Coraggio Consulting Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, December 19, 2024 Date: Thursday, December 19, 2024 Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia Length: 3h 19m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iss9ermvPk 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:09:44] Board members please take your seats it's December 19th 2024 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the National Anthem by Carson Middle School's Bella Voce under the direction of Kristen Reddick I pledge allegiance one more round of applause for those talented students item 2.02 announcements Mr. Moon has submitted a written request to attend the meeting this evening because [00:12:59] virtually because of a personal conflict is he's out of town due to a family visit and he's located in Boston, Massachusetts. All those in favor of Mr. Moon's request, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dr. Anderson, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Dunn, Ms. Lady, and myself. That is unanimous. [00:13:17] Mr. Moon, will you test your microphone? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Ms. Seizmoorheiser has submitted a written request to attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a medical conflict. She's in Burke, Virginia. All those in favor of Ms. Seismarheiser's request? Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Dr. Anderson, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Dunn, Ms. Lady, and myself. That is unanimous. Ms. Seismarheiser, will you test her microphone? We're still working on a connection. [00:13:44] All right, we'll test her when she logs on. Ms. St. John Cunning has submitted a written request to attend this evening's meeting virtually due to a personal conflict, and she is dealing with a FAMILY EMERGENCY IS LOCATED IN ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA. ALL THOSE IN FAVOR OF ST. JOHN CUNNING'S REQUEST, MISS MARIN, MR. [00:14:02] MCELVINE, DR. ANDERSON, MR. MCDANIEL, MR. ANDERSON, MR. DUNN, MS. LADY, AND MYSELF. THAT IS UNANIMOUS. AND WE ARE STILL WORKING ON THE CONNECTION THERE AS WELL. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO REVIEW A COPY OF THIS AGENDA, OF THE EVENING'S AGENDA, PLEASE SEE THE BACK OF THE AUDITORIUM. [00:14:21] TO OBTAIN COPY OF ANY ITEMS BEING PRESENTED TONIGHT, PLEASE REFERENCE THE QR CODE ON dot edu slash board docs tonight's meeting is being broadcast on channel 99 and live streamed on the website at fcps dot edu slash tv slash ch99 tonight's meeting is being broadcast in spanish on youtube at youtube.com slash at fcps espanol agenda item 2.03 annandale terrace elementary school 60th anniversary proclamation i call on dr anderson for a proclamation thank you very much [00:14:58] this is the Annandale Terrace Elementary School's 60th anniversary proclamation and we have two principals with us we have our current principal Miss Badia and our former principal our most recent principal Miss Pilsen who are in the audience so please stand as well as a host of other guests and friends and students whereas Annandale Terrace Elementary School has been a pillar of the Annandale community since its founding in 1964 providing a nurturing environment that [00:15:33] has supported the growth and development of generations of young learners for six decades adapting to changing times while honoring a legacy of inclusion diversity and educational excellence and whereas over the past 60 years annadale terrace has grown from a small neighborhood school to a thriving educational institution documented in the 1993 FCPS television series profile [00:16:06] showcasing its rich history and community impact and whereas one of annadale terrace's early principals william william i jones was one of the first black principals of a formerly all-white FCPS school following desegregation and whereas in 1999 Annandale Terrace Elementary School was among the first FCPS schools to implement all-day kindergarten demonstrating its commitment to early [00:16:41] childhood education and the importance of building a strong academic foundation and whereas Annandale Terrace has been a leader in promoting environmental stewardship and sustainability hosting the secretary of agriculture in 2024 in conjunction with the get to green and school lunch programs and earning the silver eco school certification for fostering environmental responsibility among students by integrating environmental education into the curriculum including recycling programs a school garden a wildlife habitat planting trees among other initiatives whereas the virginia department of education honored annandale terrace elementary with the continuous improvement award [00:17:20] in 2022 recognizing its sustained efforts to enhance student learning and achievement and whereas annandale terrace students demonstrate cougar pride by treating themselves and others respectfully and responsibly as ethical and global citizens and persevere as confident learners communicators and problem solvers and whereas annandale terrace is proud of its educators including a 2021 fairfax county teacher of the year reflecting the school's dedication to excellence and teaching and its commitment to nurturing students potential fostering a sense of community and belonging for all students and whereas the school's vibrant extracurricular offerings have [00:17:57] enriched the lives of students encouraging them to explore their talents build confidence and develop a love for learning beyond the classroom such as the at jumpers annandale terraces nationally renowned precision jump rope team which proudly represented the school and community by performing on the south lawn of the white house in the early 2000s and and whereas the school's strong connection with families