours than anyone I know, who get paid less than anyone

[02:40:00] I know for comparable work are asked to not just be superheroes but to self-sacrifice so our children can receive a world-class education. It's morally wrong and yet we tolerate it year in year out and this is a first step. I will put out there if people have issues with some of the language I will gladly support budget amendments to make it non-operational but the objective is no teacher should have to spend a single dollar out of their own pocket so that their students can learn. That

[02:40:38] cost should be borne by FCPS, because if we're not going to pay them market salaries, we should at least make sure that they don't have to pay out of their underpaid salaries so their children have, their students have all the implements, books, chairs, crayons, to have a meaningful world-class learning environment. We're one of the wealthiest places, not just in the U.S., but in the world. We should eradicate this cost from the pockets of our teachers and make sure that every teacher is able to use their own salary for their own purposes. Thank you.

[02:41:14] Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, briefly. When I was teaching second grade, I would have loved for somebody to ask me this question as a teacher because my meager salary of $27,719 was not enough to sustain me, but much of it did go to my students because I needed it. I wanted to make my classroom a welcoming place.

[02:41:42] I wanted to just have access to the things that my students needed. So I was at the teacher's store. I was at the dollar store. I was at all the places to bring the things into the classroom to give them the best possible environment what this is again is an ask for information and I'm hoping it's not a heavy lift this is essentially a survey that we're going to send out to our students I hope to not be oversimplifying this but I'm hoping this is something that ORC can kind of get together sent to our staff and we have the information and then we can decide what to do with that information the superintendent can offer recommendations like we should do something or we don't have space to do anything but absent the

[02:42:21] information we will continue to have the anecdotes of teachers bringing this and lamenting it because it really should not be their jobs. So thank you again to Mr. Dunn for what he has shared but that's the essence and that is why I'm in support of this motion and hopefully you all can be as well. Thanks Dr. Anderson. Mr. McDaniel. We're trying to figure out how much on average we spend the teachers spend on their own pockets on classifies. I googled it I got an answer according to the NEA from August of 2003 studies show that on average

[02:42:59] educators spend somewhere between 500 and 750 of their own money every year on things students need and I believe there's an IRS tax write-off for a few hundred dollars and three hundred dollars somewhere in there my concern with support is why I'm not going to support this I don't want to look like we are dangling paying for school supplies in front of our teachers because I would not want to go down that route and then because of budget CONCERNS HAVE TO RETRACT THAT. SO I THINK WE HAVE THE ANSWER, AND FOR THOSE REASONS, I WOULD NOT SUPPORT THIS MOTION.

[02:43:38] THANK YOU, MR. MCDANIEL. MS. ST. JOHN CUNNING? AS SOMEONE THAT HAS WORKED DOWN IN THE TRENCHES AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS AND TITLE I SCHOOLS, I WANT TO CLARIFY THAT THERE'S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NECESSARY SUPPLIES AND EXTRA SUPPLIES.

[02:43:56] As a family liaison, I have like such an abundance of necessary supplies that we share with other people where I ran out of storage. Not just your necessary supplies that, you know, pencils, books, crayons, paper, spiral notebooks, scissors, rulers.

[02:44:20] And family liaisons amongst themselves know what all of these supplies are. and we trade off if they're needed, glue sticks. And I really want for people to understand that if we're going to try to serve everyone, there are some teachers, depending on where they are in their career, that have extra access to their own accounts of money, and they go over the top because they choose to do so.

[02:44:46] And so when we're talking about snacks and supplies, I think we need to distinguish between what is necessary for children to learn, your basic school supplies versus augmenting supplies. I am always supporting teachers. I am always doing the extra so that they can have all the extra things, but there is a differentiation there.

[02:45:06] And I think that's important. And I don't know if this will capture this. Right now, if any school, I know at the community school that I worked at, if any school right now is in need of pencils, they can call that school because I've got so many boxes of pencils that are stored there.

[02:45:23] have so many crayons that are stored there i had well i had i should say so i'm all for supporting teachers i'm all for them not spending their own money but i also want people to understand that sometimes people make those choices um the other aspect that i want to say is that a lot of times where there are school supply there is so much for a class that's allotted by the administrator and sometimes we have to look at how that administrator is giving up their budget that they have a discretion at so that's another thing i want to throw out so just because of of the very

[02:46:00] so many variables and trying to get this data i can't support this amendment thank you miss st john cunning miss sizemar heiser i feel like the person is raining out of his parade today but i just maybe i misheard this but it sounded like all this was being asked for was a survey but actually the second sentence talks about a draft plan also so i just want to be clear this is at At least the way I'm reading this, this is more than just a survey.

[02:46:28] And I think part of that draft plan, I believe, could be part of the Baldrige work. If the Baldrige work is looking at efficiencies and plan, again, we have a plan to look at efficiencies and how we're spending our money. We don't want eight different plans to look at that.

[02:46:44] It creates, you know, it makes us out of alignment. If we have a plan, let's do that plan first and then figure out what we need to supplement it with. If we do ten different things, we're going to do none of them well. So this is more than a survey and to Mr. McDaniel's really great point you can just Google it to give us an approximate idea of how much it is just times it by every teacher and you got the answer to that approximately and then we have the ball to work to figure out all sorts of efficiencies and way to spend money. Let's focus on one thing and do it.

[02:47:16] Well thank you Miss Sizemore Heiser Miss Anderson as someone who has spent a large part of the last decade clearing lists and providing resources to teachers. I fully support the concept of ensuring that our teachers are supported, which is late.

[02:47:39] I will also say that I agree with my colleague from Franconia that this is so variable per teacher that it's best handled by ensuring that school budgets support teachers in their classrooms, which I believe ours do.

[02:47:55] And what I would actually be more interested in is whether or not our principals are utilizing those funds in that direction. So I can't support this the way that it's written, particularly when we're talking about budgeting money for this right now. However, I do love the idea of continuing to look at what trades are being made within our budgets.

[02:48:15] So but I fully support our teachers. And I love the fact that they have been so innovative to come up with a way to clear the lists of the things that make their classrooms home for our kids during the day. So I applaud their efforts.

[02:48:31] Thank you Miss Anderson I will take a turn good points have been raised by folks you know as somebody whose partner is an educator the number of Amazon boxes that have arrived at our home with school supplies or supplies for his teaching the trips to target the trips to the container store and on and on and on yes it's an it's an important issue and it's the exact type of issue that I think collective bargaining can address when we think about the quality of life issues that our associations can bargain over.

[02:49:02] SO I'M CONFIDENT THAT THEY WILL LOOK AT ALL THE DIFFERENT WAYS THAT THEY CAN IMPROVE THEIR SITUATION AS THEY COLLECTIVELY BARGAIN AND I'M NOT ABLE TO SUPPORT THIS MOTION FOR SOME OF THE REASONS THAT WERE STATED HERE BUT ALSO BECAUSE I BELIEVE THAT THIS SHOULD BE HANDLED THROUGH COLLECTIVE BARGAINING MR. MCELVEEN THANKS JUST VERY BRIEFLY I MEAN I TOO SUPPORT THE INTENT BEHIND THIS WHAT I WOULD PREFER TO SEE IS A STUDY OF SCHOOL AND CLASSROOM NECESSITIES

[02:49:35] that are not being provided for example tissues paper towels menstrual supplies recycling cans things that we're consistently hearing from students that we have shortages of in schools and that principals may not have had the budgets for so i think we need to address that before we move into other things thanks thank you mr mckelveen miss anderson are you asking for a go back all right mr dunn i just wanted to thank my colleagues for their uh informative comments

[02:50:10] which have been very illuminating um and i also want to say uh i've never met a group of people who are so um above and beyond dedicated to supporting our teachers and our staff um and i think that's reflected in a lot of the comments there's not there every single member of the board is beyond belief enthusiastic in that regard and uh nothing i have said today or ever should be construed otherwise. One comment on the Baldrige report, it's become something of a, the Baldrige report

[02:50:45] does everything. I've heard just in the last 24 hours that it solves every problem and gives us free snacks too. So I again urge that the superintendent present the Baldrige report to us because from the conversations I've had, I don't think there's any consensus on what it actually is does the scope of it from the reports I've seen and read about it doesn't do any of those things and it's very high level so maybe I'm wrong but we really don't know but and it's going to encumber our staff in a very serious

[02:51:21] way for the next three years which shouldn't be done without some kind of briefing to the board and perhaps a vote of approval as to the survey it's three questions one how much do you spend it can be a fill-in-the-blank or 100 200 300 or more than 300 to title one school or not in three regions so it can be a fairly simple survey either confirm the nea report or not we're a higher cost district so maybe we have higher costs data is always good and i welcome any amendments by friends or otherwise thank you mr

[02:51:56] dunn mr mckelveen oh sorry all right seeing no new hands on the screen we will go ahead and vote on the follow-on motion on the screen all those in favor mr dunn dr mr moon all those against ms seismor heiser mr mcdaniel mr mckelveen miss lady miss anderson miss dixit miss st john cunning and myself with miss marron away from the table will the clerk read the vote the vote is 3-8 miss marron is not present the motion fails thank you i call on mr dunn for a

[02:52:34] follow-on motion thank you i move that the school board direct the superintendent to present to the the school board as part of the school year 2024-2025 executive limitation 5 EL5 monitoring report. Benefit cost analysis of establishing a student loan repayment program for FCPS employees modeled on 5 U.S. code section 5379 for each employee $10,000 per year with a maximum of $60,000 which shall complement student loan forgiveness programs operated by the federal government. Is there a second? Second. Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dunn, would you

[02:53:14] like to speak to your motion. Yes, thank you. So federal employees as public servants have access to the same student loan forgiveness programs generally that teachers and other staff of FCPS have. But many of those programs don't take effect for 10 years, sometimes more, and sometimes they forgive only part of the loan depending on which program you're participating in. In the meanwhile, Student loans for the younger generation occupy a very significant impact on their income, cause some people to become undateable because they have so much money in student loans,

[02:53:53] and inhibit their ability to afford a mortgage, a better quality of life, etc. This is something that is common in the federal workplace. Almost every federal agency as a recruitment tool, as a retention tool, has a student loan repayment program under this U.S. law that allows each employee to receive up to $10,000 per year paid over six years for a maximum of $60,000.

[02:54:22] It's fairly low cost. It may seem like a lot of money, and it's not. You can also cap the number of people who participate, say $1,000 a year or $10,000 per year, so you can control the costs. It doesn't have to be indefinite. doesn't have to be unlimited. But it's something that should be explored because we have a teacher shortage. We are limited in increasing teacher pay. This is a fairly limited investment and would potentially incentivize employees to come here and stay here or existing employees to stay here.

[02:54:55] The parenthetical is included only for an explanation of what's provided in 5 USC code Section 5379. So I encourage my colleagues to consider this as an opportunity to establish an additional mechanism, an additional tool by which we can recruit and retain the best teachers to teach our children and provide a world-class education. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Dr.

[02:55:22] Anderson is away from the table. All right, Ms. Marin. I was the seconder. Oh, I'm sorry. She did so many of them. A force of happiness. Mr. McElveen, I apologize. So for a long time, I've been an advocate and supporter of having governmental programs that pay our educators to go to college or grad school in exchange for years of service.

[02:55:46] I think in the absence of a program like that, that this is a good substitute, and I'm always interested in receiving more information. So happy to support this amendment. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. Ms. Marin. Oh, I apologize.

[02:56:03] Ms. Anderson, oh, Ms. Marin, ping pong. - I first learned of this idea maybe 10 hours ago. I've never heard it brought by any member of this board forward for discussion. Of course, I am for loan forgiveness, but this is so out of the blue.

[02:56:23] I just, we have a new director, a new chief of HR coming in a few weeks whose job is to recruit and retain. And so I certainly hope that person will look at all the possible avenues. But again, information costs time and money.

[02:56:38] We cannot keep expecting to encumber the superintendent's time and get the results that we need. I don't agree with this motion and I don't agree with this approach. I will not vote for this motion. - Thank you, Ms. Marin. I'll take a turn. So nearly every employee in Fairfax County public schools qualifies if they have a federal student loan for public service loan forgiveness.

[02:57:03] Additionally I would guess that most employees in Fairfax County Public Schools who have federal student loans also qualify for income based repayment plans. And so last year the board unanimously approved a directive encouraging the superintendent to establish a mechanism within our HR department that actively encourages and helps facilitate the application process for public service loan forgiveness.

[02:57:33] That's now happening and that's a good thing because tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of educators were initially rejected from the program when it started under the Obama administration and they were rejected under the Trump administration, rather.

[02:57:49] And they're now finding relief. And so we should continue doing that work. I don't think that we should be considering additional things like this. I WOULD LIKEN IT TO THE PREVIOUS MOTION THAT I'M HAPPY FOR FOLKS TO KICK THIS AROUND IN COLLECTIVE BARGAINING BUT AS IT STANDS RIGHT NOW WE ARE ALREADY DOING MORE THAN MANY SCHOOL DIVISIONS IN THE REGION AS IT PERTAINS TO LOAN FORGIVENESS BY ACTIVELY HELPING EMPLOYEES APPLY FOR PUBLIC SERVICE LOAN FORGIVENESS AND ENSURING THAT THEY HAVE

[02:58:22] THE RIGHT PAPERWORK TO NOT ONLY APPLY BUT TO BE ACCEPTED IN THE PROGRAM. MR. MOON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Originally, I was going to support this motion, but having heard what some other board members have said about, especially Mr.

[02:58:40] Chairman, about our current program that we are with which we are trying to help our new teachers. I want to see how that is going first before we go into further. So, Mr. Dunn, I am not going to be able to support this one at this time.

[02:59:01] Seeing no others, we will go ahead and vote on the follow on motion on the screen. follow-on motion number six. All those in favor, Mr. McIveen, Mr. Dunn, all those against, Mr. Seismarhizer, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Lady, Ms. Marin, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Moon, Ms. St. John Cunning, and myself with Dr. Anderson away from the table. Will the clerk read the vote? And Ms. Dixit also away from the table.

[02:59:32] The vote is 2-8. The motion fails. Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for a follow-on motion. final following motion by me of the night and I would like to just thank my colleagues for their patience for the many motions. I move that the school board direct the superintendent to present to the school board as part of the school year 2024-2025 executive limitation 5 EL5 monitoring report a benefit cost and feasibility analysis of different options by which FCPS may generate

[03:00:08] recurring revenues to include but not limited to the options presented in the FY 2025-2029 CIP follow-on motion report dated April 2024. Is there a second? Second. Mr. McDaniel. Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? Briefly. I've already mentioned that next year may be a very difficult or even apocalyptic budget environment in which we won't receive, certainly not receive the same increase of 165 million dollars that we received this year

[03:00:43] and doubtful whether we'll receive such an increase from the state. In that environment I have brought forward motions to try to provide additional financial flexibilities and opportunities to FCPS. This is one of them. There are multiple methods by which FCPS which does not have taxing authority unlike school districts and boards and in certain states may still generate certain recurring revenue streams and it's important that we look at those

[03:01:20] to provide additional flexibilities and opportunities to again increase teacher salaries or make other investments. Thank you. Would Mr. McDaniel like to speak to a second quickly? Frankly there have been so many I forgot about this one to be honest but I remember now But what I'm particularly interested in and why I was okay to bring this forward, and I know the superintendent and I have had some conversations about this, but looking at naming rights on athletic fields and stadiums, that's something that I think we're missing a golden opportunity to do.

