Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Work Session, Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Date: Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 11m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAJhM3Cdf5k
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.

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[00:07:23] All right, this joint meeting of the Fairfax County School Board and the City of Fairfax School Board will come to order. In order to comply with section 2.2-3712D of the Code of Virginia, it's necessary for the County Board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened its closed meeting on December 17th, 2024, to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such business matters as were identified in the motion to meeting the closed meeting heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting we have a motion from a county

[00:07:58] board member ms sesma heiser mr mckelveen second county board members in favor ms maren mr mckelveen ms anderson ms lady ms sesma heiser and myself opposed abstention dr anderson the motion carries all right we will now be joined by the west springfield high school asl group under the

[00:08:22] direction of heather kendrick for the national anthem thank you very much all

[00:11:34] right we'll go ahead and get started so welcome to the to the county and city joint meeting i'm carl frisch i'm chair of the county board and providence district representative we're going to take a moment because i don't think everybody knows everybody we'll do introductions so we'll start with county board member introductions with miss maren we'll work our way around the table and then chair pittis will introduce herself and uh the city board members will be able to introduce themselves as well good evening i'm melanie marin i represent the hunter mill district

[00:12:14] which is the generally the vienna rest in a little bit of herndon area ricardy anderson i represent the mason district addendale falls curate area right now hovina robin lady drainsville which is mostly in the prime language hi i'm rochita sizemarhizer i represent the braddock district um mostly woodson robinson lake braddock school is a bit of fairfax little western field and uh 40 percent amanda hi my name is i'm student representative to the

[00:12:53] county board perfect uh i'm carolyn pitches i am the chair of the city of fairfax high amit hickman vice chair of state of fairfax hi sarah kelsey member of city fairfax city stacy hall city school I mean, City of Fairfax School Board, sorry.

[00:13:22] - Yeah, I'll move to the county. - Wonderful, so we're gonna have two presentations, one from the county and one from the city, and then we will open it up to any comments from board members before we adjourn and go to the city.

[00:13:41] So, this is our presentation from the county. I haven't used a clicker before, so I can withdraw. All right, some of this will seem like old information, but for the sake of our public and for those who may not be fully aware, For 60 years, the City of Fairfax schools and FCPS have collaborated under the School Services Agreement, the SFA, which establishes that the City of Fairfax is responsible for the tuition of city students as well as capital improvements in city school buildings.

[00:14:17] The City of Fairfax contracts with FCPS for instruction, staffing, transportation, and special education services. Schools that are located in Region 5 of SCPS, Fairfax High School, Katherine Johnson Middle School, Daniels Run Elementary, and Providence Elementary.

[00:14:34] Relationships between the board. The City of Fairfax School Superintendent, Mr. Plattenberg, is responsible for the oversight and management of the SSA on their side. City students are educated predominantly in city schools.

[00:14:50] The city welcomes county students, which allows city schools to offer a wider variety of academic and extracurricular opportunities. And I realize I'm doing exactly what we ask people not to, which is reading a slide to a room of people looking at a slide, but we're going to do it that way. The city school board appoints city residents to serve on various Fairfax County School Board community advisory committees.

[00:15:14] The city and county superintendents consult on topics like boundaries, school closings, selection of principals, citizen participation, special community needs, non-school activities, and complaints. Unfortunately, they did not consult on stickers.

[00:15:39] The city is responsible for major capital improvements to school buildings, which is the bond. The county maintains city school buildings and they make minor improvements. Members of the city school board collaborate with the county school board through regular communication, participation in regional and state school board meetings.

[00:16:00] We just saw several of our colleagues at the VFPA down in Williamsburg and the annual city-county board joint meeting, which is open to the public like we are tonight the county board appoints a board member liaison to work with the city school board this year for the strategic plan 2023-2030 which is driving the work of the division it's our north star and how we ensure excellence equity and opportunity for all our students and it's the result of more than 100 000 feedback survey responses more than 65 planning meetings fairfax city school board members and staff are a key part of this process

[00:16:39] with several on the core planning team and the alignment team as well as you can see the names up there for community advisory committees in 2024 the fairfax county school board voted to provide a city of fairfax school board member school board with the ability to appoint a city residents to all fairfax county school board community advisory committees where representation So we have the names of current appointees listed on the screen, and the ones that will be coming online for representation next school year.

[00:17:17] Those include ACE, the Adult Community Education Advisory Committee, the Career and Technical Education Advisory Committee, and Family Life Education Community Advisory Committee will all be receiving city appointed members in the year ahead.