and the wider community is a hallmark of its success with the pta and numerous volunteers playing a vital role in supporting the school's mission providing resources organizing events and creating opportunities for collaboration between teachers [00:18:37] families and students now therefore there would be resolved that the fairfax county school board Honors Annadell Terrace Elementary School on the occasion of its 60th anniversary of providing educational excellence and enrichment opportunities to students and to the community. [00:18:55] Is there a second. Second. All those in favor of the proclamation. Miss Marin Mr. McElveen Dr. Anderson Mr. McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr. Dunn Miss Lady Miss Sizemore Heiser Mr. [00:19:10] Moon and myself that is unanimous for board members present. Congratulations. [00:19:22] Miss Sizemore Heiser can we have you test your microphone wonderful thank you I would like to welcome all those here in support of the Annandale Terrace elementary school 60th anniversary proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais all right agenda item 3.01 community participation the next order of business is community participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide public comments at school board regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's [00:23:36] website. During the signup process community members acknowledge they are informed of the school board's expectations for proper decorum when providing comments. These expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room. We ask audience members to be respectful of one another. Shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated. Please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks. Audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats including when recording video or taking photos. We are grateful to those who have come to speak to us this evening and thank you for your cooperation school board members will be listening but not responding madam [00:24:14] clerk please call the first speaker Aaron Miller hello thank you all tonight I appreciate the opportunity to speak I'm here to talk about the boundary are you okay apologies I'm here to talk about the boundary review process that's ongoing and some of my concerns that I have here so I have moved ten times in the last or excuse me five times in the last 10 years my daughters have been born in three separate [00:24:52] states when we were again asked to move in 2023 recognizing as an army officer this was likely the end of my career and we were going to be able to settle and actually stabilize as a family for the first time we thought very seriously about where we were going to end up at the end of the day though it came down to one key criteria and that was the education in front of our daughters our three daughters and how can we provide the best educational opportunities for them this driving factor and maybe this story well let me try that again maybe our story is unique though where we live here means there are probably more officers or other populations that move quite frequently [00:25:32] but the decision-making criteria that parents use is not unique we are looking and we are very fortunate to live in vienna in the near colvin run and going to the langley schools for the parents in our neighborhood the story is very much the same people thought about where to live and they move deliberately to come to our neighborhood to be inside of good schools schools defined by their educational outcomes not just the presence of programs my concerns thus far are twofold first that this review will upend some of these key and critical parental decisions that went into and not just parental but caregiver decisions that went into this location [00:26:10] and the lack of transparency in the process I'd ask as we move forward that this board consider three things the timing holding reviews during the summer when people travel ensure communities cannot participate respect decisions made by parents and minimize disruptions my oldest has been in three elementary schools David Walrad good evening Chairman Frisch Dr. Reed and members of [00:26:47] the board thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight my name is David Walrad and I'm the president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers. You are preparing to make history. When I became president in 2022, collective bargaining seemed like a distant goal. The school board hadn't even passed a resolution authorizing collective bargaining. Since then, we've passed a resolution authorizing collective bargaining. We've seen the largest public organizing effort anywhere in the country this century, and we've come to an agreement on a collective bargaining agreement in a remarkably short time. Having led one of the teams, I want [00:27:24] to start by thanking Dr. Reed for her insistence on following an interest based approach. I can say with great surety that every person in the room, whether with the teams assembled by the two unions or by the district, had one major collective interest in mind, ensuring the best outcomes for the students of Fairfax County, both now and in the future. The conditions we work in are the conditions our children learn in. When we provide teachers with sufficient [00:27:58] planning time, we give our students the benefit of creative and well-planned lessons. When we provide our bus drivers with consistent pay, we give our students continuity and fewer disruptions caused by driver shortages. When we address safety concerns in schools, we address safety concerns where our students spend 180 days a year. [00:28:20] When we make Fairfax a better place to work, we make it easier to recruit and retain highly skilled professionals. you