[03:01:58] And there may be other things out there that we're missing the opportunity for, I don't know. So really the one I know that's out there is the naming rights, there could be others, and I'm happy to second this. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Ms. Marin?

[03:02:15] Yes. So this motion is the next iteration of the CIP amendment I brought earlier this year seconded by Dr. Anderson, which asked for the superintendent to come back with a list of possible revenue-generating ideas. And so that was done.

[03:02:31] It's found in the 186-page follow-on document on page 26. I will say it is pretty thin. It just lists the possible ideas. I think the next step is to further cost out these ideas I think though this example is interesting for the board to consider you know what happens when we give a directive and it comes back and we want further action is this do we do it here do we do as part of an EL I just think it's important to notice the occurrence of this.

[03:03:02] I guess I mean I'll support it because it's based on something I asked for but I'm unclear on what a benefit cost and feasibility analysis. We don't have economists on staff. You know, I guess I'd like to know further what what else I mean, I feel like this is kind of part of the board's work. Like, let's talk about these options fully. So again, I'd like to see that all the CIP follow on information digested by the board and come to a fuller discussion about you know, we've talked about naming rights. I mean, the meals taxes on the revenue generation list, there's a whole gamut of things. So I mean, there's things

[03:03:40] on there that this is out of the superintendent's hands in some ways for the meals tax like it might be in our hands because we're gonna have to advocate that a portion of that get allocated to us so i i will support it because it's the next level of the work i initiated but again i don't think this is a really strong practice besides more heiser so this is part of the fall on for the cip i also think it's interesting that we're talking about not giving the same raise to central office staff but yet putting on economic work on our central office staff just an interesting

[03:04:15] observation. I agree with my colleague that if we get information that maybe isn't as sufficient we like, what's the follow-on to that? However, I will say that kind of proves my point. If we give 20,000 things for our staff to do, perhaps we're not going to get some things back as fulsome as we'd like. So I would recommend maybe we prioritize a retreat where we walk through all of these ideas and brainstorm and then figure out how do it in a way that we actually get full information back that's actionable that we can work on

[03:04:52] otherwise it seems silly to ask our staff to do something they don't have the bandwidth for to come back with not decent or good enough information and not know what to do with that i think that just proved my point right there um i appreciate you bringing that up i'm not opposed to this i don't know if i don't know if we have the staff bandwidth to do this i don't know what actually it will take do we need to hire an economic an economist to do this like what does does this even look like I would say this should wait till we have a retreat and then we can talk about this but we've put a lot already on staff from the ones that have passed we put a lot on stuff in the CIP motions we have a lot from the cell phone motions every two weeks I feel like we put a lot on

[03:05:31] staff and pretty soon we're gonna start getting stuff back that we don't think is appropriate and then we're gonna get mad at staff and I think we need to look at our own actions in that and figure out how to be in alignment and be strategic like a broken record all these great ideas I support them all it's just we have to tie them together thank you miss Sizemore heiser mr. moon thank you mr. chairman I'm gonna support the motion you know at least I want to have our board and start discussing about naming rights as one of the ways

[03:06:06] to generate revenue a one of the boards I served on long ago for from my perspective for wrong reason stop pursuing it i think i think we owe it to community and to ourselves to really look at reconsider uh that decision made by made about 10 years ago and and having said that in response to one of the comments i think you know mr don probably with all good

[03:06:36] intention have said couple of times that we are expecting apocalyptic budget year next year i that may very well be true however even if it becomes apocalyptic uh we need all the fundings to support the best quality of education for our students you know growing up in korea that you're is a saying there was a saying that when times are tough when times are tough we may eat less

[03:07:13] and we may clothe less but we never educate less you got to keep that in mind thank you mr moon Miss Anderson, so I wasn't going to say this, but I also have a saying that I was I was brought up with, which is if you ask someone to bring you a rock and then you ask them to bring you another rock because they brought you the wrong one, it meant that you didn't give them enough direction the first time.

[03:07:41] So we did give staff direction and they brought us back 11 rocks and we haven't given them the direction as to which ones we want them to go look at more. And so I very much am interested in stadium naming rights, particularly if it could fund athletic field work.

[03:08:00] However, I would like us to do the work on our end first to make sure that we are giving staff a very clear direction as to the way to move forward. Thank you, Miss Anderson. I'll take a turn. Dr. Reed, are you exploring the ability for us to pursue naming rights in our schools?

[03:08:20] I have certainly had conversations about exploring it. I haven't I have not actively done that at this moment. But it's certainly something I've discussed with several board members and staff and others that might need to be involved in that conversation, I imagine. Yes, sir. All right. I think I'm persuaded by the argument that it's difficult to get what we're after if we're not focused in articulating what we're after. And so while I certainly appreciate the need for additional

[03:08:59] revenue and have advocated for such, I think this board would be well-minded to have some MORE FOCUSED CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE AVENUES WE WOULD LIKE TO PURSUE BEFORE WE TRY TO COVER EVERY ROAD ON THE MAP SO I'LL BE VOTING AGAINST THE MOTION DR. ANDERSON I JUST WANTED TO SHARE AND I DON'T KNOW IF IT WAS SAID I APOLOGIZE THAT THIS IS VERY SIMILAR TO A MOTION THAT MS. MARIAN HAD BROUGHT EARLIER LAST YEAR THEY COVERED THAT OH OKAY THEN I WILL NOT SAY ANY MORE Other than that, I will support it.

[03:09:39] Thank you, Dr. Anderson. If you are not asking for a go back, please turn your light off. All right. Mr. Dunn. Thank you. Well, people are talking about expressions.

[03:10:00] I always remember the ant and the grasshopper. And, you know, winter is coming, not in the Game of Thrones sense, but maybe. But, you know, the ant prepared. And I like to prepare, personally, professionally.

[03:10:19] If we know that a bad economy is coming and we'll have less money, then it is prudent from a planning perspective to see what other options are out there. And I'm thrilled that some of my motions have passed to further that objective.

[03:10:40] I think this is not a big lift. We already have the options set. There might be other options out there in the one page. But while most of that fall on motion report was fairly exhaustive in detail, and that was much appreciated because it was a great report, that one page was not.

[03:11:02] And it's something that deserves scrutiny. And as Mr. Moon has said, maybe there's historic resources we can draw on so you're not starting from scratch. But it is important for us to explore every possibility so that when we come to crunch time next year this date one year from today i don't want us to regret the fact that we don't know what options are available to us because we haven't done our homework that's why i'm pursuing this motion today thank you thank you mr dunn miss seismorheiser i think it's great to explore

[03:11:41] options i think we've already directed the superintendent to do that and if it wasn't sufficient we need to ask her to come back with more as opposed to doing it again and that initial direction from miss marron if i call correctly included naming rights so if the reason to vote for this is naming rights we already did that i think this also proves my point if we keep just voting to do the same thing over and over again well i wasn't gonna go that far but yeah i mean it kind of is right so maybe we need to do something different maybe if the information that came back wasn't sufficient we could ask dr reid to come back with it again but

[03:12:16] this didn't look like to me asking for her to clarify that this looks like additional work on top of that and we're now spinning everybody's wheels so yeah naming rights were already included i totally agree we should look at naming rights it's a great way to fund facilities i mean um athletic fields and stadiums and all of this all the things but asking for more work and more work and more work i believe in being prepared i think that's what that other motion was aiming at but i also don't believe in building a straw house when we can build a brick one so i appreciate all

[03:12:52] the thought i appreciate the the desire to be prepared i really do but i think we have that let's build a brick house miss marin well a saying that i like to say is what can the 12 of us do that nobody else in this county can do and I interpret that as we can advocate to our colleagues and elected positions at the county state and federal level one of those items on that CIP follow-on list was the meals tax it's certainly to me part of getting the state money

[03:13:28] so I will have the humility and thoughtfulness to actually rescind my support for this you know it it was my motion but it's a really interesting conversation for this board to have pretty early in our tenure we are only five months in to a four-year stint so understood like kind of being having that meta-analysis of how we work how we like our students to have as well like how do you learn how do you work I think is really important and I think I know when to call it quits so I will rescind my support on this motion. Thank you Ms. Marin. Dr. Anderson. Thank you as I hear the

[03:14:03] conversation, something comes up for me that I hope we can all reflect on, which is if we have asked for something already and it came back, did we ask for the incorrect thing? And I think that's fair. But I also know that whenever we put forward these motions, we want to be very high level. We want to be very broad. That also results in not being as clear because we're avoiding getting into the weeds but we offer nebulousness around what we're really seeking so I'm hoping we use this moment as an opportunity when we're writing these motions moving forward which is if I'm up here at

[03:14:43] 10 foot 10,000 foot level am I not going to get what I am asking for which will bring us right back to the seat it might mean we get a little bit more specific and I think we've shied away from that but we don't want to do this double work so there's got to be that nice balance that gives us the data that we're looking for without being too much in the weeds but I think we've over elevated some of our asks that may have landed us here. I just wanted to offer that. Thank you Dr.

[03:15:12] Anderson seeing no others we will vote on the follow on motion number seven that is on the screen. All those in favor of follow on motion number seven. Mr. McDaniel Mr. Dunn Dr. Mr. McElvain mr. Mc excuse me we're gonna start over mr. McDaniel mr. McElvain mr. Dunn dr. Anderson mr. Moon all those against miss Sizemore hyzer miss Marin miss Anderson miss Dixit miss st. John Cunningham myself abstentions miss

[03:15:45] lady will the clerk read the vote the vote is 561 the motion fails thank you I call on mr. Moon for a follow-on motion thank you mr. chairman dear colleagues This is the last one for tonight, so a little more patience.

[03:16:09] I move that the school board will direct the superintendent to include in the year-end review process, budget review process, conservation of a one-time bonus payment of $500 for all employees in the classroom instructional support, CIS, all employees on Schedule H, all custodial staff employees.

[03:16:32] This one-time bonus payment would be in recognition of the outstanding efforts and dedication demonstrated by these employees during the 23/24 academic year. This compensation is expected to benefit approximately 7,600 employees, with costs estimated at around $4.1 million.

[03:16:53] The superintendent shall analyze the budgetary feasibility and potential funding sources for such bonus payments and report back to the board no later than July 18, 2024. Is there a second? Second. Mr. McDaniel.

[03:17:08] Mr. Moon, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, Mr. Chairman. This follow-up motion deals with how we can provide more support for the least paid employees, some of the least paid employees who are within the school system.

[03:17:30] You know, a couple of questions and concerns came to me from my colleagues on the board. One of them is, this is coming at the very last minute, the board has never had discussion about this. Yes, the board has, correct, never had a chance to discuss about this.

[03:17:51] And I'm hoping that we have a chance to discuss about this at the ERN budget review. But one of the major reasons why I could not bring this one up was we didn't have final revised budget proposal from the superintendent only until two days ago.

[03:18:14] General Assembly was very late in passing the budget. When we found out what additional revenue we would be getting, which was May the 14th, it took superintendents some time to craft the final proposal, took about a week.

[03:18:31] And then I didn't know what the newest proposal was going to be until I went to budget work session on Tuesday at 2 o'clock. And then we had a long day, I didn't get up until what, around 8 o'clock past 8:00 p.m.

[03:18:47] And then I needed to schedule a meeting with budget staff to see whether there was any other way to generate a little more revenue in a way, which the superintendent was able to do to support her final proposal so what i'm trying to say is the reason that this came in the last many years because of all those reasons i was not able to show this you know much earlier you know secondly we're not making a decision we're not making a budgetary decision tonight we are always superintendent consider and bring back to the do some analysis and feasibility where

[03:19:26] the source of revenue could be on July 18th when we do the year-end budget review and another question that came to me from my colleagues is this whether this group of these groups of employees are the only ones who have worked hard and dedicated for our students no that's not the case all our employees are valued employees and they work hard but these are the groups of employees who are the lowest paid when we talk about earlier we passed budget with a four

[03:20:01] percent compensation increase for someone members on our LT who may be making $250,000 the four percent was a $10,000 for our teachers are not well paid we say that but the four percent is much higher than what our beginning instructional assistants gets our beginning custodians get what our beginning a cafeteria workers get you look at your time yes yes our 4% increase just barely covers inflation they only covers with the high cost of living I

[03:20:40] think this is a this is a good way to send a message to our lowest paid employees that we do care about that thank you mr. moon mr. Mcdaniel would like to speak to your second yes everything that was just said and I want say who these employees are because it's kind of, you know, technically worded here. Classroom instructional support, bus drivers, custodians, food and service workers, family liaisons. Why I'm

[03:21:09] okay bringing this forward, the lowest pay on this scale is $12.63 an hour. 4% is great. 4% at 12.63 an hour is not sufficient. And I'm comfortable bringing this forward and I recognize that there is a concern about, you know, pitting employees against each other. In this instance, when I weigh that concern with the reality of the financial implication of what 4% means to someone making

[03:21:40] 1263 an hour, I override that concern with that 1263 on 4%. For those reasons, I'm happy to bring this forward and support it. This is not recurring funds. It does not raise the baseline budget for next year. This is not an allocation. This is simply putting it on the list at year end that WE'VE DONE WITH OTHER ITEMS ALREADY, FOR CONSIDERATION AT YEAR END.

[03:22:02] SO FOR THOSE REASONS, I WAS OK BRINGING THIS FORWARD AND SUPPORTING IT. THANK YOU, MR. MCDANIEL. DR. ANDERSON. I REMEMBER A FEW YEARS AGO WHEN WE HAD A STIPEND FOR CERTAIN EMPLOYEES OVER THE SUMMER AND IT WAS SO WELCOME.

[03:22:19] AND I DON'T WANT TO ADD TOO MUCH MORE BESIDES WHAT MR. MCDANIEL AND MR. MOON HAVE SHARED, BUT THIS IS EXACTLY THE TYPE OF THING THAT I THINK WE SHOULD BE CONSIDERING. you know in our caring culture and our goals to provide a living wage and our intent to make it somewhat a thought for our workforce to live where they work this is not going to get us there but it is definitely a step in the right direction so I am happily going to support this motion and I hope we can see this as an opportunity to to just really help those who do not make as much in our

[03:22:59] division thank you thank you Dr. Anderson I will take a turn as I said in the previous motion that indicated prioritization of one type of expenditure with year-end funds I'm not comfortable voting for something that presupposes the superintendent's judgment I would like to see what the superintendent WANTS TO OFFER WITH YEAR-END FUNDS AND THEN WEIGH WHAT COLLEAGUES ARE INTERESTED IN AMENDING THERE.

[03:23:32] BUT IF WE TELL THE SUPERINTENDENT WE WANT YOU TO PRIORITIZE THIS, THIS, AND THIS, AND THE TWO THINGS SHE'S CURRENTLY PRIORITIZING WERE HER PRIORITIES, THEN WE WILL NEVER KNOW WHAT -- BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT SHE WILL DO.

[03:23:47] SHE WILL SAY THE BOARD WANTS ME TO DO THIS, SO HERE'S WHAT IT IS, THEN WE WON'T KNOW what her best judgment is and then we can make a decision based on that conversation. So I'm not closing the door on supporting this. I just want to see what it is in the context of what she actually proposes and then I'll make a judgment just as I did on the previous motion regarding the additional pay that was to be prioritized in year end.

[03:24:20] So I won't be able to support the motion. Mr. Dunn. I always like to refer to the data. We've gotten a lot of data, and I thank Ms. Burden and her team and the superintendent for providing lots of useful information throughout the budget process.