[00:17:35] head previously the board had added msaoc in 2021 as one of the advisory committees that also had a city resident in 2021 the board also opened the ability of city students students who reside in the city of fairfax to seek to represent all of their peers in the school system as the student representative on the county school board so they are no longer prohibited from seeking that position

[00:18:10] as long as they live in the city or the county they are welcome to participate and then this year alone i just wanted to point out that we've done a number of big fcps wide events at our city schools and they've been gracious to host us and you can see the list is quite luminous on the Many of these attended by hundreds of people, some by as many as 500 people.

[00:18:39] So we're obviously grateful to use the facilities, but also show off how great that working relationship is with our city partners. Is that it?

[00:18:56] So that covers the basics there, and I will let our city partners...

[00:19:03] Try not to be too redundant. We have some similar information in our presentation, similar to our schools, our boundaries and capacity for city schools.

[00:19:49] Different from what Mr. Frisch said, we also understand that this student services agreement is a four-way agreement. It's not just between the two boards, it's between the mayor and city council, the city of Fairfax, as well as the board of supervisors for the county.

[00:20:07] county again you all provide us with excellent instructional services and programming as well as transportation and we manage the contracts and the four city school buildings and our two boards work together on any issues that will impact directly impact both city and county okay so a key component of the ssa really is communication superintendents communicate

[00:20:41] on topics such as boundaries principle selection and also other community needs and our boards collaborate through regular communication and this is sort of where i'd like to connect some of what carl shares to our presentation one of the way our board communicates is to your board about our residents concerns and ideas so building strong relationships between our respective boards is incredibly important for the city because our residents do not live in the county they do not

[00:21:14] pay county taxes they don't technically have any direct representation on the fcps board so we are their voice and as such our biggest way to advocate is to the communication um the other uh parliamentans are between the advisory committees and historically the city of fairfax school board and the school's office we vet and appoint any city residents to the advisory committees with

[00:21:51] the exception of the boundary advisory committee this time which is a little problematic for us the reason being is that it's important for us to ensure that whoever is sitting on one of your advisory committees that they have a thorough understanding of the ssa that they understand our unique boundaries and our capacity policy in terms of the city schools which is different from from the county so moving forward we would respectively respectfully ask that all city

[00:22:28] representatives on advisory committees be vetted by the city of fairfax schools to ensure that we haven't have an advocate that can appropriately and adequately represent our community's needs the city is also responsible for major capital improvements which we'll talk about the bond that our community just voted for and also it's important to understand that the city students they're always educated in city schools because they aren't County residents and don't pay

[00:23:06] county taxes it's it's basically we get a tuition bill from you all and then we welcome your students into our schools as well so that we can all benefit from you all benefit from our facilities and we benefit from your programming okay so these are our four schools Fairfax High School which also has the Academy Katherine Johnson Middle School Providence Elementary School and Daniels run elementary school and each one of these schools has county students in

[00:23:41] there in the schools but if you notice Fairfax High School and Katherine Johnson are majority county students they have more than 60 percent of our student population in those two buildings our county students Providence is about at a third about 30 something percent I think 30 is a 31 yeah 31.8 Daniels run has a A tiny percent, I think it's less than three percent, and those students that are from the county typically are people placed there by our teachers who bring their personal children to our buildings, or we also have a preschool op program.

[00:24:20] So they are typically placed for those reasons. But that school, Daniels Run, is pretty much entirely city kids. So we have almost 3,000 kids.

[00:24:35] Again, we are fast approaching over 3,000. And 93% of them stay in our schools, and about seven, a little over 7% attend county schools for things like IB programs, special ed programs, academies, but other than that, they remain in our schools.

[00:24:59] Okay, so the boundaries for Providence Elementary, you can see that where the red circle is, Those are, that's where we draw county kids from. So that's typically on the other side of 66, it's Willow Crescent neighborhood and also Elmendorf between 66 and 123, that whole Flint Hill area.

[00:25:29] And then Daniels Run you'll see is all city. This is Katherine Johnson. So the red areas again are the county in that one blue area off to the right, that's the city.

[00:25:47] So you can see the boundaries are kind of interesting. Sorry, I'll just follow that. And of course, Fairfax's are similarly interesting. For our opening school report, all four of our schools were coming in fairly close to capacity or over capacity, with Katherine Johnson at 103% and Fairfax High School coming up on 100%.

[00:26:13] It's important to really, for the city, to look at Daniel's Run and Providence because their capacities are tied together. What happens is, and I guess I should, I'll just change this slide here, it talks about this. Okay, if Daniel's Run is at or over capacity, those students cannot get re-boundaried to a county school.

[00:26:35] They would have to go to Providence, they have to go to another city school. So then when they shift to Providence, if Providence is already at capacity or that pushes them to capacity or over, then that means that the county would need to reassign some of their students.

[00:26:52] Similarly, Katherine Johnson and Fairfax High School, when they're at or over capacity, they would need to be reassigned to right-size those schools. And I believe it was 2014 the last time we right-sized Fairfax High School, where the Fairfax Villa neighborhood was boundaried to Frost Woodson.

