Coraggio Consulting Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 Date: Tuesday, October 8, 2024 Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia Length: 4h 35m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i04W3vvtV4w 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 2026-10-31. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:00:19] roshna can you hear us i can hear you now but i can't see anybody it just shows there's no camera on gatehouse i i i see you just fine right here from us i can see myself on my screen but normally i can see the table and all of you all as well but i don't see that do you see the screen now i can see you okay good now we are good to go we have a quorum now i'm gonna call the work session into [00:00:53] order we do have relatively long day and vice chair sandy anderson and i'll be managing the morning and afternoon sessions i will do the first part and vice chair sanderson anderson is going to be doing the afternoon portion so let me first read the statement about mbc seismorheiser being [00:01:25] able to join in she's participating virtually due to caregiving um mr moon i don't think you have to call me in we're not calling you in we're just explaining the okay let's make sure yep so she's going to be counting for the july first code change as in person for the quorum so we have exactly seven board members to make the quorum today with that the first part of the work session today deals with a goal one report it has a two components first one is a multilingual learners [00:02:02] progress and second one is pre-k program we have we have altogether two hour and 30 minutes until one o'clock for this part of the presentation however we're gonna we're gonna break that into two different subsections so that we can spend up to about an hour for the multilingual portion and and then we're going to pre-K for another hour, and then hopefully setting aside last 30 minutes to have a discussion for both. [00:02:30] With that, Dr. Reed, you wanna introduce your staff members for the presentation. - Thank you, Mr. Moon. This morning we're gonna start off with a goal report, and starting with goal report one, and I am thrilled to be able to turn this over at this point to our chief academic officer, Dr. Sloan Presidio, who will introduce the team at the table, who will be making our presentation. [00:02:56] So Dr. Presidio. - All right, well thank you Dr. Reed and good morning everyone. It was nice to see many folks around the table at the legislative update breakfast this morning. So we're happy to present on goal one this morning and I'm joined by a number of colleagues here starting with Janice Szymanski, our Chief Facilities Officer, Sarah Maslick from the Professional Learning Office, Marcy Neal, our Assistant Superintendent of Strategy And I am so excited to have Marcy on board because after 13 years of doing all these presentations over and over and over again, Marcy's going to lead this presentation, so it's wonderful. [00:03:31] I'm also joined by Lisa Pilsen, our Director of Early Childhood, and Rich Polio, our Director of ESOL. And with that, I think I'll turn it over to Marcy to get us started. So Marcy, before you start, do I understand that your presentation is going to take about 15 minutes? [00:03:46] So if both members could hold up your question as much as you can until the presentation to tell anyone first thank you mr roon and good morning members of the board i know you all have had a busy start to your morning already and a long day ahead as mr roon said we are going to try to keep this first part of our presentation to about 15 minutes and then be able to turn over back to the meeting managers for some board discussions we're really happy to be here today to kick off the first goal report for 24 25 and as dr presidio said we're joined by a number of staff members across departments who both contributed to the report and who are here [00:04:22] to support the board's discussion today during our work session so our objectives if we've got the presentation up so our objectives for today's work session are to provide the board with an update on our progress towards meeting our strategic plan 2023-2030 goal one measures we're going to talk about the work that we've been doing as it relates to goal one and then have an opportunity to discuss the policy budget and strategic considerations for for the school board as we move towards achieving our 2030 goals. [00:04:57] If we can go to the next slide. So just as a reminder, I think there's a request if we could adjust the slides please. Thank you. [00:05:14] So just as a reminder to our public, today's presentation is on goal one, which is our strong start pre-K to 12 goal. We could go to the next slide. And our goal one recognizes that all of our students need to have a strong start to their education journey, no matter when they enter FCPS. [00:05:33] So goal one has six measures which are all on the slide. Take a pause for a moment, I think, and make sure we've got our technology so everyone can see it. [00:05:55] Thank you. So our goal one has six measures. They are all listed on the slide. And our baseline report for goal one was presented last year in December and is linked on this slide for those who want to access it. It's also on our board docs. [00:06:11] As Mr. Moon said, today's presentation is going to focus on the availability of pre-K programs, including inclusive pre-K to meet community need, which is measure A of this goal, kindergarten readiness, which is measure B, and multilingual learners, meaning expected growth and reclassification criteria, which is measure D. [00:06:28] We do have data for all six of the measures included in the full report. We can go to the next slide. Last year, we identified some initial priority measures to focus the work of both our schools and our departments, and we are continuing that focus into this school year as we see them as key drivers for improvement across multiple measures within our plan. [00:06:50] So within goal one, inclusive pre-K and multilingual learner growth were selected as early priorities for our division. And our baseline data that we reported last year identified consistent patterns when we compared the outcomes of students who had a pre-K experience to those with students who did not have a pre-K experience. [00:07:09] Our students with a pre-K experience performed consistently higher than students without a pre-K experience on multiple measures, including grade three reading SOLs. And in particular, when we looked at the baseline data last year, we saw a 29 percentage point performance gap on the grade three reading SOL when we looked at students with a pre-K experience versus students without a pre-K experience. [00:07:31] When we looked at our baseline goal reports last year, we also saw a need to focus on improving the outcomes for our multilingual learners. Across all of our baseline goal reports, all five of them, the success of our multilingual learners was identified as a key strategic focus for FCPS. [00:07:46] So for example, in our goal three baseline report, We identified significant gaps between overall student performance and our multilingual learner student performance on reading by third grade, algebra one by eighth grade, and advanced coursework. So we're continuing to focus on our multilingual learners meeting growth expectations with the expectation that improving English language development for our students will have an impact on multiple measures within our plan. [00:08:11] You can go to the next slide. To give a sense, since this is our first goal report for this year, what will be included in our annual goal reports, we will be presenting five goal reports and work sessions throughout this year. The information included in the reports will include outcome data from last school year, so our 23-24 data, compared to our baseline. [00:08:35] And as a reminder, our baseline is either a two- or a three-year average of data that we presented previously. And we're also providing in these reports the annual targets that we need to make progress on to achieve our 2030 goals. So you will see some examples of that in today's presentation. [00:08:52] The reports also include some contextual data to provide the board and the public with information to support the interpretation of the data we're sharing as we make progress towards these goals. For all of our reports this year, we are using a consistent student data source file to match our demographic data. [00:09:10] And I'm looking at Ms. Anderson because last year you all may have recalled some questions about why are these denominators looking different across school reports. And so what we have done is, because our data is coming from multiple sources, aligned our information to a standardized set of student demographic information, and that's going to provide the board with greater consistency when we're looking at data points across all of our goals. [00:09:32] And to provide you all with a consistent way of comparing our baseline to this past year's data, we did recalculate the baseline. And so for full transparency, you will see the old baseline included in the goal reports. That was what was presented last year, as well as that recalculated baseline. [00:09:49] You will see some small differences, but, again, for full transparency, we are providing both of those for consistency. And then finally, all of our annual goal reports will provide updates on our strategic efforts that we're making towards our targets. If we can go to the next slide, please. [00:10:06] So first we're going to take a look at our multilingual learner progress towards English language proficiency. And for those following along in the report, this is the second half of the report that's posted on board docs. Next slide please. For our students who have a home language other than or in addition to English they are given an assessment to determine if they need English language services and based on that assessment students who are identified as multilingual learners receive instruction and support. Our teachers assess and track student progress throughout the year and our current multilingual learners are assessed each year using the WIDA access assessment to monitor English language development [00:10:45] And the WIDA looks at reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and students have to make defined progress between two assessments to be able to meet the standard, the state standard for progress towards English language proficiency. This is also a data point the state is planning to monitor in the new accountability system across all grade levels, elementary, middle, and high school. [00:11:06] So if we can go to the next slide. So this first slide, we just want to provide you some contextual data in terms of how FCPS is doing compared to the rest of Virginia. So FCPS from 2022-23 to 23-24 saw a significant increase in the percentage of students meeting that state standard towards English language proficiency, and we're now performing higher than the state overall on this metric. [00:11:33] On the next slide, we're going to look at the comparison to our baseline. So this slide is looking at the percent of multilingual learners that met the state standard for progress towards English language proficiency. And again, this is looking at students who are current multilingual learners, so students who have English language proficiency levels one through four. [00:11:53] Those are the students who are assessed each year with the WIDA access. The data in this chart does provide that intersectionality data, because we're going to look in the first column at all of our multilingual learners, and then our multilingual learners intersected with other student groups. So on this slide, you can see that first line of data was that old baseline. [00:12:11] That's the data that was presented last year as a part of our goal reporting. And then the second line of data is our adjusted baseline. So we're going to do all of our comparisons from 23-24 too. When we compare to the baseline, FCPS saw an 11 percentage point increase in multilingual learners meeting the state standard. [00:12:33] We saw improvements across all student groups that ranged from 4 to 12 percentage points from the baseline. All of our intersected groups were similar or higher to the overall multilingual learner group, with the exception of students who are dually identified as multilingual learners and students with disabilities who did have significantly lower rates of meeting the state standards. [00:12:53] So there's our area to continue to focus on. I do want to pause just to recognize the significant gains that we have seen here on the state of point because this represents some tremendous effort that are happening in our classrooms, with our teachers, with our schools, within our departments and across our region. [00:13:10] So I do want to just recognize that this represents some really tremendous improvement that we're seeing across our system. We go to the next slide. As we provided last year, some different ways to look at the data. This is another way that we look at that same data point. [00:13:26] So this is taking that same metric and looking at it by student English language proficiency level, so ELP level. Again as we look across all ELP levels, we did see significantly higher scores compared to the baseline. [00:13:41] And we do need to continue to focus all of our efforts across all of our ELP levels, and in particular with our students who are classified as ELP Level 1, which are students who are entering in their abilities to speak, listen, read, and write in English. If we can go to the next slide, please. [00:14:02] So last year we shared some of these with the board conceptually. This year you're going to see the year-over-year targets that we've identified to make progress and come within at least five percentage points of our 100% target for all students on this measure. So what you're seeing on this slide in the gray dots, that is our baseline data. [00:14:19] So that was that three year average that was reported. In the yellow, you see the actual performance on this metric for each year. I know that was something the board was interested in last year, understanding the impacts of the COVID year. So you can see that separated out year over year, how FCPS is doing. [00:14:37] In the blue, those are the targets we have set for all multilingual learners in order to hit that 2030 target. So based on our adjusted baseline, we need to increase on this metric by seven percentage points each year from the baseline to get to our 2030 goal. [00:14:54] So currently we are outpacing that goal and on track for our 2030 goal. Our target based on, again, hitting that 2030 goal was 52% and we hit that, exceeded that with 56 percent and you do have some additional information about targets um in detailed in the full report on page 54. so now we're going to briefly talk about um how what we attribute this success to what were the strategies that led us um to seeing these gains so if we can go uh we're going to attribute those to two things it is really high support and high accountability those are the things that we're seeing as being most successful [00:15:32] and so i'm going to talk about the things that we did last year that we're continuing into this school year and some additional strategies that we're implementing new this school year and they really represent a combination of both universal strategies and some targeted efforts that we're doing in the division. [00:15:47] So things that we're continuing the full report does provide information about the board's legislative agenda as it relates to support for multilingual learner students. I know this was certainly a topic you all touched on this morning but want to make sure the public is aware that you know amongst Most other things, the board continues to advocate for additional resources, lower caseloads for ESAU teachers, and the use of appropriate assessments for our multilingual learners. [00:16:14] Our FCPS Office of ESAU Services has trained our school administrators on the federal requirements and strategies to promote English language development, and we're continuing to conduct course audits to make sure all of our multilingual learners are receiving that appropriate ELD services. [00:16:31] students who have been receiving ESOL services for more than five years these students are classified as long-term multilingual learners and as a part of our multi-tiered systems of support or MTSS schools can request a consultation with the office of ESOL services to identify strategies to address and support more long-term multilingual learners who may be experiencing academic challenges and our ESOL team works with the schools and the families to develop a plan, review an educational history, and identify the types of instruction and progress monitoring that's needed to help support students. Last year we facilitated over 280 of [00:17:10] these consultations and this work will continue on to this school year. FCPS is also continuing to support current teachers with adding that ESAU endorsement onto their license by using the Praxis test. We have an after-school course that's offered each semester to help prepare teachers for this. We had 114 teachers take advantage of that course last year. And this supports not only teachers who are going into teaching ESOL, but also our teachers who are remaining in other classrooms who are teaching our multilingual learners in those settings. [00:17:43] On our next slide, some additional continuing strategies. FCPS did purchase for the first time a basal resource for English language development instruction that's being used this school year. So all of our schools, grades K to 12, have access to this basal material to support our multilingual learners in reading, writing, listening and speaking. [00:18:03] Elementary and middle schools have already started instructing with this resource and our high school materials are coming in later this year. During the summer, this past summer, our ESAU and Title I offices established an explorers program to provide explicit English language development instruction to over 380 students in elementary schools at seven Title I schools. [00:18:25] Our students participated in English language development content through STEAM using our basal resources. And those WIDA scores will be assessed this spring to see the impact of the program and recommendations for moving forward. [00:18:40] Last year, our ESOL services and Title I teams offered professional development to approximately 300 teachers in guided language acquisition design or GLAAD strategies. So these are research-based classroom strategies to support language acquisition and proficiency. [00:18:55] And then finally, our ESOL Services and Office of School Support are facilitating data-driven strategic scheduling and programming conversations to support our schools in making sure, again, our multilingual learners are getting appropriate services. [00:19:12] And we had 28 schools participate in these programming conversations last year and anticipate that number will increase next school year. So four new strategies we want to talk about for this year. Our first one is as a part of our project momentum work, any school that had less than 50% of their students meeting this target is being monitored this school year. [00:19:35] Each of our schools under that monitoring status is developing a plan focused on improving WIDA growth and they're documenting that progress and data for each of those students and receiving additional professional development three times throughout the year to support the best practices for working with multilingual learners. [00:19:54] We have nine middle schools and six high schools that are piloting a digital English language development resource in addition to the basal resources we talked about. This pilot is going to support students with additional resources both at school and at home on reading, writing, and listening so they can get that practice in both places. [00:20:15] That digital resource aligns with the WIDA access so our students will be familiar with that format as they take that test for the first time in the spring. Our ESOL services team participated this September in Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol or SIOP training, and this training provides a research-based approach to scaffolding instruction for multilingual learners, and our team will be doing turnaround training for our English language arts and math teachers this school year. [00:20:43] And then finally, one of our goal innovation teams is going to continue to focus on multilingual learner success, and as a part of that work, the team will identify and present additional innovative strategies that will inform future goal reports. So with that, Mr. Moon and Ms. Anderson, I'll turn it back over to you. Okay, thank you so much. With that I see Dr. Anderson first. Thank you. Much appreciated for the arc because I know that's something we talked about last year because while we were I guess tentative coming in out of the gate with the targets, we needed to still be [00:21:19] able to show that we will be at 100% by the end of the strategic plan. So I appreciate that very much. Can you repeat again the measures that you said this will focus on? Is it measures A, B, and D? Yes, we're going through measures. [00:21:34] I'm going back to my notes, but yes, I believe it's measures A, B, and D. Thank you. I just want to make sure I captured that. Yes, that's correct, Dr. Anderson. You talked about a recalculated baseline. Can you walk me through the methodology of the recalculation? Because I'm not sure I'm clear so because the data we're looking at is a we're looking back in time right we're looking back in time to see the outcomes kids change over time so we have student enrollment that's shifting throughout the year we have students who are becoming eligible for 504 plans throughout the year students who are [00:22:10] becoming eligible for IEP throughout the year that data is constantly changing and so what we did is we aligned to a consistent student demographic file typically it's a data source that we use for state reporting in some cases it's not that same file but to attach all of our data sources back to that demographic file and I'm going to show you all an example in the next set where you can see the impact of that baseline change in our kindergarten readiness data for example for 504s you see a pretty significant shift in the adjusted baseline it's because we were looking at fall data but we were looking at kids 504 status in the spring so there's a mismatch because those kids didn't have [00:22:50] 504s in the fall but got reported in a 504 category so it's pretty much you're you're having it you're having the data pull be more time bound yes that is that is accurate way to assess it yep thank you you talked about the assessment for growth for multi learners that's all we do correct can you speak a little bit in terms of what you have seen, what your analysis is regarding the proficiency in WIDA and its connection or alignment to performance and state assessments? [00:23:28] I think we've shown tables before that show that as students progress from that beginning WIDA level one to WIDA level four, that our pass rates dramatically improve as we move across those areas. So typically, and I'm sorry, I don't have the data in front of me right now, but typically our students at level one pass at much lower levels than as we get to level four. And then as you move on, as students gain proficiency, once our students have reached that 4.4 level of the WIDA access test, and then move on to what we consider [00:24:06] Levels 6A, 6B, those first four years of being a former multilingual learner and then even beyond, our students begin to pass at levels that are similar to our, I would say, never multilingual learners or students that are home language English and students who have never needed ESOL services. [00:24:29] No, I appreciate that. I think I was asking more specifically, do we have that kind of analysis with these students that are being presented here? - I think, are you asking? - Like their actual performance, are we seeing that that trend is true? [00:24:45] Because we know that typically the research shows that and the data has shown that historically, but I wanna know how it's applicable to this group. - We don't have, I mean, it's an excellent question. We don't have that analysis in this report. That's the type of analysis that will be in the future goal reports, like the goal three report, where we'll disaggregate the information by ELP level, WIDA level, as Rich was saying, and you'll be able to look at that correlation as we look at like math SOLs and reading SOLs, but not in this particular report. [00:25:12] - I will hold until the goal three report. You also talked about the high school materials coming for multi language learners later on this year. What are those materials going to be? - So that is through National Geographic, it's a company called Cengage. [00:25:32] And so those are both books. So it's pencil paper materials reading writing listening and speaking and it's all there is also a digital component for the speaking piece that students can speak into the microphone and listen to what they're listen to their speaking and evaluate their own speaking and teachers can evaluate that but primarily just as we have with the elementary and middle school it's these are books from National Geographic that high visuals I would say strong text features for all students it's they are [00:26:08] thematic in nature so that students in their English language development classes will be going through a unit of study that's typically focused on a nonfiction it's focused on more expository text and content based material rooted in content as one would hope something from National Geographic would have so we're going to be materials available for classes that are not their language development classes these are no these these class these materials are for all of our multilingual learners so the primary locate you know the primary course that these students will that that the materials will be taught in is [00:26:47] during English language development course for those students who may not have an English language development course those materials will still be available and as our ESOL teachers move into whether it's content classes or are working with them during a resource time that they can still use those materials with those students but they'll be available for all students and again for elementary middle and high for all of our multilingual learners thank you you talked a little bit about a pilot is that the summit k-12 pilot that's right yeah so that's it that's okay so the summit k-12 pilot is currently at 15 [00:27:23] schools and we actually just started where I believe the window ends on Friday for the initial pre-assessment of all students so that's in reading writing listening and speaking and it's a program that places students along a certain continuum and then provides instruction in reading writing listening speaking at their level depending in each level might be different depending on each domain the students could be higher in one domain than in another so that's they'll continue with that instruction through I believe there's a second assessment window like an interim assessment window that's later in [00:27:59] December early January and then that gets them ready to take the WIDA access test which is will typically be that window will it's from mid-January to mid-March we generally start in February okay thank you and my last question seeing my time and last year's report the English language proficiency progress had a target of I'm sorry a goal by the end of the school year of 50 for all students and it goes across the board where do I see that included on [00:28:32] page 52 of the new report just for comparison's sake we can go back to slide 12 so this is and dr. Anderson this was a question you had so when we looked initially last year and we were presenting the data we had just set sort of 5% target gross again we made some adjustments throughout the year to make more clear that we're working towards a hundred percent for all of our students as targets for us as a division so this is looking at that longitudinal [00:29:10] target over time and what we have set for for this past school year when we look at again all of the data over time to get to the 2030 outcomes we had to hit 52 percent to be on track and we hit 56 percent so what we presented last year again was that five percent growth as a starting point and then when we actually mapped out all of these data points you can see what the progress actually looks like and it looks different again for different student groups this is overall for multilingual learners okay thank you miss marron to be followed by miss dixon thank you um miss clerk can you please pull [00:29:50] up slide nine thank you so much so this slide that shows fcps's growth in comparison to virginia i'm going to have to think that some of the growth in virginia is due to us having 40 of the population and making that actual number increase i mean it's it's kind of hard to believe because it's just a large gain so i definitely want to celebrate it it's just one of those things that i'm not really used to seeing which is pretty amazing um you know uh yeah so can you go to the next [00:30:27] slide please so i i do want to follow up on the question about i want to make sure i understand what has happened can you like so that i could relay it to you know constituents what was done with the first baseline and the second baseline i'm not sure how i could explain it in like two or three sentences are you able to do that i will try to explain it in two or three sentences i think where it's going to show more clearly is in a future data slide but let me try to give you an example so in our kindergarten it's going to be hard to explain it in this one but i'll then i [00:31:03] I can wait. I just think that we need a little more clarity or I need that anyway and then just one more slide advance please. Thank you so much Ms. Baker. So on this one I want to be sure I'm understanding how is the growth being captured? So if you're an ELP level one and you've gone up eight percent at what point do you become an ELP level two to three? I mean it's this whole growth capturing the growth question. So the way the VDOE measures growth is through a particular matrix based on your grade level and the actual amount of [00:31:42] progress that you make from one year to another on what's called their composite score. So each student, I'll try and keep this pretty high level, but each student takes, when they take the WIDA access, they do a reading component, writing, listening and speaking all of that is then that they have an individual score in each domain and then there's a composite score the composite score goes up for example if you're a first and second grader you need to make one full level of growth like go from one to two at different age levels different grade levels those what you need to you know the amount of points that you need to [00:32:20] gain in order to show official growth according to video we changes similarly So for example, if you're a high school student as a 16, 17 year old, it is much more difficult to gain language at a rapid pace. And so the threshold is a little bit lower. [00:32:37] So overall in K through 12, so each student is each student's benchmark or I guess their goal for the year can be a little bit different. Okay. I do understand what you're saying. I still think that we need to think about how to further communicate this about the a growth in terms of acquiring the language, which I think in the full picture is, but just this chart is a little bit, I'm still processing that. [00:33:03] Dr. Reed, I'm wondering if anything is surprising to you about these gains considering what interventions have been provided? - I think that one of the things we talked about when we began the strategic plan was the dissonance when all of the arrows go in a variety of different directions. [00:33:23] And what we are working really hard to do right now is align our work, right? The central office to the region, to the school, to the classroom. You might even say from the boardroom, right? To the central office, there's a through line from the boardroom to the classroom. [00:33:38] And when those arrows align and our resources align and our strategy aligns and we're intentional, we will see improvement. That's the point of having a strategic plan that we stay disciplined about focusing on. [00:33:54] And I think part of our work is going to be staying disciplined from now till 2030 to achieve and realize these gains. It can't be a one year and then we shift to a new goal or shift to a new fill in the blank, right? We have to stay disciplined with this work. [00:34:10] And what we saw last year is we baselined, right? And then we crafted a strategy. We allocated resources to support that strategy. And our staff and students are the best in the country, right, we know that. So when we can have a strategy that's best practice that works, we align our resources to support it and we stay disciplined in our focus, we will progressively see these gains year after year. [00:34:36] If we start bouncing around, I don't think that's gonna happen. So, and I think even in the face of changing accountability from the Commonwealth, we here in Fairfax County have to stay focused on the work we know is gonna make a difference for our kids and it clearly is. [00:34:52] I'm really proud of our team FCPS. From our drivers getting our kids to school to our more nutritious lunches, right, everything matters. And we're gonna continue to see these gains. So no, I'm not surprised. I'm just really proud of the hard work of the team. [00:35:08] - Thank you. The other thing that came to mind as I listened to the dozen strategies that you presented on three different slides is