for bringing forward the tentative agreements between the Fairfax Education Unions and FCPS and I ask that in a couple weeks when you vote please have our students in mind when you vote yes. Thank you. [00:28:44] Lydia Lutt. Good evening. My name is Lydia Lutt. One of my sons, Jack, is a seventh grade student at Sandburg Middle School. I'm here tonight to share my concerns that Fairfax County is not teaching its children, my children, to study. On the On the FCPS homepage, it talks about excellence, equity, and opportunity, but at Sandburg, I find assumptions, bar lowering, and someone else's responsibility. [00:29:20] This is my child's planner. Provided by FCPS, you will see that it's blank. No one told him how to use it or why Fairfax County bought it for him. I am a partner in my child's education. I have the responsibility and, frankly, the privilege to do that, along with the privilege of my own higher education and the time to make sure my child is preparing for his own advanced education. [00:29:46] But I keep asking, when is someone, besides his parents, going to expect him to study? What study skills is the school teaching him so I can reinforce them at home? I'm told those lessons happen in advisory. No, wait, in the core classes. [00:30:02] But then his science teacher tells me he has to assume no one is studying, so instead he takes class time to give answers to his study guides that look exactly like the quizzes. He's not teaching study strategies, and no one else is either. The head of student services at Sandberg tells me that I have to remember that some kids have to take care of younger siblings or go to work after school, and that our students will learn to study when she did, when they go to college. [00:30:29] Seriously? Please do not let Fairfax County give up on teaching kids how to take responsibility for their own education, to learn and grow and push themselves. Please stop assuming that kids with after-school responsibilities shouldn't be taught how to study, because privileged kids and families know that that is wrong, and they will not wait for you. [00:30:53] The current divide will only get wider, and kids whose parents didn't go to college... Laura Smith. I have a 7th grader and twins in 5th grade. [00:31:13] My kids lack a grade level reference text from which they can learn, resulting in a lack of foundational understanding of the material. Their learning consists of PowerPoint slides pieced together by teachers, IXL, quiz questions, and a litany of VDOE hyperlinks. [00:31:29] These are lovely enrichment activities, but my kids need a foundational text. 1. Textbooks provide that foundation, the content and context of what they are learning all in one place. My seventh grader received a Q&A list and a hyperlink to the FEMA website as her reference for learning about nature. She needs a book for background, context, and vocabulary. Two, read the research on kids and books. You extol the benefits of kids reading books at book fairs but then withhold books from their actual curricula. The research consistently and clearly shows [00:32:06] that organized structured textbooks facilitate deep learning with progressive building of knowledge books support this process in a physical tangible way not having books also discriminates against my neurodivergent children whose primary learning style is not PowerPoint slides briefed in a room of 30 distracting peers three parental engagement I cannot manage the litany of websites logins and disparate pieces of information to help my kids but I could with a textbook for learning to study textbook based skills like skimming for key points, making connections between ideas or organizing information are [00:32:44] foundational for academic success. My kids will struggle later because they will start from scratch, but you can bet that the private school kids will have this skill set in spades because their schools give them books. Five, we don't need a Virginia SOL specific textbook. We need one that covers 75% of what they need to know and the rest can be filled in by enrichment. Deborah [00:33:12] Lerner. I'm here because it seems that Fairfax County no longer believes parents should be engaging with their children at all when it comes to their education. The county has bought a new elementary language arts curriculum called Benchmark. Maybe the content is stellar. I wouldn't know. I haven't seen a single assignment come home all year. I reached out to my daughter's teacher to ask how I can at least help her prepare for assessments and was told, quote, the consumable student materials that go with the program are required to stay at school for the duration of [00:33:52] the unit. Unfortunately, the program does not provide additional materials for students to use at home. Benchmark is a scripted curriculum that is trademarked, so there are not provided supplemental materials. I question the legality of locking coursework inside the classroom under the guise of intellectual property. Similarly, I was shocked when we received notification that Fairfax would no longer allow computerized math tests to be sent home. [00:34:17] The reason was given was that they want to be able to use them again next year. Are we really worried about a 10-year-old test theft ring? Going over test errors is a classic learning tool and I am appalled at the idea that the county is taking away parents' abilities to review a test with their children. When I asked my daughter's teacher where I could find math materials for us to work on at home, I was told, quote, FCPS does not have a specific math curriculum, so unfortunately I don't have resources or materials that I can share with you. I've encouraged other parents to check out the testing section of Barnes and Noble. Did you hear