[00:27:16] So, it's been about 10 years, and we're approaching capacity again. All right, so looking ahead, we, like we talked about earlier, our constituents passed our bond referendum at a success rate of about 70%, as Ms. Hickman won the bet on that one.

[00:27:38] It's a $220 million bond to renovate both the elementary schools, as well as replace Fairfax High School's roof. We are gonna continue to address the growth in the city. We have a lot of development going on in the city, as well as the county has a lot of growth in the Flint Hill sector, which affects our schools.

[00:27:59] So we're really paying attention to how that's affecting our school capacities. And we're just, every year, our student membership increases. And then we look forward to continued collaboration between our boards.

[00:28:17] We really value the partnership. It's very important to the city. So we hope that we can continue that. - All right, thank you very much for that. We will now open the meeting to comments and commentary from board members of either board.

[00:28:40] For folks who are wondering what that looks like, look at Dr. Anderson right now. If you'd like to speak, you can go ahead and raise your placard like that and we will call on you. I've got Dr. Anderson followed by, I've got Ms. Marin followed by Dr. Anderson.

[00:28:55] - Chair Frisch, very quickly, are we doing time limits like we normally do? - Three minutes. - All right, thank you. - Well, thank you for sharing all this great information. I appreciate learning a little bit more every time we meet. I wanted to clarify understanding about the boundaries piece. So are the Fairfax City boundaries being reviewed as part of FCPS's boundary review process?

[00:29:17] Perhaps that's a question for our superintendent. - I think all the boundaries within Fairfax County are being reviewed, so those would include the city. - The city boundaries are not flexible, though. I think what Dr. Reed is saying is that, yes, the city is within the county boundaries, but our boundaries can't shift.

[00:29:39] You can't, because-- - The city boundaries can. - Yeah, it's an independent jurisdiction, essentially. It's like somebody took Arlington County and plopped it into the middle of Fairfax County. - Yep, got it. Okay, great. - Do you do, so when you said 2014 was the last time you write sites, is that generally your boundary review?

[00:29:59] Is that when you do that kind of? I guess it's not a boundary review, that's the wrong language, but adjust. - So back then, Fairfax County did what they called boundary light changes, so we advocated to the county. We said, you know, Fairfax High School has been over capacity for a number of years.

[00:30:17] We really need, basically we need you to reassign students and they looked at specifically what neighborhoods they could shift easily, and Fairfax Villa, which is sort of sandwiched in between the city and the Willow Springs sort of area, right, Jeff?

[00:30:40] Wouldn't you say that that's, yeah, Braddock Road, and they, the proposal was Woodson wasn't at capacity and neither was Frost, so it was a good opportunity. It was just enough students to alleviate some of the capacity issues at Fairfax High School.

[00:30:58] - Thank you, so Dr. Reed, as part of FCPS's boundary review process, is our team, our consultant looking at capacity of Fairfax City Schools, because that might trigger some of FCPS students being moved out of city schools in the future?

[00:31:14] - I believe they are. We have representatives from the Fairfax High School Pyramid also on the committee, and a representative from Fairfax City Planning. but not a rep from your board, is that right? - No, but Eric Foreman, he's not a city resident, but he works in our planning office.

[00:31:34] He's very good in terms of capacity and development within the city, so we're pleased to see that he was included on the advisory committee. The only concern we had was which resident we had, because having a resident is different than having somebody who works in the city but lives somewhere else on the committee.

[00:32:02] A resident understands the Fairfax City residents are very prideful of the city and their school buildings and they want to be included in decisions. And because we don't really know yet who the people are that are representing the city, We have no, we don't know how much they understand.

[00:32:29] Not everybody is well versed in the SSA or where our boundaries are, what the capacity is in our building or how we deal with capacity issues. - But we've not cleared any. - No. - Because it's not a school board advisory committee, right? - Not a school board, yes. - It's a superintendent's advisory. So even our board didn't have any say or who was on that.

[00:32:45] - No. - And we didn't screen anybody for our own particular issues from pyramid to pyramid. - But I do see the chair's point. - Yeah, the-- - Noted, yeah. - Yeah, thank you. It's just that because we are a unique jurisdiction and we have a contract, so to speak, with the county, who we have representing our community is important to us.

[00:33:09] - Got it. One other thing I was wondering about the bond. So was that on the November ballot then? - Yes. - Okay, and so you have, like, what's the cycle of bonds that you usually go for? Like, is it where, you know, every two years is what's-- How does it work? So the last, so we went to Bond in 1997 for the two elementary schools.

[00:33:30] You win. Yeah. So, yes. And then we went again in 2004, I believe, for the middle and the high school. So how do you go about deciding when to go for Bond, and what's that process like? If you could, I mean.