this is very intensive work that requires people to people, the trained adults to the children. it when I listen to all of these things you know I just I hope that as we continue to share the work that's happening that people realize that you know this is not a cookie cutter thing and it takes real people who are like emotional and caring and knowledgeable and not just anyone can teach thank you [00:35:37] okay thank you Mr. Tixit we followed by Vice Chair Anderson. Thank you for the presentation I my question is on the slide 14 one of the bullets is provide schools with consultation strategies to improve outcome for long-term multilingual learners and I believe you mentioned five years what is the reason for multilingual learners to stay in that program for that long because I've [00:36:13] seen students pick up very fast and you know so could you please elaborate on that I mean I I think there could be a number of reasons but I think the the primary reasons and what we're seeing I think some of the reasons we're seeing growth is really focusing number one and that all students are receiving high quality English language development instruction and at a level that's that they need for their particular level so for example making sure that our level one students as Miss Neal mentioned earlier that we're giving our most are you know giving the most amount of time and resources to those students so that [00:36:53] they can make make gains and also I think in some ways to piggyback on what Dr. Reed said, I mean, for English, for multilingual learners to make progress, in our office, we really talk about collective responsibility. So one of the things that I believe was just mentioned about all the different things that we're trying to do, it's because we know for our students to make progress, we need our ESOL teachers to really have high-quality instruction in English language development. We know that our classroom teachers, you know, third-grade teachers mathematics you know biology teachers that that all of our content and [00:37:30] classroom teachers need strategies in order for students to make progress so well some students perhaps some students are not making progress because year after year perhaps they're not getting the best instruction that they need in English language development or from their content teachers so that's what we're out to change right that's an area of growth for us that's where we are providing as much training and support as we can to both our ESOL teachers and our classroom and content teachers because when they do that together then students make consistent progress so that's that's certainly a data point our [00:38:06] long-term multilingual learners that we also are looking to really you know lower the number of long-term multi if I could add just a little bit to that because I think you had a little bit more maybe nuance in your question a little bit about you know what what's going on with this five-year number and why five years? Maybe some students can become proficient earlier. So just a couple things I think that are important for everybody to know. So the research has been really clear for a number of years that for most students, it's going to take between five to seven years for them to develop the type of proficiency where they have the academic skills, not just the communication skills that you might have in an informal setting, right? But the ability [00:38:44] to read a chemistry textbook as proficiently as a native English speaker would read it. So five to seven years is kind of that target range, and as Rich said, we're really trying to accelerate as much as we can that time curve to be closer to five years than closer to seven years. [00:39:00] And Rich's team is really identifying and working with those longer-term ELs, those students that are at that five-year mark or beyond, to try to make sure that we're adjusting our instruction, adjusting our support, to help make sure that they develop proficiency as soon as possible. However, there's other students that might develop that academic proficiency even earlier, And when they demonstrate that on the federal and state required WIDA assessment, then they can exit ESOL services, and they don't need to be in that program and have those supports anymore. [00:39:29] We monitor them and make sure that they're still progressing well academically. But some students can exit earlier than five years as well. So my follow-up question is about the students who come in a little late to our schools. They're coming, immigrating or migrating refugee population, which is students arriving in the middle school or high school. [00:39:49] how do they then develop this proficiency and then graduate from FCPS on time? - And we have as soon as our, when students come to us as a, perhaps from an international school, perhaps as a WIDA level one or two, we would call that student a newcomer. [00:40:07] We do have specific newcomer programming at the middle school and high school level that takes students where there are. Sometimes it's a more sheltered environment with other students at their level that make progress. But we do check to make sure not all newcomers need all that support. [00:40:26] So of course we're doing evaluations to make sure that students are placed appropriately. But we do give a much higher level of support to those students. So for example, they would have either teams classes or they would have additional support in content areas. We do have some of our students come to us, are considered SLIFs, that's students with limited or interrupted formal education. [00:40:48] In those students, we do have some specific, particularly in literacy and numeracy, we have specific courses for those students and specific supports that we've developed and also worked with Virginia Department of Education to develop and ensure that those students are receiving, because they may be at a much lower, they may be at an elementary or middle school literacy or numeracy level, right? [00:41:11] So we want to make sure that we're providing them support that they need. We also at times, I know Dr. Reed has spoken to this, we do some instruction with students in the home language, particularly in Spanish, when it's possible with staff members who are bilingual, so we're doing a lot of, we're doing some, I would say, home language literacy support of students, and we know that when home language literacy improves that that transfers over to English, so those are some of the types of things that we're doing. [00:41:44] Just one more quick add-on on that. Students that might come at a high school age like 16, 17, or 18, where they don't have the English skills, they are entitled to stay in our school system until age 22. And we have different alternative options for them in terms of the type of schedule that might best meet their needs. [00:42:04] So we've got scheduling at different times of the day, for example, to really best meet their needs. So students can stay longer if they need to. Okay, thank you. So the last point I'll make is about use of AI. Last year in AI symposium, we heard Dr. Salman Khan from Khan Academy. [00:42:23] He was talking about how AI models can be used for the conversation piece, especially for the MLL learners where they're developing the skills. I wanted to see how FCPS can incorporate that if possible. And it's more individualized, I guess, for a student. [00:42:41] and there are already developed a model or courses accordingly. So I don't know if you have researched that, but would like to know that. - Well, it's an excellent question, and we're actually participating in an AI symposium with George Mason right now today as we speak. [00:43:00] So we've got staff over there working with some of their computer science professors. So we're still at the kind of emergent stages of AI in the instructional setting, but we actually are piloting, And I wanna thank Dr. Reed for encouraging us to look at trying to pilot some resources in other languages other than English. [00:43:17] So we have a small pilot right now in two schools where we're trying to pilot math materials in Spanish. And part of that is working with the vendor who are in the process of releasing, it's kind of in beta format right now, an AI tutor to support students with artificial intelligence support in their native language. [00:43:38] So we're really excited about that. We're obviously gonna need to collect a lot of information and see how well it's working, what kind of progress students are making. But I think we're gonna see big leaps on the AI front in terms of individualizing instruction for all students, not just students who aren't native English speakers. [00:43:55] I think that's coming to the marketplace pretty fast, but we're still in the initial stages of it. - Thank you. We have Vice Chair Anderson to be followed by Ms. St. John Cunning and Ms. Lady. - First, I wanted to say thank you for normalizing the data. [00:44:10] I think that as we move through, going to be very helpful to have one specific data set that we can we can look at across the board so i think that that is tremendously helpful so i really appreciate you guys taking the extra time and i appreciate you including the baseline for us because i know it may not have changed as much this time but it could over time so i appreciate the extra work that that took um so i'm beginning to understand more i guess the biggest question i have is that i understand that kids that are at different ELP levels are are given different state standards in terms of what they need to be at so I guess my underlying question is we're gonna be [00:44:48] able to get to a hundred percent even though we have different kiddos at different levels is that correct I I'm optimistic that we're gonna continue to make growth that we've seen this past I guess what I'm asking is it is is it a realistic goal I think again if we look at the research of students meeting five to seven years to develop their proficiency I think getting to a So 100% six years from now is going to be a very, very ambitious goal, but we are certainly going to do our best to do everything possible to get there. [00:45:18] But it's a very ambitious goal, no doubt. Wonderful. So my second question is, so the WIDA is a federal test, is that correct? Does it have a state overlay in terms of what the state requirement is for that growth? [00:45:36] So every state is required to provide an English language proficiency assessment. The WIDA access test is the one that Virginia has chosen. And that's also this 40, about 41 or 42 states use WIDA. And so each state then makes their own metric, develops their own metrics for what is considered progress or proficiency. [00:46:00] So Virginia is different from other WIDA states in terms of when you might exit ESOL services. It's strictly a Virginia metric as opposed to, you know, Maryland might be a little different or New York might be a little bit different. - And are we anticipating that the state is also going to adjust those proficiency levels as we're continuing to see more strenuous looks at all of these things? [00:46:23] - I really wanna say thank you for that question. It's an excellent question. I don't have an answer for it, but we have not had conversation or the state has not signaled an intent to do that at this point. However, they have signaled an intent to raise the cut scores, if you will, the score by which students need to achieve to be proficient on things like our SOLs. [00:46:43] So I think it's logical to assume that this possibly could be another area where they might adjust cut scores, but we don't have any information to suggest that they have a plan to do that at this point. - So as I have recommended in other situations, I would very much like us to make sure that we are monitoring our own version of success here to ensure that we don't have outside influences come in and again, try to illustrate that our students not as successful, particularly as Ms. Marin said, when we are contributing to the growth of the state at such a significant level, so thank you. [00:47:16] Ms. St. John Connie. So first of all, thank you for all this work. I really appreciate it, and I appreciate the format in which it was presented. [00:47:31] I'm really happy to see that our general ed teachers are getting some ESOL training, particularly in terms of what is considered proficiency. I know you went into it a little bit, but I've had to explain the WIDA results to parents. [00:47:50] And a lot of parents and a lot of adults feel that because their child is speaking much more fluently than they do, that the student is at a certain place in that proficiency. [00:48:08] So I have two questions. for you to explain those different components that comprise the composite score and then my other question is and this is very subjective do you feel that that composite score accurately reflects the language acquisition because it's not just the verbal it's the you know listening it's the reading and the writing so just for the rest of our board members that have not had to explain to parents no you do not want to remove your kid from ESOL because he's [00:48:42] speaking English well could you explain the different components and is each component weighted differently so like reading is it weighted differently than oral and listening you know receptive versus expressive versus writing I mean I know what I've had to explain but I don't know how they're weighted I think I'm on that last part I think I would have to go back and do a go back myself to I want to make sure I don't want to give an inaccurate response on the exact weighting of the different domains I do know that the test is as you've mentioned the test is broken down each student reading writing listening and speaking [00:49:20] you a parent can also see the students like receptive language and expressive language scores and how they did and there's also a literacy component which is very important that we look at so teachers we we expect our teachers our ESL teachers to be looking at the different domains and particularly the literacy scores for students in reading and writing to see how they're doing so the the other parts of your question I think and I'm sorry could you repeat that last part I was wondering like each of those components are they weighted differently right that's what I'll have to get I'll have to get back to you on [00:49:57] the on the waiting on what's weighted I will say for in thinking about students I appreciate that you that it really is important to understand that students develop language at different rates and that certainly we have students that are in that could be even in those mid-range like a WIDA level three but still be not yet at grade level academically right in mathematics and in language arts in science and social studies and so they may have gained that those interpersonal skills sometimes called you know playground English or you know basic inner interpersonal communication skills but not yet the real academic [00:50:37] language and vocabulary that's needed to perform successfully on grade level assessments so so that's something that's why we continue to work with our level three and level four students and I think that was certainly a focus when we spoke with principals last year is make sure you're not you know let's not forget about our students who are at level threes and fours because we want to make sure that we're giving them explicit language instruction and vocabulary instruction in the different content areas so that they can continue to make progress. Thank you. I would often explain to parents like I'm bilingual but I'm probably at a fifth grade level when it comes to my reading [00:51:13] and writing in Spanish and what what I want to explain to everybody in the audience is that we want to make sure that a child is at their fifth grade levels in speaking reading and writing. I'll take a go back. I just think that's an important distinction for people to understand. Thank you, people. I take my turn. Ms. Seismorheiser, you have any questions to ask? If not, I'll take my turn asking some questions that I had shared [00:51:51] you know prior to work session what some of my questions might be with Mr. Polio. So either you could answer what Dr. Presidio, you enjoy answering my questions regarding this anyway, so I will do that so let me start with this question first this adjusted baseline is that that's a three-year data correct adjusted is it 2021 22 23 that's the average the three-year 22. yes when it's an adjusted baseline and it's three years it starts with the 2020-21 school year and then if it's not a three-year baseline we've noted it in the report so you can see in some cases we didn't have data [00:52:28] for the school for the 2020-21 school year so let me let me let me start with that denominators numbers that i see on slide number 11. for all multilingual learners the denominator jumped from 23 000 to more than 27 000. there's some more than we have a lot of support outside which is great for this work session uh more than 20 jump uh could someone explain whether this is just a [00:53:02] natural jump out of pandemic or such a huge growth in the multi number of multilingual learners i think i think enrollment trends uh might are up i mean we have each each year for the last few years. We've had about 1,000 I think in 2020 and 2021 certainly. Our numbers as total enrollment dropped, our numbers of multilingual learners dropped as well. We are now, I think today we'll get September membership, and we ended last year over 38,000 students. So I think the number of [00:53:40] students taking the WIDA access assessment has certainly increased in the last few years. It's still higher than overall increase in student population. It seems to be percentage of multilingual learners has grown faster than looking at these numbers. [00:54:01] Am I wrong? Yeah, I think, Mr. Moon, what we could do is provide some demographic updates to the board as a follow-up. Okay, thank you. With that, the next question goes to, After students go through with assessments with the four different domains, they are placed in certain level of ESOL classes. [00:54:27] Do students generally stay in those in the same level for the entire year? I think that varies by level. So certainly at our elementary schools, there's flexible grouping throughout the school year. So students may be in one particular English language development group with some students and then change throughout the school year as they continue to as they make progress i think at middle school and high school um speaking with our counselors and our administrators there's there is generally at our middle school and high school sort of a mid-year check to see but it can be [00:55:02] challenging to to change from to change the whole student's schedule in the middle of the year that doesn't mean that the instruction within the english language development class can certainly change so we we are always we work with our teachers to always be looking at our multilingual learners and pushing them up so they putting them in the highest level group and putting them in the most inclusive class possible so with a schedule that gives them the most access to our non-multilingual learners to our general ed classes and to like taking students from i guess the progression would [00:55:41] be maybe a more sheltered class with only multilingual learners to a team-taught environment where there's support right in that classroom to a general ed classroom. So I think that's something that I will certainly take back and look, but we are also doing audits to make sure that all of our students are in appropriate classes with the appropriate amount of support. [00:56:05] Is it possible for you to get back to us with the numbers, you know, giving us a number of students who are benefiting such, perhaps I would say a flexible approach, supporting, providing a support to students based upon students' needs rather than keeping them for the entire year no matter how the student progresses? [00:56:30] I think we could certainly look at the placement of our students and the support that they're receiving right now so certainly that would be that would be an excellent exercise for us to do is look at number of students that are in like for example team-taught classes versus number of students that are in general ed classes and what that support looks like if you have the number I would love to see those numbers you know with the read our assessments when the four different domains even though students are generally my understanding is placed based upon composite score of four domains. [00:57:06] However, a particular student may have a different level of needs in those four different domains. So whether we are able to provide kind of individualized support per student's needs, depending upon the domains. [00:57:31] Yeah, I think it's an excellent question. We'll see what kind of data that we could provide to try to help quantify the types of supports based on individual student needs. But maybe just one little thing that I would say is there's kind of two major buckets of support that we provide to our multilingual learners. [00:57:46] The first is that access to the core content standards. We need them to continue to learn the same core content that a native English speaker is learning no matter what grade level they're in. So that's where students based on their WIDA level might have more or less sheltering and support that are provided to help them access that core content. [00:58:05] And that's not going to typically change throughout the year, right? You wouldn't really have a student that would need support and then in the middle of the year not need support anymore, right? So that's going to be more stable. What's going to fluctuate more is the English language development instruction that they're receiving, which is tied to these WIDA levels, levels one, two, three, and four. [00:58:25] And that can change throughout the year, but our teachers do provide more individualized and responsive support based on the WIDA information that they're getting, that assessment data that's driving the instruction. And with our new materials that Rich talked a little bit about in the presentation, we're going to have more interim assessments. We're not going to be as reliant on that end-of-the-year assessment. So we'll be able to be a little bit more agile with adjusting that instruction for ELD. But we'll see what we can do to kind of quantify it for you a little bit better. Dr. Procededo, I know this is just one person's experience but when I came as second language learner as a high school [00:59:03] students when my school was able to provide me with was flexibility for me to be in and out of my ESOL go to a regular class if I search if I want it away the full understanding by the regular English class teacher knowing of my needs so without penalizing my being they are not understanding what's going on but giving me an opportunity to be exposed to a less restrictive environment i i think that's critical and i mean that is our goal and and that is how our program is designed and and i will tell [00:59:39] you over the last even 10 years we've gotten a lot better at that than than we were previously so again i don't know what your experience was when you were in fcps but really over the last decade we've got a lot of fcps it was outside the fcps i wish i could say it was an fcps my my apologies My apologies. [00:59:59] But we have gotten better at that. That doesn't mean that we don't have more growth to make. So we'll try to share some of the information and data with you. But yeah, that's definitely the philosophical approach and program model. To make a little sad, it was a neighboring school district, by the way, when I came. Oh, well. Dr. Reed. [01:00:14] Yeah, I want to comment on that earlier release into courses that don't require as much support. And I know we've been taking a really close look at that, particularly with our student voice. have a number of our multilingual learners that have said they really particularly not in mathematics but particularly in courses where they felt like they were more prepared and were being asked to take classes or scheduled into courses that maybe they already took in their home language or their home country so I know the team is working really hard on how do we make those moves more nimbly for our young people so I appreciate you bringing that [01:00:52] up thank you with that unless i have a miss size tomorrow heiser we have a two three go back miss starting with this lady and then i go to dr anderson miss saint john cunning so dr re that just brought up a thought that i had as a director in my years in the system which is often central registration when they did an evaluation of a student coming to us from a different country we found sometimes that while the progression for science may have been different in that country or the progression for mathematics may have been integrated in that country that we traditionally from central office they were awarding [01:01:30] biology because it's our first year of science course or they were awarding you know algebra one or the reality that a kid walks into central and is all suddenly sitting down for you know tests for a couple hours that we learned at Chantilly that oftentimes we had to reassess them because they were just tired and and they wanted to get into school and they weren't sure when they went to center registration what their experience was going to be so I guess what I'm trying to maybe it's a question is are we still engaging in that practice because sometimes we would get a transcript and then we would talk to a student with a translation and they actually took some sort of like physical [01:02:08] science yet they got a bio credit you know are we working within that when how we are evaluating kids when they first come yes I mean we do have international transcript evaluators at our central registration sites that are welcome centers that look carefully to see what should be awarded so I can't speak to every single student and you know perhaps a judgment that might be made over awarding certain science credits but we do look carefully at that and you know certainly want to work with schools to make sure that students are appropriately placed so like there's no because I felt somewhere like there must [01:02:47] have been some rubric around well they did this on the math assessment therefore it's not possible that it could actually successfully completed physics like sometimes i felt like there was a if then matrix is that not the case no i would have to i have to go back and and look at our assessment processes exactly but i don't i don't believe that it's uh set like cut and dry that a student does has to enter this this classroom i believe there's a conversation between central registration and schools to really look at where students should be placed now I [01:03:24] think given dr. Reed's example it doesn't necessarily mean that all students you know I would we feel terrible if a student feels that you know they're in a lower level than they should be but I think we take you know take precautions to make sure that students are placed appropriately and have conversations with with schools on those students so I guess my final question is are we assessing any of our newcomers mathematically in their native language or in terms of science in their native language for content versus vocabulary um i do not believe we are doing home language mathematics assessments right now at central registration but that's [01:04:04] something that i could check i could check with you i think that would be great because i think that's where the breakdown is at times is i know the math but i don't know the english version of the math we are doing a home language assessment in spanish um in literacy for all of our students that come in with the home language of Spanish and give that to schools so that they can see, for example, that perhaps a student really does have lots of home language literacy, or perhaps a student may not sort of like to help schools with the interventions that might be in place. Thank you. And I mean, I think these are excellent questions. I would say, I mean, again, the intent of that initial central registration is to try to get the students registered and assessed [01:04:43] appropriately as soon as possible, right, and get them enrolled in school as soon as possible, not to get them locked in right so as that student starts you know their coursework and they're working with their teachers particularly their english language development teacher we want to be agile and nimble and be able to reassess students and move students if we didn't get them appropriately identified in the beginning but we definitely have more growth to make in terms of being consistent with that across all 200 of our schools and i guess my final question thinking of this is um do we do we find that in our schools that have higher numbers that they are um designating [01:05:21] a multi-language learner counselor i just know in terms of doing registrations and under and being able to see the master schedule in your brain and a student comes in if that's my main thing and i'm working often with our esol department chair it's then working with 12 different or eight different plan the number of counselors are we seeing more of that model yes so we do have i believe it's 10 and i could go back and check the numbers but we have our our schools with the highest percentages of multilingual learners do have an additional are allocated an additional um school counselor [01:05:54] and that school counselor works primarily with newcomer students my cameras thank you i can't see my camera so hopefully you guys can see me um just where the screen is so i really appreciate the conversation i appreciate um all my colleagues questions and i'm first i want to start by saying congratulations and kudos to staff and dr reed for the work you've done on the multilingual language learner growth it's really incredible to see some of these changes i know there's still room to grow and lots of work we're still doing but it you know it shows the hard work of your teachers [01:06:33] your staff so just thank you for that i wanted to start with um i wanted to also ask to mr moon's point I think I heard you Dr. Persillo say that you know and it makes sense we're trying to get them in as soon as possible and register as soon as possible and then the teacher works with them is there some sort of built-in checkpoint right like let's get them registered immediately so we can get them in school and get them learning but now we're one quarter in we're going to have a counselor checkpoint or somebody checkpoint to say all right let's see are they academically where they should be can we maybe provide more enrichment academics in a different setting [01:07:10] you know that maybe in a class it's not as dependent on English language proficiency so that's my question is do you have any space for that yeah I mean I think it's an excellent question I think it happens but not as consistently as we would want it to happen we don't have the same structures that we might have for for other student groups or other programs where we would have you know quarterly or you know and or even semi-annual check-ins so I think that's a good question I think it's something that's probably a growth area for us to continue to figure out [01:07:41] And I do think with the new materials that we're adopting, the English language development materials that we've been able to purchase as part of the language arts adoption for the division, we are going to have more information. We're going to have more interim assessment information than we've had previously, which will, I think, help facilitate those kinds of conversations happening in schools more frequently. [01:08:03] So I do think that's another area, though, of practice that we could tighten up our guidelines and support of schools with. I think that would be great because we want to make sure our students are challenged appropriately, right? And so, and their English proficiency isn't getting in the way. So I think if you can put in some regular, and I think I only got two minutes, you know, I haven't spoken yet. [01:08:22] So I just wanted to put that out there. Everyone has had two minutes this time. I'm sorry? Everyone has had two minutes this first go around. Oh, I'm sorry. I missed that part of it. Okay. I apologize. I missed that. It's different than our usual, which is fine. I want to talk a little bit about our preschool and our funding for preschool. [01:08:42] I noticed in some of our slides that the number of income eligible 4-year-olds on the waitlist has increased by 42% since 20 -- not on the slide, sorry, this is in the executive summary of the goal report. Since 42% since school year 21-22 and the students find eligible for early childhood services, your child find has increased 39% since 2018-2019 and the data shows the importance of preschool for you know long-term student success are we doing anything and we've talked a lot about jlark which is very important in the funding gaps from jlark i also saw that it [01:09:17] said that fcps gets 61.7 of its preschool funding through local dollars is there a space for advocacy maybe in partnership with the board of supervisors around needing funding or needing better sources of funding especially as the increase has been obvious besides malheiser we're going to do that part of discussion as a second part of the goal one presentation since you've already asked if the staff is ready to answer please go ahead i can come back to that [01:09:48] if you want i didn't realize we were i think i would just say yes we have advocated um to that point but need to continue to do so probably more proactively than that maybe we've done previously and when lisa pilson had to step away for just a second so when we cover the preschool section we can probably provide more detailed response after we cover the preschool section that would be great and i would