that? FCPS does not have a math curriculum [00:34:56] for my daughter. When you provide a bare-bones curriculum, eliminate all resource materials from the classroom, and you prevent any way for learning to be reinforced at home, you need to ask yourself whether you're actually prioritizing the education of our children. H.J. Spiegel. Thank you for the opportunity to testify as an individual. At the last school board meeting, the school board passed a resolution agreeing to hire an outside law firm to investigate and report on the circumstances [00:35:35] surrounding Hayfield football recruiting. One provision of the resolution forbade retention of any law firm that has done any business with the school system within the previous 10 years. More importantly it is the lawyers who have worked on school system matters not the law firms that is the more relevant issue. [00:35:53] Lawyers move from firm to firm so it is important to revise the enacted resolution to clarify that no law firm or lawyer or law firm employing any lawyer who has worked on school system business within the past 10 years shall be permitted to be involved in the investigation and report. [00:36:09] If such a lawyer joins the firm you have chosen after the investigation begins, there will need to be a firewall between the lawyer and the investigation. This is not addressed and should be. The investigation needs to be pristine. I recently read that the school system paid outside law firms around $9 million over a recent period of 18 months, representing the school system in various legal issues. [00:36:32] One of the law firms has billing rates of over $2,000 per hour. This is unconscionable. The school board could hire more in-house lawyers and pay each one $200,000 per year, and they could handle every possible school system issue and save the taxpayers millions of dollars per year. [00:36:50] I also note that whoever it is in the school system responsible for retaining these outside lawyers is what we describe in the legal business as a rainmaker. Whoever that is, whether you're division counsel Mr. Foster or someone else, they should have their employment contract amended so that for two years from the date on which they are no longer employed by the school system, they are not permitted to take employment from any law firm they hired on behalf of the school system. This will prevent unjust enrichment and a conflict of interest. Thank you very much for [00:37:20] listening Jenna white good evening I'm here to request that you make healthy start times a priority for all of our students especially our students in middle schools in 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics published its position statement middle and high school should aim for a starting time of no earlier than 8:30 since then numerous other health and education organ or organizations have taken a similar stance that same year this board and the [00:37:56] superintendent of SPS committed to improving middle school start times in the future. It's time. We need you to follow the plan and implement later school start times in 2025. According to the AAP statement, a substantial body of research shows that delaying school start times has a wide range of potential benefits to students: physical, mental, health, safety, academic performance, attendance, and quality of life. There's also been a great deal more science since this statement was written in 2014 to further support middle school start times. [00:38:28] So I was surprised on December 3rd when my phone started pinging, hearing from advocates who are watching the work session. They texted me, middle school start times is tanking. Why, I asked, were the plans from the consultant not good? They didn't really discuss them, I was told. Why, I asked. [00:38:45] Boundaries, they said. Start times now has to be done with boundary changes, so we have to wait again. But we've been told the boundary work will be done in phases. That realistically is going to take years. I get that it's complicated but sometimes we have to do hard things not to mention the over eleven hundred sixth graders in Mason District who are middle schoolers at the bus stop at 6:30 a.m. at 11 years old. [00:39:08] These sixth graders as usual in middle school in these three schools are forgotten. As the community continues to become aware of what happened at the work session I'm sure we're going to continue to speak up to make this happen. Please listen to us. also listen to the consultant you hired discuss her four options and get this work back on track to happen in 2025. Thank you. Please play the video testimony submitted by Stephanie Lundquist-Aurora. [00:39:40] Good evening and happy holidays. As we move from the Hayfield football scandal into the boundary review, parents are left wondering what else you're hiding from us. You voted against Mateo Dunn's external review until you absolutely didn't have a choice any longer. And congratulations, by the way, on doing the right thing, but too late after the regular football season was already over and we were into playoffs. The exploitation of the homeless student loophole was abundantly clear to the public mere days after Superintendent Michelle Reed referred [00:40:17] to the whole thing as misinformation. So are we supposed to trust you to do the right thing on the boundary review? You've already hired a firm that doesn't seem to have any experience on boundary reviews. Are they friends of Dr. Reed's? You've also set up a community committee that you're forcing to sign, or I've heard you're forcing to sign, non-disclosure agreements. And really, nothing says trust like signing, sign this NDA. And exactly how are you selecting those [00:40:50] committee members? I know for one example, you've selected a friend of Carl