[03:24:44] So one of the budget questions, question number 61, asked for custodial employees, as an example, where they currently rank relative to surrounding jurisdictions, and what does a 4% increase do? And with a 4% increase, Fairfax will rank number one of seven surrounding jurisdictions for minimum salary.

[03:25:08] But for midpoint and maximum, we would rank fifth. That's significant to me because if you're starting out in your career, you're doing pretty well in Fairfax. But once you have a family or a significant other, once you maybe purchase a home or a condo, purchase a car, life gets a lot harder.

[03:25:34] And I think we have a moral obligation to do more for those who make sure that our teachers are supported in the classroom, our schools are clean. For those who feed our children, those who transport our children, those are people who we need.

[03:25:52] And unfortunately, the cost of living has driven many of them far distances from where they might work. So we do need to address affordable housing, which is a county issue and a state issue. But we also need to do whatever we can to support them and signal that they are valued and their contributions are recognized.

[03:26:15] Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Ms. Dixit. This is a noble idea, first of all, my colleagues who brought this up. I do want to say that when we are talking about year-end funds, we do know that there is already a priority in special needs teachers and other programs.

[03:26:39] Those are definitely -- we have already promised we have to deliver on that. The superintendent already has said she will take care of that in the year-end funds. I would, however, say that we should just wait to see what is available at that time AND THEN MAKE A DECISION ON WHAT WE CAN DO ADDITIONAL AND IF WE ARE DOING ANYTHING, IT SHOULD BE ACROSS THE BOARD, WHETHER IT IS $500 OR $400 OR $300, BUT IT SHOULD BE TO ALL THE EMPLOYEES. THAT'S WHAT I THINK. THANKS.

[03:27:11] THANK YOU, MS. DIXIT. MR. MOON? I WELCOME, IF BOARD MEMBERS SUGGEST THAT WE SHOULD DO AT THE YEAR'S END FOR EVERYBODY, because that does not diminish our support for a lowest employee employees but i just want to point out a couple of things that you know superintendent had shared with me this is for the public that she's was expecting more than 100 million dollars a year in surplus but that's been the case for the last several years last year was 127 million dollars and there's no reason for us

[03:27:50] not to expect similar amount this year and we have the board has already given blessing as some board members have already alluded that for special education we are putting in 25 million dollars out of eon recording cost and we are also putting in 6.5 million dollars for drop program that benefits about 2500 employees that's average 2600 dollars per employee and those are employees

[03:28:23] the much higher paid employees because they are near the retirement so we are already doing that have done that this is sending a message very warm heartfelt message caring message to our lowest paid employees thank you mr moon seeing no other speakers we will go ahead and have a vote for the on the follow-on motion number eight on the screen i believe it's number eight all those

[03:28:56] in favor mr mcdaniel mr dunn dr anderson mr moon all those in favor uh opposed miss sizemore heiser miss marron miss lady miss anderson miss st john cunning and myself all those abstaining mr mckelveen miss dixit will the clerk read the vote the vote is 462 the motion fails thank you all right we are through our follow-on motions we will take a 10-minute recess and return for the

[03:29:30] the rest of the agenda a real 10-minute recess we will begin promptly at 10 38. board members return

[03:37:48] to your seat we'll beginning in two minutes board members please return to your seats started agenda

[03:40:40] item 5.02 action item certification of closed meeting compliance in order to comply with section 2.2-3712d of the code of virginia it is necessary for the board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting on may 23rd 2024 to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting do i have a motion dr anderson

[03:41:14] do i have a second miss size more hyzer all those in favor miss size more hyzer mr mcdaniel Ms. Lady, Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, and myself. That is, I don't see Ms. St. John Cunning, but she enclosed. All those opposed, abstentions with Mr. McIlvain away from the table. Will the clerk read the vote?

[03:41:42] So the vote is 10-0 with Ms. St. John Cunningham and Mr. McIlvain away from the table. THANK YOU AGENDA ITEM 5.03 ACTION ITEM CONFIRMATION OF ACTION TAKEN AND CLOSED I CALL ON MS ANDERSON FOR A MOTION I'M GETTING THERE I MOVE THAT THE TEACHER IDENTIFIED AND CLOSED SESSION BE DISMISSED FROM EMPLOYMENT FROM FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS IS THERE A SECOND

[03:42:17] MS LADY ALL IN FAVOR THANK YOU MS LADY ALL THOSE IN FAVOR MS SIZEMORE HIZER MR MCDANIEL MS LADY MS MARIN MR DUNN DR ANDERSON MS ANDERSON MS DIXET MR MOON AND MYSELF THAT IS UNANIMOUS for those at the table with Mr. McIlvain away from the table and Miss St.

[03:42:36] Jen Cunning away from the table. I call on Dr. Anderson for a motion. I move to deny the appeal of the employee that was considered on the written record and closed session and to adopt the recommendation of the school board's hearing officer. Is there a second? Second.

[03:42:55] Miss Lady. All those in favor. Miss Seismar Heiser, Mr. McDaniel, Miss Lady, Miss Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Miss Anderson, Miss Dixit, Mr. Moon and myself. THAT IS UNANIMOUS FOR ALL BOARD MEMBERS HERE WITH MR. MCELVEEN AND MS. ST.

[03:43:11] JEAN CUNNING AWAY FROM THE TABLE AGENDA ITEM 5.04 ACTION ITEM STRATEGIC GOAL STRATEGIC PLAN GOAL FOUR BASELINE REPORT EQUITABLE ACCESS AND OPPORTUNITY I CALL ON DR. REED FOR PRESENTATION ON THE STRATEGIC PLAN GOAL FOUR BASELINE REPORT GOOD EVENING CHAIRMAN FRISH BOARD MEMBERS AND COMMUNITY SO OUR GOAL FOUR REPORT JUST WANT TO REMIND THE board and the community that on May 9th we held the work session to review the

[03:43:48] goal for baseline report and tonight I just want to highlight some of the topics we shared during our May 9th work session so a reminder that goal 4 is actually the last of our five goal reports that are being presented this year and goal 4 focuses on equitable access and opportunity and in particular we looked at heavily on student outcomes reading by third grade on-time graduation and attendance on the next slide please thank you also the report highlighted different patterns of participation by student groups within

[03:44:28] existing courses so tonight I'm going to highlight some of the data from the work session as well as discussing some of our plan next steps for equitable access and opportunity goals we're going to take a look at elementary school first and take a look at a review really of our students enrolled in sixth grade advanced mathematics just knowing that during the baseline years 35 percent of all sixth grade students were accessing advanced math across the division however there are gaps in certain student groups which again we have plans

[03:45:04] in place to address and want to make sure that as we work through our strategic plan between now and 2030 that were very intentional about addressing this issue we also in our elementary schools have two different world language models we have both dual language immersion as well as our FLES program which is foreign language in the elementary school FLES is part of our special time and is a one hour a week program often done in two 30 minute BLOCKS OR ONE 60-MINUTE BLOCK. FROM THE CHART, YOU CAN SEE THAT CURRENTLY

[03:45:42] WE HAVE ABOUT 56 SCHOOLS THAT HAVE SUCH A PROGRAM. HOWEVER, THERE'S NOT A PARTICULAR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TITLE I AND NON-TITLE I IN TERMS OF OFFERING FLESS. WE ARE, HOWEVER, INTERESTED IN LOOKING AT HOW THAT MIGHT BE EXPANDED. AND SO I DID WANT TO SHARE ON THE NEXT slide, our thoughts around how this might occur between now and 2030.

[03:46:08] So what we did is we took a look at how many new schools might need to be added and also how we would be thoughtful around planning in 24-25. So next, we want to talk a little bit about equitable access and opportunity just in general for elementary, if you will, enrichment courses.

[03:46:31] So one of the things we took a look at were four different categories, and we wanted to asterisk each category because not only do we need to make sure we have equitable access and opportunity for these different courses at each of our 141 elementary schools, but we want to increase the inclusion opportunities for all students of all abilities in these elective courses.

[03:46:56] So it's a, if you will, a two dimensional chart plan. So this might include more exposure to world languages, fine and performing arts, and so forth. So just a summary chart really for elementary.

[03:47:12] Next I want to take a look at secondary, middle and high school participation. And if we take a look at middle school honors participation, on average students across Fairfax county public schools are taking 2.1 honors courses each year and again that is an average because there isn't a point one honors course but on average about 2.1 however again as I mentioned earlier we do see differences among student groups the numerator just for those folks at home watching the numerator is the number of classes taken and the denominator is the number of

[03:47:51] students so the denominator of course goes on the bottom and the numerator on the top so we are again looking at participation and want to take a look at the much as we did in elementary kind of our CTE STEM middle school elective offerings we heard a little about this in our CTAC report recently this week about what courses are available and you'll see a little more of that even in high school but at the middle level we see the large majority of our middle schools are offering at least two electives in the areas of human services

[03:48:25] stem and information technology however not all schools have equivalent offerings and what you can see for example is that IT courses that the middle school include computer exploration coding and computer solutions as we think about the explosiveness of other technology options around AI quantum and so forth WE'RE GOING TO NEED OUR CURRICULUM AGAIN BEING RESPONSIVE TO THAT.

[03:48:54] AS WE THINK ABOUT MOVING FORWARD, MIDDLE SCHOOL, OTHER ENRICHMENT OFFERINGS, AGAIN, EACH OF OUR SCHOOLS ARE LISTED IN TERMS OF WHAT THEY'RE ABLE TO OFFER, AND THERE SEEMS TO BE MUCH MORE ACCESSIBILITY THAT'S EQUIVALENTLY AND EQUITABLY DISTRIBUTED AROUND THE COUNTY in these areas, but high levels of two or more course offerings at the middle school are occurring in the fine and performing arts.

[03:49:23] As we look at middle school world language offerings and thinking about accessibility and opportunity, we do know that at the middle school, 96% of our schools, of our middle schools are able to offer at least two different world languages. And the majority, 62%, were able to offer at least three.

[03:49:41] However, it does differ school to school, and we do know that the schools that had the largest number of world languages available were our secondary schools, and those would be our 7 through 12 schools and almost by design have access to more options.

[03:50:01] Looking at high school participation in advanced coursework was another measurement in goal four, and on average high school students complete two and a half advanced courses each year. However, we continue to see different outcomes or differences between student groups, and so this is again in our planning and our work moving forward, these are data points that we're going to be addressing. In the next slide where we discuss CTE and STEM course offerings, we again, the CTAC report this week illuminated some of the different courses, challenges you might even characterize them as barriers for students in some

[03:50:41] schools to access these courses many of which are in Academy settings where transportation has been a concern and/or time courses that may need to be missed to accommodate transportation however we do note that 96 percent of our schools do offer two or more education and training courses so I think they just don't all have the same vast array in thinking about high school elective offerings i think this slide again is fairly thoughtful what we do see here is that high levels of schools offering at

[03:51:20] least one course in i.t engineering and computer science pathway with more variants in the schools that offer two or more so the appendix of this report provides information on which academies house these programs and the reminder for those watching online that the full goal 4 report is also posted to board docs I'm just presenting a summary this evening when we look at the availability of fine and performing arts at our high schools again these tend to be more consistently available across the

[03:51:55] division and again it's important to note that for some of these electives a a student may take the same course for multiple years which enables them to continue their work throughout multiple years. A reminder that recently I know as I was coming into the division there was a career pathways study that was completed. We have linked that study to the slide as well as to the presentation that's online and so there was a review done of our course offerings and the connection to the regional workforce here in Fairfax County. The report did

[03:52:33] indicate and identify a need to expand availability of coursework in information technology and education pathways and that's part of the data we've used in thinking about informing our next steps on the school. Our world language offerings at high school is an interesting data point as well. What we have found is that all of our high schools were able to offer three or more world languages with the majority of schools 64% offering four or more world languages. I do know that one of the world languages that's in particular high

[03:53:07] demand at the moment is ASL and we've really had a conversation with our HR team in terms of recruiting students that teach American Sign Language. As we think about more consistent world language offerings we looked at what we might do for example if we wanted to begin offering a minimum of four world languages we really have to be thoughtful about how that might look currently all schools offer three if we want to take that number up to four we have to think about that multi-year phase in if we want to take it to five

[03:53:43] we have to think about how we might adjust that this is a draft so you know think we have many choices but again this would be one way to consider the expansion of access and opportunity in the world language area and on the next slide we took a look at what might be possible across all enrichment courses and advanced coursework and looked at how we might determine what number of minimal course offerings we would intend and then what what are the next steps that we're going to need to create to do that and we're beginning that work

[03:54:23] actually next week with review of data that we're pulling in terms of the actual number of students at each school in the course is not the data I've provided you this evening is the courses that are available and in general large buckets students that are in but we're going to be actually drilling down over the next couple months before the start of the next school year to look at the number of students in different courses at this point.

[03:54:51] So again, with the goal that we are ensuring that we're increasing inclusive opportunities as well for all students. So the last section, we want to look at access to inclusive opportunities and supports. And here we see the three-year baseline, and I know the data.

[03:55:12] THIS IS A 2021-2022 DIVISION REPORT DOES HAVE A TARGET OF 72.1% FOR INDICATOR 5A, WHICH WE HAVE NOT MET, WE'VE NEVER MET. I BELIEVE LAST YEAR WE WERE ACTUALLY AT 48%, WHEREAS IT SAYS 55%, THAT'S THE THREE-YEAR BASELINE NUMBER.

[03:55:35] SO WE HAVE QUITE A LITTLE BIT OF ROOM TO GROW IN THIS AREA. Chapter 5A actually specifically looks at inclusion starting in kindergarten through age 21, and as I indicated, we have continued to lag in this category.

[03:55:54] The other thing that we're looking at is the number of students who are enrolled in academic support classes, and the data shows that 14% of all middle and high school students are accessing academic support classes. We're looking at a variety of other methodologies to provide, for example, executive function supports perhaps within advisory sections.

[03:56:19] I know that was a pilot idea several years ago, and we're sort of re-energizing that thought and working particularly at the middle school level where students have options to sign up for other electives in terms of what we can do with executive functioning skills, just as part of strategies for success, but also as part of advisory for students.

[03:56:48] So as we think about the big ideas and considerations for next steps, I just want to summarize. These are some of the areas of opportunity and the considerations that we are taking into account. There are a number of topic areas, because goal four really is at the heart of a lot of the work that the strategic plan intends for us to achieve by 2030.

[03:57:16] So I believe there's one more slide, our plan next steps, and again we're going to continue the data analysis as I mentioned in fact in some areas very shortly. We also have a world language survey tool that we did in terms of data that I attached I don't think we attached to the slides, but we attached to the report.

[03:57:41] We did that and completed that in December and had, I believe, over 7,000 community members, parents respond to that so that that information could help inform next steps. There will be other data to take a look at in terms of specifically course-taking pattern data for students and looking at national clearinghouse data in terms of what our students do after they leave us so a different set of recommendations will continue within specific curriculum areas and multi-year transition plans will need to be built so at this point

[03:58:20] i think that is it for the presentation on goal four uh chairman frisch and i'm happy to take any questions from the board thank you dr reed at this time i will now invite board members to ask any clarifying questions or provide comments i call on mr dunn uh thank you. Only slide eight references immersion programs. What is your plan for immersion schools?