just put in a plug i know for students with ieps or progress reports i would put in a [01:10:23] plug perhaps a very quick progress report for multi new multilingual students right that just comes out quarterly it doesn't have to be as lengthy but that just kind of says is this student in the right spot i think that would be really helpful so that's all i have for now thank you thank you we have three members on the go bag and could i just give you one minute each for now and then starting with dr anderson to be followed by a miss shane john cunning and miss marron um yes thank you one of the things that i'm interested in regarding this data because the progress is [01:10:56] good but where can i find the information that shows the progress across the school levels i'd I'd like to see it broken out by elementary, middle, and high, and I'm particularly interested to see it across the pyramids so to ensure that we have consistency of progress. [01:11:14] Where can I find that information? - So we do have some information in the report about overall school progress. It's not individual school-reported information, but if that's something the board was interested in, we could certainly follow up with that. - I am certainly interested in that. I ask for that almost with every single data point that you all provide, because that's how I'm able to evaluate whether or not we need to do something more in this area versus this area. [01:11:37] So if that could be provided, that would be great. The other question that I have, still going back to the data on page 54, and looking at the actuals from last year, which I finally, I did find, but I'm wondering here, why did the target change from what we had last year to this year? [01:11:59] Can you speak to that a little bit? - So again, I think the targets last year we set just as an initial, we wanna see significant improvement which was a five percentage point gain. What we have done this year is take where our baseline data was and map progress to that 100% target. [01:12:18] So that consistent year over year data. So it did cause some shifts, Dr. Anderson, to your point. In some cases, we needed to make more than that 5% growth. In some cases, it's less than that 5% growth. and it varies by student group as well, depending on the starting point. [01:12:33] So what we've tried to provide the board is just that clear transparency of if we're staying on track with consistent growth year over year, this is what we need to do for all students and then for individual student groups. - Okay, thank you. And in most cases it was more aggressive in this area, so that's helpful. [01:12:50] And I just wanna also lend some support to Mr. Moon's point. I have had some students who feel really locked in to their ELD classes when they have made some growth. If there's some flexibility there, that would be very much appreciated. So actually what I wanted to ask about has been discussed and there are a lot of students that come in that are multilingual learners that are already very proficient in the content and not in necessarily the language and what kind of programming and support can we have [01:13:25] for them and how can we make sure that they are not repeating time in content areas that they already know so that then they can access some of these advanced classes because some of our students that do come in that are multilingual learners a lot of times I've seen are very advanced and I just want to put out put that out there number one so that people are aware of the breadth and scope of multilingual learners that we have in our system and number two to see what kind of programming do we have do we need to develop programming to make sure [01:14:01] those students needs are also being addressed sure I will say just a another plug for our welcome centers we do we do a very in-depth educational background like interview with families to check and so we would ask questions about you know exactly what schooling was like for students so that we can we can find students who may have that content knowledge and make sure that they're placed appropriately and again I think it's a conversation between our office the ESOL office and schools, and both counselors and ESOL department chairs to work on students' schedules. [01:14:39] And then I think Dr. Presidio said, I think we can certainly look to have more formal check-ins with students to see how they're doing, you know, two months in, a month in, to see that, you know, if placement was appropriate. And most of my experience has been in elementary school, so I've seen kids come in at elementary school that are like you know at the seventh grade level and they're put in fifth grade so it's not i understand counselors in high schools but just across the spectrum i think the one thing i would add to that and this again is something that dr reed has advocated for that we're working [01:15:15] on is making sure that all of our teachers have the skills and the strategies to support multilingual learners well rich and i had the benefit of starting teaching in california many many years ago we won't say how many years ago and even then california required us to have a license right to be able to support students multilingual learners in the general education setting and so we're working more towards that with some of the professional development that rich talked about with glad strategy psyop and we're working on a micro credential for our teachers to try to incentivize folks to take more of that training and to be able to use those strategies and when [01:15:52] we build that capacity it's going to be a lot easier i think to support students need be more agile with with placements as well so okay thank you we have a miss Maren is the last one yeah I just wanted to share for the benefit of this this current board that when the previous board was developing the strategic plan this particular goal we wanted to marry in not just early and school readiness but no matter where you enter into the system so especially those students with limited or interrupted formal learning our SLIFE students so I think like seeing this how this is playing out like I think it's worked really well but the [01:16:32] intent was you know for those students who particularly are older having the right kind of reading instruction and content for them was something we kept talking about so I hope that helps okay thank you with that you know we started about eight minutes late so we're not doing that at all so I'm still hoping that we can be done by one o'clock if I will go a few minutes beyond one for our lunch break. With that, let's go to the next piece. Thank you, Mr. Moon. We're going to talk -- if we can go to slide 17, I believe. We're going to start talking about our inclusive early childhood [01:17:09] experiences, our pre-K experiences. And before we look at the data, we do want to provide some background information for the board and the public, just as we think about the impact of pre-K, the existing offerings we have in our system, and the current funding structure. So if we can go to to the next slide. [01:17:26] So as we shared at the beginning of this presentation, we know that gaps in pre-K experience can lead to gaps in kindergarten readiness in areas of literacy, math, and executive functioning. We know that pre-K is linked to higher graduation rates and attendance at a four-year college, so gets into our goal five measures. [01:17:43] And our own data does show significant differences between students with and without pre-K experiences on fall and spring readiness assessments. Go to the next slide. Virginia is not currently a universal pre-K state, meaning our children under the age of five are not provided with free early childhood experiences. [01:18:03] And participation in pre-K is a family choice in Virginia. However, we know that many of our families face significant barriers to accessing early childhood programs for their children. Our FCPS pre-K program specifically serves students with IEPs and students who have economic or other educational risk factors. [01:18:24] And last year, 25% of all of our kindergartners had completed a pre-K program through either FCPS or through the Fairfax County Virginia Preschool Initiative, or VPI. And VPI is the state-funded grant that's designated to provide high-quality pre-K preschool education to at-risk four-year-olds who are not served by the federal Head Start program. [01:18:48] We can go to the next slide. So this slide shows a three-year trend of student pre-K experience by location. So the blue line at the top is showing the students who are accessing pre-K outside of FCPS. The yellow line represents the students who are accessing pre-K either through FCPS programs or through Fairfax County VPI programs. [01:19:11] And then the gray line represents our students who did not have a pre-K experience. So the data shows that both the number and the percentage of students without a pre-K experience is declining. so that's great, we're headed in the right direction there. And the number and percentage of students with a pre-K experience both within FCPS or outside of FCPS is also increasing. [01:19:33] If we can go to the next slide. So we're gonna talk a little bit about funding. FCPS is legally required to serve students with disabilities in our early childhood programs when their IEPs require those services. And approximately 1% of the budget for these programs comes from federal dollars. [01:19:52] The majority of funds that are used to provide these programs are through our local dollars. And then for this year, FCPS is also claiming VPI funding to support these programs. FCPS receives state, federal, and local funds to provide programs for students with those economic or educational risk factors, and these dollars are braided together. [01:20:13] And currently, FCPS funds just over 60% of the budget for these programs through local dollars. And I think an important distinction here is for our students with economic or educational risk factors, we serve them as funds and space allow in our programs. [01:20:30] We can go to the next slide. This slide provides an overview of the FCPS early childhood programs, and it's really important to note on this slide that as we move towards greater inclusion, these classrooms become much more blended, and students with IEPs may be inside any of these classrooms depending on their needs. [01:20:49] Students with IEPs may also be receiving resource services in settings outside of FCPS. And on the next slide, I'll walk through the inclusion models FCPS is currently using as that's the direction our division is headed in. So for the first -- oh, we can go back. Sorry. [01:21:06] Thank you. So the first program on this slide is our early childhood class-based program, and this program serves students with IEPs who are between the ages of two and five and a half day program. The second program on the slide is our preschool autism class, or our PAC classes, that serve students with IEPs who are between age two and five in a program that is three full days and two early release days. [01:21:30] The next program is our Early Head Start program, and that's serving students who are aged six weeks to three years who meet those economic or educational risk factors, and that is a full-day program. And then the final program on the slide is the FCPS Pre-K program, which is serving four-year-olds and some three year olds if they're a space that allows who meet again those economic or educational risk factors for a full-day program we can go to the next slide so this slide shows the different inclusion models that FCPS is currently using and I'm going to walk through starting at the left-hand side with our paired classroom model so in the paired model we have two classrooms that are [01:22:10] coming together typically this is happening in the morning with a teacher and an IA for each class and the students participate in both large and small group inclusive instruction in the second model the itinerant model this takes three classrooms and consolidates them into two so we have two pre-click pre-k classrooms and one early childhood class base class that get consolidated into those two classes each of those classrooms has 14 income eligible pre-k students and four students from the ECCB classroom and the special education teacher and I a float between those two classes providing the [01:22:47] special education support so there are always three adults within each classroom for students and then the final inclusion model is our single teacher model and this is one teacher who's dually endorsed in both that special education endorsement and the early childhood endorsement and one I a providing instruction in a single classroom and this is one of those to find that dueling and endorsed teachers can be challenging in terms of staffing we can go to the next slide please so we're going to take a look at our data and the first set of data we're going to look at is the percentage of students [01:23:23] who enter kindergarten with those pre-k experiences so when our families register their kindergarten students they complete a pre-k experience form and that is what gives us the information to understand what students did prior to entering kindergarten and based on that information we saw that 78% of last year's kindergartners came in with pre-K experiences and that was a 4% increase from the adjusted baseline. We did see significant increases for our Asian, Black, and Hispanic students when we compare that to the baseline and we do see differences between student groups that we're going to examine more [01:24:00] in subsequent slides. I do want to make really clear that as we look at closing this gap of students without a pre-K experience, we do need to acknowledge two limitations to this data. First of all this includes any kindergarten student that registered an FCPS regardless of where they were residing when that child was in pre-K. So we have me have students in this data set that were not living within Fairfax County and it does include families who made an intentional choice to not enroll their children in pre-K. So something to be aware of and we're going to talk a little bit about that in our strategy [01:24:32] section. So on our next slide we examine that same data looking at students who who are economically disadvantaged. So during last school year, we had a little over 2,700 kindergarten students who came in and enrolled who did not have that pre-K experience. [01:24:51] And about 80% of those students were economically disadvantaged. So the vast majority of our students coming in without pre-K are economically disadvantaged. This slide is showing intersectionality between student groups when we consider those who are economically disadvantaged and those who are not economically disadvantaged. [01:25:10] So I'm gonna walk through a couple of examples. If we look at that first column for all students, you can see again, 78% of all of our kindergartners came in with that pre-K experience. When we look at all of our students who were not economically disadvantaged, that number goes up to 91%. [01:25:28] When we look at our students overall who were economically disadvantaged, that percentage goes down to 63%. If we look at our Hispanic students as another example, Overall, all of our Hispanic kindergarten students, 60% had that pre-K experience. [01:25:44] When we look at our Hispanic students who are not economically disadvantaged, that goes up to 86%. And then we look at our Hispanic students who are economically disadvantaged, that percentage goes down to 54%. And we see that impact across all of our student groups. [01:26:00] So it is really critical for FCPS to continue to focus on pre-K opportunities for economically disadvantaged students. We can go to the next slide, please. So it's also important for us to look at trends we're seeing with kindergarten registration. [01:26:16] And I'm gonna walk through this slide again sort of from the left to the right. So the first set of bars you're gonna see are kindergarten registrations over three years. And you can see those numbers are actually on a slight decline. The second set of bars is looking at the total number of kindergarten students that registered without a pre-K experience. [01:26:37] this is the inverse of what we looked at on the previous slide that that number is going down so that is going in the direction that we want to see that happening as well the third set of bars are showing the number of kindergartners that are registering that are economically disadvantaged so you can see we saw significant increases in the number of our kindergartners who are registering who are economically disadvantaged and when we compare this to the baseline it's a 30 36 increase so it's pretty significant and then the last set of bars you're seeing on there is the number of economically disadvantaged kindergarten students without a pre-k experience so that number is going [01:27:16] up as well so while our total number of kindergarten students is not growing we have more economically disadvantaged kindergarten students and more economically disadvantaged kindergarten students without that pre-k experience so on slide 27 the next slide another way for us to look at this is is that by looking at applications and wait list data for our income eligible programs. [01:27:44] And as you can see from this slide, FCPS is seeing significant increases in the number of income eligible applications that we're receiving for our pre-K programs. So again, that program that is typically serving our four-year-old students. We're also seeing a significant increase in the total number of income eligible students that we're serving in our programs. [01:28:04] So again, we're trending in that right direction. And finally, we're seeing an increase in the number of eligible students who are on the wait list for that pre-K program. And it is important to point out that we are required to maintain a wait list for these programs. [01:28:20] And the reason why we're required to maintain a wait list is so that there is not a delay as space comes available in filling that space with the student who is eligible for programs. But certainly our goal is to serve as many students as we can through our programs. It's also important that we're not surprised to see that wait list number growing because we're doing some additional outreach efforts to make sure families in our community are aware of the FCPS pre-K programming that we're offering. [01:28:46] So we were not surprised to see that data point go up. On our next slide, thank you. Another way for us to look at this data is to see the percentage of income eligible students that we're serving in our programs. [01:29:02] So if you look at this last column, In 23-24, we had just over 2,400 eligible applications, those families who met that income eligible requirement. Of those, we had 1,900, a little over 1,900 students that were served, which represents 79%. [01:29:21] So while we're serving more kids, the percentage of kids we're serving is starting to flatten out, which means the applications are increasing at a similar pace of our program expansion. So that's an important sort of data point for us to continue to monitor. [01:29:37] It's to increase the percentage of eligible students served, we would need to continue to expand access to our pre-K programs for our students. Let me go to the next slide, please. So this is another growth target chart, and this one is specifically looking at targeting the growth from the last slide that you saw. [01:29:56] So if we want to get to a point where we can, our 2030 goal of serving all of our income from eligible students, we would need to make improvements by two percentage points each year. So for last year, we need to stay on track. We wanted to hit that 81% compared to the 79% that we did hit. [01:30:15] So we are just under what our target was for last year. On our next slide, you can see this data looking at pre-K need by community. And we do have this full heat map in the report, which is on page 22. [01:30:34] know this is a little small if people are trying to read it on the screen but just to kind of walk through the heat map the slide shows pre-k experience by high school boundaries so the lighter areas are where we're seeing more students a higher percentage of students in that high school boundary come in with a pre-k experience and the darker areas and the map are where we're seeing a larger percentage of students without that pre-k experience coming in and enrolling in kindergarten and this data certainly helps us identify where additional pre-k seats may be needed so I'm one of the things that the board asked for last year when we presented this was not just to give the percentages [01:31:10] but to also give the raw numbers so you could see what the impact looks like so I'll give two examples in the Westfield boundary for example 21% of those kindergarten students didn't have a pre-k experience and that represents a hundred and fifty-three students in the Annandale boundary 34% of the student their kindergarten students did not have a pre-K experience. [01:31:33] And that represents 180 students. So again, that is in the full report on page 22. On our next slide, we're gonna switch gears and talk a little bit about the data that we're seeing coming out of ChildFind as well. [01:31:49] And ChildFind is the process that we use for identifying children with potential special education needs. And with the exception of the 2020-21 school year, the referrals for ChildFind have remained relatively consistent. That's that first set of bars on the left-hand side of the screen. [01:32:06] We have seen growth, however, in the number of students who are referred that are being assessed and the number of students that are being referred that are found eligible for services. So this growth is also really important for us to monitor as it relates to potential expansion needs to support students with IEPs in our early childhood programs, and as it relates to our inclusion targets for pre-K. [01:32:31] Go to the next slide. So we did present an addendum for goal two on inclusion to the board at the July 18th, 24 meeting. And while our goal two report will have additional inclusion data, we did wanna put this information in as it relates specifically to pre-K. [01:32:50] As you can see from this data, FCPS has made progress towards meeting the state targets for 6A. However, we have not yet met those state inclusion targets for pre-K. I do wanna point out that the data for 23-24 has not yet been released by VDOE, and certainly we will add that information as soon as it's available. [01:33:11] It is important, as I was sharing in that previous slide, that as the number of students with disabilities being served in our early childhood programs increases, we need to make sure that we also are increasing adequate seats to serve students without IEPs to meet those inclusion targets. [01:33:29] And next slide, please. So I do wanna highlight what we're also seeing with regard to fall kindergarten readiness as it relates to those pre-K experiences. So FCPS uses three screeners to assess kindergarten readiness at the beginning of the school year in the areas of reading, math, and executive functioning. [01:33:48] And so we're gonna take a look at the data. When we compared to the adjusted baseline, overall our fall readiness declined by two percentage points, which doesn't represent a significant difference. There were not significant improvements in fall kindergarten readiness overall or for any individual student group. [01:34:07] And only two student groups were significantly different from the baseline. The first is our students with disabilities, where we saw an overall decline of five percentage points, and our students with 504 plans, where we saw a decline by 11 percentage points. [01:34:22] And I'm gonna pause here, because I know that we wanna talk about where we see that adjusted baseline, and this is a really good example on this slide. If you look at the old baseline for students with 504s, you see that that percentage was 67%. [01:34:38] And when you look at that adjusted baseline, this is where we saw a big difference. And the reason we saw a big difference in this data point is this was a fall screener, a fall assessment that was given to students. When this data was mapped, it was looking at spring student demographic data. [01:34:54] So kids who didn't have a 504 in the fall, but had it in the spring got counted into that 504 count. So this is where this adjusted baseline, we mapped a fall assessment with a fall student demographic data. And that's where you see that adjustment happening in this data. [01:35:14] So if we can go to the next slide. We looked at that same data set by students with and without a pre-K experience. And again, we see significant gaps. We saw significant gaps when we did the baseline reporting. [01:35:29] So overall, again, 69% of our students, regardless of pre-K experience, met that fall readiness expectation. When we look at just our students with the pre-K experience, we see that 76% meant the readiness expectation. And then our students without a pre-K experience, only 39% of those students met the fall readiness expectation. [01:35:51] And so we did not see significant changes in readiness from the baseline overall, and for students with pre-K experience, but we saw a nine percentage point decline for our students without pre-K experience compared to the baseline, which means the gap of readiness between kids with and without pre-K experiences is widening. [01:36:13] Go to the next slide, please. This slide looks at intersectionality data for our students with disabilities. Again, we did see that five percentage point decline from the baseline, and so we wanted to look at this information as well. [01:36:29] And given the high rates of pre-K experiences for our students with disabilities, overall, remember they were at 91% had a pre-K experience, and the lower rates of kindergarten readiness this metric we do need to continue to investigate ways to further strengthen readiness for students with disabilities next slide please so this slide shows the annual growth targets for kindergarten readiness and i'm going to walk through this slide because you're going to see some additional lines on it that you didn't see in the previous growth targets so in the light blue you're going to see our actual data from the two years this was a two-year baseline and this past school year [01:37:09] you're going to see in the blue the targets for all students so the overall target that we have for all um kindergartners and this progress represents about a three and a half percentage point gain each year to get towards our 2030 goals we have also created targets for each of our student groups so again you can see the range of improvement efforts that need to happen at the yellow you'll see the currently the highest student excuse me currently the student group that's performing highest on this metric so this is students with 504 plans and in the orange the student group that's currently performing lowest [01:37:47] on this metric so you can see for some of our student groups they need to make one percentage point gains each year to hit the target and other student groups we need to make seven percentage point gains each year to hit the target and we do have additional information about all of our student groups and those targets in the full report go to the next slide all right now we're going to go through the strategies we're currently using and some additional strategies we'll be doing this year to work towards our kindergarten readiness and inclusive pre-k goals so the next slide shows information about the [01:38:23] additions we've made in FCPS in terms of classrooms to continue to address growth needs we have used local dollars to continue to expand early childhood Access and FCPS, and this chart shows the classroom growth for our existing early childhood programs. [01:38:39] I do want to point out that the single teacher inclusion classrooms are part of the pre-K count. So last year in the FY25 budget, that included $2.1 million in 26 positions to support inclusive pre-K expansion. [01:38:55] And both the FY25 and 24 budgets included additional funds to support preschool special education capacity needs in the division. What this chart does not show, and it's important to point out, is where programs are not co-located to allow for those inclusion opportunities to happen. [01:39:13] So we know continued financial investments are needed to meet our 2030 pre-K's experiences, inclusion, and kindergarten readiness targets. On the next slide, as I mentioned in the multilingual learner section, the board does have advocacy that they continue to do at the state and federal level on the topic of pre-k and pre-k funding and the full report does detail some information at a local level certainly continued partnership with our fairfax county partners through our structures such as skipped our neighborhood and community services and early childhood program services is really critical for both [01:39:48] coordinated efforts to expand opportunities to serve our children in all of our elementary school renovations and the currently improved cip they include two pre-k classrooms in the capital project scope and so schools that do have more than two existing pre-k classrooms keep their current number in the renovation but being able to build in those pre-k spaces as we're renovating schools as i shared the majority of our kindergarten students entering fcps without that pre-k experience are economically disadvantaged and again to close that gap and increase kindergarten readiness we will need to make continued financial investments to expand those [01:40:25] seats for students on the next slide our chief academic office has created a plan to ensure that every existing and newly created early childhood site has an identified inclusion model and we are strategically placing new programs to optimize available inclusion opportunities to the greatest extent possible. [01:40:46] The single teacher inclusion model was expanded this year by adding six additional single teacher classrooms for a total of 13 classes. This year, all 26 classes at 23 schools with co-located pre-K and early childhood special led classes are implementing a paired classroom inclusion model with at least one pair of classes, and we began implementing the itinerant classroom model this school year as well. [01:41:11] The team is collecting data throughout the year to inform modifications for improvement as we continue to expand inclusion to meet the needs of our community. We talked about the importance of building a pipeline of educators, and we are partnering with George Mason and James Madison University to offer a pathway for our current FCPS staff to gain endorsement in either early childhood special ed or a dual endorsement in early childhood special ed and early childhood education. And our FCPS early childhood teachers and IAs will continue to participate in jointly developed and delivered professional development opportunities [01:41:48] to support inclusion in our early childhood classrooms. Next slide, please. We talked about the importance of our ongoing collaboration with Fairfax County. One of the things we can continue to do is exchange waitlist information with our county partners to support enrollment of students and programs regardless of where they are. [01:42:07] Last year our FCPS pre-K programs also implemented several high leverage strategies to support our multilingual learner success that will continue this school year including the GLAAD training that Mr. Polio talked about earlier. Our FCPS early childhood programs to the government do offer support as well as FCPS to families who are not accessing pre-K. This may be families who are on the wait list for programs, if families who exceed the income requirements for programs, or those who may not be seeking the type of program options that we have. There are some details in our full report about [01:42:45] these pre-K alternative programs, but I'll just highlight a few. Some of the names you're very familiar with. We have our We Play program, Early Literacy program our hippie program our bridge decay program and our family literacy program and while these alternative programs are not a full pre-k experience they do provide some critical learning opportunities for students who have not yet enrolled in a pre-k program and then finally on our next slide we do have three additional strategies that we're going to be introducing this school year the first is some additional data collection strategies and I talked about some of the limitations we have in terms of understanding kids pre-k experiences before [01:43:25] they come we are going to begin starting to ask additional information when families register our kindergarten students to understand if they were residing in our county the year prior and what barriers existed to accessing pre-k programs so we can really start to hone in on where the unmet needs are for us as a system as the second strategy we're piloting an early childhood tier one executive functioning curriculum in five of our schools will have approximately 225 students across 21 early childhood classrooms participating in the pilot and again data is going to be collected this school year with the goal to expand the use of the curriculum in early childhood classrooms for the [01:44:05] next school year and then finally a goal innovation team is focused on the availability of inclusive pre-k and they will be identifying and presenting innovative ways that we can expand inclusive opportunities to our eligible students, and those recommendations will inform future strategies. [01:44:24] And then I think we're going to go ahead and wrap up with conclusions and turn it back over to our meeting managers, if we can go to the next slide. So just in summary, the big -- if we can go to the next slide, please -- the big things that we saw out of this report, obviously we saw significant increases in our multilingual learners