[00:33:46] Okay, well, I've been known to be very picky by four superintendents now. - It's basically when we look at our school building, first of all, we don't like them. I was irritated that we got beyond 20 years, but we look to try to renovate every 20 years now.

[00:34:08] That was when they did the original renovation at the elementary schools. The goal was we would not let our buildings go more than 20 years. It has been 24, almost 25 years since the renovation. So that was sort of a driving force.

[00:34:23] Our buildings are in good shape, but as you know, education evolves, and the infrastructure and some of the educational spaces don't meet today's standards, so.

[00:34:42] - Well, thank you, appreciate it. - Dr. Anderson? - I'm just a little jealous to hear that your renovation cycle is 25 years when we're pushing 42, so it hurts a little bit to hear that. only have four schools this is true too and i'm pretty much miss marron went and asked some of the questions that i had and i'm glad that we're elevating kind of the island that is city of fairfax in this work of boundary because in some conversations that i've had in the community there seems to be the understanding that they are up in in part of this review and i could not

[00:35:21] convince folks that they are not because they're an independent entity these are really loud that they're an independent entity so thank you for raising that a question that i had when you mentioned when you determine when you will need to right size which essentially results in removal of county students from your schools what do you look at because i know for fairfax county we look at the capacity you know over 100 percent 130 percent what is your threshold 130

[00:35:56] so first of all let me say that it is never our intention or desire to have to reassign county students and in fact it's only been done last time was 10 years and i think we only reassigned 300 students total for all four schools it only affected one neighborhood and it was a great process with fcps people were happy that they were not upset that with the woodson frost switch but we did have families who wanted to stay at fairfax they had

[00:36:34] a sibling and we the city allowed that the for families to get all the way through our schools if they had already started even if they had two kids who hadn't entered into fairfax we allowed for the the family to finish um so i'll say that um we we are actually in january starting the process of looking at our capacity policy but typically we have managed to stay under a hundred percent or at a hundred percent and even when we've gotten to a hundred percent we you know after a year to sort of trickle back

[00:37:11] down so right now the thought is that we would look at obviously a hundred percent or higher so I would say when we get over we get to a hundred and one or more that's when we we start tracking it in terms of years and like I said we're just starting this work in January but the thought is that three years we would work with the county to say it's been three consecutive years at you know this much over capacity and give the county two additional years so it's a

[00:37:47] five-year window basically we would say hey like right now we're telling you we're at 103% capacity at Katherine Johnson. If it remains over capacity next year, we will notify you again, hey, it's still at capacity.

[00:38:03] Third year, okay, it's at capacity still, we're gonna need to look at reassignment. And that's sort of where there's gonna have to be some work between the city and the county, because when you guys go through your boundary process, I don't know what's going to happen with that.

[00:38:21] So whatever you all decide is also going to affect us because we're not, because our buildings, if we have a different process than you all do or if your policy is going to, we would like to have some say in, you know, if the policy, what the policy wording is for you in terms of the city schools, that those would be, those calculations would be different or how they were approached.

[00:38:53] - Sure. - The other thing that I would note, because you can look at things that we've talked about at our dais before in relation, when Ms. Hall was head of the PTA at Providence, for example, there was significant capacity concerns at Providence. - And then COVID happened. - And then COVID happened.

[00:39:08] But as part of that, they go through the same calculations that we do in the CIP for the capacity things there. So they're looking at space utilization and flow of the building and what other things they can do before they do that. So all of those things are still in the menu for our relationship too. - Yes, 100%, we have, well, much to my chagrin, we have enclosed open classrooms, open spaces, learning spaces that was never, when the original building renovation was designed, they were designed a certain way for a reason.

[00:39:42] And I think actually you were not our superintendent, but you came and visited and they were, you know FCPS was going to we did look at spaces and sometimes our board says no we are not going to allow for that building modification if we think that it's important to the instruction and programming in the building thank you and I do remember that conversation regarding Providence and you also kind of gave me a segue into my next point one of the conversations that is being

[00:40:17] had with our boundary process is perhaps changing the configuration of the middle schools to be 6, 7, and 8. I'm wondering how does that fall within what the city's policies are? If that were to occur with Fairfax County schools, would you piggyback on that configuration or would you remain the same, or is that just a conversation to be had?