[03:58:47] So one of the things I'm sorry, Mr. Dunn, you said slide eight. Okay. The immersion schools, part of what we did with the foreign language survey for the community is look at the languages that were most of highest interest. So I think that our plan is to look at space within schools and the highest demand languages to contemplate whether we want to move forward with immersion or FLESS. I met with a FLESS teacher the other day. There was, she mentioned that there was 1.5 FLESS

[03:59:26] teachers for 800 students. Her words almost rated more, it was absolutely impossible to meet the intention of training students to become fluent in a foreign language in 60 minutes a week. and also stated that uh it stressed her beyond belief because she had to grade students or otherwise certify their their fluency or meeting requirements um i i am a supporter of increasing exposure to world languages i'm not sure fless unless it's redesigned is the vehicle

[04:00:00] to do that um i think we need to go back to 2013-2014 there was a report prepared by a 36-member group that recommended expanding immersion schools by five schools per year over a number of years. You can also look at taking immersion schools and making them into magnet schools because I think if you were to eliminate Fox Mill Japanese immersion program, German at Orange Hunt, French at Kent Gardens, I think you'd have quite an uprising of parents because those are wonderful communities with strong linkages to the to the country's

[04:00:35] reference in those programs. I think FLESS needs careful study, and I'm committed to working with my colleagues to strengthen the World Languages program. I appreciate your commitment to expand it, but if we're expanding it without expanding fluency and really broadening horizons, then I question whether that's the path that should be undertaken. If, you know, only in the United States could 60 minutes a week be deemed as really exposing people to a world language and a world culture it's it falls far short of what any other country would provide not to criticize you dr. Reed but it's been that way for a long time and we have to

[04:01:14] take a hard look at are we actually increasing fluency I believe my colleague mr. moon has told me previously that in Korea they learn English for two to three hours a day for at least three days a week if I'm remembering correctly I welcome his correction and that actually provides depth and of course foreign languages also enhance same areas of brain for STEM, for music, for art, and learning multiple foreign languages study after study shows enhances literacy and numeracy at a very young age because the brain can learn as much as you challenge it. But if you don't challenge it then then you can actually slow down learning. So I wanted to ask have you

[04:01:52] considered the best practice nationwide is to convert immersion schools from a segmented program or a segregated program to a whole school program? As you mentioned, there have been several studies done here in Fairfax County public schools, and I know staff have reviewed them, including actually Mr. McElveen shared with me that we used to evaluate or assess our FLES program annually.

[04:02:20] And I did talk with Dr. Presidio about that and pulled the most recent report for the assessment for FLES, which I believe was 2014. And I'll forward that to the rest of the board for a Friday letter. I think there are a variety of programs at this point and certainly just an abundance of languages that we might consider here in Fairfax County.

[04:02:42] So I will certainly continue to work with staff to review best practice as well as I would encourage the board and the community to take a look at the language survey we did in December kind of in preparation for this conversation around expansion because the community had some there's some clear lines of demarcation around language.

[04:03:04] Can I also ask about arts programs? I've heard at a number of schools across the county that there have been perceptions of reductions in availability of band teachers or other well arts programs where it's not centrally funded so I wondered if you had considered the possibility of centrally funding all all arts programs to ensure their consistent availability at all schools consistent with one fairfax yeah there are no plans to cut our fine and performing arts programs i think our fine and performing arts programs are central to a well-rounded education and a core

[04:03:38] value here in fairfax county i know at the secondary level often courses not just fine and performing arts but all types of elective courses are really dependent and linked to students sign up so um i think we certainly coming out of cove but i think chorus and guitar are two courses that i've heard particularly in some school locations have been slower to come back in numbers but there's no plan to to cut the fine of performing arts so we generally there are a

[04:04:15] A VARIETY OF STAFFING FORMULAS WE USE FOR DIFFERENT CONTENT AREAS, CTE, LANGUAGES AND SO FORTH. AND I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO JUST A GENERAL REVIEW OF THOSE STAFFING MODELS. BUT THERE'S CERTAINLY NO PLAN AFOOT TO CUT STAFF AND FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS.

[04:04:35] THANK YOU, MR. DUN. MR. MOON. THANK YOU, MR. CHAIRMAN. I DON'T THINK OF THIS PARTICULAR DATA OR INFORMATION HAS BEEN PROVIDED OR ASKED FOR BY THE board members but the one question that had been on my mind for a long time is this a there are schools in the county especially house high schools where because of a number of students who can enroll it's so small the school is unable to offer those classes high-level math high-level science

[04:05:14] classes etc I mean I understand because you know we provide a staff based upon our staffing formula and and principals building principals have to make a tough decisions whether to offer those or not but dad dad basically denies in a school you know students in certain schools on equal access unless the students people play is a place to another square right well go to a academy etc how do we how

[04:05:49] How do we, going forward, provide more equitable access to certain programs for all students in all schools? So I think we're going to have to look at more creative ways to offer coursework, whether it's asynchronous or synchronous connections, because we really can't offer a classroom teacher for three students, for example.

[04:06:15] At the number of schools we have, that's not going to be sustainable. So I think we're going to have to look at first and foremost how do we build a broader foundation because as we pyramid up, right, if we have more students that have a foundation to take some of our more advanced courses, the likelihood that there will be enough students in a section grows.

[04:06:37] Having said that, I think at schools where maybe we don't have the ability to, for discrete math for heck for example maybe or differential equations maybe we look at a different model for students so they're able to take the course but maybe not in person you know every other day two hour block as students are able to do and when you think about university today there are many university courses that i would characterize as hybrid learning where there are some of the

[04:07:12] instruction that occurs on a technology platform with discussion boards and so forth and some of those that become lab settings so I think we're gonna have to be more creative with some of those singleton electives or enrichment courses because I agree with you it shouldn't you know if only four other students are ready that shouldn't stop a student from being able to access that content it just may need to be accessed differently and would you be able to back to the board sometime in the future to share more about this yes sir thank you thank you mr moon dr anderson thank you one of the things that i was hoping to see here and perhaps it's in

[04:07:52] conversation is what is our ex what is our expectations as a division what are our goals regarding language because i don't know if that's fully clear in terms of what we intend to get out out of that programming.

[04:08:09] - So when you say that programming, are you, which grade level, which-- - Regarding, let's say FLESS, let's focus on elementary. I know much of the language here says exposure. Let me just kind of go back, go on to my second part of the, to the second part of my question.

[04:08:28] Because I think depending on the goals of the division, that might impact how we treat what the community wants see out of the programming because we could have an opportunity where those are not aligned but have but we haven't yet defined what is it that we're looking for our students to achieve out of FLESS as a division not just the exposure piece are we looking for it to be a continuation on to middle school and high school which would mean we would tighten the types of languages that are offered rather than having the community build it from the ground up which is what essentially

[04:09:04] occurs from those surveys right and the surveys are part of our regulation around um you know citing new programs uh in our in my research around flesh originally uh what i have is that flesh is focused on meaningful and purposeful communication rather than grammatical mastery as well as opportunities to explore cultural aspects of the target language so we currently offer FLESS in seven different languages across 56 schools at the elementary level.

[04:09:41] I don't see necessarily that the ability to fluently speak or I don't know if you call it fluently write, but to write in that second language, I don't see those as targets, nor do I necessarily see that as realistic in 60 minutes a week, even though it is over a number of years.

[04:10:03] I do think though that the ability to better understand that culture and to have some, you know, I think ability to have purposeful communication, core communication skills clearly is or has been a goal.

[04:10:24] So I don't know if those goals shift over time. I think Dr. Presidio, do you have a recollection of when FLESS began in the division or perhaps some of our more you have thoughts on that off the top of my head I don't know the year that flesh began but I mean we've had the program for several decades for sure and the program goals have always been as you stated right with the recognition with the limited number of minutes that we're able to provide in the school day that we're really trying to get that exposure to the language to the culture and some basic communication skills with the hope the students that

[04:11:02] are interested will continue to pursue that language in middle school and high school so we create those vertical articulation agreements that if a school is offering a particular language at elementary where they're feeding into is the middle in the high school that will offer those languages there as well but I mean I think you know we've had a number of studies of the FLESS program over the years and you know a consideration of continuing this conversation about if we want to you know adapt those goals for FLESS certainly is reasonable but would require additional instructional minutes

[04:11:38] in the school day if we were going to set more ambitious goals and targets for the program. And I guess what I'm looking for is in your discussions as a leadership team, do you find that these goals continue to serve us as they were defined many years ago? And if not, what does that potentially mean for the future of the program?

[04:11:56] You don't have to answer it right now, but it's just something that I still see as an area that is not yet clear because it leads to a lot of other things. One of the things that I wanted to talk about on slide 19 no I'm sorry slide 7 the equitable access and opportunity this is still in draft form can you speak a little bit more in terms of what does regular exposure mean and we could skip the world language and go to STEAM and fine arts regular exposure is that once a week is that twice what is the expectation.

[04:12:29] Well, I think what we're trying to determine is all of those, all of the topics you see on the chart are important in elementary school, all of them. And as we think about each of those regular, I think, STEAM, where it's being used in schools, Dr. Presidio, is it like 30 minutes a week, 30 minutes every two weeks?

[04:12:57] I'm trying to it looks really different school to school currently or not at all in some schools, but Am I on the right track here? It can be it so I guess regular might be Weekly might be every two weeks, but what we're trying to do is create a rhythm at every school So this is now our expectation because I think it needs to be yes, I think when we are When we look out by 2030 when we're we've hit all our strategic plan targets, I think working backwards We need to have regular exposure

[04:13:36] And I would call it more than exposure but regular steam instruction for all students and I think one of the things as you know that we're really committed to enrichment wise are also the math Olympiad and science Olympiad and you heard that in the TPAC report that the schools who traditionally haven't had that participation are absolutely going to have it in the fall so that can be exposure to steam instruction right when you talk about science Olympiad having students in those science labs and working on those science skills so I it would be my intent that we have regular instruction

[04:14:15] in all of those areas as a consistent practice and I love those programs but I also know that they serve a very small number of students compared to an elementary schools population since this is stolen draft form I definitely I'm looking forward to some more refined language that speaks a little bit more closely to what our goals are as a division to achieve some of the other measures that we have in the strategic plan lastly I wanted to talk about slide

[04:14:46] 19 I find it here consistent world language offerings one of the things THAT I SEE HERE WHICH TENDS TO OFFER ANGST TO INDIVIDUALS IS IN FALL OF 2025 THERE'S SOME CONVERSATION HERE ABOUT A TRANSITION PLAN TO SUNSET AND AGAIN I DON'T THINK THAT'S A BAD THING I KNOW IT CAUSES ANGST BECAUSE WE DO WE CAN'T AFFORD TO HAVE 15 LANGUAGES ACROSS THE BOARD SO WE DO HAVE TO HAVE THE CONVERSATION IN TERMS OF WHAT WE NO LONGER HAVE SO I'VE APPRECIATED THAT BUT CAN YOU EXPOUND A LITTLE BIT THANK YOU SURE AND I

[04:15:25] don't necessarily in the multi-year transition plan to sunset programs and staff positions doesn't necessarily mean world language programs right I mean I think if we're offering one of the things we talked about even in the CTE pro report yesterday if we're going to offer for example a variety of new courses and students are in those new courses they're not in some other course so we're not going to be able as a division to continue to layer on courses for students without sunsetting something I don't know what that's going

[04:16:01] to be it may or may not be a language it may be fill in the blank I don't know but as we think about our curriculum which has remained I think in the CTE report they said the aviation and drone course are the first new courses in quite a little while so and again the pandemic disrupted a lot of our thinking and planning work but we're gonna have to make choices right as we face this new future and whatever those choices are are gonna create a need for something to add which means there'll be a need for something to subtract because we have a

[04:16:36] finite number of students at this point. Thank you Dr. Anderson. Ms. Dixit. Thank you Dr. Reed for the presentation and I'm actually on the slide 15 it's the availability of select CT STEM high school elective offerings and when I looked at the CS courses it says only 63% of the schools have more than two and high schools offering two or more courses so this is where I think our

[04:17:11] biggest area of improvement and as we know the world is going and our students definitely need more access so some students who are good at science and science computer science when they come to high school they literally have one or two courses they can do in a typical high school not not considering TJ and Academy even with the Academy it's not easy to work with their current schedule and keep going to the you know the core sometimes they get full very

[04:17:44] fast. So the base high school, like you said earlier, having a maybe virtual option or hybrid option where students can actually, from the ninth grade to 12th grade onwards, they can continue their journey in CS. It could be starting with the data structures and then maybe moving on to the further AI and things like that.

[04:18:10] I also noticed that in middle school there is no programming or CS. It's currently right now, maybe as an elective, it's maybe in some schools, but that was not my experience when my own kids were.

[04:18:25] Elementary school, it's even worse. It's like they didn't know what is computer science. Now they're, I guess, learning a bit more now. So we have come a long way in terms of making them understand. But I think those those seeds have to be planted for CS also in elementary school.

[04:18:45] They can do those block programming at a like and I think I've seen that in one of your presentations the kids are doing that mathematical blocks and that's a basic of like programming. And that's kind of where I wanted to see us growing is that we start them from very early and elementary and then middle and high school that's where we're creating the next generations of our students who are ready to take on the world yeah it's there's nothing more fun than being in a kindergarten class with b-bots right that are being programmed to amaze Ron so I definitely agree and as we look at

[04:19:24] our course taking patterns I know that's a priority I appreciate you pointing out the data point thank you miss Dixit mr. McElveen so this is a fantastic presentation much improved from what we saw at the work session so I'm grateful to you and staff for the revisions that were made it's much more fulsome and I think it gives the community a better idea where we might be headed so there was a question about what our goal with world languages is and I think it dates back to 2006 and the adoption of the SAGs at which point we said that or prior

[04:20:03] prior board said that the goal was fluency in two or more languages right and we've continued that over the years. Mr. Dunn referred to the 2014 report which came from the internationalization working group that was a direct initiative of this board to answer this same question we're dealing with now which is how do we expand and do so prudently and unfortunately we haven't followed what that report laid out. In fact, in many cases, we've gone backwards where we talked

[04:20:37] about better vertically articulating. We've lost programs that were supposed to be vertically articulated. I'm thinking of Chinese at Chesterbrook as one example. So there's much work to be done on that initial report, much less on what we're currently doing. So how long has FLESS been around? I had FLESS in elementary school in the mid-90s, but it was an after-school program, and it was a paid program and it was sponsored by the PTA so we've made some progress since then I think so that every student in a school can get it but we still have the equity work to do to

[04:21:12] to expand it the survey that was mentioned that went out last December as a parent I was taking that and I had to stop midway because Chinese wasn't an option and so I'm afraid those survey results are flawed. So for what it's worth, that's unfortunate. But I think our trends as a system mirror national trends. We see that Spanish, French, and ASL are the three most popular languages in the U.S. And I think that, as you said, the rise of ASL is very

[04:21:46] much reflected here. On FLES, which Mr. Dunn brought up. So I have been an eyewitness to the transformation of a FLES program at my elementary school. Last year, per remarks that Miss Lady made at the work session, it was the number one complaint we had at the school.

[04:22:09] We brought in central office curriculum folks to work with the teacher and improve the curriculum, and I was talking to the principal the other day, there have been zero complaints this year. It's far improved, so it's possible to get there. It takes the work.

[04:22:26] THE LAST THING I WILL END WITH IS SOMETHING I TALKED WITH SLOAN ABOUT IS THE OVERARCHING QUESTION WE AS A BOARD HAVE TO ANSWER IS TO WHAT EXTENT ARE WE GOING TO TAKE A CENTRALIZED APPROACH VERSUS A LOCAL DECISION APPROACH.