meeting those state standards for progress towards English language proficiency, But we do have a long way to go, and continued efforts need to be made to get to our 2030 targets. [01:44:53] We've made positive strides in terms of increasing the percentage of kindergarten students with those pre-K experiences, but we do continue to see gaps in particular for our economically disadvantaged students. We continue to see those significant differences in readiness for our students with and without pre-K experiences, and we saw that gap widen this year, this past year. [01:45:15] We do need to continue to expand seats for our income-eligible students in order to fully meet the community need and to meet the VDOE targets for Indicator 6A. We're going to need to continue to investigate kindergarten readiness efforts for students with disabilities and certainly strongly recommend continued advocacy efforts for state at the state and federal level as well as with our local partners to address gaps in pre-K. [01:45:39] And with that, Mr. Moon and Ms. Anderson, I'll turn it back over. Okay. Thank you. That was wonderful. I have three members on my list, starting with Ms. Lady. Thank you. If we can quickly go back to slide 27. So my question is that there seems to be either a gap in my math, but when you look at the 24/27 and you subtract the 1908, you end up with 519 kids, but we only have 304 on a wait list. Does that mean some get [01:46:16] outright denied? So, no. What families may be, and I'll have Ms. Pilsen add to whatever I share as well, some families may not go on the wait list. So, we may have some families who find different preschool programs that meet their needs. We may have some families who are relocating out of the area. But, yes, there is not a gap in your math. Your math is accurate. So, Ms. Pilsen, do you want to add to that? That sums it up. We have families that they decline after being on the wait list because they do find other programs that meet their [01:46:54] family needs so have we ever and I understand there's sort of like a confidentiality but when with these three or four families do we do any outreach to talk with them about the fact that there are some private places that will do some scholarshipping of children do we try to help them find a place or we just put them on a wait list and it's up to them so we work closely with early childhood programs and services that's through Fairfax County government so whenever we have families on a waitlist with FCPS we share our waitlist with them we do have our family service family service specialist that [01:47:30] work collaboratively with our partners with neighborhood and community services and ECPS all formerly known as office for children so what I say both that's what I'm referring to they work collaboratively to support families to get their needs met might that service be in the community versus within FCPS but for three or four kids we're not we weren't successful last year right so we had 304 children especially on your mic is your mic on yes okay can you not [01:48:03] hear me I'm sorry I often think I'm a lot louder than I am for 304 families we were not successful and keep in mind those may be families that enrolled past enrollment date so that those were the number of families that were on our wait list at the end some families we reach out to and there's no communication communication completely falls off and a large part is mobility a lot of the families that we serve in our program they live in extreme poverty so that [01:48:42] mobility piece is a factor as well so that brings up another question the the students who there's obviously 24 and 27 that qualify how are they selected is it is the extent of the need absolutely okay so our highest need students get it over those that may not they're definitely in poverty but yes okay um some other comments for facilities and this came up before i was when i was actually on the campaign trail um doing a community engagement around herndon in elementary schools renovation and I asked the principal Candace's how many pre-k classrooms do [01:49:22] you have right now and she said two and then she said but I could probably fill three and I said how many are in the renovation and they said two I got a problem with that we haven't broken ground yet I don't know if it was fixed but when we see the growth that you just articulated you just gave us the percentage of increase of our economically disadvantaged pre-k and kindergarteners what are we doing? Two is not enough. We've got to look at the projections and we've got to figure this out. If we're going to break ground and do renovations, we need to do them correctly and have enough seats for our kids. Because if this goal is by 2030, Herndon Elementary School won't be touched ever again for 40 more years, right? And so we know we'll be understaffed. [01:50:01] And then my only other question is in terms of the 504s, and maybe this is a broader question just to put out in the ethos, but the bottom line is that we have situations where students are identified as needing to be tested for special education, perhaps, and parents decline. [01:50:20] It is my understanding we could write a 504 without parental consent, correct? No, I don't believe so. I thought that they were not a required member of that committee. [01:50:37] Mike, can you help with that? Yeah, I'm not sure the answer to that question, but I would imagine the parents would need to be there to consent for a 504, but we can certainly get some follow-up information for you. [01:51:00] If you could do that, that would be great, because I know that that was something at the high school level that often alternatively did, because parents were refusing things. Maybe we just coerced them into understanding that they would go this route, not that route. But it was my understanding that they did not have to be present at those 504 meetings, but maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong. As a parent with a child with a 504 I had to be present and my permission is required. Okay all right thank you. I have a Miss Meron to be followed by Dr. Anderson. [01:51:34] Okay this one's totally different than the last one because we don't control the context as much as we could possibly control for teaching English and you know thinking back to when I met Miss St. John Cunning it was working on a project maybe 2008 or 09 with the office of children trying to promote school readiness and getting registered for kindergarten so I missed what you had said about the state of the office for children and as I was listening to all of this you know there's I'm always kind of looking at the vernacular like what are we talking about and we have [01:52:11] programs maybe by the Fairfax County government I don't know that's the office for children then we have Head Start which is federal we've got all these different programs and then we have I think FCPS ones or are we just the host so I think that we need to be really clear on what our domain is because we don't have a lot of funding you know to the point about facilities we don't even have enough funding to to educate the students even if we had all the income eligible I mean having two classrooms added was dr. Reed's idea to push as much as we could to eek that number up and is it correct that so 1908 [01:52:49] is the max we could educate at this point like what's the max that we could serve with the seats we have today like I apologize so our maximum number of seats as of right now I want to say it's 2140 something I have to give you the specific number it's not okay exactly where I want it to be right now but we [01:53:24] request the maximum number of seats that we can serve that are VPI's yes there is not a maximum number of seats that we can serve whenever it's a student that is receiving spent early childhood special education services thank you I mean so there's so much at play here I mean I think it's hypocritical for video you don't want us to hit an indicator without funds and without statewide universal pre-k I mean there's so many contexts that we're operating in and so I know dr. Anderson you know has said continuously we can only account for what we are accountable for and we're in this weird place when it comes to pre-k and so who knows [01:54:01] what we can guess why children are not arriving at school ready for kindergarten the research shows it so you know my questions and my thoughts are about i think we should get clear about what what's being funded by what funds and what we are really responsible for because if we're responsible for but then at the same time well we get title one funds and we're responsible for those so like why wouldn't be responsible for headstart funds but we've got to make some sense about like what can we realistically be accountable for I think knowing how many income eligible students we actually have in Fairfax but [01:54:38] again that's and this makes me wonder well are we tracking all the students who don't go to public kindergarten and don't go to public first grade like what role does the public school system have do we get note and I'm like do we get notified if a family decides to go to private school like we okay we get because know and we will get notices when parents want to educate their student for like other reasons homeschool so it just raises all these questions but i also want to say that if we're going to educate our kiddos in small classrooms they need kiddo sized playgrounds that's a big need i hear from my elementary school principals who are delighted to have our littlest learners but [01:55:13] they cannot play on big kid playgrounds so what can we do even in the interim of installing big fancy things kids just need some creativity maybe some plants some shade um that's a consistent need i hear thanks any comment from staff so you you've mentioned a few things the playgrounds are a work in progress we um have set aside some funding and i want to say there are six schools that are still [01:55:45] in the queue to add preschool size playgrounds um dss mike bloom and i are actually meeting with facilities and to talk about some other options for playgrounds at those locations where we are co-located where those playgrounds need to there they need to be early childhood sized playgrounds but they need to be a little bigger because our early childhood special education class size is typically eight children where pre-k is 18. so having a larger playground so that is a work in [01:56:15] progress. And I will say that playgrounds used to be around $125,000 per playground. They are much more expensive as post-pandemic as well. So yes, we are working on that. I would just add a couple things because I think, Ms. Marin, you named a lot of different, I think, questions and important issues with respect to what's in our purview and our domain around pre-K. And I just want to try to clarify for what it's worth kind of what how we're thinking about it now it doesn't mean you know obviously that we can't adjust how we think about it based on board feedback but for the board [01:56:54] and for the community there's kind of two major issues that we're really looking at when we think about our goals around pre-k the first is to try to get all of our income eligible students access to pre-k hopefully through an fcps program or through a county program or to miss lady's point through a private program but but hopefully through our programs and as part of the report we share data that there's like a 40 percentage point gap in terms of kindergarten readiness benchmarks on whether or not you had a pre-k experience. And we've got 37% of our students in FCPS who are income eligible now without a pre-k experience. So that's our first goal is to [01:57:31] try to close that gap for our income eligible families. As Marcy pointed out, we're a little bit of like two steps forward and one step backwards though, because we've been adding slots, So we've been adding classrooms, but we can't even keep up really with the pace of the additional income-eligible students that are enrolling each year, right? [01:57:51] So we're making progress, but we're not making the kind of progress that we would like to make. So we definitely need some new strategies in that regard. And one of the biggest blocks and barriers to access for our income-eligible students is facility space. Whether it's classroom space, whether it's playground space, that's one of our biggest barriers. [01:58:10] So we're continuing to work on that. The other barrier, of course, is the finance side. We don't get full funding through VPI for every student that we put that's income eligible. It's like 50% of the cost of educating that student. So we've got the financial barriers, and that was part of the legislative package and something that I know that the board members were advocating with our delegates and representatives just earlier this morning. [01:58:33] But that first goal is to try to close that income-eligible access to pre-K gap. The other goal is to make sure that we're getting our students with disabilities educated in an inclusive environment, an inclusive preschool classroom environment. We're still, you know, I think we're making progress in that regard, but we're in the early stages of having that be a division goal for us. [01:58:56] You know, prior to this strategic plan, that was not necessarily one of our key strategic goals, but it is now, and we're working really hard, trying to align all of our work and our resources towards that end. But again, when we think about barriers to inclusion, one of the biggest barriers is we have to have co-located programs. [01:59:16] We have to have income-eligible general education students and students with disabilities co-located in the same school in order for there to be inclusion. And right now, our programs are not set up and structured like that. So we've got a lot of facilities and structural challenges as it relates to inclusion as well. [01:59:33] But I just wanted to be clear that those are our two biggest goals. Obviously, we take our direction from the board in terms of if we need to adjust those at all. But those, when we talk about pre-K, that's really the focus of the division at this time. Okay. [01:59:49] I'll put you on. I have Dr. Anderson to be followed by Vice Chair Anderson. Thank you. agree with everything that Ms. Marin has said, but just to kind of hone in a little bit, do we have any sense of how many seats the county has for preschool across the county? So VPI slots for FCPS or the whole entire? I guess the whole enchilada. The whole enchilada. So the whole enchilada is a little over 2,600 seats. VPI slots, that is not including Head Start because you mentioned the different funding sources so whenever we talk about federal [02:00:27] programming that's head start an early head start the county has 26 VPI seats how many head start seats do they have they have more I don't have that number off the top of my head but they they have far more than FC Peta and all of those seats filled so I'm I we do not track the county's wait list we share hours but theirs are community home and also they have they do have some head start programming so they have higher horizon so those are actual brick and [02:01:05] mortar facilities they are higher horizon and gum spring those are early the head start programs that are offered by Fairfax ECPS okay just one thing I want to add to that we have a strong partnership with the county when it comes to providing early childhood education, preschool experiences to students, and continuing to focus on expansion efforts. [02:01:32] That's one of the major initiatives in SCIPP. But I want to be clear, like our focus traditionally in FCPS has been trying to serve those four-year-olds and prioritize the four-year-olds because they're closest to enrollment with us while the county is focused more on the younger children. So that's why you'll see like the numbers are going to break down for two-year-old, three-year-old, four-year-olds more on the county side than FCPS, whereas we have more the four-year-olds than the county has so that's kind of been the strategy historically just in terms of how we've prioritized our focus sure but this is quite the quagmire and it just makes me wonder how can we tighten some of those relationships with the county I don't know if this is superintendent not here [02:02:11] she had to step out for just a minute I'm sure she'll be right back though oh well I'm sorry who am I speaking can we pause my time until I figure out who's in the room that I can speak to okay I guess I'll skip this part because I'm just wondering how can we they're not under our control but how can we ensure that we're kind of maximizing you know the kids that we are sending to the county and helping them expand their programs because it's probably a lot easier for them to expand into private home pre-k preschool and then we can [02:02:49] build buildings we just don't have that kind of capacity so I will just kind of pause on that. Well, if we could pause the time, because you might want to come back to this point, but I just briefly would say, I think our best avenue of advocacy is the strategic planning partnership that we have with the county around the early childhood readiness plan that's part of the SCIP work. Now I know Dr. Anderson and I both serve on SCIP this year, and we've had a number of conversations that we would like that work to move forward a lot faster. So we definitely have some improvements that we can make but that's probably the best avenue for us to really make [02:03:25] sure that we're maximizing in a strategic way the priorities of both boards as it comes to expansion of early childhood we do receive the majority of funding for early childhood services when we talk about the overall counting county funding we do receive the majority of that funding in fcps so we do need a better plan that has some really clear targets with accountability for expansion when it comes to pre-k and that's what I think where there's some areas of growth within that early childhood readiness plan sure thank you can somebody speak a little bit to your response to this heat map because when I take a look at this we see Herndon Lewis and in Ellen Justice being a dark blue [02:04:05] what efforts are being taken in those areas to address this need absolutely over the past couple of years we have added classrooms in those four pyramids where there is space but it all it comes back to space and the the reality is there's needs in those areas that are not just being looked at and targeted from us as a school division but also in our collaboration with ECPS and looking [02:04:41] at the the number of opportunities for family home care in those areas to be able to share our wait list through coordinated enrollment efforts through ready regions to be able to get families access to care in those areas based on the demographics of the families that live there. There's a saturation. And that's another area, I think, of opportunity for partnership with the county to say, well, maybe we need to invest additional funding as part of our renovation plans, to Ms. Lady's point, in some of those communities where we have the greatest area of need, or look at alternative space, whether it's [02:05:16] be a lease space or some some other space but we do need our county partners to help us with that well this would be a great thing to take to the next skip meeting which is coming up very soon so looking forward to that um let me just kind of get into this data a little bit because i think i i've lost myself on page 16 miss neil um i see the data that shows um the current 23 24 goal i'm a little bit confused because last year's um report had a target goal of 80 percent and i [02:05:51] believe now the target that is not 80 currently can you tell me why dr anderson can you tell me which table you're looking at um i think it's table two okay oh okay so this and this is one that i want to clarify we did make a notation on here we did not set specific targets on this topic because this is talking about there is family choice in this data right so to set a target of a hundred percent when you've got family choice as to whether or not they're going to enroll their child in pre-k and again we talked about [02:06:27] some of the limitations on this data some of these kiddos didn't live in Fairfax County the year prior there's not a specific target on this data I think as we can get down to that more granular information dr. Anderson with some additional data collection understanding who was here the year prior understanding if there are barriers we can be more clear about the target we would want to set on this if we could stick a pin to what you've just said because that's a secondary question but the question that I did have is comparing what we had last year and last year's report on which is on page 15 to what we have in this year's report these are different numbers it said all [02:07:03] students the target for 23 24 was supposed to be 80 percent this is now it's 78 percent and it's less across the board if you could explain that a little bit it's that one's I think you're looking at the SY 23/24 data the actual data not a target the 78% okay so that's the act that's the actual yes okay so let's talk about not having a target for this year and potentially in the out years what does that mean then as a measure because this was a discussion we had when this was placed as a measure when we had the retreat we [02:07:41] can't control all of that so what are the implications for this work when it's part of our strategic plan and we have no target so we have really nothing to to gauge against to see how we're moving so we will be setting targets and at this point I think we're grappling with a variety of different preschool programs be they county funded, county led, division led, space available and so we will be setting a target for the coming year. I think we are other than the [02:08:19] growing need which is proportionally increasing we are clearly going to need targets for the both the inclusion preschool classrooms as well as serving more of our income eligible preschool learners. We know that if we're going to close achievement gaps that's most effectively and efficiently done with preschool children they learn much more quickly we had that conversation around multilingual learners we know the rate of language acquisition occurs much more quickly with young children so we'll absolutely have targets and we'll be [02:08:54] clear about that moving forward that that's on that's on me so when will that arrive to us I will provide tentative targets in the upcoming Friday letter we'll have an opportunity to revisit that. And could they just be re-embedded into these documents? Yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you. Just speaking of targets, just going now to the readiness piece. I'm looking at page 30, where you have the report of kindergarten students expectations. And again, there's some changes here. I don't think I have enough time to go into that from last [02:09:29] year. What I want to understand better, Dr. Reed, is how do you want us to use this information for your evaluation as we've talked about before the divisions goals are your goals and now we have actual data from last year are we should I organize myself to be a year behind or will whatever happens at this at the end of this year be provided for us to use for evaluation so I think it's really I don't know if we want to call it a year behind but what we're presenting this year in each of our goal reports is our progress to date and so as we discussed [02:10:08] in the first part of our goal report this morning we've made significant progress and some might argue unprecedented in the last year with our multilingual learners and that progress note would be used in this year's evaluation because that's our cycle of reporting when we look at the chart on page 30 on the kindergarten readiness similarly that chart would be reflective of where the kindergarten readiness is at this time and therefore while it's a two-year baseline it does represent where our students are at this point so I think there are a variety of measurements that are embedded with [02:10:45] regard to preschool that you could utilize but that's the data we have at this time and a year from now we'll have new data again that can be utilized for evaluation purposes thank you I have Faisal Anderson to be followed by Ms. Seizmel-Hijer, and then Ms. St. John-Cunning. [02:11:08] Okay, so I have a few weird questions that are kind of all over the place, but I know. Okay, so first question is on slide 37. Is the data from 21-22, is it possible that that's an outlier? Is it significantly different, and it's coming out of -- I just was wondering whether or not we'd ever gone back a little bit further, just to see whether or not that's outlier information, so that we can see kind of where, whether or not it actually frames our progress effectively? [02:11:48] So that was the first question that I had. I just want to make sure. Yeah, I think we can look to see what the data points were the previous years. Part of the challenge we have with some of this is the screeners change, and then we have a not apples-to-apples comparison, which is, you know, part of the issue we run into as we continue to look years back. [02:12:07] I don't know if, Dr. Presidi, you want to add anything to that? Not really. Off the top of my head, I can't remember which year some of these screeners change, but I do think that that's probably part of it. So we need to look at that a little bit more closely and we can follow up in writing. Because if that's what's going on, I would love for us to put a caveat in the reports that actually shows that so that it can show that it's not necessarily just us. [02:12:30] To that end, this is also data that we can't really, I understand that we have a goal. This isn't necessarily something that we can solely impact because this is before our kiddos come to us right because this is the fall of their kindergarten year so I guess in to that end we all probably understand that not all preschool programs are created equal in terms of what the strenuousness of their academic programs are do we ever do any sharing with local preschool programs that actually shows what we're actually going to be expecting kiddos to have [02:13:07] when they first walk in the door well that is not that is that is a work in progress in terms of share all programs that receive VPI funding so there there are private programs private providers they are required to have a curriculum all of our everybody in the state of Virginia they there's a list of approved curriculum resources that can be used and they're required to use that as well as having the early childhood standards so there's that piece and it looks like you want to add something well I was just gonna add one thing I mean we're [02:13:44] happy to share and have shared materials but that's really more on the county side in terms of the county. I'm not suggesting that we share materials what I'm suggesting is that we share an understanding of where kids need to be so because if we are going to be monitoring this on our side I want to make sure that our partners and it could be private partners as well I understand the VP fund VPI funding aspect of it but we also have we are not asking families whether or not they're sending their kiddo to a VPI preschool we're asking whether or not they're sending them to preschool and that's being self-reported and so if that's the case then having just information available as to what kindergartners are expected to have [02:14:21] with those writing skills are it's extremely important in order for us to actually capture our growth absolutely no I agree my point just was the county historically has been really the body that's done more of the outreach sharing professional development training and support for private and community-based programs we focused more on the quality control of our own programs internally but our county partners do a lot of that outreach right and I completely and totally understand I think that maybe this is a moment that we need to we need to partner with our county like together because if we are going to monitor our success based and we're trying to [02:14:59] track growth for targets for kindergartners walking in the door in the fall we have to do something to make sure that we under that we're impacting that as we're moving forward just to eliminate that as a possibility of a moment of lack of growth for us so that's the first thing second of the kids that are on the the 304 children that didn't have the pre-k that were on our wait list do we track how many of those actually entered kindergarten without pre-k are you [02:15:34] is your question do we track the students who enter pre-k who were on the fcps wait list for pre-k enter kindergarten who are on the FCPS wait list that is not something that we have been tracking but that is something that we can definitely look into because the other thing is all of us have had our kids on wait lists at some point or another and realize that right we forget to take them off wait list so I don't that happens as well yeah right that the 304 kids didn't get certain like to provide services somewhere and so I think it's really important for us to track their self-reporting to determine whether or not they actually didn't receive services so if they're part of our [02:16:11] number because that also gives us a certain amount of information as to whether or not what we're what we need to be doing so that would be a question that would be around that self-reporting yes my child was on the waitlist yes we received services elsewhere or no we did not well let me just clarify my question if we are tracking a waitlist then we don't even actually need to ask them so this is when they're to check whether or not they've reported that they're that they went to pre-k because we already have the information that they're on the waitlist. But our schools don't. So yeah, we can look on that. So it would be on our side, not on the [02:16:45] school side. Okay, thank you. Ms. Seizman, to be followed by Ms. Shane John Cunning. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate this report and the chance to ask the question. So a couple questions. [02:17:01] For the PAC class, I noticed that the PAC class numbers have almost doubled, 69 to 136 in the course from 20 to 21 to 24 to 25. But the only right now listed inclusion model is a paired CLASSROOM MODEL. CAN YOU EXPAND MORE WHY THE OTHER MODELS AREN'T BEING USED FOR THE PACK CLASS RIGHT NOW? [02:17:24] SO, THE INCLUSION MODELS THAT WE ARE USING RIGHT NOW -- AND I KNOW THIS IS SOMETHING THAT WE'VE TALKED ABOUT PREVIOUSLY. OUR STUDENTS WHO ARE IDENTIFIED IN OUR PACK PROGRAMS, THEY ARE RECEIVING THE PAIR CLASSROOM MODEL THAT IS AN OPTION AT THE SCHOOLS WHERE THEY MAY BE ATTENDING SCHOOLS. [02:17:50] As far as the ECIP single teacher model or the itinerant model, they're not exclusive of students who are identified as having, are on the autism spectrum. [02:18:09] It's ultimately an IEP decision that's made by the knowledgeable committee. If that committee sees fit, that that child would be best served in a single teacher classroom or um an itinerant classroom or if that child requires resource services and they're they are in a pre-k classroom with push-in supports those those options are made available so you said that pack costumes have the paired costume model in the schools where they have that model available [02:18:44] out of 136 pack classrooms honey didn't have that model available i don't i can get that number to you um it's a rough estimate 10 20 40 80 any rough idea of how many miss seizmer heiser i cannot give you a rough estimate because that would not be satisfactory i don't have a specific number at least at this point while waiting for greater information but i'll i'll get that yes um i would ask if all of the other preschools are doing a student by student determination of inclusion [02:19:24] or only the PAC classroom? So for the paired model, it's not a student-by-student determination. They are pairing. For the ECIP and for the itinerant models, yes, it is a student-by-student based on IEP decision. [02:19:48] I understand. Maybe I'll rephrase my question. It sounded like for the students on the autism spectrum outside of this paired model, access to the other models is on a student-by-student basis. For the other classes, are they also on a student-by-student basis, or are we only assuming that children in the autism classrooms have to have that for the other models? [02:20:08] That's an assumption for a lot of students, but I'm wondering if that's an assumption we need to make. All students who are identified as students that an ECIP single teacher model or an itinerant model is best fit is based on IEP decisions. [02:20:26] It is not based on whether or not that child has an autism spectrum disorder as their primary disability or not. It's based on the IEP decision. So in some of these other models that you have for the ECCB classrooms, it's still based on an IEP team decision even for those models as to whether they're allowed to be in the inclusive setting? [02:20:49] Correct. Whether they're placed in a full-day inclusion classroom, it is based on an IEP decision. And that's based on what we have to offer at this time. Yeah, I think that's right. So we don't have full-day inclusion models for classrooms regardless. [02:21:05] So I guess, so where do those students go? So if you have a classroom that's a full-day inclusion model in one of these other programs and a parent or IEP team decides that that student can't access this, where do they go? If you could pause my time, please. [02:21:21] Thank you. So I want to make sure that I'm clear on your question. Is your ask that where do children, if in an IEP decision, it's determined that a child is to be placed in a single teacher inclusion classroom, and if the school that that child attends does not have that model, where does that child go? [02:21:49] Is that your question? Well, I guess, yeah, I would then ask the students to have to make the choice between being in their community or close to school if they have these itinerant models or single teacher models and for some reason the iep team decides but are there other models in that school or do they have to go out of their pyramid or community like what is it an iep team decision or are we doing inclusive classrooms well let me let me see if i can help with this a little bit because i think these are really important questions and what i was trying to say earlier is we're at the very beginning stages really of our inclusion work when it comes to pre-k inclusion [02:22:25] and and i know that that's not a satisfactory answer for anybody but it's just the reality of where we are we're in our first year of these pilot models and we have some a number of challenges one we don't have the amount of co-located classes that we need to have to be able to really optimize the amount of inclusion experiences the second barrier that we have the second barrier that we have is that we don't have all of the we don't have the same level and amount of inclusion pilots programs right we have more opportunities for inclusion with the paired classroom model right [02:23:01] now than we do with the esip model and that we do with the itinerant model and the esip and the itinerant model i think as miss pilsen was saying those are going to be more limited based on iep team decisions because it could be the case that a parent decides that they don't want their student in that type of inclusive setting they really want them to have more self-contained support. So again, we're new at this. We don't have a lot of data to really be able to analyze where those family preferences and IEP team decisions are coming out. We'll have more information on that at the end of the year as we analyze the three different inclusion models that [02:23:37] we have. But those are a couple of the barriers that we have right now. But I do want to be clear, our goals around inclusion are the same regardless of the disability that the student has that qualifies them for the IEP services. So we're not looking to provide different models or different experiences based on whether or not a student has an IEP for autism or if they have an IEP for another disability that they need support for. [02:24:04] But we obviously have a lot more work to refine these models and to scale these models across the division. And I really do appreciate your advocacy around PAC because that is one of the biggest areas of growth that we're seeing um and there's an incredible amount of need to get this figured out as quickly as possible for those students and families besides maharaj are you done sorry i thought i was muted because i was coughing and clearing my throat i apologize um yes i agree and i think there's a lot to be flushed out and also just some training to be done around educating [02:24:43] our families and iep teams about the significant amount of data behind improving inclusive settings i bring that up because one of the things that was flagged in this report and i appreciate it right is that while 91% of our students with disabilities have preschool education they don't they have larger gaps entering kindergarten and so I have said many many times we've got to look at program service delivery because many of our programs have not been updated or the service delivery models have really not been looked at holistically in 20 30 40 years and perhaps one [02:25:16] of the reasons for that gap is the service delivery model we're doing and perhaps we really look at the data behind inclusion and work on that bigger sort of change management process around that and then see who really doesn't need to be in that setting. [02:25:34] Just perhaps. Right? Because there's a lot of data there and there's a big gap here so that shows that it's not just access to preschool. So I'll leave that at that and I would love to follow up maybe offline because I have a lot more questions on this. [02:25:50] This may not give you 100% of the reassurance and comfort. However, we are very aware of the program delivery models in terms of instructional programming and curriculum that there were differences and we are two different programs. [02:26:15] We are a program that has been historically designed to service our economically disadvantaged population and a program that has been required to serve our children who have IEPs with the intention of really being focused on servicing students where their disability is and closing that gap with their disability and our offices are working collaboratively to ensure that yes that is while ensuring that those goals that are identified by [02:26:52] the IEP team for the delays that some children may have are very critical to work towards closing we can do that through using a guaranteed and viable curriculum using curriculum resources that align with what's used in a pre-k program using the same material so that we can close those gaps to the access to content despite a child's ability and that is the work that we're going forward if i can just finish my thought a longer conversation however i will say that what we've been doing isn't working as the data shows [02:27:30] so perhaps looking at the program delivery and looking at those best practices on inclusion for every student might be in educating our teachers families and staff on why the data behind that works might be a good enough step i'll take a go back thank you okay just want to remind board members that we're initially scheduled to go until one o'clock but we since we started late we're gonna go a few minutes beyond one is that okay maybe another 10 minutes thank you i have a [02:28:02] miss shane john cunning um so first of all thank you for the report and uh as someone that has worked in every elementary school I ever had worked at, had an early childhood preschool education program, and the work that those educators do and IAs do there is heroic. My daughter was actually a model student in one of those programs, and I think that was one of the most significant things that she had in her academic career. Part of the problem I know right now is we do not have enough teachers to teach those kids. We're short [02:28:40] with our preschool special education teachers, and I think that we have to be very honest about that and try to get more teachers in, because special education for those little ones in terms of the breadth of disabilities that is served in those programs, it's really wide, and you really have to be trained. [02:29:00] So I just wanted to put that out. And I know that as this model is being rolled out, we're gonna have to work out some kinks, because as we're doing inclusion, we are also putting these kids into Head Start programs where teachers have to deal with students that are economically disadvantaged and are already behind the curve in some areas. [02:29:20] And then we're gonna have inclusion and some of our Head Start teachers also have to have the training or the ability to deal with these things. I applaud the effort to do that. I just think that we're gonna have to be patient to work out the kinks. - Thank you. - As someone that has been in schools that have these programs. [02:29:39] I appreciate that there's been more applications for Head Start, and I appreciate the outreach. Having said that, I know that there's a lot of people that don't know about it, and it's gonna go just up and up and up. I wanna give a shout out to our Family and School Partnerships Department, because I know that they do all of this outreach, and we haven't, you know, we've touched the tip of the iceberg, so this is gonna include, this is going to just increase the needs. [02:30:05] So having said that, I have another question. In terms of tracking kids on the wait list, Do we track the kids that are on the wait list but that then use our family and school partnership programs like Hippie, Family Lit, Early Lit, or programs like All Ages Read Together? [02:30:21] Do we track the kids that don't get into Head Start but use some of our alternate programs or some of the alternate programs we host in our schools? - So we don't track our students that to see what they're accessing if they're not accessing a program. [02:30:39] We do provide that information. These are alternatives for families, but we don't track them beyond the wait list. That has not been our practice. To be honest with you, our team doesn't have the capacity, but we're going to figure something out moving forward in how we can track our students who are, if they're not able to be served in a pre-K program, if they're served through all ages read together or hippie early lit things of that nature. [02:31:09] would see that as an easy connection because i know as a family liaison the kids that didn't get on the wait list i would call them and offer them hippie family lit uh so i would partner with family and school partnerships because they might have the data and i think that's important and and we're providing that so we need to we need to get the credit for that um renovation how many classrooms do we need to service the need well i don't know that i could answer that question off off the top of my head. [02:31:41] What I will say is since Ms. Szymanski has come home board, she's been a great partner and collaborator in trying to help us figure out how we need to think about our space differently, more efficiently use our space, how we can utilize the renovation cycle to put in classrooms. [02:31:56] So we're working together, our departments are working together to try to figure that out. Part of the problem right now is it's hard to project the number, since we're seeing this growth in the number of students coming in, it's a little bit harder to project. So we need to go back and I think probably update that analysis. [02:32:13] And as we do that, we're happy to share that information with the board. But off the top of my head, I can't tell you the number of classrooms right now. And another question that I have is who has... I think Dr. Reid wants to address. Yeah, there actually are a number of classrooms as we think about our boundary work upcoming. [02:32:31] And I think one of the goals is around program placement, right, in the boundary conversation. And it's really going to be a matter of how we choose to use some of the classrooms and some of the facilities that have some space. But at the end of the day, it's going to be funding for the program, which VPI money comes to the county, and then the county decides how much the school receives of what they receive. [02:32:57] So I feel like the advocacy that came up earlier is really around our ability to capture more of those VPI seats so that we can work with children in our schools. I was in a classroom last week where they had Head Start, working with our curriculum materials that we've ordered. [02:33:18] So we're already working on letters and beginning sounds and early sight words with our preschoolers. Guaranteed those children are gonna come to kindergarten much better prepared because they've had that experience. It's not just been quote unquote like childcare, right? [02:33:34] or preschool without that level of intention. So anyhow, I think we have more classrooms than we realize, and hopefully the boundary work will help us identify those in spaces where we can make the best use of them. [02:33:50] And Ms. Walty, do you want to add something? I did. Thank you so much. So while we are not-- I don't know that we're actually tracking students who were turned away from pre-K because of capacity, family and school partnerships is tracking the students who have gone through the early literacy program. [02:34:12] And we're just trying to streamline the data right now so that, you know, we can crosswalk, excuse me, but we have at least the last four years of data for students who have gone through HIPPY and our other early literacy programs. [02:34:29] And we're gonna be working together on that. - Thank you. Just a quick question in terms of renovation when you get new space and we can get new spaces can we look at the model of how that space is created because for some reason the rooms for early childhood have shrunk and those kids need more space to move and sometimes they also need the space to take their naps so those spaces have gotten smaller and just because they're smaller people doesn't mean that they need less space [02:34:59] That was a spec issue that has been rectified where I was the recipient of that going through a renovation at Annandale Terrace where we had these very big pre-K classrooms and then they became very small. [02:35:16] The spec went from the 925 down to 600, but there was some conversations and some things agreed upon, I want to say two years ago, so that any, I think it was any school that was in the bond of 21, they had the smaller rooms, but moving forward, they'll be at least 900 square feet. [02:35:41] Sorry. Thank you. I know that I have three board members and go back, and I'm going to give each one of them a minute, but I'll take my turn for just one quick question slash request. [02:35:59] I'm sure that staff is planning on collecting longitudinal data to show to public that, you know, how pre-K experience is going to make a difference. It's making a difference not only just kindergarten readiness, but an impact on maybe reading by third grade as that is our, one of our major metrics under goal three. [02:36:24] Is that, should I, could I assume that? Yes, Mr. Moon. And so we did report out that data point in goal 3 last year on pre-K experiences on reading by third grade. So yes, that longitudinal look at the impact of pre-K experiences. Thank you. Let me go to Ms. Barron, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Seismarizer, the three members on the go back for one minute each. [02:36:47] Okay. So just three things. One, I wanted to follow up on a strategy that was mentioned on slide 43 about collecting information about whether kids had pre-K, I think it's also an opportunity to collect information on whether they have forthcoming siblings that are going to come through the system. So whenever we can capture that, I think it's a good idea. Regarding playgrounds, there was a statement about how much they cost. I know there's kind of not yet -- well, let me say this. I look forward to more consistent plans for playgrounds for everyone, and I And I just think, let's not get too complicated. [02:37:24] Little kids can do a lot with very little space, as long as it's to spec and safe and accessible. Okay. The last thing I want to say is that it just sounds like this is one of the biggest things that we have on the table, Dr. Reed, with the county in terms of negotiating our memorandums of understanding, whether that's for law enforcement or health. [02:37:45] I would much rather the county and us talk about this than talk about the schools potentially taking over something like the crossing guard program which is something that's been on the table so let's talk about this stuff and play to our strengths thanks thank you I have a doctor Henderson okay I just want to kind of focus on the things we actually can control and I would love for you to show me where that is we have some fall readiness data we have some spring readiness data clearly those are not the same cohorts so I would love to see the comparison from last reports fall data to this reports spring data where can I [02:38:25] find that so it is the same cohort the students are taking fall assessments and the same group of students are taking spring assessments if they're the you know given we've got mobility right but potentially the same group of students tell me the pages where it's the same cohort of kids so I can make a comparison because right now I'm a little yeah I think the easiest thing well I can orient you to page 30 is that kindergarten readiness data so that would be the fall data for the kindergartners who were enrolled in the [02:38:57] 23-24 school year and then page 35 is the spring data and that's looking at that sort of first-grade readiness for that same group of students okay so on page 31 what is that group and what is this year that group is taking the same information that's on page 30 and looking at it by pre-k experience versus not pre-k experience got it thank you so I will look at that secondarily I had similar questions regarding how is the programming determined III there was a lot said but I don't think I have clarity how do you determine it's like [02:39:34] it's an itinerant teacher okay walk me through that a little bit please so very briefly most important what programs are available within the school are they co-located if so itinerant models those are school we did itinerant models at schools where we had ECCB classrooms that we could collapse and we had multiple pre-k classrooms in the same school so we collapsed ECCB and consolidated pre-k and ECCB classrooms at a couple of schools do we have more schools that we could do that in yes but this is our first year and we didn't want to test [02:40:13] drive test drive a flop we wanted to make sure that we could see what's working we're piloting we're trying right our paired model classrooms those are where schools are co-located with pre-k and early childhood special ed whatever that early childhood special education program may be it may be pack it may be ECCB and the pre-k classroom being paired with whatever the special education classrooms are at that school so pretty much it's happenstance we [02:40:49] We don't have like a mapping, a comprehensive plan as to where these would be located. We're just taking advantage of what already exists. We're taking advantage of what exists at this moment, yes. And then we are looking to, we're working and moving forward, where might things need to be moved so that we can. [02:41:07] Just to add to that briefly, given some of the constraints we have, like for example, with the ESIP classroom, you need a duly certified teacher to be able to run that. probably. I mean, we don't have the data back from the pilot yet, but I think there's going to be really strong data, right? But we're not going to have all of these teachers that are duly certified. [02:41:27] So we're going to need multiple inclusion models. So that's why we're running the pilot test the way that we're running it right now, is recognizing that, you know, we're not going to be able to just scale one model across the division. We're going to need different models based on the different barriers, whether it's teacher licensure, facility space, whatever the case is. [02:41:45] Thank you. Ms. Pilsen, don't kill me with this last point, but I would love for us to get a comprehensive list of other buildings that we have that are not being utilized as schools, whether it be Graham Road Center, whether it be Lee's, I would like to get a sense of what other spaces are available and how can we better utilize those spaces and what their current capacity is, like who's there, because there's some spaces that have adults that we may not know about. [02:42:13] thank you by the way earlier i didn't want to cut up you know staff from responding to your commenting on uh you know miss marron's remarks on the playground you have anything to say we agree all right with that miss seismar heiser is the last one on the go back list i'll be quick um first i just wanted to sort of save staff some time i know there was a question earlier about 504s and i just wanted to mention that while parents are not required to be part [02:42:46] the 504 team they are required to give consent for any um evaluations that may lead up to a 504 so and they also do have due process rights um but they're not required to be part of 504 but i think most of our teams try to include them so just saved you all some time just thought i'd let you know um and then i have a couple other questions on um when we talk about preschool access and people were saying no to preschool are we looking at the impact of access to child care if you could [02:43:19] pause my time please um and i say that well i can clarify if you want so that is work that we are doing collectively with the county and looking at um child care access and the type of pre-kindergarten child care or pre-school experience families are looking at um the ec early childhood programs and services are currently going through their strategic planning process and while we are looking at [02:43:56] making sure that we have programming to support community needs in terms of the income eligibility things of that nature we're also looking at the types of child care that our community actually needs because we have families that one of the um the challenges with a school scheduled pre-k program is they don't have a job that is school hours so and child care is a challenge for families in that particular case so they may choose a [02:44:32] different option so those are things that we are working towards ensuring that there's accessibility in the community to meet the needs for families that need a different option other than what our school district has to offer [02:44:49] Yeah, that's what I was saying. I think I've heard families say that they can't put their kids in one of our preschool programs because it doesn't meet their work demand hours. So maybe partnering with child care centers on providing some of these services there. And then I just wanted to say that I understand that inclusive preschool is a big change. And we used to do it. We're kind of coming back to it. So it's going to take time. But in the meantime, if we don't look at the structural issues and the change management issues and the service delivery models and the multi-age classrooms and the impact that has on inclusion in a teacher efficacy i think it's going to be hard to have a really successful model and that's what i've been [02:45:24] trying to lift up so thank you thank you just just as a closing comment um i definitely agree i appreciate that ms seismorheiser and just so folks know we are being uh with an expert in the field as a consultant uh on our inclusion model so we look forward to to looking at some of the best practice models from other places in the country to inform our work moving forward thank Thank you. [02:45:48] - Mr. Bloom? - Yes, thank you, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser. The other thing I wanted to mention is that as part of the enhancement plan for students with disabilities, we also have some actions related to program review. We did do some work last year on a program description document to inform some of the work for this year. [02:46:07] So we're gonna be looking at not only our public day sites, but also our school-based programming, like PAC, enhanced autism classrooms, our ID programming, And specifically, we're gonna be looking at the structure, the programming, staffing, and outcomes. [02:46:24] So that'll be part of our enhancement plan work as well. - Okay, thank you so much. With that, our first part of the work session concludes. To be fair to all the staff, including school board, office staff, we'll take a 30-minute lunch break and come back at 1:50. [02:46:48] - Okay, thank you so much. We're gonna go ahead and get started this afternoon on the second part of our work session. All right. So thank you, Mrs. Anderson. This afternoon, we're going to be talking about our boundary proposal plan and getting a pretty much a high-level overview of our project planning and our timeline as we anticipate it moving forward. [02:47:21] So, as a support team working with David Irwin from Through Consulting, we have Janice Szymanski, Lisa Hall, both here, they're working most closely. And of course, I'll be working very directly with the team as well. [02:47:41] So we'll all be available to be part of the conversation with the board. But I'd like to go ahead and introduce David Irwin to begin the presentation. So Mr. Irwin. Hi, thanks. Thank you, Dr. Reed, and good afternoon, board members. I think we're going to be showing a presentation as well. I guess as we start showing it as a just brief introduction, David Irwin, one of the co-founders of a K-12 consultancy called Thru, we work with school districts, divisions across the country, helping them solve their most challenging problems. [02:48:16] Our team consists of former board members, former superintendents of large districts, and former teachers and principals, and we bring that experience to it. And so we've been working with some of the largest systems across the country for the past 15 years, and during the course of our work, we'll bring that expertise of lessons learned examples from other places across the country. [02:48:45] And I should also mention too that we're also joined, we partnered with a firm called Frontline. Frontline is a -- they own a solution called -- they purchased a company called Forecast 5, which was before 5 Maths, which I understand the division used for quite some time. [02:49:01] Frontline has a GIS proprietary solution that helps facilitate the boundary planning process. Currently they're in 170 districts in 29 states across the country, and they have expertise in doing the technical components of helping to develop the boundaries, and they're not new to us. [02:49:18] partnered with them for the past three years and work with them in another district helping to support using their tools to support some work so it's not we're not marriage it was just brought together we've worked with them for the past three years go to the next slide went through this first I wanted to thank both Janice and Lisa and their teams they have their teams have in themselves have spent a considerable amount of time helping us to develop some of the components that are in here and it's starting off to a great working relationship and I'm going to describe some of the rules of the different committees along the way but I wanted to thank them both for their support [02:49:53] helping us to get where we where we are right now first and foremost I wanted to thank the I thank the board for taking on this important work you know typically what happens across the country is that boundary reviews become an annual basis is done annually the superintendent that's supporting us dr. Robert Avosa who came from Palm Beach County where he served in Palm Beach and Fulton before then it was a regular annual process to go through an updating updating boundaries so take doing this for the boldness you know the boldness of those work of doing for the first time in 40 years is is great it's aligned to what [02:50:31] state code says as well and it's a best practice that you know districts and divisions should be doing we know there's a lot of tough work ahead but I applaud the the board for taking on this work and what they did in adopting the new revisions to policy 8130 and in here that your division has a some really good information on your website that articulates what some of the best practices are they're there so I won't necessarily read them but these are the practices that you know that we will be following along for this work these [02:51:09] these are pulled directly from policy 8130 and this will be guiding our work every day this is our guiding principles it's our North Star that we'll be pointing to every single day it's access to programming proximity to where we're not disrupting where families are balancing you know they're responsible around enrollment and capacity and providing you know walking busing limits that limits transportation time around transportation so all of the work that we do will be looked at that through this lens first and foremost and then secondly there are a few other priorities are in board policy as well [02:51:46] and these this is what we'll do as well so before we even get to the point of even starting to look at any any data we will ensure that every single day that we're following these priorities as aligned to the board as a lunch with the board policy says and in having the policy in place allows great guidance for us to be able to carry out and do exactly what the board has intended for the work to be done our next this is a high-level high-level schedule of what will happen between starting now and January 2026 a couple things I just [02:52:25] want to call out to your attention are this pre-engagement analysis and community engagement we don't plan to load to look at a single thing as far as any boundaries until we've collected and received feedback from the community so even though we're showing data collection and some website development the data collection is starting to get frontline loaded with a count and they've already started that process of the county has some great flat files are called to start loading data and we're working with Janice's team to start loading information and the integrations that need to happen with your student information systems so that we have the information available but none of this [02:53:01] information will be looked at until after we complete after we complete the initial stakeholder engagement sessions and in a couple slides later I'll get into what our schedules are for starting that's stakeholder engagement sessions But our plan is to, you know, the websites around, you know, communications that we're going to start, that are starting right now, doing this pre-engagement community work, you know, hopefully ending by February, March, and then starting to the work of starting to look at the analysis. [02:53:33] and we'll be using the feedback that we heard from the community to help guide guide our work and then after that for what any potential communities that are impacted as a result of potential scenarios that's when we start the second heavy part of the community engagement and then eventually we'll get to the point of developing what we think the final scenarios are and my assumption is that there will be several board working sessions where we walk through and present back to the board kind of what our recommendations are based on the analysis that we've gathered from the community sessions from all the work that we've done i wanted to talk a little bit about the core teams that are going to govern the work and these are best practices that [02:54:12] we've done and other initiatives and i'm excited to show you the second one as well so the core project team this is dr reed and her her leadership team so janice and and lisa for sure and i believe marty's part of that as well and we're going to be meeting weekly to talk about issues progress things that come up along the way for keeping us on schedule we have already formed the facilities planning work team that's led by Janice and her team and their focus is going to be on loading all of the you know all of the data the facilities if all the facilities information that are going to really support the technical component of identifying and identifying all of the [02:54:50] components of the boundary and I think we're along the way and you have a pretty robust department as far as the ability to start like loading this information so I think we're well on our way to the next slide from the community communications and community engagement work team this is led by by Lisa and her team and we've already got off to some great work I know that their plans are right now to roll the website out to roll out updates on the website and it's you know from our experience working with other districts it's you have some pretty [02:55:26] robust processes and systems in place that we're going to tap into throughout the engagement. And we also meet on a weekly basis, same with Janice's team we're meeting on a weekly basis. The next is the superintendent's boundary review advisory committee. This was something that was called written into the policy and we're super excited about this work. [02:55:49] In a lot of the work that we've done, we have helped to form similar committees where we're able to be able to share, be able to collect feedback on a very frequent basis, be able to share updates of things that we're considering, and getting feedback from them along the way. My understanding is that that committee is, the invitations are being, our applications are being open today, and there'll be a period of time through the, you know, through the direction of the superintendent to eventually determine who that team is, and my assumption is it's going to be a diverse representation of community members that will help weigh in along the way and this will be a real working group we plan to bring them real [02:56:25] information to allow them to you know give us feedback give us direction on and help us inform with what the eventual you know recommendations and scenarios that we come up with so we're really looking forward to working with that diverse group and then the last along the way is the school board and so the school board will be obviously ultimately providing the direction and our hope is that by the time we come back to present what those final recommendations are, that there's lots of head nodding because you're in agreement that you've had your input along the way and that you were given the information that you needed to be able to make the best decisions and there were no surprises along the way. So that's our hope that [02:57:05] as we start to get to the work sessions that you're not wondering about what's coming up next and what's out there is that there's enough communications that you're very well informed about the work. We are in the midst of starting to use a tool that's going to manage for a project this large and complex. And there's different entities. There's obviously the division and the employees have responsibilities for different things. There's our responsibilities. There's frontline. So we're using a project management tool that's going to help support the development of the individual tasks and dependencies on those tasks. And our plan is, the one that we're using [02:57:45] happens to give you know potentially public facing access we understand how important transparency is for this work so our goal is to be able to be able to publish as we