[00:40:44] i don't think we've raised this as a potential plan to you as of yet that may result from this boundary work it would definitely have to be a conversation um but i will just say from personal experience i taught in a six seven eight model middle school for 10 years and and i do prefer that model to the seven eight model that being said most of the buildings in the county were designed as intermediate schools I attended Hughes middle school and therefore the configuration of the building has to be considered right so if

[00:41:22] we have to make adjustments if we you know if we come to a consensus that yes the city is participating in this change in philosophy for our buildings that we would have to work with the county on how are we going to further fund renovations made possibly to those that building to me you know Katherine Johnson to make it meet the ed specs for that model oh and thank you for raising that because the three middle schools that I represent that are six seven and eight I don't think there was much consideration to the ed specs it was just we're going to

[00:42:00] put these kids in one building and make it happen the other wondering that I I have if if there is a switch to Katherine Johnson to follow six seven eight if that's what Fairfax County ends up doing that would also impact the number of county kids who can actually attend because then you will have to absorb our sixth graders six graders and so there we need to make sure that we have the conversation regarding that impact yes because it would if you take the sixth graders from both of our elementary schools you're talking about

[00:42:36] 220 plus students yeah yes so that's in addition to what's already in the building and the building's already over Cassidy thank you dr. Anderson anyone else I actually enjoy the the conversation around what it means to move sixth grade into middle school because I think focusing on one pyramid shows what we're gonna if that's what happens that's what will happen in every pyramid right those conversations will have to be had about how it impacts the

[00:43:15] populations of elementary schools which kids are going to be moved where so it's not a unique challenge right it's a unique challenge in that the different jurisdiction so there's complicating factors but the same types of measures that would have to be taken in one pyramid are the same types that generally speaking would have to take place in another obviously there are other factors like secondary schools and other things that would have to maybe follow a different pattern as well but everything's gonna everything has a give-and-take right like if you move sixth grade into Katherine Johnson then there's not going to be as much room for other students to be there but at the

[00:43:54] same time there will be more room at the elementary school level so everything has its benefit and it's minus I think as long as we're all committed and I think we are to what's best for students we'll find the best path forward Miss Marin well I just want to mention tomorrow night not far from Fairfax City just down 1:23 we're hosting our final community advisory community closet community meeting about the boundary process which some people see the head nods so maybe you know but it's at 6:30 at Madison High School and I will be there and would certainly love to see you there as well if you could make it

[00:44:28] just another opportunity to listen right anyone else from either board want to say anything I felt singled out by the maps because you just circled parts of Providence district but well it's always nice to look at the breakdown for Providence elementary school I know but I will say like the biggest chunk of Providence elementary school is Providence district that's not city and so I always look at it and it's like 30% and I'm like yeah but of the county it's like 75% of the

[00:45:06] county kids that are at Providence elementary are from the other thing you know that I would note about Providence is it wasn't just the building right like we also changed the AAP scenarios so that we were no longer, Providence was no longer drawing county kids simply because it had an AAP program that people wanted to be in.

[00:45:21] So we had, there are lots of things that we do at every other school to solve these problems too. And I think as long as we all go walk into these conversations open-eyed as to what the considerations are, our city partners want what is best for their kids in the same way that we want what is best for all of our kids too.

[00:45:41] And I think we've made a lot of progress in that regard, particularly as it relates to representation of the city's perspectives on our different school board advisory committees. And while we haven't yet elected a city resident as our school board member, that day may one day come.

[00:46:00] Anybody else would like to say anything? Oh, yes, go ahead, sorry. - So I just wanted to appreciate all of you for listening to that and really would ask that if you can provide this information people do ask because i think it's not common knowledge that you if you live in the city you can only go to a city school so i'll say myself 15 years ago when i moved in i lived next door to woodson and i was like oh this is wonderful my children go to woodson high school it's literally over a fence right next door guess what they didn't because we live in the city it is not

[00:46:36] advertised that way real estate agents are not aware of this breakdown unless you're really looking into it um even oftentimes zillow and truly on all these websites they're putting it in incorrectly um so just to keep informing people of what that looks like because carolyn says we don't have the option of changing those boundaries that is the city has made those boundaries you saw the map it is a bizarre looking map it doesn't make much sense um yes it looks like a dumbbell it's a very strange but providing that knowledge to the community we believe is really important we try to do it as much as possible and appreciate your

[00:47:14] collaboration with that so if a Fairfax City student wanted to attend one of our career tech academies they cannot they can because the pie graph is was showing the number in your schools but not necessarily a number in our schools well - Well, 7.4% of our students go to county schools.

[00:47:36] - Got it, okay, sorry, I missed that. - So that's typically if they go for IB at Robinson or they're in a special education program. It used to be for AAP centers, it still is for Mosaic, but Katherine Johnson is now an AAP center, so our students there stay in Katherine Johnson.

[00:47:58] And some other, I'm trying to think of, - Yeah, academy, but also like language programs. If somebody wants to take a language that's at Oakton, I assume that that's another way they can attend a county school.