[04:22:42] I THINK THERE'S VALUE IN MAKING DECISIONS AS A BOARD IS WHERE WE WANT TO GO BECAUSE THAT'S THE ONLY WAY WE'LL GET THERE. THANK YOU. THANK YOU MR. MCELVEEN. MS. My comments are really similar to Ms. Dixit.

[04:22:58] So I know on slide 15, it says 15 out of the 24 high schools only offer two or more CS classes. And my school has a four-year CS plan. So freshman year, you get to take foundations and then APCSA, data structures, and CS capstone.

[04:23:14] And I'm currently in that CS track. So I'm a junior taking data structures right now. And I started my freshman year. And just building my CS skills each year has been really nice because I've been able to expand my skills and I get to do that all the way up until senior year but kids at other schools they may have to stop at APCSA which that coursework isn't as rigorous as CSCAPS or data structures so it's a huge inequity especially since CS is a big factor behind AI right now we all know AI is going to be the future and so I think it's something that we should definitely focus focus in terms of expanding that class to other schools

[04:23:53] and expanding, like, the four-year plan versus a two. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Kareem. Ms. Lady. I'm going to piggyback a little bit on our student rep and then add some other things, and that's just about recruitment, right?

[04:24:10] I think some of the issue is when we're talking about some of these CS classes, it's been my experience as someone who built a master schedule that you have to have the skill sets within your building to teach that, just like you have to have the skill sets within your building to teach even multivariable calculus or differential equations and things like that.

[04:24:28] So I just want the public to be aware that while we have a definite interest in it, that that's a tough thing, and I'm going to bring up at the same time, and Dr. Reed, you and I have talked about this already, but the shortage of ASL teachers. It's my understanding that there's approximately 150 students on the wait list for ASL at Fairfax Academy, and ASL is also something that can be taught in other schools, and we offer through the online campus I just want to elevate that as well because while we offer that course we don't have teachers for it right now and we are working hard to recruit them for next year and hopefully we will find them but I just

[04:25:06] people need to be aware that certain skill sets are in high demand in other places and and as we've talked about earlier with a budget you know more lucrative jobs than than teaching so I just hopefully we can find that but to the point of all of these conversations we're talking about machine learning or or all the different things that we need to be doing.

[04:25:28] That's going to be a challenge. So I also want to elevate the need for business partnerships and to be nimble in how we do scheduling and hopefully create some of understanding with different industries where our kids can go out and learn more on the job.

[04:25:43] I think that's going to take a little bit of time, but I hope not as much time as many things seem to be taking. Right? So hopefully we'll move a little quicker. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Miss Lady. Miss St. John Cunning. Thank you. I would be remiss if I did not comment on this, having three daughters that went through the Spanish immersion program and just want to highlight the importance of the immersion programs in our schools.

[04:26:13] Personally, I think studies have shown that, you know, we have a partial immersion versus full immersion program and studies have indicated that the better way to go is to go with full immersion. uh understanding all the budget cuts and having the right people around to do this and having people uh that can teach that in the schools and enough kids to be able to take it but i i really just want to express the impact that having that different language has on all our students as for fless i know it's a little bit different and it's offered in elementary schools

[04:26:50] And I just want to, as we look at what we want Fless to be and what goals we want it to have, I feel that sometimes it's that exposure that is necessary. Just as with band and orchestra in elementary school, they don't have enough time during that, a lot of time to really learn the instrument, but they're exposed to it.

[04:27:13] From there, some students decide to follow on and get involved at the middle and high school level in the orchestra or in the band, or in, you know, as in with music, then they go on to choirs, and as with PE, then they enroll in sports.

[04:27:34] So I think we've got to look at FLAS as something as an exposure to the culture and an exposure to language and how it develops different ways of thinking, although that goal may not necessarily be the same as a full-on immersion program, and I think it's important not to lose sight of that.

[04:27:54] Thank you. Thank you, Ms. St. John Cunning. If you are not asking for a go-back, please turn your light off. Mr. Dunn. I'd like to ask on slides 4, 9, 13, 22, and 23, there are different student groups represented We don't seem to track, or at least not reflected here, LGBTQIA+.

[04:28:19] Is that data tracked at all? We don't ask students to self-report that data, so I don't believe we are tracking that data for these purposes in terms of class selection. The data would be, for example, on some surveys that are done, but in this case, these are actually -- we pull this information out of the student enrollment system.

[04:28:44] I did want to thank you, Dr. Reed, for the work you're doing. I mean, as Mr. McAleen said, this is a great improvement for the prior presentation. And I appreciate the plan that you have on slide 19. I think what the public needs to understand is that we have a mishmash of programs across FCPS resulting from different initiatives in different years.

[04:29:07] And so you're undertaking a Herculean task to try to standardize and make sense of it, which especially for economically disadvantaged students is beneficial because they frequently are mobile between schools over different years, and to have a consistent curriculum and consistent course offerings is highly beneficial as well to our military families and others that might move more frequently.

[04:29:33] One thing I wanted to point out, just in moving to standardization, I hope that the final goal of offering a minimum of four world languages, I just want to emphasize the minimum that We don't establish only four world languages, but indeed continue to offer diversity, especially based on the nature of the community, because there are certain pockets.

[04:29:55] There's a Korean-American community. There's different communities of Afghan refugees and others that we should respect and try to make sure we have courses matching the needs and requirements of those communities. and also to establish programs respecting heritage speakers of Spanish over multi-generations.

[04:30:16] And like Miss St. John Cutting, my three children all participate in the Spanish immersion program at Fort Hunt Elementary, and their lives are much richer and better for it. And so expanding immersion is something that I believe should be a priority that can be overtake over a longer period of time.

[04:30:35] EARLIER THIS YEAR, I MENTIONED REVISING THE CONTRACT WITH THE STEAM CURRICULUM PROVIDER, SO I JUST ENCOURAGE, AS MR. MCELVEEN MENTIONED, CONTINUE ASSESSMENTS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE CONTENT WE'RE USING, WHETHER BY CONTRACT OR IN-HOUSE.

[04:30:51] YES, SIR. THANK YOU, MR. DUNN. MS. DICKSETT. I'LL BE QUICK. I'M JUST GOING TO TAKE SOMETHING WHAT MS. LADY SAID ABOUT THE SHORTAGE OF THE TEACHERS for CS and ASL.

[04:31:08] Again, it's a challenge, we know. But I was wondering if there is a partnership arrangement can be done with the GMU or any university. I know some students already go to GMU. My son is taking a course there right now as a senior.

[04:31:23] But it's not in CS. It's like math courses are available right now. So that's one opportunity I guess we can explore. The other is for ASL, I was thinking about Gallaudet University in DC, which is for ASL, it's for deaf and hearing, my brother went there, so I know well about that school.

[04:31:43] So just talking to see them if they would be able to, again, do a partnership with us because some of these things can be done with, I guess, with some discussions and at least to explore that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Dixit.

[04:31:58] Dr. Anderson, to take us home. Yes, and I'll be quick. There's just a couple of things that I did not see here as part of the next step since you had some new components. I didn't see a focus on academy offerings. I know that's been the hot topic of conversation everywhere regarding the expansion.

[04:32:15] And another piece that we talked about quite a bit during the work session was-- because I think one of these components here is evaluation-- is evaluation of programming. Because ensuring that it's consistent across a division, just having a review of that would be very helpful.

[04:32:31] So people or parents and families are not feeling as if what is happening at school X is at a much higher level than what's taking place at school Y. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I call on Miss Lady for a motion. I didn't realize it was a question.

[04:32:50] I thought it was a comment. Go ahead, Dr. Reed. Well, the academy courses, I think we did discuss those. And I think one of the goals we have is creating more options at base schools because of the amount of time students lose often to travel to academies.

[04:33:07] So I don't know that we put that in here directly, but it's something we certainly can add. It's part of our -- I think if we look at the slide that was more of a summary slide. Okay, so slide 20. We probably should have written it in there, but it might include -- what we're really talking about is creating -- thank you, appreciate that.

[04:33:29] What we're really talking about is making sure that we're able to increase access, and And so what sits under this chart is going to be increasing numbers of courses obviously at base schools. And, in fact, the aviation and drone program is starting at a base high school because we just know, and when we talk about small engine repair and like greenhouse building and that type of thing in the CTAC report, those are things that we can find space in a base school, I think.

[04:34:00] these are no longer draft maybe you can add that additional language yes ma'am thank you dr anderson i call on miss lady for a motion i move the school board approve the goal for baseline report as division starting point for the work toward achieving the goals in our strategic plan 2023 to 30. is there a second i second miss marin miss lady would you like to speak to your motion no i think we've had a healthy discussion thank you miss marin would you like to speak to your second i will just briefly say that i think it's helpful to have the discussion about world language and we also had that at the work session and I hope that we can continue to find the best approach

[04:34:40] to effectively educate our students in world language. Thank you. Seeing no others I will call for a vote for the motion which is on the screen. All those in favor Ms. Seismerheiser, Mr. McDaniel, Mr. McElveen, Ms. Lady, Ms. Marin, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Ms. St.

[04:35:00] John Cunning and myself that is unanimous for board members at the table with Mr. Dunaway. ALL RIGHT. WE WILL MOVE ON TO AGENDA ITEM 6.01 PERFORMANCE REVIEW TECHNOLOGY EL12 MONITORING REPORT. I CALL ON DR. REED FOR MONITORING REPORT OF EXECUTIVE LIMITATION 12 TECHNOLOGY.

[04:35:21] THANK YOU CHAIRMAN FRISH MEMBERS OF THE BOARD AND THE PUBLIC. TONIGHT IT'S MY EXCITING THRILL TO PRESENT EXECUTIVE LIMITATION 12 WHICH ADDRESSES technology in the division. And I want to start off by thanking Dr. Mr. Gautam Sethi our chief instructional technology officer and his entire team as well as our chief academic office which works in tandem with our office of technology. So as we move to the next slide one of the things

[04:35:56] I just want to make sure I certify is at the time of this report to the best of my knowledge information and belief the information I'll share this evening is true and correct so let's go ahead and hit slide 3 please the again for those watching online the full monitoring report is attached online if you want to go visit that and read it it has a lot of hyperlinked data charts and so forth this evening I'm simply presenting an overview in a summary format want to

[04:36:30] I'll remind the board that there are eight areas of EL12 and on this slide you see four of those areas. On slide four we see the remaining items or the remaining four measurements for EL12.

[04:36:46] Tonight I'll be highlighting selected areas but again the full report is on board docs. So the first topic is really around the implementation of an innovative future focused comprehensive and efficient approach to provide accessible and equitable technology resources.

[04:37:04] Again, we want to make sure we're providing modern and age-appropriate developmentally, in particular one-to-one devices to all grade levels, including our pre-K-2 students. And we continue to maintain that commitment as the need arises in terms of equipment replacement.

[04:37:23] So it's really quite a significant investment, both in time and resources in this case. The next slide, slide six, I want to do a reminder that this year we had high school student devices being refreshed with new laptops that featured a bigger screen and longer battery life at a lower cost than the 2019 purchase point.

[04:37:51] And that's actually because technology, as you know, has become more affordable as new developments have been made. So with the savings that we were able to realize, we also then provided high-end computing devices in 20 school labs.

[04:38:11] And one of the things that I'm really proud of is we also are moving to our Every Employee Connected Initiative, which is a new initiative this year. And I thank Mr. Sethi for following through on this, but this aims to extend the useful life of devices and provide equitable access to all employees.

[04:38:30] We've redeployed over 2000 devices to operational staff in transportation, food and nutrition services and other teams who previously did not have a device to access email or professional development or training activities.

[04:38:46] And in fact, in some cases, we've purchased devices that for, for example, I believe it's our interpreters that previously had to have their own devices as part of work. So we really, I really want to applaud the hard work of our IT staff and making sure that we are providing laptops for all staff members to use.

[04:39:10] In April of 2023, as a response in particular to our military-connected families and also families that are moving in because of change in work locations, we did pilot a new online student registration system, which we had not previously had in the division.

[04:39:28] We registered over 2,600 new students, and we are continuing to make that kind of our registration system. And I think that's really important because we want students as soon as they know they're coming to Fairfax County to feel welcome and be able to submit registration materials as soon as humanly possible. The data bytes, our weekly dashboard for division leadership, you've had an opportunity to see what that looks like. And we've added school pulse for our school leaders and we're going to be forwarding department data bytes as well. So there's just a whole new

[04:40:06] look to how we're using technology slide 8 talks about the infrastructure which has been modernized and you can see the data points here I am a little bit in awe of all of this data but when you think about over 17,600 wireless access points across 240 buildings which allow us to simultaneously connect 300,000 devices and we've done our AP exams which are now online and high stakes

[04:40:43] testing through these wireless systems I mean that's a huge endeavor and I just again really want to thank all of our many many IT staff for this support we've doubled our internet connectivity to support these demands of all of the online systems the digital SAT AP SOLs and other mandated requirements with nary a you know misstep and when I think about not to pile on but when we think about the change management for the new FAFSA portal portal and all of the problems I just really have to say that our team has piloted and taken

[04:41:23] seriously the responsibility and has done a great job so slide nine looking at key regulations around safe and secure computing computing environments I also want to note that we continue to do cross-functional teams in AI we have I'll talk a little bit more about our safe and secure uh in computer environment around ai in a couple minutes but we have done some regulation

[04:41:59] updates and are really trying to stay current so i would encourage folks to take a look at those hyperlinks slide 10 again we've talked about really trying to have interactive communication talking points continues to be more widely used and we continue to utilize the let's talk portal for family and community communication the light speed parent portal is something that is fairly new that's going to be I believe in all

[04:42:34] schools mr. Sethi next year so it's been piloted this year and currently it does give families access to student internet activity and as of May as of this month we have over 7,000 almost 8,000 parents that have created parent monitoring accounts which enable parents to see where their students are exploring on division issued devices so slide 11 again talks a little about our policies that ensure technology resources are not used for commercial political or

[04:43:11] indecent purposes that might disrupt our learning environment and we use a number of different internet filtering tools to ensure that our access is filtered and inappropriate access is blocked so slide 12 I just want to close out item 4 by talking about the types of ways that we store information that protect against cyber threats I think we've taken a number of measures to try to ensure our data is protected I will also say some of our fishing expeditions

[04:43:47] honestly have been challenging for our staff but they are best practice and I thank you miss Karim they are best practice I'm told but some of them have felt challenging and so we're trying to really work with that tension on reminding and training and keeping staff safe without and trying also to be thoughtful and how that occurs item slide 13 talks about the artificial intelligence ethical and appropriate boundaries and guidelines we have a steering committee that's been formed and the teams are actively training staff

[04:44:26] on basic AI literacy as of April 2024 over 5,000 of our employees have participated in AI literacy training sessions and the mid-year Department of Instructional Technology AI conference attracted over 800 employees in a single event. We'll also say that FCPS is updating student and family facing resources. Cross-functional teams are exploring available AI tools where the Terms of Service permit used by students under the age of 18 to expand opportunities for students and we are planning to expand learning opportunities

[04:45:05] next year in AI. There's academic guiding principles for generative AI have been provided to help support schools and we're really looking at student access to AI tools within existing FCPS platforms such as Adobe and Canva and adding generative AI features that will be available to students. Instructional services has shared grades 6 through 12 AI literacy curriculum resources with educators and facilitated an educator innovator cohort that involves roughly

[04:45:41] 200 k-12 educators they actually had a recent demonstration of lessons so we have approximately we also want to talk a little bit about assistive technology devices currently we staff 32 assistive technology coaches across the division and have approximately 3,000 pre-k through 12th grade students who have accommodations on an IEP or 504 requiring assistive technology we have speech-generating devices for augmentative and alternative communication, and those are

[04:46:17] provided by FCPS to over 1,600 students. So there is a significant amount of data as well around accessibility. The next part, item number seven of the limitation shows or talks about staff training that has been provided, the digital citizenship lessons, which are really more and more important, device responsibility use, and our SBITs are trained on the ISTE standards for students.