can directly from from the tool to make it as transparent as possible so that the community is fully informed about about the work and the timeline of the work along the way and we're in the midst of having that set up right now obviously loading with some of the details of the plan itself the next around you know some of our community engagement principles and this is something that we have um we have you know done we know this has worked successfully in districts and divisions that we've served you know throughout [02:58:22] the country is you know first and foremost foremost is representation that we're representing all communities and especially marginalized communities we know that um we know that uh you know there will always be you know vocal groups you know that have most interest that will come and sometimes those vocal groups i'm speaking out as a board member sometimes those vocal groups are not always the not always representative of the entire community obviously they have a point of view we want to make sure that we're incredibly thoughtful about how we're engaging all this is going to you know the work that we recommendations will impact everyone and we want to make sure that everyone has a voice so [02:58:58] representation is clear transparency is huge ensuring that we're as transparent as we can about the process which means early communication starting as early as possible to communicate the plan to say what we're going to do and then follow up and do what we say and be able to follow up again and that's that's our goal we will push push the division for ensuring transparency out of the gate collaboration I think that a lot of that's going to be done through you know through I think the work that we get from the superintendent's advisory group to ensure that we're getting the diverse perspectives and then alignment we know that there are other efforts going on right now we want to make sure [02:59:35] that the messaging that we have is aligned to other priorities that are going on in the division at the time these are principles that we've always done with all the districts and divisions we served and we're going to ensure that we follow these things along the way so this is a little bit about the community engagement activities so as i mentioned kind of in our overview the first the first part of our work is the community engagement sessions and i'm going to in the next slide i'm going to share a little bit more about what that schedule will look like or at least a rough sketch of what that schedule will look like for those that can't attend in person we're also going to have virtual sessions [03:00:15] they'll look largely a lot like what we're doing in the public sessions, but they'll be virtual to allow for attendees to be able to, others to attend who can't be there in person. We are going to target surveys, the surveys to the community to get their feedback as well. [03:00:30] We're gonna make sure that when we're asking questions, that we're asking questions that are helping us to, that we understand what we're gonna do with the data when we get the information from those questions. And more importantly, we're gonna make sure that we try and get the most representation again, not just the voices that would typically want to respond. [03:00:47] We want to get as much representation as we can from the entire community. And we have lots of different strategies to be able to do that. I'm grateful for Lisa and her team and the different translation and mechanisms to be able to reach out. But our goal is to try and get a really cross of diverse representation. And we'll be pushing for that throughout the engagement. [03:01:04] And then, as I mentioned, the advisory committee work sessions themselves. We have a cadence that I know that we're going to start forming soon as the committee's formed. and we'll be using them to help us along the way as far as getting feedback from the community and our assumptions that they are our representation of the community. [03:01:24] So we broke down a little bit the first part of this community engagement session. Right now, we're working with Lisa and her team to come up with the exact schedule of dates and understanding the complexity of the schedule that goes into this and finding space and also making sure that we have the right communication so we're giving the right amount of notice. [03:01:45] We're making sure that those, we wanna make sure we're thoughtful about that as well. But our plan right now is certainly before the break of the holiday to have all six regions, have a session in all six regions before we break for the holidays. As you can see, we have lots of dots across the top and how we plan to engage with as many sessions that are needed to following exactly what was in the board guidance around following around regions, around pyramids. [03:02:10] and we're going to have as many as possible but we want to make sure that we get the first six along the way uh first six along the way and our plan is to really help launch those as soon as possible but possible giving the right amount of notice so that everyone has an opportunity to be able to plan for them along the way during that course we hope to also have a few virtual sessions and again this is what we're planning for right now where we can be flexible if we think that we have to have more sessions we can do that as well and then the green dots represent the superintendent boundary review advisory committee when that's going to meet we understand that we want to [03:02:46] probably meet a bit more frequently to begin to get us kicked off and provide the right direction and then that comes into a regular cadence the way we've done this in the past usually meeting about monthly is probably about the right cadence these i my assumption is that these are largely going to be in person so the coordination of bringing 40 people together will take some time But our plan is to be able to bring that team together as frequently as possible. [03:03:09] And these will be real working sessions where they're actually looking at the maps and they're helping us inform us about helping giving us direction. And I'll share a little bit later about what the maps look like and how we plan on engaging them to look at that. [03:03:26] And then we're planning for surveys in January. And our hope is that as we start hearing from the community sessions, so what we've always a best practice we've done is that the community sessions help inform some hypotheses that we have and we use the surveys as a way to kind of you know help help test some of the hypotheses that we've heard as well and again it provides another opportunity for the community to be able to provide voice into the process um this is i think you guys have this presentation so i apologize for a lot of words on this but i wanted to there's a lot of details in there that we want and i'm not going to read through everybody but i just wanted to really kind of so you understood the different [03:04:02] communication channels um you know we have the website which is going to be updated frequently um and working in collaboration with uh with the team with the team um the virtual sessions as as i mentioned that we're going to have um email newsletters uh right now the division has great processes in place for using those newsletters and we're going to tap into those um we also understand how the you know division has plans in place for flyers handouts and posters and we're We're gonna be there to help developing them. [03:04:32] We have best practices for what we've used in other districts and divisions, and we'll be offering for advice for what those can be. We're grateful for the translation department that the division has to make sure that we're translating these as appropriately into the right language. And we're getting as much transparent information into the hands of your families and communities as soon as you can. [03:04:52] And then the board work sessions. My assumption is that in the weekly updates that Dr. Reed gives to the board, that there'll be an update in our work as well. And we'll plan for those briefings so that Dr. Reed can share those updates to the board on a weekly basis. [03:05:09] Make sure he covered anything. This is just meant to be a representative example of the type of communications that, you know, just to look forward to what we will be doing. You know, the first is the website, which has some information on it that should be launched shortly. There'll be community newsletters and certainly the communications around the six sessions. [03:05:27] Our work right now is ensuring that there's enough notice around the sessions so that we can ensure the attendance with the proper notice so that caregivers can make necessary arrangements to be able to be there. In our past, we've used a cadence of understanding like what the modality is, what the date is, what the subject is, and all of those different ways, ensuring that we have well planned out in advance of the type of communications. [03:05:53] And as we start getting into the work, it was great to see Lisa's team had some great examples some you know targeted types of communications and we'll be using our expertise of you know what we think works well to help guide us along the way that's it around independence and objectivity our firm is a independent and objective independence and objectivity is in my dna it's what i've been doing for the past 15 years and so it's i work for a global firm that all we [03:06:31] provided was independent objective advice uh it's in our dna and sometimes we'll be providing information that you know the division or board members might not want to hear but it's the fact based information that's helping to support the right decisions and you can count on us throughout the entire process of being uh independent objective we're using the information that's being provided to us you know through the community sessions and then looking at the information that's coming that's being produced out of the frontline tool to help us make fact base independent objective offer into independent objective advice and you can count on that throughout the throughout the entire course of this this engagement the next is really just kind [03:07:11] of going through some samples through frontline so i work with the frontline team to show you some examples we made some decisions not to show the tool live one it's a very large data set and we're depending upon the inner you know the connection the connectivity because it starts a large data set even though updates happen almost in real time sometimes the timing you know it doesn't happen instantaneously um and i wouldn't want to sit here and having to watch the computer that's the wheel spin while we're waiting for a scenario to to show but i wanted to give you a you know a snapshot as to what the tool looks like so on this uh this this particular image [03:07:49] this shows a uh this shows a particular school zone so the orange section that has a lot of of students in it that those individual dots represent students and just so to be clear this is a fictitious data set because these are individual because this would otherwise represent individual students if this was real live data Fairfax data this would show personally identifiable information so we will never show and this is in front lines you know part of you know what their agreement is we will never show in public settings like you know large public meetings publicly available our personally identifiable information they have a data set they use to show illustrative examples so this is a [03:08:27] anonymized district but it represents what it looks like what what it would look like if it was loaded with with FCPS data so what this shows is a school zone and the orange represents the school zone but then all of the little orange dots are students that are attending that particular that are attending the school that's in the zoned area and where they're coming from the rest of the district there's little different dots of the looks like apples almost of the yellow, blue, and red represent where they're traveling from other schools to be able to get to the school that's within that school zone. [03:09:02] So this is a representation, what it looks like on the left-hand side will show what school they're zoned from and then what school they're going to. And that's, you know, as we start loading the Fairfax data, we'll be able to visually show this, you know, almost instantly. [03:09:17] The next is, and this is what, you know, work that we'll be doing with the boundary review team, and then the teams I mentioned as well. My understanding is once we establish the boundary review team, or the superintendent's boundary advisory group, there will be NDAs in place as we start showing real data for real students that they're under NDA. We'll never hand out, they'll never be adding handouts that they go home with, but we'll want them to see representations of where students are. But this is an example of something that we will do with them as we're considering a potential, like looking at a particular zone. [03:09:54] The area in the middle looks at an area that, in a scenario, looking at a scenario. If we wanted to address this particular area, we would show you this is what it would look like if you made a change to it. And then this is an output of what it would look. [03:10:11] And again, this is in this scenario. When we're looking at scenarios, we can almost do this on a real-time basis and shows what the impact is. This graph represents, on the left hand side of the table, represents the capacity and whether it's under or over capacity. And then when we made that change that I just showed here, it shows what it did to capacity. [03:10:29] So the blue was what happened beforehand, and the orange is what happened after hand. And then similarly, on this particular dashboard, this shows what other factors that are impacting those students. The top left is, I think, I believe, is enrollment. [03:10:47] the top right is by grade, what the impact is. The bottom left is based on free and reduced lunch status. And then on the bottom right is special education. So almost on an instant basis, we'll be able to develop a potential different scenario and show the impact based on all different types of demographics. [03:11:06] And that's work that's gonna guide our work. And because all this information is limited, we'll be able to do that almost instantaneously. We also are going to be loading any other information that is important for work. So if we know that they're walking zones that the division has, we're going to load walking zones. [03:11:22] We're going to load any, you know, if we know that they're apartment, you know, if we know things about new buildings or apartment complexes that are coming into place, we'll have all that information that will allow us to kind of visually represent without having to read through, you know, spreadsheets and spreadsheets to be able to visually represent what that looks like. [03:11:38] And that's the work that we're going to be doing with the advisory group and obviously with the teams as well to be able to come up with those different options. are the last this is getting a little bit more details but this is how the tool supports you know if you know whether it's the that this are small our small working groups are also the advisory group we're gonna be able to create scenarios on the fly and again it will be based on what the what's in board policy and what feedback you know what our guiding principles are and then the feedback that we've got from the community for us to say let's try that let's look at this scenario if we build this scenario what does this look like like. And we'll be able to, you know, on the fly, be able to build those different scenarios [03:12:16] ahead of time. Our hope is that we have a lot of that information ahead of time so that we're spending time actually showing what that looks like as opposed to just building it along the time. And again, our frontline partners, you know, do this on a daily basis. So they already have great ideas for the type of things that we'll want to say. This is a representation of information that we will likely be able to share. I know it looks like little Pac-Mans, but But these are representations of students that aren't identified by personally identifiable information. [03:12:47] We understand that obviously we have to balance both the transparency of being able to show to the public what this looks like, but then also protecting student information. So we believe that we're going to be able to share information like this publicly to be able to show information that represents students and locations that don't necessarily represent you know where where a student lives but gives some information that we find helpful and that's the type of information we'll do to be able to provide that transparency along the way and then really the last slide to share is um this was both both done in omaha public schools [03:13:24] in miami-dade and these are real sites that are live right now when they were you know when in miami-dade i'll give you an example where they do regular updates anyway when they made proposed boundary changes they made a site available so that families could go look at potential impact that would be as a result of a change and then they could give feedback back to the you know back to the district about what that looked like and so we plan to do the same thing too once we come up with initial draft scenarios they'll have access to be able to go see what those scenarios look like and be able to give feedback a question that came up along is like are they going to be able to you know would community members be able to go into plane into the system you know the [03:14:03] answer would that be no because they couldn't we wouldn't want to be able to give up personally identifiable information but from a transparency perspective and this has worked well you know as frontline has worked with this across the uh across um you know all the districts that they serve to be able to give real access to a tool to be able to go in and look at the potential impacts and you know you know have an understanding as how it might impact them and their families and their students so just one last slide on next step so um we're in the process right now of working with the teams to you know to start scheduling these first six sessions uh as soon as we can and obviously arranging the logistics um and the actual composition of what we're going to do during [03:14:42] those sessions themselves um you know continue the communications um you know continue to build out the website and all of the communications that will go along with this this work and then uh we already know that janice's team is underway and starting to start collecting the data and the integrations that need to happen right now so that by the time we get to start looking at data we have that information loaded right now. So those are kind of our next things that are in our horizon right now that are being added into our detailed project schedule that we're developing right now. So that that concludes my I guess formal presentation and I guess I'll open it up [03:15:17] to questions from from the board. Mr. Dunn. So I have a bevy of questions. Okay. And that's reflecting I want to give you the chance to to answer questions that I'm getting from the community okay so I'll start with can you tell the community a little bit more about why through consulting is is qualified to do this work who's on the team why they have the requisite background and maybe a little bit about your background and how work you may have done previously at other organizations [03:15:56] you bring that to through and how that ties in with other people's experience great okay I'll start I'll do my best to try and answer all that in the best I can so I I spent almost 15 years at a company called Gartner which an international research and advisory firm and I led their go global k-12 education practice they had lots of different disciplines that are part of it my co-founder and I wanted to focus exclusively just on k-12 and you know we're driven by student achievement for all kids, and that's why we founded what we did, so we could focus just on K-12 and just on helping to solve the most challenging problems facing kids. [03:16:34] So our team comprises, so I've worked in almost every single large district in some capacity over the past 15 years. New York State Department of Education is our currently largest client, and we've worked in districts and divisions as small as the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska everywhere in between so we bring that expertise so though you might see a small team we come from a global firm that has done this for 15 years prior to coming to do this work so i could understand thinking a smaller firm but we come from a large one our advisory team is consists of the former president of our company as part of our advisors that got just along the way [03:17:14] our team itself includes first and foremost dr robert avosa dr avosa is a former superintendent from palm beach county schools the ninth largest district in the country previously he was the superintendent full county schools which is in georgia about the 25th biggest district in the country robert's not a uh something that we just came for convenience i served him as a consultant when i was a gartner at both full county schools and palm beach county schools and we've worked together for the past decade or so on any large engagement like this he usually supports us and provides that guidance. He has done this exact boundary work for, has done this exact boundary [03:17:54] work for the past 10 years or so. We're relying on his guidance. The rest of our team includes consultants that have both consulting, large consulting experience, but all come from a teaching background. All of our other consultants come from being former teachers, principals, and have come into this role as well. Trying to think if there's anything else. And then we partnered with frontline education because of their expertise in actual doing the technical parts of the of the boundary of the boundary technical work of aligning the different boundaries our work you know that we have do with [03:18:30] almost every engagement we serve is around community engagement it's around engaging these sessions that I've explained before it's around the communications it's around the data analysis and it's around the independence and objectivity so that's the expertise that we bring and I think if you spoke to any one of our districts or divisions we would speak they would say that that's the lens that we brought brought to the work we are uniquely qualified to perform this work and you know frontline is as I mentioned before they're not a new entity to us we've partnered with them for the past three years this wasn't we just found a firm to partner with we've worked with them we know what their tool looks like and then I guess one other thing I could I [03:19:07] could also say is I led this work for over a year in Houston Texas at you know one of the most you know contested you know districts at the time about this work so I live this boots of this work and what it meant and what some of the underlying issues that I know will come up along this work so the only difference in that work compared to this one is and this one is directed to you know the superintendent's leading in that case we were engaged directly with the board this was a board initiative we were engaged directly with that work I hope that answers I think yeah it does um can you so it's been 40 years in Fairfax County we've got piecemeal revisions throughout that time causing a lot of [03:19:46] different issues is have you seen either or personally worked on or have there are you aware of any other districts that have gone that length of time without doing a comprehensive county-wide or district-wide school boundary revision no I mean Houston was one that didn't but now generally like this is best practices that divisions district do this often you should do it based on the emergent needs that happen. [03:20:11] So no, a question that will come up, and I think that we're going to add this, as part of our community sessions, it will be part of an education too. So some feedback that we got earlier is during the process of education, be able to illustrate how this is something that is something that other divisions do often. [03:20:31] And if we can give representative examples, especially everyone seems to care locally about what happens locally, and we can show how this is something that's regularly done. And we plan to bring that education along the way. But no, not adjusting it in 40 years, it's not something that's typically done. [03:20:46] But, and again, I applaud the board for taking on this important work. It's, you know, decisions should be made in what's best interest for all kids. And this is an example of doing something that's in best interest of all kids. - How long had it been in Houston before they undertook boundary revisions? [03:21:03] - I don't know, in this scale, I don't think they ever did. I honestly don't think they ever did. And their main reason, their driver for doing it was that they had incredible over enrollment at lots of schools and then they had under enrollment at lots of other schools. I know that Dr. Avosa, when he was the Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools, he came in and they ended up taking on this work. [03:21:26] That was about 10 years or so ago, but at the time it hadn't been addressed and they had some significant financial issues that they had to make some of those decisions at the time. a driver to doing you know a you know just unfortunately a driver for sometimes making these decisions knowing that we need to do something is when it's too late when we've got to a point that we have crazy over enrollment at some schools and under enrollment in other schools if you're making these things frequently then you know some of the impact is you know less as it could be right now do you have access or are you aware of data that would show that changing school boundaries and the county such as ours would not have an [03:22:05] significant adverse impact on home values because whether you're have kids in the system or you're the 70% of residents who don't have kids in the system that's your number one concern yeah I mean we can try to show what I could say is I don't think it's gonna it's you know changing the perceptions of families that have made decisions to move to certain places because if I understand that I understand you know as a parent as a community that matter you move to a certain place because of the schools and all of a sudden the school that you move to is you know a boundary changes and it can change the school my hope is that as you're providing access to all students and you're trying to [03:22:42] afford all students that you know an excellent education across all your schools then a difference between one school and another school shouldn't make a difference and I think that we're if that's information that we need to help gather and bring along the way to help make that decision to help you to help this board be informed that's what we will do a lot of our work we do along the way as we help gather together what leading research says and be able to make it in a consumable way that you can use, because obviously you all each have your own constituents and to be able to share that that way. [03:23:14] So I understand where community members are coming from. I could understand that, but helping us to break some of those myths and understanding that my hope is that the belief is that you can have, that any student can have a great education and should have the same experience at any school that they go to across the division. [03:23:31] I appreciate that, but that wasn't exactly what the community is telling us and what they believe that will eventually help us inform when we do have the data, when we start looking at the -- and also getting ideas of what they would want. They're telling us. They're saying this is what you should be doing. [03:23:48] This is information you should be looking at. So we're using these sessions. If we came there with scenarios that we've already planned out, we're not allowing them to voice what they care about. So this is us allowing, like, authentically be able to listen to them and hear what their concerns are and again because we're doing this independently objectively we're gonna be able to report back to this board and say this is what we've heard from the community so you know it's our teams are gonna be facilitating these sessions it's us that's gonna be collecting and synthesizing this information and this is the information that we're gonna be presenting back to the back to the board can you talk a little bit about you know people are scared there's a lot of fear and uncertainty and so they don't understand the why the rationale for these changes and you put up what's in [03:24:27] the policy but beyond that can you explain how do you explain to people this needs to happen change must happen for all these reasons how do you put that together how do you present it yeah I mean I think I mean if if if it's available to us and we can show some of the current like that showing right now of what you know what this situation looks like if the overcrowded attention schools or the you know some of the funding you know that's associated because of what you have in place right now those those are things that I mean obviously we these are all things that we've said at the beginning of our presentation of things that we'll look at if we believe that having some of those facts along the way can help support that again at this these opening [03:25:05] sessions we're not trying to convince community members of anything we're really just trying to listen to them there is a part that we're going to give them you know obviously information about the process and why it's so important but we're not trying like our plan is to really to listen and if we can give information that can help them you know elicit kind of some some actual some feedback from us, that's what we want. But our goal is not to come at them and try and convince them of these beliefs that we have. We want to learn and hear what their fears are, hear why they don't want the division potentially making these changes, or if we are making them, what are the considerations that we need to make as we're potentially [03:25:42] going into this work. This isn't our first time doing sessions like this and again our the best way for us to do it is to try and you know through through obviously through you know incredibly facilitated conversations to be able to get authentic feedback from them I think that that's what the board wants and our plan is to give that authentic feedback but but in listening you also have to explain to them that this is happening we are revising the boundaries and how do you make that clear that change is happening yeah that's inevitable but we want to hear your feelings about the change how do you how do you I mean if I can go back to like we're gonna show them like this is [03:26:21] our skin this is our schedule we're saying that there are new scenarios that are gonna be presented to the board and this is our part of getting their feedback along the way to help inform eventual decisions that need to be made I hope that answers your question I'm trying to yeah okay okay we're gonna go to dr. Anderson and then miss Marin thank you so much just a quick question regarding the community input you articulated that until all of that information is pulled there will be no scenarios that are built how do you go [03:26:57] about evaluating that community input let's say for example all of it falls within the principles it just seems to be a matter of preference how do you decide where to lean into is it because you're looking for a majority of the people to speak to that can you give a little bit of an example from your experience yeah so i mean i think like i mean ultimately like i what i know will start to emerge is it will be themes that come along the way um and i think for us the first part is just collecting the raw feedback that we're getting we're going to be collecting raw feedback um in each of the sessions we're going to be synthesizing what we hear into potential different themes [03:27:35] and then we'll can we'll be comparing and seeing if we can find some similar themes that are coming along the way from the other sessions that we've conducted so you know our our what we take is lots of information that's being given to us through the individual voices and we need to present it in a way that's consumable to the to this board so I the only way for us to do that is to authentically listen to what they're saying collect themes and you know our goal is not to give you a 300 page list of a verbatim of what every single stakeholder has said it's to be able to synthesize that information but then I think that we're going beyond that like we're going we know that there's only going to be certain voices that are come to the meetings we hope that a lot come but then that's where we're going to use [03:28:14] the surveys to kind of validate some of the hypotheses that we're drawing from the community sessions and what we're hearing in the sessions is that I know when I answer a lot I'm not sure if I know you definitely got there you actually went ahead and previewed my next question which is we do have parts of our constituencies that are very engaged and we have others who are less vocal or less able to participate how do we ensure that that voice is also included it may not be surveys it may not be the in-person meeting I don't know well in the format of at which in which you may devise it so I want to be sure that we are going to be as intentional as possible to ensure that we [03:28:53] have representation in terms of who we're hearing from we have