[00:48:14] - Thank you. - Ms. Sizemore-Hyser. - Thank you. I really appreciate the conversation and to the points made, I think as we get into the boundary work, looking at sixth grade and where that belongs, I know I've had conversations with you about we can't leave behind the secondary school students there's all these benefits of sixth grade and in middle school but I think it's so important to think about it do you point about communication right I don't live far from the city of Fairfax I used to teach in Fairfax City very sad today and so you know I have a lot of friends who live in the city and when I first ran like oh we'll vote for you and then they were very sad when they

[00:48:50] couldn't and they were very sad when they didn't feel like they had representation even more than so I think it's really important to have these conversations and I think as we're doing the boundary work it's important to let the county residents know that hey by the way we're not going to be touching this set of boundaries as we're looking at balancing capacity at schools because those are the city boundaries right and that's why that's going to stay the same and we're going to work around that for our county students I think that's part of the communication around our boundary work and I would be curious I know Fairfax High School has one of our academy programs in the high school I'm curious if there's any agreements around placement of certain programs

[00:49:27] within Fairfax City Schools from the county or not like you mentioned AAP Center this was some rejiggering over the years but a special education programs yeah I mean right like that's I you know I've never dug into the agreement enough to know what exactly is required it's similar so we have county kids who attend our preschool autism programs and we also have obviously some county kids that come to Fairfax for the Academy and change it as their base school because they you know they need to take dance and it's you know three

[00:50:02] hours long and so we do and language is part of our Academy so we have a lot of we have American Sign Language Korean Arabic we have a lot of languages in our so yes they come for other things I bring that up because I think it's important as much as cities kids right can go to Fairfax County schools if they want to access certain programs and not in the city the same with the other way around like the county schools can play people place at a city school if there's a particular program there and then as we're looking at expanding programs I think it's also important to be equitable with the city schools to make

[00:50:41] sure that if your kids need a particular program that they don't always have to leave right like whether it's AAP or special ed there's certain programs that aren't students choose to have but other programs that they need to have and I think it's important as we're looking at that placement to ensure that your your kids right don't know to leave the city to get a program they need so i just wanted to bring that up as some conversations and maybe there's some more joint work we can do as especially as you're going down the boundary work yes thank you sure pitches um so when have you guys discussed at all um the secondary school model and if you decide to to move to a six seven eight middle model will

[00:51:21] you we have consultants that are working on all of it all of the above at the at the moment and i I know that Ms. Eisemurheiser and others have raised the question about secondary schools as it pertains to the sixth grade conversation. So TBD on that front. Dr. Anderson?

[00:51:36] - Just one last final question. You talked about Katherine Johnson implementing an AEP center. When did that occur? - So that happened in 2017, I wanna say. In 2014, we started advocating to have local level four at the two elementary schools, partially to alleviate some of the over-capacity issues at Mosaic at the time.

[00:52:05] 'Cause we had 200 students from the city, sometimes over 200 who attended Mosaic. And at the, you know, this was pre-renovation. So once we did that, then we started moving towards, let's make Catherine John.

[00:52:25] We were losing a lot of kids out of Katherine Johnson to Rocky Run, who wanted to leave to go to the center. So I think Dr. Noonan was our superintendent at that time and it was when Aaron Lennart was, so I'm trying to like get a timeframe in my head.

[00:52:45] So it had to be 2017 to 2019. And it was basically like a grandfather and we changed it to a center, but we didn't force people to choose it or stay at Katherine Johnson as the center.

[00:53:06] We gave them, it was like a two-year thing. So if you were at Rocky Run as a rising eighth grader or you were coming in as a rising seventh grader, you could continue on that path. And then it was like, sorry, now you have to go to Katherine Johnson's center.

[00:53:26] - Okay, thank you. Was that effort led by FCPS or the city? - It was a collaborative effort. We basically advocated for it with FCPS at the time and it was a pretty easy collaboration.

[00:53:47] There was both sides. It served its purpose. It helped with capacity issues at Mosaic in terms of the elementary schools and also Rocky Run at the time was at capacity. These are all pre-renovation for those buildings of yours.

[00:54:04] So basically, I mean, FCPS was none too happy, just they're great, you know. It'll alleviate some issues for us as well. - Do you recall any of the impact on the staff? Were teachers required to have additional classes, certification, did you experience a big attrition of teachers who may not have been able to meet the new requirements?

[00:54:29] - No, in terms of the center at Katherine Johnson, yes, teachers had to go through the certification process. It was never brought to us as an issue. - Thank you.

[00:54:47] - Ms. Sizemore-Hazer, your pitches? Anyone else? Ms. Anderson? - The only question that I had for you is what preschool services the city is already providing because I know that for us, a large part of the push to potentially move kiddos to sixth to eighth grade, although I also went to a secondary school, so I'm very sensitive to those issues.

[00:55:14] But I know that a large push on our side is to ensure that we have room in our schools to provide preschool opportunities for kids. And so I was just wondering if you guys could speak to that a little bit. - I will say that the city has long advocated to have universal pre-K.