[04:46:51] So the last item, number eight, really is around delivering transparent information. And I just want to highlight a couple of the ways we do that in the division. We have a technology support for families page, and we also provide information on a variety of platforms and password resetting.

[04:47:13] We also have Lightspeed Parent Portal that's lighting up, shall I say. And at this time, Mr. Chairman, this concludes the summary of the monitoring report for executive limitation 12 technology.

[04:47:29] Thank you, Dr. Reed. Mr. McIlvine. Thank you for the presentation. So I have several questions. We've talked before about our move to one-to-one computing, which Sloan and Mary Beth worked with the board 2018-2019.

[04:47:52] And we were pretty specific about going with laptops as opposed to Chromebooks, right? Do you have a sense of the price of the new Chromebooks as compared to the Dell laptops? Thank you for that question.

[04:48:07] I know we've had several spreadsheets on that. I THINK IT WAS MENTIONED IN THE PRESENTATION THAT THE NEW DEVICES ARE COMING IN CHEAPER THAN THE PREVIOUS DEVICES FROM THE WINDOWS TO THE CHROME LAPTOPS. OKAY. THANK YOU FOR THAT. I'D LIKE SPECIFICS. AND I'D BE HERE TO GET STATISTICS AS WELL ON HOW MUCH BREAKAGE HAS OCCURRED ON CHROME BOOKS.

[04:48:29] WHAT I'M HEARING FROM HIGH SCHOOLS IS THAT THEY'RE GOING TO HAVE TO BUY NEW CHROME BOOKS TO ACCOUNT FOR THE BREAKAGE THAT THEY'RE SEEING. My second question is, what accommodations are being made to ensure that students that have computer science classes have access to a Windows laptop as opposed to a Chromebook?

[04:48:52] Yeah, we definitely continue to provide Windows devices which are available. We also upgraded the high-end labs in the schools so they can have much stronger computing power, especially when they move into high-end programming activities. So those are two opportunities which we continue to sustain and move forward with.

[04:49:09] So now that we're at a point where everyone has a device, can you tell us why we're investing in new computer labs? Could it be that we can't just do everything with a Chromebook? I think the high-end computer labs, and I will ask Mr. Sethi to respond, but I think where I've seen those, and now that I think about it, I haven't seen it here, but where I've seen them in other locations are, for example, architectural drawing, the CAD. I mean, there's certain often video work or fine arts requires actually Mac books are I

[04:49:49] think used to see my last division was an Apple division but mr. Sethi do you want to share I think some of the opportunities that come in the previous Windows devices we had were basic configuration which were great for word processing activities but when we ended up doing any stem or any other CTE coursework they would be challenged in terms of processing power. There were basic devices, four gigs of RAM, very basic CPU, and the price points was somewhere in the range of 400. I think it was 420 or something in that price when we get you from numbers. These labs allow us to allow use AutoCAD and

[04:50:25] devices which the students can work in the building but we have also enabled the opportunity for students to be able to use cloud computing technology so when they're at home they can continue to use things like AutoCAD if they're interested in participating in those programs the other program I know like annual used to require something much more higher end I guess when you're doing publisher and that type of thing but this isn't probably my best area of expertise sure yeah I mean I just as commentary I would say that I'm I'm disappointed we're going back to computer labs when we're giving every

[04:51:04] student a computer and then I've heard a lot about network outages that are happening during the school day that our providers have chosen to you know network and cloud people have decided to make changes during the school day as opposed to after school do we have so there's a couple of different things that happen and given the size and scope of our infrastructure some of the network outages we get typically end up being an activity where somebody ended up digging a cable out and there was a construction activity so teams move in kind of repair that we tend to get them more frequently and it comes down to how much

[04:51:41] construction is going around our school buildings the other activities are generally unplanned outages never ever will our teams do planned outages during the course of the day because that is just not how we would want to run the operations and the infrastructure unplanned outages unseen unforeseen damage to our cabling infrastructure which connects our schools to our central networking hubs that kind of things generally take out some of the networks during the course of the day okay and last question for now is T specs what is the future for T specs the future for T specs there there are

[04:52:16] rumors out there about T specs and those are right there the tech rumors about T specs I haven't heard the rumors about the T specs but generally speaking the amount of technology that is going into our buildings and if you saw some of the previous goal reports there's going to be need for more technology in our schools even if we start doing the remote programming activities where virtual learning may be happening where you are in one school but you're being supported by another building in terms of learning from a classroom teacher perspective I think that work continues to grow it shape-shifts a little bit it

[04:52:52] won't be the base level work where you are spending four days trying to build computers because the new devices don't need to spend any time trying to build them, right? They're more like your iPhones, which means that when you open them, you type in your password, they're ready to go, but our Windows devices required a substantial amount of effort every year when we used to reset them and put them back in. So the T-Spec work is shifting, but the ability to engage at a higher level and use technology in more innovative ways to support instruction like virtual learning, connected classes, those would be great opportunities for our T-Specs.

[04:53:28] Thank you. You bet. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. This is hysterical over here.

[04:53:44] A couple of questions. One of the things that I noticed, and I thought this is really tremendous, is the Employee Connected, which you just talked about a little bit. Now, these devices were taken from the high school students and repurposed, or just any device altogether?

[04:54:03] The current ones we use were the high school student devices, and we kind of sought through them to make sure the best devices are repurposed and then the next batches are going to be obviously the middle school students are getting a new device next school year so we will have another batch of them coming out so if you keep using those cycles we can potentially sustain without spending any new dollars 10 to 15,000 new devices for the employees are not connected which is about the count of staff who don't get devices from FCPS and I and I love that program so thank you for putting that forward well I have a question is

[04:54:37] regarding just the e-waste because we have I see in your form here there's 68,000 devices in high schools 2,000 went into this program what happened to the other 60,000 and I'm very generous at the math here Dr. Anderson if you ever get out to the warehouse there are pallets of these devices when we have been doing a recycle which is part of where we got the idea to reuse some of these but they're pallets that we surplus and sell right yeah so certainly many of these devices do get

[04:55:15] into surplus and they get sold out for parts before they even get there our teams which we run out of woods woods and they take those pieces apart and use the parts and pieces for as long as we can so if you get one computer you can imagine it has at least eight or ten working parts and it so they get repurposed to repair and maintain the existing fleet so there's a lot of ingenuity and inability to kind of extend and at the end when whatever's left over ends up going into the warehouse for recycling and sometimes for sale too we have vendors who would come and buy it but that runs through our procurement services well that's good to hear because i was just concerned

[04:55:53] about how much potential waste we may have had um this report was particularly interesting to me i don't know is this our last one um no ma'am no there's one more i i find these no i'm funny i find these reports to serve two purposes but tonight there's just one you guys are cutting into my time i find these reports to really serve two purposes there's the information piece it was fascinating to hear what is going on in the in ocs the office of cyber security i think that's great for us to know a little bit more about and i think it's great for the

[04:56:33] public to hear so in terms of providing information it really hit the nail on the head very very helpful where i struggle is the piece that we're supposed to evaluate the accountability piece because the data for me is not as clear and i will give you some examples of where he where it has been and i'd like to see more and where it isn't and i think there's some opportunities there where it's clear you talked about data centers moving to the cloud computing or cloud storage moving from 211 servers to I'm sorry to 211 servers from 339 I see the growth I can evaluate

[04:57:12] that you're moving in the right direction so I appreciate that you talked um and also what I mentioned with the employee connected um talking points about data usage on page um I don't know what the page is but you talked about how many um messages were being sent um over 25 from the year before to to this current year again it's very clear and easy for me to evaluate where i struggle is um 17 600 wireless access points i don't have any context for that is that good for an enterprise

[04:57:52] our size is that mid-size i i don't understand how to treat that data and i'll take a go back please so um i mean so so the access points provide a fair sense of how many we have if you think of an access point it's like at a typical home you would have one of those which is the wireless router for providing full coverage into our buildings even in these rooms you can see how HOW MANY WE HAVE, 17,600 IS JUST A GENERAL SENSE OF THE LARGE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT WE OPERATE.

[04:58:26] I UNDERSTAND THE NUMBER, I JUST DON'T KNOW, IS THAT GOOD, IS MORE BETTER, IS FEWER, I DON'T KNOW WHERE WE ARE IN THE CONTINUUM OF THIS KIND OF ACCESS, THIS KIND OF -- YOU'LL HAVE ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY AS WE GO BACK.

[04:58:44] ONE OF THE THINGS THAT I THINK WE TALKED ABOUT IS WE INDICATED THAT WE HAVE DOUBLED OUR internet connectivity year over year I didn't put it on the slide but it was in my talking points and I think the key infrastructure upgrades based on those seventeen thousand six hundred so maybe we'll just add that next time to it I think it's in the actual report not it yeah in the rather than the presentation but doubling the internet connectivity was a huge lift to make sure that we

[04:59:17] could seamlessly offer the digital sat and sols this year for the first time the sat and ap thank you dr anderson miss anderson two things really fast um first i can't advocate strongly enough for online registration particularly for those families that are moving in so i love that we're moving in that direction um the second thing that i wanted to talk about was on slide 14 where we're talking about aac devices you and i had the with several of our colleagues had the opportunity to have an amazing day talking to some of our families related to AAC devices.

[04:59:56] One of the things that I hear most often from them is that there's a disconnect. We're doing a good job, I think, of providing the actual device access, but it doesn't necessarily bleed over into the training related to how to integrate those pieces of technology into instruction.

[05:00:14] So I can't think that that's the only place that that may be happening. SO I WANTED TO CALL ATTENTION TO THE FACT THAT I WOULD LOVE TO SEE A STRONGER CONNECTION BETWEEN HOW WE ARE UTILIZING THE DEVICES, PARTICULARLY FOR THOSE STUDENTS THAT ARE USING IT FOR THEIR SOLE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION TO ENSURE THAT WE HAVE INTEGRATED INTO INSTRUCTION SO THEY CAN PARTICIPATE WITHIN THE GENERAL EDUCATION SETTING.

[05:00:37] THANK YOU, MS. ANDERSON. THANK YOU. I WANT TO TOUCH QUICKLY ON THE CHROME BOOKS VERSUS WHAT WE USED TO HAVE BEFORE. I ALWAYS SAID I DON'T SPEAK TECHLISH, SO I CAN'T SPEAK ABOUT ALL THE LAYERS OF THE TECHNOLOGY, BUT I JUST KNOW THAT I THOUGHT IT WAS MY UNDERSTANDING THAT THEY WERE GOING TO RETAIN A LOT OF THE OTHER LAPTOPS FOR OUR HIGHER END AP AND COURSES AT THE HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL WHERE THE CHROMEBOOK WAS GOING TO LIKE NOT ALLOW THEM TO DO THE THINGS THEY NEED TO DO.

[05:01:12] I don't know if we're doing that, but the one thing I really want to bring to light is I did hear earlier this year, and this may have been correct, I just want confirmation that TJ students were supposed to be in Chromebooks next year. Can you please confirm that that's not going to happen to our TJ students, that they will actually continue to have their Dell computers?

[05:01:31] So for the schools which need the courses to continue to have the Windows computers, we are giving them the Windows computers. For all of the high schools, we did bring in Chromebooks. So the schools can request and next year they will continue to do so and the year after that because we will still have a fleet of the Windows devices that are coming off of rotations to continue to sustain that work.

[05:01:54] Right. So can you confirm that TJ will continue using the devices that they've had? Yeah. Okay. And then the only other concern is this idea. I don't know if you've been in some of our overcapacity high schools, but we got rid of computer labs. I have no idea. they're classrooms now. I'm not sure how you're going to put those back in places like McLean or Chantilly or Centerville or these overcapacity high schools where we've gotten rid of them because we have one-to-one. And yes, we have CAD. We didn't get rid of those. We didn't get rid of graphics. There are certain places where we didn't touch them. But, you know, the traditional computer labs we used to have, they're all classrooms now. So. Right. And I think that's

[05:02:33] probably why we talked about only 20 of those labs and we have 25 high schools. So there's not even I think I don't know where you upgraded those but I'm guessing they were not in every high school yeah so the design is not to install new labs the design is to be able to provide high-end computing for the labs so they can refresh them but as you just mentioned we still leave the Windows devices with the schools who need to continue to do the work because some of the software that is running some of these which also goes back to our curriculum and programming if the curriculum programming demand a software

[05:03:08] to be a specific type, and that curriculum is not getting written or refreshed because of state regulations and everything else for 10 years. Technology moves much faster than curriculum in those cases. We hope that they will catch up because a large majority of school districts continue to use and grow towards Chromebooks because it simplifies management.

[05:03:29] It vastly reduces our cybersecurity risk. Windows devices are the most common devices that are hacked. have actually they claim they have never been hacked which is a good point to be at this point in time so that's that's sort of the overall position for us to be in because student devices are 180 000 and trying to protect them even at a minimum cost is still a substantial cost thank you mr dunn i just want to say how impressive this is i remember being in meetings many years

[05:04:07] ago where um we there was talk of getting to one-to-one i think just for high schools so the fact we have it universally is is a great thing and a great accomplishment of course there's a huge cost associated with that that we didn't used to have um it we have a lot of wi-fi access points but i feel like whenever i'm in the schools the wi-fi never works on my phone it's just like dead so um is there so um if it's cellular signals surprising and contrastingly cellular signals in our buildings because they were built back

[05:04:45] then which of bunker houses plus we don't put towers next to our school buildings traditionally cell phone signals tend to be really really weak inside the buildings these the Wi-Fi should work and it may just be a configuration on the phone issue if you need to do that we can certainly fix that okay I think this report is great I mean across the board but what it reflects generally if you just take a step back is more and more and more right and then were bringing AI and you know I was just as a dad I was just looking at iPads for all the K through

[05:05:24] two and I was just wondering do these kids ever not are they ever not on a screen and um and you know there's been conversations at the work session elsewhere about you know kids don't have social skills so they'll order outside the Starbucks and then go in and pick up the mobile rather than just going in and having conversation um has there been any thought to reducing the amount of screens and and increasing human interaction it's a great question either mr. Sethi or dr. Presidio could respond to that I know I know that has

[05:06:02] been a concern for sure yeah and I think there's sometimes a misconception about how frequently students are on their devices primary grades in particular I mean when I visit classrooms they're typically not on their devices the reason we have those devices is there are particular applications that can really personalize the learning experience and target things that are skill specific based on individual student needs but the majority of the time particularly at the primary grade students are not on their devices as the primary means of instruction I know that there's a number of software that is

[05:06:41] used in our schools that can provide individual learning plan plans and pathways. But, you know, speaking with students, you know, their perception, at least they tell me, is that they're not effective. Do you have, are there studies of the software systems we use to determine that they actually are effective? Yeah, now we have a lot of digital resources in what we call our digital ecosystem library. So again, we don't evaluate the hundreds of different programs that you know students might use for you know 15

[05:07:20] minutes over the course of a month or something right but the programs that are more high usage like our Lexia program we have student achievement data that we can track and monitor and look at student growth based on you know those types of programs and we do see good benefits from those but again I mean our ecosystem is so large we don't have the capacity to do that for every you know resource that the teachers have access to so the high-volume programs you are able to validate that students are actually achieving measurable gains from using them, is that right? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Moon.