a situation at Fairfax County where we have a lot of squeaky wheel that gets the grease I want to be sure that we have representative sample of the feedback yeah and to be frank you're not picking on any work that's been done in the past but we did look at the previous you know work that was done and the surveys were not very represented they were not representative of the entire community um and that that will not happen with us we will you know whatever we need to do to ensure that we get the right representation we want a cross representation i mentioned the vehicles that we plan on using um it's the tactics that [03:29:31] we're using to be able to ensure that we get that representation um and if we have to take more time because you know for example we're not getting you know i think our first we have a lot of sessions planned, you know, we'll see what the turnout looks like at the first six, and if we think that we're not getting the right type of representation, we need to look at strategies to be able to, you know, to get the right engagement. [03:29:50] And then same with surveys. Oftentimes, we do lots of strategic plans, and during that time, we'll watch kind of what our expectation is around the type of survey responses that we would want, and if it isn't working, we'll use different tactics, whether it's we need to engage our principals and, you know, some type of, you know, campaign for them to be able to get that engagement out and you know offering um you know really that's what we've done effectively is used our principles to really you know use that message principles seem to be the west best way and they're the most trusted resource to be able to get to families obviously you know the other part is and this is where we'll be leaning on the advisory group is um uh is the community that [03:30:27] doesn't necessarily have students in the division but have an interest too you know getting making sure that we have their representation as well as their taxpayers here as well no i appreciate that I think you do have a point with principals having an opportunity to reach out to parts of their community, but I would be remiss if I didn't raise our family liaisons who are trusted by the parts of our community for a number of reasons. [03:30:48] There are some cultural commonalities and language commonalities, and plus that's the work that they've been doing for a number of years, so I want to make sure that there's room for those individuals to continue to connect with those parts of our community. [03:31:06] Can you speak a little bit, if this is applicable to any other work that you've done, because it is an issue here, how we should be thinking about or how you will be engaging and responding to great schools and niche ratings when it comes to community discussions? [03:31:21] Yeah. I mean, this, unfortunately, I mean, niche schools is run by a marketing company, and the marketing company is to get, you know, viewers to look at their page. Unfortunately, you know, it's the first things that parents see, you know, when parents look on Zillow. They look at great schools. It's a component of great schools. Even though great schools does aggregate data that comes from assessment scores, my guess is that you face this every single day. This is where I think the superintendent's advisory group comes to having that narrative around how community members look and whether that's [03:32:01] engaging the real estate community and for how they're communicating what that what that looks like is important this problem i understand it this isn't necessarily even a bad this is a problem that all districts and divisions face along the way um of being critical of a district or or parents potentially making a decision based purely on something that they see by a company that's run by marketing when i actually when i when i ran for the board um many moons ago in in my community I actually wrote an article around trust. [03:32:29] Why is it that families trust a niche? I actually did a little bit of investigation and saw that their top data person, previous background was like a junior analyst at some small little marketing company or something like that. I understand how it becomes a focus, and I think the division can do a lot to kind of flip that narrative on why that shouldn't be something. [03:32:51] Sure, but I wonder, when you talked about doing some education with parents regarding a multitude of things, could that be one of the components just to set some context? It certainly can be because my guess is that there's going to be a lot of concern. If I'm moving from a school that's rated by niche in this place and the boundary changes, you know, a parent's belief is that all of a sudden my kid's not getting the same education in a different school. [03:33:12] So being able to communicate, you know, help work to communicate why, you know, what's being provided in one school is the same or better, you know, the same as another school is important. So the answer is, I understand what you're saying, and it sounds like that's some work for us to do, but this isn't, you know, this is something that, you know, it's something that, you know, unfortunately every district faces. [03:33:35] Okay. Lastly, you talked a little bit about a site that was made available in the previous divisions that you've worked with. Can you give a little bit more detail, because I think I missed regarding what you said was available for parents to just kind of play around with and get some more information on their own? [03:33:53] And they're active right now, so you can actually, you know, go to Miami-Dade Public Schools or Omaha Public Schools right now. And you can plug in any, if you just, it starts typing in an address. You have to know what an address is, but if you type like 123, like an address will pop up. And it will show like what your zone, which in the case of Miami-Dade, it's live right now. [03:34:10] But when they were going through their scenarios, it was a way for them to be able to show potentially this is what the impact could be with this particular scenario. What's there now is live. And there's lots of different variables that you can put in there as far as, like, if there's different particular programming that you want to put in place. [03:34:25] So it's not just strictly about the boundaries. It's the type of programming that may or, you know, could be available to those schools. And our hope is to be able to use that as we come up with these potentially new scenarios, be able to show this is potentially what it looks like, and then be able to collect feedback from the community based on what's in there. [03:34:41] And again, this is outside of going, you know, being able to, we can't share this, the tool itself that one that we're working with because it has publicly you know it has I'm sorry personally identifiable information on it but this is a way for and again we're doing we think this is a great mechanism to be able to provide that transparency back to the community so they can actually log in yeah or they can go on and put their their own address and and understand what that impact and that is going to be a tool that you're making available in this process yep absolutely thank you can you talk a little bit more about you You mentioned Miami-Dade and Omaha, that this tool is still open and available. [03:35:18] Is this because they're continuing to do their process every year? They are, but it's also for, it's like a school finder so that parents can, if someone's moving into the community or they want to make a change, they can understand without having, they can see where they're, there's, and we would have access to that long term as well. You actually, in part of the separate contract that you, with Frontline, is that you have access to that too. [03:35:37] So I think almost, yeah, that is an available tool that can probably even be used. don't want to speak too fast for how when it can be used but it's something that could even be used now and it's a pretty robust tool i think they're you know there's only if i think there's only one or two firms that even do something like that there might i know a lot of districts have their own homegrown ones and this might be one of them but it is something that's it was made available during during and i don't want to speak completely out of it because it's it's front lines but i i'm pretty sure that that's that's an available that's being used right now or can be used right now as soon as it's loaded when when it's ready to be used dr reed would that be a separate contract [03:36:11] contract, or is this within the boundaries of this contract? The Frontline contract is a software license, actually, so it is a separate procurement process. [03:36:27] But that option was built into the contract, allowing access. Again, I can't speak for how long it could be, like when it could be set up and ready to use, but the idea is that it could be used now as a resource outside of the work eventually of getting to the boundaries of the boundary work. [03:36:45] - Thank you. And last question for Ms. Hall. Do we already have a landing page for all things boundaries where all of this will be included? - We do have, excuse me, we do have a page that we've used for the process, the policy process. [03:37:04] There will be a separate, I have Executive Director Beth Visioli from communications here. There will be a separate page so that there's no confusion, that we've gone through the process with the school board adjusting the policy, and this page will be all things boundary review. [03:37:23] - Okay, thank you. If we can just make sure it's easily available, because sometimes it's hard to navigate our sites, even though I know we've had some additional work be done. And my last comment is, Dr. Reed, we know that there's lots of eyes on this process. We know there are a lot of interested parties, and we know there's a lot of hesitation. [03:37:42] To that end, I think as transparent as we can be as quickly as possible would be important because the posting of this didn't happen until today and we know the community is watching. I would love to hear how come we didn't get this posted a little bit sooner. [03:37:58] Legal confirmed the PowerPoint late yesterday. Someone legal confirmed the PowerPoint. We were able to post it. If we could just kind of stick to what I think we've all talked about in terms of timeline for posting that would be really important particularly in a hot topic topic issues such as this one. Ms. Marin. And then Ms. Dixit. Yes thank you I'm pleased to see this timeline I think I just want to confirm I thought the study was going to be presented in January 26 I guess I was mistaken I don't know if anyone else had that understanding but it will be coming to us sooner so that [03:38:38] is great and I will need to inform some people that I misinformed about that so apologies. In the beginning with the designation of whose role is it I didn't see any officer of the chief academic office and we've talked about how boundaries can impact the availability of academic programs can you speak dr. [03:38:56] Reid about the role of the instructional services or chief academic officers office sure they're gonna have a role in the conversation for sure but they're not necessarily in terms of setting up the if you will student locations and all of the pieces that have been put into place thus far dr. Presidio will be joining Miss Hall and Miss Szymanski in conversations moving forward as those are relevant well I could I mean even this morning I think we had some conversations about you know well the buses go this way to get a kid to this program and that so it does seem that there needs to be some regular [03:39:34] involvement so I would like to hear more on that or maybe my colleagues want to share or is there a way that we can solidify that to make it more consistent Well, they're going to be represented on the advisory committee, and that will be the committee that's meeting most regularly. [03:39:50] Okay. Well, to that topic, can the board receive language so we can advertise that opportunity for community members and people to apply to that advisory committee? That invite will be going out this afternoon, actually, from my office. So can we share that? [03:40:06] I would like to make sure that we get a copy so I can share that, right? Because it's to everyone, or is it not to everyone? all families um this afternoon okay but we can certainly share the link uh to that that'd be great yeah yes thank you and regarding that is there a special uh number of seats for students to be on that and provide their student input we're still evaluating that we feel like to actually have the student representation from around the division we would use the two groups the seals group and the sack group because they actually have the largest student voice and representation [03:40:42] Also, our student board member is on the SAC group, and it's really in terms of being manageable in terms of a steering committee, we're already at, I think, 40. So I think the SEAL and SAC group will have a lot more student voice be relevant. [03:41:00] And I've already spoken to the SAC group about it. Thank you. It's great to hear you using that. Well, to put forth a recommendation of both our current and past student board rep, they have asked that the advisory period in high school be a place where they can engage in current event topics whether that's the state accountability or perhaps this topic and I'm recalling when we first did the strategic plan I believe there was facilitated times in all grades where the students were led through like here's your time to give your input is that something that you're considering for this exercise I think the students really are going to drive that I think it's certainly time we could use but I think they also have [03:41:38] some other ideas that they want to lead you know within their campus they have different ways of doing surveys too well I was wondering about that too and if these community engagement sessions you know will there be real-time polling you know and visuals that kind of thing I hope it could be a little more what people are used to how is this timeline dovetailing with the middle school start time change work you know I think that's a great question that work started pre me right so and it kind of I believe is slated Andy's here I think [03:42:14] it's slated to come to you in January in a work session January 25 like this January and I think we have to kind of hear what they bring to the table to better understand how they may how that work dovetails okay that might be something worth sharing with the public because I hear about that all the time from parents like when are you gonna get to us are you gonna change it and we had talked about possibly a next fall implementation so whatever that may be I think people would find that helpful one thing I saw missing with the comms was social media I don't know if there's going to be money for ads to recruit [03:42:48] people or inform people but that would be helpful I think and I think that's it thank you mistakes it thank you for the presentation my question is about the methodology for data collection and data analysis, what tools are you going to be using? [03:43:15] I mean, I think so that the two sets of data that we're going to be using is the qualitative data that we're collecting from the community sessions. So that's one set. There is obviously the survey data, which then we'll compile, which will both be, there'll be both opportunities for scoring things along a scale, as well as the qualitative, you know, open-ended text we get along the way but then the data analysis we're going to be using heavily using the tool we're going to be using the frontline tool so i showed some examples of if i go back to it it it allows us to be able to generate incredible amount like the data is going to come directly [03:43:51] from here so this is our way of ensuring that there's objectivity and we're using real data so this all of the data is coming from a division provided data that's loaded into here we also understand that this potentially questions about the validity of some of the data and we're going going to be independently looking at that that work I think that's we've we've done that in several other engagements supporting other districts so we understand and my guess is also we're going to hear this from the community about the data about the validity of the data so we'll be using that so our plan is to help you know with our own kind of independent validation of it but the analytics that we're using is largely going to be that's coming from from the tool obviously there'll be other manipulation that we're going to need to [03:44:29] do but we're not using other that are right now we don't have other plans to use other statistical software or others so it's generally but this is a very rich tool that allows us you know almost instantly to be able to see graphs and charts for a previous project that I did with frontline you know sometimes we had to extract and do kind of our own analysis using you know you know basic you know pretty basic spreadsheet stuff but we again this is a very rich tool and we plan to use the capabilities that are coming directly out of the tool so is Is it your personal experience with Frontline that you chose to go with this data provider for analysis? [03:45:07] Yes. And just because of the robot -- and again, I'm not a salesperson for them, and I don't -- I just -- it was so easy for us to be able to -- like, as an example, we could draw a polygon on a map, like literally hand draw it, and say, "What do those students look like?" [03:45:23] And output instantly gives information about demographic information about those kids, special information and allowed us to really quickly analyze and come up with you know a decision about a particular scenario so I think that's what we used if when I previously mentioned the work that in Houston we partnered with a company called decision inside at the time they've been since acquired by by power school I think but our experience was that you know we had this great relationship and working with frontline which is why we wanted to partner with them on on this work you know if they were here they could show the tool well I think they did not want to show it live because of the spinning issues, but it sounds [03:46:00] like you probably have an analytical interest, too, and it brings the right analytical experience or functionality that we want. Yeah. In my day job, we have to use different tools, NVivo and PSS, Python, there are different ways to do qualitative analysis, quantitative. [03:46:20] Dr. Reed, the contract with Frontline, is it going to be coming at the same time, it's already awarded? I know that procurement is handling it because it's a software subscription. It's not a consulting contract. [03:46:35] So there's a different approval process for that. Okay. Because it has to come in on the same timeline because all the data they're collecting has to then go in that system. That's correct. Correct. Okay. other question was about the execution the project plan looks great but as you said you know we are a big county and but you have handled big county no wrong problem but how often is your team going to be here what assurance can you give us to be timely completion of this project as you see it's very high stake [03:47:09] and and basically all of us are very interested in making a on time completion yes so as far as asking the first question about on-site so for any of the community sessions we're going to be here on site you know we in our proposal we had up to 72 sessions to be able to host um we obviously i my assumption is that all of the uh all of the uh superintendent advisory group meetings those will all be in person as well and then any of the board working sessions are going to be um they're going to be in in person as well um we you know we understand the demands of getting to january and where we see risks along the way we're going to um you know [03:47:46] we're going to bring that that you know bring that to our groups and eventually we'll make its way back to the board and weekly i'd like to say guarantee that we're going to be on schedule but you know that a lot of that depends on you know that you know if you know a lot of that depends on the division and being able to move as fast as we can um as far as assurances go uh we have We have 100% track record with any district we've ever served, ever, and not to say that over time we've had complications along the way. [03:48:13] We had one project that didn't, you know, a bunch of years ago in Austin ISD that didn't go so great, and we corrected it. So I think, you know, you'd be welcome to speak to any district, any board member that we've ever served before and know that, like, at the end of the day, we're always there. [03:48:29] And more than anything, we're flexible to be able to -- we don't come with a rigid timeline And if we are rigid, we have to follow this exact process, we adapt along the way. And I think if you were to talk to other board members that have worked with us, they would say the same thing too. [03:48:47] We know that we're going to have to adapt often, and we're going to have to adapt to things that come up along the way. And that's our plan. More than anything, we're a trusted advisor. And we hope to, through demonstrating, we hope to demonstrate that trust over the coming months. Thank you so much. [03:49:02] As about that data dashboard, I believe frontline tool can be used to do some data dashboard. I think it would be helpful for our audience and stakeholders to be able to see them on the website boundary that how it's going to work and the work in action basically. [03:49:21] This is just, again, a representative example, but this is like there's a million different ways that we can be able to present information on a dashboard. So we'll be looking for, obviously, the guidance that we'll get from the division. And obviously, I'm sure that the board is going to be saying for things that they want to see. [03:49:39] But our plan is to be able to, as transparently as we show, is to be able to show a dashboard of information along the way. Now, this is regarding students, but, like, we also have a dashboard on our project as to how we're using JIRA to be able to then report, like, our tasks on time. You know, are there delays in any particular tasks or dependencies? [03:49:57] So we have our own kind of internal dashboards, and our plan is to be as transparent as we can. And again, knowing that there are so many different parties that are going to be involved in this work between communications, between facilities, between the front line team, between our team. So that's our plan to be able to manage kind of large and complex projects like this. [03:50:15] And I appreciate your background and experience to be able to understand what that looks like. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Mr. Moon, and then I'm going to take a turn. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions that slide number six has four large priorities and then the next page we have other priorities that we would be considering or we could be considering [03:50:52] as we make a decision on boundary changes and obviously we are going to be using your expertise and your service to come up with some options, some recommendations for the board to consider. As you do that, you're going to have to consider these priorities. [03:51:11] And these priorities in our policy are only listed in alphabetical order. And so how would you be applying these priorities to formulate, come up with your recommendations? I'm sort of envisioning because we're doing comprehensive countywide a boundary changes boundary change there could be you know multiple areas perhaps would [03:51:41] you envision yourself applying sort of like same criteria or formula if I want to put it that way in coming up with a real recommendations or it could be when When you look at these, apply these priorities, you will be more of art rather than science or formula. [03:52:06] So depending upon the location, you could be putting more weight on one over another. Is that? Yeah, that's it. Thank you. Did I cut you off before you finish your question? Yes. Okay. Then I'll probably have a follow-up. [03:52:22] So what we've done often, and I assume it will be something that we apply here, where we develop like these different solutions scenarios where we use different criteria. And sometimes that criteria, some criteria is weighted more than others. And we can show the impact, we would like to be able to show the impact of a scenario that's based on a criteria. [03:52:41] So we might weigh, you have four main areas and then you have, I think there are eight subsequent ones. Obviously we won't be evenly be able to apply them all. There's going to have to be some compromise. If we do, if we're prioritizing one priority, it might have an impact on another. [03:52:58] And so I think our plan is to be able to show through how we've done this a lot. It's developing a solution scenario where we show, we kind of figure out the weight of a particular criteria. And we sometimes do that in color coding, showing like red, yellow, green, like it's high impact, and then be able to collectively show across all of our criteria so you can kind of cleanly see like how much of this particular scenario change will have an impact on any one of these particular areas. [03:53:24] We've used that, I think, that mechanism quite often. So if you can imagine, there would be a solution, I wish I had an example to show you, but it's a, we would have all of the criteria, which is your priorities listed in one kind of row. And then we would have this scenario and we would have some weighting and we'd probably, you know, some color representation to be able to show what that looks like. [03:53:46] So you could see, you know, where are the particular, of a particular scenario, how much is it impacting any one of the different criteria. So we'll look to the guidance from, obviously, the direction of the superintendent for what's best way because again you have i mean the four the four top ones are obviously the most important but obviously you have the other ones there because you you both also believe that they were important so um our goal is to be able to show you you know and and obviously we're if if we need to weight one criteria or other we're going to show you this is an impact if we're prioritizing this particular priority area um this is potentially how an impact it could have on another and you know our goal is we're not going to make these [03:54:26] decisions for you we're going to be presenting what we believe to be the right recommendation and understand the implications of those decisions that it might have i mean i understand ultimately it's going to be the board that's going to be a making the decisions perhaps putting a different weight on different priorities you know listening our policies however you are going to be the one for the coming month with either one strong recommendation for you know one area or multiple recommendations for us to consider for one area but when you have multiple areas and at the end [03:55:04] of the day our decisions or your recommendations seem to be applying different ways depending upon the locations are we then going to be faced with the criticism that we're not being consistent yeah I mean it's a it's a it's a fair point and again our our plan is to bring you that you know fact-based information in a way that can support that your decision-making obviously I mean right now that there is in your policy there's no particular weight these are the these are top priorities and these are you [03:55:40] know the secondary priorities so I think that we would ultimately you know we don't want to make the decisions as to what priority is more important than another but if we believe you know if if we will come to with a recommendation if we believe that one of these priorities is in conflict with another and tell the board that you know you prioritize access of programming well it has an impact on these different areas and what that implication is so again we are you know no are we know this is incredibly complex information and our job is to be able to give it to you as clean as you know as easy for you to be able to [03:56:16] understand and then really more than anything understand the implications of the of you know of a potential recommendation you know I pose those questions to you in part because of my past experience having dealt with some of the tougher boundary decisions that bold really rested with you know putting different weight right on different different factors and we're probably not gonna be immune from that as you move forward I'm sorry yeah they're gonna be tough decisions but our hope in plan is to give you fact-based information so [03:56:55] that you can make the right decisions and feel confident about the decisions that you're making I'm not gonna doubt that you're gonna give us a fact-based recommendations and the board will make fact based decisions but when when we apply fact based those facts are not consistent depending upon location that's where we get into trouble right I understand the work that's ahead of you the tough decisions that you guys will have to make okay I'm gonna go ahead and take a turn first I want to say thank you because what you have presented here is what the work that the governance committee did in order to put the [03:57:33] policy together so it is very refreshing to see the work plan that actually directly outlines the work that the board intended so I appreciate your diligence that happened and that staff support to ensure that that happened the question that I had for you is related to survey data we've had some genius children that have shared survey links and we've also have we have some bad actors across the country that have decided to influence surveys in the past Yeah. [03:58:02] And so I would love to know, are we planning on sending specific surveys to parents that are one-time use kind of surveys? I mean, it depends. I mean, I'm not sure. We haven't got to developing the surveys. I don't know what tools the division has in place right now, but there are ones that have, you know, have a link that once they complete it, they can't complete it again. [03:58:20] Obviously, I would recommend that. We don't, you know, we don't come with any particular tools. We can recommend ones that work. With a division this large, my guess is that with the same that you survey anyway, that you have some, I know a few of them of what they are, and my assumption is if you have them, then it prevents that from happening. [03:58:38] So I appreciate that, but I also appreciate that, again, we're getting to the right communities and asking the right questions. I learned a long time ago is ensuring that when we ask a question, that we know exactly what we want to do with it when we get that data. And I found like more times than not, the surveys that I've seen in the past that like, Like, I don't understand what we're gonna do with that data that we get. [03:58:58] And so like, again, because we're gonna be using the community sessions before we get to the surveys, I think more than anything, we're gonna be kind of test, using it to kind of test our hypotheses. And again, understanding that the survey data is just one piece of information. [03:59:13] So, you know, not new to it. Sometimes often though, like getting some of the verbatim feedback is really, really helpful. Obviously having quantitative data is great, but being able to pull through the qualitative data has always been helpful. And my assumption is that when we eventually present back to you kind of like interim steps along the way, we're gonna be including some of that interim feedback along the way, but what we've done before, and that's helped kind of inform some of our decision-making. [03:59:40] - And I'm sure that with your experience working with large school districts like ours, that sometimes we do have influences from across the country that we're dealing with as well. So I appreciate your sensitivity to that. are you planning on, and I'm throwing this question out there randomly, but are you planning on having discussions with some of us related to issues that have already bubbled up in terms of concerning areas that we, or folks that have already reached out with concerns, are we gonna just go straight to them? [04:00:11] - So right now it's not in our proposal. We can, a lot of our engagements, we usually have one-on-one board meetings with every board member just to understand, make sure that we understand their concerns. It wasn't something that was put in our scope and asked to do. We do it quite often, but it's something of the collective board effects. [04:00:30] I'll leave that to Dr. Reid. - It's very possible that it could just be a survey that you provide us, that we would be able to share some information. Just not that our opinion reigns supreme at all, but also just helps you have a little bit more information about what you're walking into in different locations. [04:00:47] - I mean, at the end of the day, distance is your decision-making. We want to make sure that by the time you get to that eventual decision-making, that you feel confident. And so, obviously, through some of the checkings that we're doing with Dr. Reed and the information she's sharing, is that you feel confident about the process. And along the way, as I know you will give feedback to the superintendent, that we're adjusting along the way so that you do feel confident. This board has asked some really tough and thoughtful questions. And I'm doing my best to try and answer what I think that I can, but knowing that like having the right thoughtful time to make sure that we're getting answers to your questions and are doing the necessary research or ensuring [04:01:24] that we have the right type of scenarios in place like that, that's our goal. And my, again, my