[00:55:30] We do have obviously Head Start and we have some special ed preschool programs Daniels run we have in the city we have Main Street which is a preschool program that's housed in Green Acres Elementary which the school board owns it's no longer an operating it was one of the six original elementary schools in the county in the city so that building is half utilized for the senior center and half for Main Street preschool it's on a sliding scale we work with them to

[00:56:06] I think we've provided resources for them in the past but yes we in in terms of our renovations the hope is to add you know and in thinking you know we're trying to think towards the future that this is a possibility that eventually you know we will have universal pre-k so the the plan for now is to add four additional classrooms to each of the elementary schools as your renovation does include a capacity increase yes it does okay and i know that it was just bonded but what yes

[00:56:42] what's your timeline roughly roughly i know i know it's a horrible question well my timeline is always different from what it mr plattenberg tells me six years right okay well i'm going with six well i hear four yes miss marron yes so our board is going to be looking at our capital improvement program one of your favorites mr pottenberg uh at the start of the year and i'm

[00:57:21] furiously scrolling through it right now to try and remind myself if rcip includes it must right so i'm wondering as you went to bond though did you do you have more area to go for more sustainable options i mean i think about i know i certainly hear about the instructional program daniel's run i mean it's like award-winning environmental ed and so when you were bonding I mean, are you able to do more sustainably than perhaps we can?

[00:57:48] - Yes, that's on the table. We haven't done the design yet, but there's been talk of, like at the high school, the roof, since we're replacing the roof, what are our options in terms of looking at sustainability?

[00:58:03] And same with, right, all of our schools really have won Virginia, all sorts of awards. I don't, I can't even name it. Virginia, naturally, obviously, Daniel's run has won for a number of years.

[00:58:19] Katherine Johnson has also won an Eco Green. There's been several. We have carried our watersheds. - Well, I think from what my, I didn't know as much, though, is that because of the instructional program, not per se the facility.

[00:58:35] And so, again, just wondering if your bond would, but yeah, the roof sounds like a great opportunity, but if you were planning other things, thinking about net zero, I mean, that's what, like, we're striving for very far on the horizon. So we just welcome your thoughts or updates on that.

[00:58:50] - Sure, we'd be happy to once we, yeah, when we start that process. - I'll take a turn really quick. One thing that I have mentioned to a few of our city colleagues is how eager I am to partner on even bigger ideas.

[00:59:07] You know, I know that there are, you know, one of the good things about having a few of our city colleagues joining the city council is that there are more opportunities to partner with the city as a whole with an eye towards education. And I would love to see another elementary school in the city of Fairfax.

[00:59:26] And there are ways to do it in a way that are mutually beneficial to the county and the city, both in terms of the benefits, but also the responsibilities, because we're not gonna see a slowdown of the growth in that corridor.

[00:59:41] I live a block inside of county boundaries from the city, and there is a project being approved or opening, it seems like every other month. And so at some point, maybe not in the near future, but in the future at some point, we're gonna have to have conversations about how do we address that together.

[01:00:03] As we've always addressed it at the schools that we have, I know that the city will not green light new schools unless there is a capacity crunch at all of them based on city populations. But that doesn't mean that that's how it has to be, right? Especially if we have some forward thinking about what could happen in order to get us to the table around a new elementary school or other services, particularly as we think about how do we solve the preschool issue together, because we all have the same goal of getting as many students into preschool as possible.

[01:00:35] Chair Pitches. - Yeah, Carl and I have talked about this. Actually, the county owns the work yard that's right next to Providence Park, which years ago, when we were at the council, wanted green acres for something.

[01:00:50] We were trying to figure out, well, we need a site in case we need to build another elementary school. And I had wanted Providence, because it was Providence Park area, because it was right in between Daniels Run and Providence.

[01:01:05] And it was close to the county side, sort of the Braddock Road area. So you guys actually own a piece of property is why I couldn't get that. That is part of my advocacy.

[01:01:23] But yeah, and you all believe there is something in planning for this at the Burkholder Center, which is right down the street from that. The county owns also a piece of property right across from the post office in the city.

[01:01:45] That right now there's a proposal to put housing there. So which is interesting because my question was, well where are they gonna go to school?

[01:02:10] - I just wanna piggyback on what you were saying because I think we are also in the unique position with the George Mason campus right there on the city, in city property lines, right next to it. To be able to have those conversations of what benefit is there that we can utilize within the George Mason community with their education school.

[01:02:27] And I know that FCPS has a really strong partnership with Mason and we see them at the rally meetings. But what could be coming down in the future? I agree that's more innovative in use of collaboration between all three.