[05:07:56] Thank you, Mr. Shannon. Given the hours, just briefly, a couple of questions. I think earlier in the evening you mentioned you said that AI is the future, but I think AI is now. I'm glad that you also provide additional information regarding how we prepare how we work with our students work with AI but would you be able to provide I guess in the next year's report a some some data and more

[05:08:29] information about how use of AI is helping teaching and learning how it is bringing more efficiency to our school systems operation and whether there is any policy conservation the school board need to pay closer attention to I did that efficiency might also you know touch upon whether we are saving money by using using AI we are in terms of teaching and learning we are whether our

[05:09:09] student achievement is going up or going down going flat I miss those information would be very helpful you know at the recent a conference that I attended and the book recently I read it talked about how AI can be a not only help our teachers in developing the lesson plans but also can act as graders and tutors even as a co-teachers I don't want AI to replace our teachers but I want to see how we can have our teachers have a best out of

[05:09:47] the use of AI and students as well thank you yes sir thank you mr. moon miss Thank you. Just a couple of questions. The registration it says that parents are able to start it electronically. How do they complete it?

[05:10:14] Well, they should be able to also complete it. There is a part of it. They come in in person. But Mr. Sethi, do you want to outline where we are? I mean, ideally, I would like them to be able to finish the process.

[05:10:27] They do finish it. The process starts and can finish in the system. Obviously, a school registrar is going to review all the data that comes in. They can see all the uploaded documents and then approve the final registration. There are uncertain circumstances, as with any of registrations, when they could be referred to go to our central registration offices for evaluations of things of those nature. Other than that, the system can take all the data. You can upload all your paperwork in there, and that will get processed by the school.

[05:10:55] So families, if they're a military particularly and are not local, they can complete their entire registration virtually? Yes, ma'am. Okay, wonderful. Another piece that I wanted to talk about, bear with me while I find my page here.

[05:11:12] There's a section here where you talked about light speed. I thought I heard you say that light speed is now becoming available. I thought that was available about three years ago. So to clarify, there's two parts, there's a lot of light speed parts to our ecosystem.

[05:11:30] The parent portal, which has been available but has been ramping up, the most recently we purchased or at least piloted with many of our schools the ability for teachers to control student devices when they're in the classroom setting.

[05:11:46] I think we had heard feedback where certain points the technology can't get out of hand and the teachers can't go and actually, you know, they can stand and certainly do the management of the classroom. But the Lightspeed Classroom Portal, which teachers now have access to, and next year we'll purchase it centrally so schools don't have to pay for a pilot, will give teachers access to manage the student devices within the building.

[05:12:13] So when they're in their class, they can see what the students are doing. They can say, okay, everybody switch to this website so we can talk about the lesson and engage with them or even manage their digital distractions direct from the teacher's laptop. And that's the pilot this year?

[05:12:28] That's the pilot this year. Next year, it has been a huge success. Teachers have loved it. They said it's helped them manage the classroom much, much more efficiently. So next year, we're going to buy it and make sure every teacher has access to it. There's some amount of training that goes with it, but it's not a heavy lift.

[05:12:45] That's great growth. As I was talking about the talking points usage, this was a data set that was very helpful to me. It showed me what we had last year and where we are right now. I like that comparison of one year over the other. So as much as you can include that in here, I would appreciate it.

[05:13:02] But I did have a question regarding something that you helped to implement when you first got here, which is the audio feature on FCPS websites. Again, very useful for our parents who may not be able to read the information that's provided there. Have you captured any data regarding its usage?

[05:13:21] Ms. Hall, do we have any data regarding that usage or Mr. Sethi? I apologize. I was just looking for something on the computer. Could you repeat the question, please? Yes. The audio feature that is on the website, have you captured any data that talks about its usage from our community?

[05:13:45] I don't believe we've tracked it in terms of, we can see if we can get that data. Gautam, I think we can get that. Yeah, I think we might be able to extrapolate because there is some amount of charge that comes back. It's a cloud service, so we can probably extrapolate based on the costs and get back with some data.

[05:14:05] I think that would be very helpful because that's something we've invested in and I'd like to know are people finding it helpful, are people even using it. My last thing is here you talked about how there is FCPS one-on-one transformation is being achieved without incurring significant increases.

[05:14:25] For me, that's a subjective term. Can we get the numbers that would lead any of us to determine whether or not those increases have been significant or not? Yes, ma'am, we can. Yes. Thank you.

[05:14:41] And I think that is my last inquiry. Oh, and also Schoology. YOU ALSO REFERRED TO THAT AS A DATA POINT WHERE PARENTS ARE UTILIZING IT THIS YEAR. YOU OFFERED SOME SINGLE USAGE AND OVERALL, WHAT WAS IT LAST YEAR ARE WE SEEING GROW?

[05:15:02] WE CAN PULL HISTORICAL DATA AND TRY TO GET THAT TO YOU. THANK YOU, DR. ANDERSON. I NOW CALL ON MR. MCELVEEN FOR A MOTION. THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR. COMPUTER TURNED OFF.

[05:15:19] I MOVE THAT THE SCHOOL BOARD FINDS THAT THE SUPERINTENDENT HAS MADE ADEQUATE PROGRESS TOWARD COMPLIANCE WITH EXECUTIVE LIMITATION NUMBER 12 TECHNOLOGY. I further move that the school board approve the monitoring report based on the superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive limitation 12 technology as outlined in the strategic governance manual.

[05:15:36] Thank you, Mr. McIlvain. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Anderson. Mr. McIlvain, would you like to speak to your motion? Nothing further. Ms. Anderson, would you like to speak to your second? No, thank you. Mr. Moon? All right. Seeing no others wishing to speak, we will call for a vote for the motion which is on the screen.

[05:15:56] All those in favor, Ms. Seizmerheiser, Ms. Lady, Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, myself, and Ms. St. John Cunning. Opposed? Mr. McLevine and Dr. Anderson, abstentions? Will the clerk read the vote?

[05:16:18] The vote is 9-2 with Mr. McDaniel away from the table. All right, the motion passes. All right, at this point, we would typically take a 10-minute recess, but I'd like to suggest that people can fill out the form and submit it at their leisure as normal, but we just had a recess before this, believe it or not.

[05:16:43] So we will continue on without objection. All right, agenda item 7.01 policy review technology EL12. The next order of business is the policy review for executive limitation 12, technology EL12.

[05:16:58] Following the board's vote in September 2023 our vote at our February 8th 2024 regular meeting each year the board will review each of the 13 executive limitations at the time of the monitoring report is provided to determine if any revisions are needed moving forward the board may also review any of the executive limitations at any time change is needed at that time board members may provide comments on executive limitation 12 technology to determine if any revisions are needed at this time i see no uh one seeking recognition so i call on mr moon for a motion thank you mr chairman i move that the school

[05:17:35] would maintain executive limitation 12 technology as it is currently detailed in the strategic governance manual is there a second second mr dunn mr moon would you like to speak to your motion no sir mr dunn would you like to speak to your second no thank you all right seeing no others the motion is on the screen we will now take a vote all those in favor Ms. Seizmoorheiser, Mr. McElvain, Ms. Lady, Ms. Marin, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Ms. St. John Cunningham, and myself. That is unanimous. Agenda item 8.01,

[05:18:13] academic matters. I call on Dr. Reed, and I apologize profusely that you've had to wait this long. I had no idea that's why you were here. I'm very sorry. They're here for the next item. Oh, okay. How about we do strategic plan update before academic matters? All right. I feel like like we've invited you to a slumber party all right doc dr reed what is your pleasure which i'm going to let you make an executive decision based on what your staff is telling you i think

[05:18:47] they want to see the academic matters yeah see that's uh i will tell you we have amazing staff here and i just uh anyhow academic matters we're going to be relatively quick but this is critically important in late breaking news we're going to talk about the new sol family reports coming out very shortly and dr presidio and his team really provided some outstanding slides so as we look at

[05:19:22] a focus on through year growth for grades three to eight this will be the new parent report coming from the virginia department of education which has a focus on viewing growth across the school year. So the intent of this, and we're hoping that the timing will improve in the coming years, but the intent of this is to be able to have an assessment fall, winter, and then spring so that parents and students and staff can see the growth in the content area. It's designed to give this year long and it should tie together our Virginia scores with our standards of learning. So we're

[05:20:01] We're really excited about the possibility of this vertical scaled score being similarly scaled for fall, winter, spring, and it should. The line graph you see that every parent will receive will be able to enable a through-year growth pattern and note the level of support that each score represents.

[05:20:24] Secondly, the line graph in the new SOL parent report uses a key for each vertical scale score. This denotes a general level of readiness and potential support needs. So these vertical scale score range from a low of 900 to a high of 2000.

[05:20:45] Based on a statistical analysis, the VDOE staff have identified three vertical scale bands for each reading and math test and I know this is a lot for those of you at home that are still watching but do take a close look at this and there's a lot of information here that we want to make sure that students and families are able to access one of the things is that the score band describe the students likely level of readiness to successfully access the content

[05:21:22] standards in their next reading or math course and their anticipated need for academic support in the upcoming school year. So we know these scores are just one data point that reflects the performance on a single day and these scores are meant to be used alongside a lot of other available data report cards other assessments and teacher formative and summative assessments. At the same time the readiness and support levels in this report may help families prioritize the type of the support they want for their students academic progress so as

[05:21:57] we think about understanding these results grades 3 through 8 we have a new Fairfax County Public School web page which gives families information and resources to respond to their students reports and I really am thrilled that our chief academic office and chief experience and engagement office was important that we had a landing page for our Fairfax families prior to these state reports coming out so I'm thrilled to share that this webpage introduces and supports understanding of the framework used for standard of learning report cards in elementary and middle school and features information on making sense of

[05:22:37] test scores and other information using a question-and-answer format. The webpage also points families to resources that can help them plan for supporting their students ongoing learning at home and with summer coming up we want to make sure that if you're watching at home students and family check out this web page because it's going to provide a lot of opportunities for fun and engaging learning this summer and the last slide is a focus on accessibility has targeted reports official scores and multiple delivery modes the reporting model

[05:23:14] utilizes this parent view as well for all families who have accounts and those eager to develop their accounts. We continue to improve accessibility of the ParentVUE platform and our school and central office staff continue to facilitate opportunities for families to get signed up. For families who do not yet have CIS or ParentVUE accounts, reports are distributed from the student's school or sent by US mail to the family's home address. We're really hopeful that this information gets out to families and we're doing everything we can to make sure families understand the information and that is academic matters thank

[05:23:51] you dr reed dr anderson just really three quick questions last year we were also talking about a new video e-report and that never materialized well there i think there's been a timing challenge because the vg you know the the what they call interim assessments we didn't get the results till too late to actually act on those but um dr presidio insights into the new yet again um reports yeah no these these are going to be distributed in the month of june so right around the corner

[05:24:30] families will be receiving these reports that's why this is late breaking news okay so this is actually happening so we had those interim assessments throughout this year to inform the report to be provided in june we did yeah if a student was enrolled in the state of virginia schools in the state of virginia those scores would be available if if they were enrolled all year they took the fall assessment the winter assessment and then the spring assessment okay so those were the virginia growth assessments that's that's correct okay so it's not a new assessment that's going to feed this so i don't think i need to ask my other two questions thank

[05:25:07] you thank you dr anderson mr moon mr chairman just one quick question for clarification uh this This is something new to me, so you're going to have to educate me on this one. So for winter and springtime, it's all state, using the state assessment tools?

[05:25:28] Yes, sir. Online. Online, every way, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8? Yes, sir. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moon. All right, seeing no others, we'll move on.

[05:25:45] Thank you very much. The moment we've all been waiting for. Agenda item 8.02, strategic plan update. I call on Dr. Reed for the update.

[05:25:56] Thank you, Mr. Frisch. I would like to call our team up to answer any questions that they might that you might have, because this is really an exciting part of our update. We really want to talk about our laser focus on the alignment of our strategic goals. And we've been sharing early implement stage early implementation stages all year. This evening, in our strategic planning update, we're going to talk about our grow your own teacher program, and we are so thrilled about that. Just a reminder that this would be pillar C diverse, adaptive,

[05:26:32] and supported workforce and the work of this program impacts student success in all five goals of the pillar. So our grow your own program helps current employees become licensed special education teachers and what we can say is that in particular our special education teacher workforce is one that we are really recruiting heavily and hoping to retain. Federal data shows that 21% of public schools were not fully staffed in special education at the start of the school year and we continue to think and work innovatively to provide

[05:27:08] the best instructor in front of every one of our classrooms. So one such innovation is a grow your own and this slide talks a little bit about the different pathways and essentially we've got three pathways Annie do you want to talk about these just a little bit or certainly thank you Dr. Reed by the way I'm Annie Dyfert senior manager for system-wide professional development good evening so we do have three pathways for our grow your own teacher pathways employees who are coming to the division as perhaps new hires or

[05:27:42] paraprofessionals with an eligible bachelor's degree can join a licensure and master's degree program at George Mason University. We support them through that. If they have a transferable associate's degree, they can join our bachelor's degree program, getting a dual licensure at James Madison University.

[05:28:02] If they do not have a degree, we support them as they achieve their associate's degree. And then they can join the pathway for a bachelor's degree at James Madison University. So exciting. So exciting. All right, our grow your own support. What do you want to take that?

[05:28:20] Thank you, board. My name is Bob Hamel. I overlook the program. So the Grow Your Own Support Program offers a 50/50 tuition sharing model with the candidates where FCPS pays for 50 percent of the tuition while the candidate pays the other 50 percent. We also provide instructional coaching with the candidates for two years or more depending on the candidate's needs.

[05:28:41] We develop a cohort model so the candidates are going through the cohort together. They're developing the relationships with the teachers and they're able to bounce ideas off of each other. We also tailor and develop targeted professional development that is based off of the teacher's needs.

[05:28:58] And so each time we offer it, it looks different. One of the main things that I do is I offer the career counseling and advice to the program. So I am supporting candidates from the start of the pipeline to the end of the pipeline. This is crucial, especially in our bachelor's degree program. As you can imagine, when transcripts come in with all different credits from all over the world, we have to do our best to work with that candidate to figure out what they need so they can become a licensed teacher and then of course this has allowed us to enhance our partnership with George Mason University, James Madison University and Northern Virginia Community College.

[05:29:37] So certainly. So the program began in 2022 when an idea kind of came to a group of us. It was one of the specialists in human resources, myself and somebody in DSS and we had a successful ESSER III pilot program.

[05:29:53] And of course you know that ESSER III is sunsetting, but we have been able to identify some blended funding approaches so that we can continue the program going forward. We are celebrating here in a couple of weeks the first set of graduates, 41 people who have graduated in the 23-24 school year.

[05:30:17] Yes, we should be celebrating those individuals. So you'll be introduced to some of them here shortly. I think we've got a video to show. I'm not quite sure where it is in the program.