assumption is that you have lots of mechanisms for how you meet with the superintendent and the superintendent will relate to us and we'll be adaptive to be able to adjust so that you have the information and you feel confident about the information that you're getting along the way. [04:01:41] Perfect. Well, I know we all look forward to working with you. Thank you. Do we -- we have Mr. Dunn for a go-back. Is anybody else interested in a go-back? Okay. Mr. Dunn. So slide nine, you list the members of the core project team and the facilities planning working team. [04:02:00] Does the chief equity officer, Dr. Nairos-King, have a role on either of those committees? Okay. I just want to make sure someone who's lends is equity since, you know, one Fairfax. How many seats are there on the advisory committee? [04:02:21] We are framing it -- it's likely to. We want to limit it at 40, but the makeup is not complete because there's some overlap with organizations, but right now the tentative plan is 40. [04:02:40] Are those 40 who are there as individuals or as representatives of organizations like -- Both. Both. Okay. And what is the basis for selection? We wanted a wide representation, employees, non-employees, parents, community members, advocacy groups. [04:02:57] So people who don't have kids in the system will have the chance to serve. And how will you ensure it is fully representative of the county? Did somebody say something? [04:03:12] No. We're going to give it our best shot, just like we did with our instructional core planning team for our strategic plan. Well, the application you mentioned, the link, not all communities do email to an equal degree. so will notices also go out by paper and like Thursday folders and by text because people communicate different ways I assume you know our communications team can manage that so we can send that to principals to send out through folders but they'll be going out by email this evening okay and will it also be communicated by text guess principals also have access to texting [04:03:50] principals could certainly communicate by text we will work on expanding our plan thank you um and what about surveys um will it also go out just by email or will we also use multiple communication channels such as texting and and and paper for for people who may not have access reliable access to internet i mean we're going to i mean we're going to defer to the tools that the division has in place um if we believe that we don't have the right tools for you know what the board has asked we'll make recommendations on what those tools are we're we're agnostic to [04:04:28] to any particular tool, but we also know what's worked in other districts and we'll recommend that. So again, my hope is with a division this large and complex, you have access to lots of different tools. And my guess is you have one that we know will work. [04:04:44] - And I might add that we will go so far as to do what we did with, I think the calendar and the strategic plan, which is providing a way for families who may not be able to complete the electronic survey, or may have trouble reading, may need support in completing the survey, that we will have staff available to support them. [04:05:12] - So phase one is, according to the policy, on a regional basis, phase two, after the changes are proposed, are affected high school pyramids. My interpretation of that is every high school pyramid, because I imagine every high school pyramid will have at least one line changed. [04:05:29] Is that how you see it? - It is, I mean, we just, we're going with the assumption it's affected areas, but it could be all. Our assumption and built into our proposal is that we're having as many sessions like as we are in the first half of what we're doing, so. - There was a slide you had that had 24 meetings along the top. [04:05:46] How many of those meetings are happening in phase one before changes are proposed? And how many are happening in phase two? - This is just phase one. So it's all across the top. So the idea is we'd replicate this in phase two, something like this in phase two. they're so essentially you'll have 48 meetings in total or more I mean we've we've I think in our proposal we've accommodated up to 72 and are these meetings all community meetings or does this 24 include meetings with the school board meetings with the advisory committee or is that counted separately this is just community meetings okay you'll have 24 meetings across the [04:06:25] county at different times and days to make them accessible yeah for yeah for Now it could be more, I mean, it could be more. So we've right now, right now we assume the first six were the region, and then we just assumed that there would be, you know, initially the pyramids, which is why we listed 24, but it, you know, it could be more based on the direction that we get from, you know, from, you know, from the board, from our advisory group along the way. [04:06:49] And right now we have, you know, as you see, a few different community, you know, virtual sessions. And then, you know, we have, you know, through this first phase of engaging, you know, almost up to six times with this superintendent advisory committee. So that's our plan for right now. [04:07:06] And again, we plan to replicate that when we get to the second phase. - And what is your guidance going in from the superintendent? And does that guidance include a direction on establishing middle schools that are grades six through eight? - I mean, we haven't got to that point of establishing that, but obviously getting feedback from the superintendent is what we plan to do. [04:07:28] Again, as you said, we're coming into this independently, objectively, so we're not informing anything about what those potential changes. Obviously, we're gathering information, so we know those factors along the way. - Do you have any thoughts on phasing? [04:07:44] So implementing new boundaries rather than all at once over time? - Yes, absolutely. This is gonna be, potential changes could be an impact. And again, I think we're gonna use our priority areas to help us understand what that phasing looks like. My assumption is there's probably immediate relief need to do in some areas and we're going to prioritize those first and others should be phasing you haven't done this in for over 40 years like this is going to be disruptive to the community so phasing it to you know where it's where you guys can manage and mitigate the impact to it is the right thing so yes i don't i don't think there would be any recommendation where we're making some large changes that this division can't can't manage and that's a recommendation that we will [04:08:23] that we will make and i just like to emphasize i'd like to have an in-person meeting with you because a lot of people bring information to me and i'd like to be able to share that with you okay yeah that's i'll defer to the superintendent um miss barron yeah mr dunn made me realize that in the past and including the recent past the board members have often been invited for a one-on-one or two-on-one discussion with a consultant to offer our particular feedback it's blanking on me now what we've but we've done that in a bunch of things i think so that might i think i would [04:08:58] like that opportunity and perhaps that could be discussed i don't know how much that impacts the the contract, but it is something that we have done, and perhaps other board members can jog my very clogged memory at this point in the day. Advice chair? We did it with middle school start times as well. [04:09:14] Middle school start times, right. And I know we've done it in other events as well. So. Mr. Dunn. [04:09:30] Thank you. Sorry. I won't take the full two minutes, but I want to make sure I can communicate clearly to my constituents what the ask is. When they come to this phase one meeting, what should they bring to the table? just feelings of fear and uncertainty but but data and information right so so what what should they bring and what will that meeting look like will you break up into groups will it just be a listening or will they get to okay for serpent let me start with the latter part of it and then I'll try and get to the front part the general and we've done this many times and it's it works pretty well so we have a opening session it's almost like an education dr. Reed [04:10:06] will lead the intro part of it we haven't figured out the exact timing of how long it will be it won't be longer than two hours in total but an hour and half to two hours so there'll be an introduction part where dr. will do some introduction we will do some type of education that talks about why boundaries are important you know all the things that go into it the benefits if we can bring you know you gave the example of being able to bring research about impacts on housing values of whatever we can do to provide information to set context that's what we will do first and foremost sometimes do that for 20 30 minutes 20 30 minutes something like that well again we are going to we're working on those details now we will then break out into small group sessions. We know that these are going to be some highly contested sessions, you [04:10:45] know, with a lot of passion associated with them. So we're going to break out into smaller groups. Our recommendation, I assume we're going to be using schools so we can use classrooms. We will break out into different classrooms, you know, eight to 10 people per room. We're going to, for our first set of sessions, we're going to over plan for my team being there to make sure that we can accommodate, you know, that enough conversations individually. [04:11:08] And we'll probably have, you know, somewhere between eight to 10 people in a session where we discuss through a facilitated conversation with prompted questions that can bring through meaningful responses. We do that for a period of time, 45 minutes or so in that range or so in order to be able to get the feedback, allow individual voices to be heard, and then also to be able to control for, you know, if someone's, you know, speaking more than others, we want to ensure as much voices are taking place. [04:11:33] We usually use things like big chart paper or posting notes to be able to post like feedback and things that we need to consider along the way. We come back together in a group format. We allow someone to be able to read out kind of what they've heard. But then the most valuable thing for us is everything that's written on those pieces of paper. [04:11:50] That becomes part of our analysis. So we take that back and that becomes part of the input analysis. And to me, that's the most, that's the most, more so even from the surveys, it's what people are telling us at individual sessions. And again, we're breaking down these interval sessions to be able to control, we don't want, you know, we understand obviously the sensitivities around this and we want people to be able to have their voices heard, but we want to have it in a productive way. [04:12:14] And we hope through our facilitation we get there. That's coming back. Back to the questions that were asked. Again, they're gonna come to us with some misconceptions about the work, about why the data that we have is inaccurate. They're gonna talk to us about the impact on their home values, or the fact that sending my kid from one school to another school, you know, I moved to this community for this reason. [04:12:38] So we're facilitating questions to hear those things. If there isn't an expectation for them to prepare anything to come to us, I mean, obviously if they bring us information they wanna share, we'll take that as far as input. And I think it's really us facilitating through guided questions, really to get, you know, this first part is really getting the emotional part of like what's on their minds. [04:12:59] And again, we are synthesizing this information and then presenting back to you. So you as a board can really hear authentically this is what the community is telling us. And again, this is, you know, why you're having an outsider do it and not doing it yourselves is so that you can have, you know, unfiltered, you know, independent feedback from us that we're telling you this information. [04:13:17] Of the 8 to 10 people at each community meeting, how many of those will be employed by through consulting? Well, the 8 to 10 represent the, I'm saying that the number of sessions, that number of, like the number of people for each breakout group is gonna be out, like eight to 10 people. [04:13:33] - Oh, eight to 10 people. So at each of the 24 community meetings in phase one, how many consultants from through consulting? - So we have four or five plan to be able to be there for each session. When we've done this, when it's got a lot larger, we've sometimes asked that, and this is what we've built. [04:13:50] We're trying to accommodate as much as we can. I know resources aren't unlimited. So what we have tried to do is if we believe that, So we're gonna over plan for our first set of sessions to hopefully accommodate. If we believe that these sessions become gigantic, this is where we might engage the division and some facilitators, again, where we would provide the exact guidance on what needs to be done from a facilitation, but this isn't making any decisions, it's really just helping to facilitate a conversation. [04:14:15] And in a division, like we did this project we recently completed in Midland, Texas, where we had a very large group, larger than we had anticipated, and we trained a couple of facilitators that they could facilitate conversations the other thing we also have to consider we're planning for is that we know that we're going to have to be able to speak you know have you know language translation and accessibility so this is we're going to be leaning on the division to have whatever type of translation that's needed so but i think we're going to use our first six sessions out of the gate to kind of understand and anticipate how large the groups are we don't believe that we can really have thoughtful conversations in groups of larger than eight [04:14:50] eight to ten so we're kind of kind of going to plan for that along the way um so so the uh slide eight the schedule it shows that you know you basically don't start the work of drafting scenario until march of 2025 and then there's a school board vote nine months later so that's a very compressed schedule especially because you have three months or so to prepare the scenarios and then you have june to september which is not necessarily optimal for consulting with school families who are going on vacation and such. [04:15:23] So a lot of people have said, well, we're going to see version 1.0 of the changes, right? And then there'll be a community engagement. But what if we don't just want to trust that you guys are going to hear our input and implement it correctly? [04:15:38] Do we get to see version 2.0 or version 3.0, right? And I don't see that broken out separately in this four-month period of June through September. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, will you present subsequent iterations? Maybe not for everyone, but maybe their particular changes are more significant. [04:15:56] We can. Just to be clear, this schedule is based on your direction that we got from the division right now. As I said, you know, we'll be flexible as directed by the division for what they want. If you want to see, you know, if the collective board, you know, directed by the superintendent wants to see iterations along the way, we can do that. [04:16:14] You know, right now, this is, you know, as we're starting this new relationship, we're taking our best guess based on the direction that was provided to us you know this you know it seems like it's a you know it's a it's a you know 18 you know it's a little obviously less than 18 months can go by really quickly so I understand you know being able to consume and make decisions in this period of time is a lot so again we'll look to the division you know obviously directed by the board at guidance and right now again we have the first phase broken out because we know what that looks like we're we know we're gonna learn some things along the way that are going to impact what we do during phase two. [04:16:49] Obviously we come into it with experience of what we think that could happen, but we're allowing for flexibility along the way. And my hope is that we learn some lessons along the way from our first sessions that help impact. And as we get to understand, as we're providing information to the superintendent who shares with you, that you're channeling us back, you're channeling back guidance that we need to adjust along the way. [04:17:12] I don't know, Dr. Reed, do you have a sense of when you'll start publishing with the meeting schedule because we have meetings by this timeline in November and December? Yeah, I think this week we're going to be taking care of that. The really key group is this advisory committee, right? [04:17:28] That's the really diverse group of community members, staff, and so forth, and I think that's the group that the plan was written around in terms of the iterative process, right? So the community engagement meetings will come back to this advisory committee. [04:17:48] The advisory committee is going to have representation from across the entire division with different partner groups. So then they will sort that out and have conversations about next steps as well. [04:18:04] So there's a lot of iterative work that's going to happen between the advisory group and the community engagement groups. So the community engagement dates, I know the communications team is working on setting those and I believe we're going to have tentative dates already and try to confirm those and get them out this week for the six regional meetings to start. [04:18:30] How many advisory -- how frequently will the advisory committee meet? Every two weeks. For what length of time? I'm not sure yet. Probably 90 minutes. In the evening? Yes. [04:18:45] It sounds like -- And that's not a public meeting. advisory committee meeting do you have any thoughts on the role of fpac cpdc peck on in terms of the school boundary revision process well we've already discussed that and for example fpac has a member in fact i think um here a liaison to the advisory committee peck certainly could have a liaison to the advisory committee i think already does so those committees have a liaison to the advisory committee so the advisory committee is the hub and then there are spokes really [04:19:20] that go out do you view the advisory committee as a steering committee as a decision-making body the advisory committee is going to synthesize information and likely be part of the recommendations that come to the board absolutely and will they have staff support I mean if these are volunteers in the community will you have the member at the 40 members drafting reports and things like that or will that work be done by staff I think that We have to meet first and establish our expectations, but staff will be part of those groups. [04:19:58] So I think that clearly staff will be supporting the advisory committee. And that's the staff on the core project team? No, that would be staff on the advisory committee. But when you say staff, like who do you mean from what office of FCPS? [04:20:18] Each of our offices will be represented. Okay, thank you. We're going to move to Ms. St. John Cunning who needs three minutes because this is her first time and then we're going to go to Dr. Anderson. I don't think I'll need that much time. Based on the schedule that you've given us here on slide number eight and based on the work that you've done before, is this something that you feel is doable? [04:20:42] It's aggressive but doable. Obviously it needs commitment from dedicated resources from the division. What I will say in my two weeks of, you know, some of the pre-planning that we've started to do, it's an incredibly responsive team. [04:20:58] And I'm excited about, you know, sometimes, you know, we don't see this much responsiveness and, like, attention to it. Maybe because it's the sensitivity of the project or just the leadership of the division or just the nature of the work. But yeah, to give assurances that we'll hit this exact -- it's an aggressive timeline. [04:21:17] And the best that we can call out is, you know, using our project planning to be able to alert where we think that there are potentially risks to the schedule along the way and being able to mitigate along the way, mitigate those risks. Have you worked with advisory committees before? [04:21:32] We have. So, actually, most -- we have a lot, a local one that might be representative too close to hear is in 2021, I think, or 2022, Alexandria City Public Schools made a decision. You can read about it in the news around removing their SROs from the schools, and they need to make a decision to be able to figure out what the memorandum of understanding or MOU was to bring the Alexandria City Police back into the schools, and so we formed a committee. It was called the SLEP, the school law enforcement, police. The SLEP was a committee. I'm forgetting what the P was. [04:22:09] And it was an advisory group of 40 people that almost mirrors exactly like the diverse representation. Met with them on evening, series of evenings over the period of about five or six months to eventually come up with a recommendation that was put forth by the superintendent. And the board ultimately voted unanimously on that in, I think, March of 2023. We gave our recommendations to the board in January 2023. [04:22:37] So it was a different topic, but it was a contested, a hotly contested issue that had a lot of emotions associated with it and a lot of data associated with it. And we had evening sessions and all the sessions to be able to bring diverse perspectives that eventually got to a point that the board voted on it. [04:22:55] So we had no shortage of working with advisory groups like this. We actually, that's the, honestly, for us, it's the most enjoyment of the project is because we're getting their authentic feedback that goes beyond just what the division or district is telling us. And you can go read about that. [04:23:12] And, you know, that comes to part of our qualifications. You can, you know, it's published in the news about the work that we did, too. Thank you. Dr. Reed, is this advisory committee, although smaller, I understand, going to mirror what you had, the kind of advisory committee you had with the strategic plan? Yes, absolutely. [04:23:28] I mean, the point is our community wants-- and I went back to the policy just to reread, right? It was really important to the board to have that robust community engagement and really diverse perspectives, right? [04:23:44] And I think it's not a drop in and drop out. It's a staying with this work that's so important to this community. So the advisory committee absolutely would function very much so like the core planning team which meant regularly, they reviewed all the minutes from all of the other committees that met and then set a different topic for the next agenda and at the end of the day came back with a recommendation for the board. [04:24:15] - Thank you. I just wanna express my confidence in that process because I was on the core strategic planning team and I know that you had a robust community engagement and I went to several community engagement meetings that were held, but the fact all of that information was brought back to the core team and aside from the community engagement you had some other groups that were meeting and the fact that that core team was able to process that information and synthesize it and was very representative of the community I think was very valuable and helped [04:24:51] probably move the strategic plan along sooner than if it would have been done another way. Okay so we're gonna go to Miss Lady for our first time and then Dr. Anderson for go back. I'll be short and I think I think I heard the answer to this but just for confirmation in terms of front lines software capabilities hypothetically we it could say right now currently an advanced academic program is at this middle school but if we added one to this middle school what would the numbers be absolutely yeah okay so that's and that's yeah [04:25:26] and even if you get yeah so that it's that is a that's absolutely one of the you know you know key components of it and it's any and it's really any type of programming there's whatever data source it is that we want to bring in to be able to share and again based on real students you know grade levels demographics of those students all of that stuff so not just the programming impact but like the demographics of the students that are in those in that whatever programming happens to be did that answer yeah and then the other question is regarding transportation how does it do an overlay of transportation does it does it calculate some sort of like times in terms of because it's it's not just the transportation [04:26:04] at beginning of school and the end of school it's also a situation where a kid is ill and i know that in my constituency i've had parents say wow that's when it kind of hits you and i got to go 40 minutes to go get my child yeah not because i'm at work just because of distance to school but it has capabilities to do some measuring on that as well it does i don't want to speak exactly for it and i'll be able to get information back but what the frontline folks said and they've they've said this to the facilities team. [04:26:28] It's not a transportation tool, but it can take input from transportation data to feed into it. So, meaning that I think it can help like, you know, figure out like travel times associated with the students that are in it, and by it's inputting data. So, it's not the transportation system that you're using to kind of plan for it, but it can take data that can help us, you know, inform eventual scenarios. [04:26:50] I'll go back and, you know, there'll be something that we look into. I just don't want to speak out of tune for their software, but I know it is a consideration for, obviously it's one of the core priorities, so it is something that we will be considering. - And so my final question has to do with projected enrollments for construction that hasn't started, that's planned or that has started and how we've been doing projections. [04:27:12] For example, I have an elementary school that's like 33% over capacity because they didn't think children were coming from those apartment complexes. We're gonna be at 170% over capacity in another year and a half, right? So it's crazy. So does Frontline have its own metrics for measuring that or are they relying solely on the data from Fairfax County and how they measure that? [04:27:33] - My understanding is that there are relying on Fairfax data, but they have their ways of helping to, they have access to national data that can help them validate it. I mean, I don't think it's information that they're making up themselves, that they're pulling from other, because again, they do the same work for other districts and divisions. [04:27:52] They have ways of being able to help predict the validity of the data that's in there. So we are, I mean, we will be relying on the divisions, you know, demographers and stuff. But I would be speaking, I know that they're using, they definitely use, because they work with this 170 other divisions and, you know, they obviously make boundary decisions based on, you know, projected enrollments, you know, they have ways to help ensure, like, do we believe that that's a valid data? [04:28:18] I don't know that I can say for sure exactly how they use that data. I elevate that question because you're going to get it. And I think we need to have education on or a solid understanding maybe from an outside entity like yourself and frontline who are not emotionally involved in this project yet to just answer the question around how this is done around the country and how it's done by us. [04:28:43] And you can count on us asking questions about the data all the time. We're not just taking data and just assuming that we believe it. again we're going to hear this from the community that's going to help drive it so we'll be you know validating the data that we have and if we have questions about the data we'll call out those questions or risks that we you know for we don't we can't believe this you know we have questions about the validity of this potential data thank you okay dr anderson for a go back please yes thank you um let me make sure i grab my notes here one of the things that i wanted to um to talk about that just something that Mr. Dunn said just kind of jarred my memory is the role [04:29:23] of FPAC. FPAC's charter has some language in it that speaks to boundaries. It's not coming to me really quickly, but I know you have it at the ready. How does that dovetail into this work, Dr. Reed, being that there charter? May I ask Mr. Dunn to, do you have it handy? I do have it handy within your speaking slot. [04:29:46] I don't know if I can pull up that quickly. Go ahead. Take a few of my seconds. I know that FPAC and CPDC were specifically created because of what was perceived as inefficiencies in the school boundary setting process, which Mr. Moon was probably there for. So, I will pull up the charter, though. [04:30:03] All right. While you do that, I'd be very curious to hear how can we engage and be truth and pretty much be in alignment with those charters in this process. So that's one. Two, it was very interesting to hear you say that there are opportunities for different programs to be added to the tool, because it makes me wonder, Dr. Rhee, the Plunker Report, which talked about expanding access of AAP programming, particularly at the middle school level, I think it's what, 3D or 5D, it's one of the recommendations. [04:30:36] Would we be able to add this to the number of things to be evaluated by this software? And the second part of that question, how do we add these different things that may be out there? How do we provide that information for consideration into the calculus of what this software is able to do? [04:30:58] So I can answer the first part. The software can map addresses and programs of any address or program we want to map, so regardless of the program. The Plecker Report, the Jonathan Plecker Report, is really ISD is working on the implementation of the AAP program, you know, at middle schools, and I don't -- I assume -- is that what you're talking about, the AAP program? [04:31:26] I know they were working on local level four at elementary. I don't know of any work at the middle school level, and this would be a good opportunity to do that. Well, it might. I just -- I think it might. So I think that would be a question for the Advanced Academics Committee, and that committee would probably want to weigh in on where they are. [04:31:48] I was trying to remember their report from last year that they provided. I think they were still in progress on those topics, but again, that's an advisory committee that I think we would want to connect with and find out where they are in terms of their work. [04:32:05] I think the board already did accept the Plunker Report in its recommendations. was just a matter of moving forward right now I got here so I got here right but I think that advisory committee would want some say in how that intersected or dovetailed with this work okay I could stick a pin but the other part of my question is when things come up that might make sense in order to investigate in this process how do we communicate that to you or I think you would in our weekly one-to-ones you could say this is a topic that I think [04:32:43] intersects with this or on our I think we're probably going to be doing updates at regular board meetings like we've done with strategic planning so I think that would be a time an email to mention it you know any of the above I think would work I think the board meeting updates will be a good place to do that mr. Dunn were you able to locate that charter because I would love to understand how we can support that charter in this process the it says the [04:33:22] below matters are within the purview of FPC as determined by the school board and include but are not limited to school program capacity enrollment and projections CIP prioritization school closures and new schools student accommodation planning building additions modular relocations review of school boundaries and such other matters as directed by the school board so given that's the case I would love to understand better the role that FPAC can have in this process since that falls under their charter I think as the last sentence was as determined by the school board so that's a decision you [04:33:59] all will have to make I mean I can you send that around when you get an opportunity and I'll follow up then okay if we are done with go backs um I just wanted to ask a clarifying question. There's already a PEC representative on the advisory committee? Is that what I heard? No, I think Mrs. Anderson. Oh, Ms. St. John Cunning is in charge of PEC. I wasn't sure what the motion was because you were on PEC I think last year. Okay. No, but I'm assuming they'll have a liaison. I don't know who it [04:34:37] is yet. And CPDC then could also have a liaison. I think the FPAC liaison and or CPDC is really a conversation the board needs to have but isn't peck the same status is also and so we would need to be discussed i have not heard of any board member that is going to be a liaison to the advisory committee well we only have board members on peck so it's a standing committee not an advisory committee yeah so it's it's not an advice so i don't foresee a path forward with that unless [04:35:14] the board decides that which i think is outside the purview of what the intention of this particular committee is. Thank you. I'm done. Okay, then thank you so much for your time and thank you for being here and otherwise have a wonderful day. We are adjourned. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com