[01:02:45] - Dr. Anderson? - Yes, she's giving me the answer to this question. I was just curious in terms of what is the communication between your board and your city council when it comes to, and the mayor, when it comes to new development, because we have lots of new development, and as I just mentioned a little bit while ago, the question is always where they're going to go to school, and I don't think we have as planful and strategic of an approach as I would like, because very often we have multifamily homes and spaces where the school's already overcrowded,

[01:03:24] and the proffers are not what they have been other places or even in Fairfax County in years past where when you have these big communities there's a school that comes with it I'm very curious to see how does the process work for the city of Fairfax so it's always been a struggle but I'm hopeful because I have two school board members who are moving to the council so it it is long been the argument because all the city

[01:03:56] development tends to be on the Providence side of the city and it's it's incredibly problematic because a lot of the county development isn't on that affects that end of the city so unfortunately I'll just be blunt money talks so in past the council has while we try to explain to them the impact it has not only on our we try to put it in terms of money right the wear and tear on the buildings having to pay the county more money and

[01:04:34] tuition but ultimately they have historically in the last I would say four to six years have been approving a lot of high density and they tried to tell us that they're not going to get a lot of students out of that but we all know that housing choices have changed no longer is a single-family home or a townhouse the only place you're gonna get children we have plenty of families who are moving into these new condominiums that are more like one level townhouses and we have so many of them and they're new and they're more

[01:05:14] affordable than buying a single-family home so it's a struggle it is a conversation and but it's more of a one-on-one each school board member is assigned a council member and it's that board members responsibility to communicate with that council member and sort of get it across that you know if you approve this you know 250 unit housing development it's going to bring this many kids which is this many classrooms and this is what that's going

[01:05:50] to do the tuition bill usually money is the only way you can sort of make it make them see the impact well and one good nugget of information for that conversation is that the county had to adjust the way that it calculates projections because we were no longer being as accurate as we could be because we were assuming much lower student yields out of condos and apartments than we should have been and we are more accurate today having adjusted that than they were previously because it has changed, especially when you've got great schools that people are moving to go

[01:06:28] put their kids in. So, Ms. Marin. Yeah, so I am very interested in the capital piece and the development piece and representing, especially in Vienna and the town of Vienna, how that has changed over, you know, the 20 years that I lived there and now. And so I appreciate knowing what the development pattern is kind of looking like in Fairfax City. I do think that the next big thing the horizon for us is really facilities and funding of that I have met with the superintendent and our chief of facilities and took a deep dive and how they're probably are projecting because there would be times when I'm like hey

[01:07:08] did we know that that townhouse unit was going up right across from an elementary school and I've seen over the years that there has been improvement but I like really sat down and tried to understand so I do think that we're trying to project and as wild as it might be like birth rate it's still a really reliable factor which is hard to believe in our community where there's so much you know influx and outflux or staying and going so I do wonder you know I'd hope that our projections are just as accurate you know everywhere in the county and certainly for the city they seem to be holding true I was told that they would look back and see and sure enough the projections were pretty

[01:07:43] much on so but if we're not seeing that on the ground in reality then I think we really need to make sure whatever we're doing is accurate so I just want to share that well I will tell you in the city Eric Foreman who is on the boundary advisory committee he he's the one who does our projections and he works closely with the county a number of years ago there was a affordable housing complex and we had about 57 students out of there and they were replacing it it was

[01:08:19] you know it's being redeveloped and it was a lot of it was condominium buildings some two over twos and then several townhouses and they said oh you're not going to get hurt here we're not going to get very many students out of that you were actually going to be better off than what was there before which did not hold true at all so I think mr. Foreman also has sort of seen the tides turn over the last four to five years that we are essentially we're getting the yields out

[01:08:55] of condominiums and apartment complexes is increasing and I think everybody is sort of coming to that realization that it's not it's not a phenomenon it's from here on out I mean as as long as Northern Virginia is this expensive you know it's and we don't have a lot of affordable housing that's the how that's the next affordable housing miss Hall just to kind of piggyback on that I know that the county overall has been flat as far as your you know numbers have gone

[01:09:32] but the city has actually increased 7% which is a very large number and I just want to make sure that we are aware obviously of the things that are coming and going but just the city we're only going to get bigger and I know that the county side of it as well but we can only do so much within our buildings so we would ask that you just try to be cognizant of that and I do not envy your jobs with the community overall I know it's going to be a big big conversation and people are not going to want to move their kids for a variety of reasons but we just want to thank you in advance for doing the very hard work with us

[01:10:09] thank you anyone else all right it is 6:40 we have a little time until we reconvene for some food but we will adjourn in terms of dinner we've been able to move it up a little bit early so if you look at the map on where you need to go we're going to Marshall High School it's actually around back is

[01:10:49] where you'll enter for the dinner so if you can look for Fairfax County school board members I just sent the map to your invites we can

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