[05:30:32] Well, it's next. There we go. Try to keep it amped up, ready to go.

[05:30:51] Through the Office of Professional Learning, Fairfax County Public Schools offers aspiring teachers a supported pathway to become a fully licensed special education teacher. Whether a paraprofessional or a teacher trainee, the Grow Your Own program provides the resources such as financial assistance and special education instructional coaches to grow and retain special education teachers within the division.

[05:31:15] The Grow Your Own program built a special education teacher pipeline with multiple entry points from a bachelor's degree at James Madison University to a master's degree at George Mason University. Fairfax County Public Schools provides a 50/50 tuition sharing program.

[05:31:30] FCPS pays 50% of my tuition which is a great relief for me because I am a single parent and so I have a daughter who is also attending community college so having that tuition benefit is very, very helpful for my budget.

[05:31:47] Teachers in the Grow Your Own program benefit from personalized guidance from special education instructional coaches. These instructional coaches design and deliver professional development in the areas of lesson planning data collection behavior management and more. My instructional coach is like my everything having an instructional coach helps me to figure out how can I be more effective and she basically comes based on my schedule which is awesome. Being able to have a coach that is a safe space I know Miss Joanna when she comes to sit with me she's not only looking to see how I'm doing as a

[05:32:27] teacher about how I'm doing as a person. She can always tell when I'm feeling overwhelmed and so I feel I can actually tell her exactly what's going on. Teachers in the cohort get to collaborate with a supported group of fellow aspiring teachers throughout the Grow Your Own program.

[05:32:42] The cohort means you have the same students with you throughout your program so we've gotten to know each other, we work on group projects together so it's it's you don't even feel like a student with them it's more like family. The Grow Your Own program boasts a strong record of helping participants achieve their licensing goals.

[05:33:03] To date, 130 candidates have been accepted into the program with a success rate of 92.3%. In the beginning, when I thought about student success, I was thinking about just their grades.

[05:33:20] But having been in the program, they've made me see other ways I could assess their success. So I know some students at the beginning of the year, they didn't want to engage in discussion. They kind of left it to the other student. But now, those same students are opening up.

[05:33:37] They are raising their hand. You can really see the success, not just in grades, but the student's growth itself. Excellence, equity, and opportunity. All right. That's it.

[05:33:53] And we're happy to answer any questions. And just a big thank you for staying. AND JAY NACO AS WELL BACK THERE THIS EVENING OR FRIDAY MORNING. YOU'LL BE WITH US A LITTLE WHILE LONGER. WE'VE GOT ABOUT HALF THE BOARD FOR YOU.

[05:34:08] MS. ANDERSON. I HAVE ONE TINY THING TO SAY SO MY COLLEAGUES DON'T KILL ME. ARE WE CAPTURING THESE FOLKS WHILE THEY'RE AT JMU ON BREAKS AND THINGS LIKE THAT FOR SUB POSSIBILITIES? BECAUSE THERE ARE ALREADY KIDS THAT HAVE SHOWN INTEREST IN SUBING.

[05:34:26] SO I'M JUST WONDERING WHETHER OR NOT WE'RE GETTING THEM SET UP they go off into the because I know creating that sub pool is a big deal the current candidates that are in our bachelor's program are current pair professionals already hired within the county right I was looking at those other two options where you've got kids that are going or you know you've got different people that are going off to JMU or that's all still included so the JMU program is a virtual program and so it is candidate the same thing with MVCC they are candidates that are already paraprofessionals within the division BUT WE ARE WORKING WITH NORTHERN REGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE TO FIND A WAY TO GET INTO THE

[05:35:02] INTRO TO EDUCATION COURSE WHICH IS ED 200 TO START TO TALK ABOUT THE BENEFITS THAT FCPS OFFERS. PERFECT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS. ANDERSON. DR. ANDERSON. FIRST OF ALL, YAY. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL OF THAT WORK AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR ENTHUSIASM. IT MENTIONS HERE THAT YOU COULD HAVE VARIOUS ENTRY POINTS. SO THE EMPLOYEES THAT ARE STUDYING who do not have a degree how long does it take them to get to the point where they can be a certified teacher that has to be more than two to three years it is so NVC an associate's degree

[05:35:35] typically if you're a working professional is going to take you probably it's going to take two years but that's going to be your full summers across that two probably two and a half years And then the same would be true for the JMU piece.

[05:35:54] It is full-time during the summers and then your evenings. They really do a good job, George Mason, JMU, they do a really good job of scheduling the coursework to compact it in a way for working professionals.

[05:36:10] So like JMU, the program is two and a half years. It's 60 credit hours, but they manage to fit it into the two and a half years for working professionals. And VCC is also working really closely with not only us but other school divisions to do these programs for working professionals.

[05:36:28] So, NVCC is also about two and a half years for the associate's degree. So, it's a lot of years and we do the matching. What is the commitment that we are requiring of these individuals once they complete their degrees? So, George Mason, it's a three-year commitment after they complete the program.

[05:36:47] I think JMU, we are also asking for three years also, and we're a little bit looser with the NVCC, which is currently one year for one year. Oh, I see. Thank you. And my last question is regarding funding, since this was started and piloted with ESSER III funds.

[05:37:07] How are we currently resourcing this initiative? So, for this year going forward, Marcy, do you want to? Sure, I'm happy to answer that question. So we have the remaining ESSER funds to carry us through for this year and then we've identified some Title IIA grant dollars as a part of that as well as existing operating dollars that look at tuition reimbursement that we're tapping into and some of our enhancement plan for students with disabilities funding.

[05:37:37] So it's a combination of funds. Okay, so it's multiple streams. Do we have a cap as to how many we can accept based, of course, on the available funding? MANY TEACHERS DOES THAT AFFORD US? OR POTENTIAL TEACHERS? I BELIEVE WE HAVE 47 STARTING IN THE FALL WITH THE EXISTING FUNDS WE'VE IDENTIFIED. I'M LOOKING AT ANNIE TO MAKE SURE THAT NUMBER'S CORRECT. AND THAT'S OUR CAP, 47? I THINK WE CAN TAKE IT A TITCH HIGHER THAN THAT CURRENTLY WITH THE EXISTING FUNDS. THAT'S CORRECT. BUT THAT'S ABOUT IT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, DR. ANDERSON.

[05:38:15] FIRST OF ALL, THIS IS A GREAT PILOT PROGRAM AND I BELIEVE IT'S GOING TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN THE YEARS to come what percentage of ours I guess shortage it's addressing and how long is going to take us to I guess get over that hump where we are very short staff in special needs I I think that we're also doing special education teacher career fairs hiring earlier it's going to be a combination of strategies this

[05:38:49] This strategy alone is not going to address the shortage in teachers for special education, but we do. I mean, with 41 graduates this spring, that's 41 more teachers that we'll have in the fall than we had previously.

[05:39:05] So I think, Mr. Smith, as we get clear about our data for hiring for the fall, we'll be able to have better numbers for you, but we have multiple strategies. Are we considering opening this to non-FCPS employees to just get students in colleges and just give them this path and recruit them right from high school to associate degree?

[05:39:33] So that was kind of what Bob was referencing is that students who are attending Northern Virginia Community College just generally who might be interested in pursuing education would take the EDU 200 or the EDU 250 and NVCC has invited us to come into those classes and speak on kind of how to be a teacher or what it's like to be a teacher which we are looking at as somewhat of a recruitment tool where we could say oh by the way if you would join FCPS you can be a full-time employee and you can access these tuition benefit programs.

[05:40:09] So it's kind of one of the ways in which we thought we might be able to encourage because Every time we offer this GIO program to a paraprofessional as a part of the pipeline, what we're doing is we're taking a paraprofessional and we're providing a career growth into the classroom.

[05:40:27] We have to find a way to backfill the paraprofessional. And so in a dream world, we would be taking high school students and providing them, making them paraprofessionals and then taking them all the way to the finish line that way.

[05:40:43] My last suggestion would be a lot of international students are in GMU and NVCC and after they get the degree they can do OPT visa and the college provides that, not the school.

[05:41:00] They can work in the community, like school system or any job. And then there is an H1 track for them too. So, again, if we don't have any other creative ways, this is something to look into. And I think, Dr. Reid, in Texas, I saw one of the, they're doing that, and they're creating, doing visa sponsorship for the teachers.

[05:41:29] Yes, ma'am. We are exploring visa sponsorship. I know we've met, I know Mr. Foster and his team is working on that with HR. And we have actually several teachers right now in the division that are requesting that support.

[05:41:48] - Thank you, Ms. Dixit. - Mr. Dunn. - If all ESSER funding goes away and we just pay for this ourselves, how much does it cost per teacher? - Mr. Dunn, I can answer that question. It's approximately $10,000 is the tuition cost for the teachers who are completing the program.

[05:42:08] - Per year? - In total. - And that's over three years? - So it's $10,000 for the total program. So it's divided over three years, so $3,300 per year per candidate, more or less.

[05:42:25] That's remarkably cost-effective. Is this based on programs elsewhere, or did you just create this? Is this the first program of its kind nationwide? There are a number of options for tuition reimbursement, and how do I want to say?

[05:42:50] It is late tuition reimbursement and then service Expectation I guess we'll call it that Right teacher residency programs Right there are also a number of divisions even in the Commonwealth here in Virginia that help pay for advanced degrees for teachers or for principals in exchange for you know that apprenticeship time or the

[05:43:16] commitment time. And I just think that it makes a lot of sense because sometimes we are also spending tuition on sort of more randomized professional development. This is pretty focused and strategic. So I think it's a good investment. And I think title to a title to part a monies are for professional development. So that is their purpose. I think the special ed enhancement plan piece of it is not a significant amount of money and it's not a permanent source. I think that was around trying to get our numbers up quickly, but I think that it is a modest sum of money

[05:43:54] that, by and large, we're going to look at Title II, Part A, and some general fund monies. Well, I hope you pursue, you know, appropriate awards or recognition for, you know, the leadership shown here, because it sounds really great, and it sounds a little bit different from what you described generally.

[05:44:12] I applaud the focus on special education. Is there any thought to expanding it beyond special education? I think we can expand it to a variety of topics. I think right now the team, we're looking at our highest need staffing, which is our special education.

[05:44:30] I think as we think about computer science or other advanced mathematics, I still, I think our partnerships with industry and partnerships at the university level are going to provide assets in those areas as well.

[05:44:46] Thank you. I have a friend who participated in something that sounded similar. It was also in a cohort with GMU. It wasn't focused on special education, though. It was through FCPS, but she reported it got discontinued.

[05:45:02] Some somehow the cohort got dissolved or discontinued last year. So I wonder if you could comment on that at all. I'm not sure what we dissolved last year, Ms. Neal. Nothing is coming to mind, but we can do some investigating on that, Mr.

[05:45:18] Not necessary. Just wondering. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Moon. Just a couple of things quickly. One of the questions has been already asked by Mr. Dunn, but I want to add my support to look into areas other than just a special education. You mentioned computer science, maybe high-level math, and et cetera. I do not know whether we have

[05:45:51] people employees on the wait list to get in okay, so we have a sufficient funding to Provide the opportunity to all those employees who want to pursue this at this point. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you I do think though as you're talking about it I was in a classroom this week at an elementary school where they were doing kindergarten counting to a hundred in sign language and I think we may have teachers that as we look at ASL as a short

[05:46:27] WE MIGHT LOOK AT SOME OF THESE UNIQUE POSITIONS WE'RE LOOKING FOR AND OFFER THE SAME TYPE OF PROGRAMMING. SO I THINK IT JUST -- THE WORK THAT JAY AND BOB AND ANNI HAVE DONE IS JUST -- IT'S REMARKABLE. AND I THINK IT'S, YOU KNOW, TRANSFORMATIONAL FOR US.

[05:46:43] THANK YOU, MR. MOON. MS. MARIN. I HAVE ONE QUESTION, WHICH IS HOW CAN WE BEST REFER PEOPLE TO THE PROGRAM? I often am asked about pathways and I don't know where to send people.

[05:47:04] Clearly we burn the midnight oil, right? Actually we do have a shared inbox, teacher pathways.opl@fcps.edu. We can provide that back so that everybody has it and can email us.

[05:47:22] Thank you. I have two comments. One is, Dr. Reid, it would be really interesting to see a comparison of the results from the Teach for Tomorrow program as compared to the Grow Your Own to see if, you know, are they completing at the same rate or just, you know, strategies that could be shared because from what I recall, the Teach for Tomorrow program has sort of a lower turnout in general.

[05:47:45] So I'm curious about that. And the other thing, it's related, but I do want to say for teachers who are, I have constituent who heard she was a teacher at one of the got her degree from one of the best colleges in america but that was 30 years ago she was out of the field then she's been an ia she doesn't have a pathway to get a license and so i'm wondering like she's basically being asked to redo all of her bachelor degree work or something i'm not articulating it perfectly but so i guess my question is for people who perhaps have a gap who were teachers have a gap have a bachelor's degree and in teaching and maybe even a master's again these are the kinds of questions i get about how

[05:48:21] can someone of that experience stay and not have to be complete like half their college degree so I know it's a little bit out of your lane but I raise it for dr. Reed's consideration and if there's like another iteration of this perhaps that could be part of it mr. Smith I would ask anyone who's in that position to contact our human resources office the office of talent acquisition our licensure senior manager Sadiqa Turner she has amazing resources and has ACTUALLY HELPED MANY EMPLOYEES AND MANY WANTING TO GET BACK INTO TEACHING FIGURE OUT THAT

[05:48:57] PATHWAY FOR LICENSURE IN THE MOST DIRECT WAY. THANK YOU, MR. SMITH. I THINK SOME OF THE CHALLENGES LIE AT THE STATE LEVEL AND WHAT THEY REQUIRE. I THINK THE STAFF HAS BEEN HELPFUL, BUT THE BLOCK IS THE STATE. SO I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THAT AND IF THE BOARD CAN HELP WITH THAT WORK. YES, MA'AM. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MS. MARIN. AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SPENDING YOUR EVENING AND YOUR MORNING. GOOD MORNING WITH US. AGENDA ITEM NINE. THANK YOU, DR. REED.

[05:49:23] - Yep. - Consent agenda. Our adopted rules of parliamentary procedure, Roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion. Many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance.

[05:49:38] Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of a board member prior to the meeting. The consent agenda items are on the screen. Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Seeing and hearing none, the consent agenda is approved. Agenda item number 10, new business. following our new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled for a future meeting agenda item 11 committee reports uh i call on mr mckelveen for an audit committee report not tonight thank you i call miss i call on ms seismor heiser for

[05:50:14] a governance committee report is it too soon to say mr mcdaniel already shared it probably too soon she'll be here all week try the ziti uh public engagement committee uh miss anderson we are CONTINUING TO WORK ON GETTING THE COMMUNITY ADVISORY COMMITTEE OPERATING MANUAL READY FOR VOTE AND SO WE'RE HARD AT WORK.

[05:50:42] THANK YOU. AGENDA ITEM NO. 12, BOARD MATTERS. WITHOUT OBJECTION, WE WILL SKIP BOARD MATTERS. SEEING NO -- ALL RIGHT, MR. MOON, GO AHEAD WITH YOUR BOARD. I'M JUST KIDDING. THERE WAS -- OKAY, THANK YOU, MR.

[05:50:59] CHAIRMAN. THERE WAS A FULL OBJECTION. All right. At 12:49 a.m. this meeting is adjourned.

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