Frisch's who has no children and doesn't live in the district. So that was a bit puzzling to all of us. And he's publicly supporting redistricting for equity. So it didn't seem like a coincidence to us that he had been selected for your random selection committee. And it leaves us all wondering, did you learn anything from the Hayfield scandal? Instead of a meaningless apology for your misdeeds and cover-ups. We would really like to see you move forward with transparency and fairness [00:41:29] in other realms of governance and decision making. The boundary review is your first test after that scandal, and so far you're not doing very well. Thank you. Agenda Item 4.01, Student Representative Matters. I call on Ms. Sawant. [00:41:50] Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, everyone. I truly enjoyed being able to attend the City County Board Meeting on Tuesday and seeing how our collaboration helped serve both city and county students. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and effort that went into preliminary discussions of the possible future implications of rezoning Fairfax students and the Fairfax City pyramid for any possible capacity issues that we may see in the coming years. These discussions reflect the weight of the decisions that impact students academic performance, social lives, mental health, connections that they have with teachers, and overall well-being and safety at school. It is crucial that we carry the safe the same intentionality into our [00:42:29] boundary policy discussions across several high school pyramids because even one neighborhood shift can have significant consequences. These are not decisions that we should be taking lightly. Speaking of pyramids, in January students will start course planning for the upcoming school year. From my discussions with board members and students, it is evident that equity in access to this information is critical. All students should be receiving consistent details about available opportunities, courses including dual enrollment, AP, IB courses, summer learning programs, AVID, and CPP. All students should also have access to creating four-year plans and looking at what their schedule will look [00:43:06] like over their four years in high school, speaking with their counselor about course load, and we should also be making sure that rising eighth graders feel prepared for their transition to high school. As students wrap up this final week before winter break, they also do appreciate the recent change to student view, which now stays open until the last day of the quarter. This adjustment reduces unnecessary anxiety and promotes transparency between students and teachers allowing time to address missing work and avoid surprises on report cards. Meanwhile at our most recent December Superintendent's Advisory Council meeting student delegates have already begun working in focus groups aligned with the five strategic plan goals. These [00:43:43] goals center around these the projects that students have started in these goals center around improving student absenteeism rates and engagement in the classroom, reevaluating homework expectations to reduce stress while maintaining academic rigor, promoting equity in advanced coursework such as Algebra 1 and 8th grade for ESOL students and English language learners, increasing awareness about the diverse post-secondary opportunities beyond traditional four-year universities, and creating personalized plans for sharing college and career information. Our SAC delegates were thankful to be able to meet with subject matter experts at this past meeting where we were able to to understand the nuances of each of these issues [00:44:23] and what we can do to address them. I invite board members and central office staff to engage with our students, helping them build out their recommendations that can have a positive impact on our community. We look forward to meeting with Dr. Reed in January for our mid-year check-in. Together, we can continue to build a system that reflects the values and aspirations of all our students. [00:44:43] Thank you. - Thank you, Ms. Sawant. Ms. St. John-Cunning is joining us. Will you test your microphone, please? [00:44:59] - I'm sorry. - No worries. you we can hear you all right agenda item 5.01 action item certification of closed meeting compliance since the board will reconvene our closed meeting we will take this up agenda item 5.01 when we complete closed meeting later tonight the same goes for agenda item 5.02 agenda item 5.03 action item financial year 2025 mid-year budget review i call on mr mcdaniel for a motion i move the school board approve revenue expenditure changes reflected in the fyi 2025 mid-year budget review as detailed in the agenda item. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Seismarheiser. [00:45:40] Mr. McDaniel, would you like to speak to your motion? Just to say thank you to staff for their work that they do on this item and superintendent and lead for prioritizing safety and security above all else in this expenditure package. So thank you for all your work. Thank you. Ms. Seismarheiser, would you like to speak to your second? Just to thank staff like my colleague did for all their work and for prioritizing safety. I think it's a good mid-year package so i appreciate all the hard work of staff and dr reed thank you mr dunn thank you um i note that there is a proposed expenditure adjustment of 3.4 million dollars for safety and security initiatives and it states that the specific use of this funding will be determined [00:46:19] by the office of chief safety and security offices based on immediate need in fy 2025 and it cites potential investments in additional security cameras and vape detectors supplying schools with panic alert systems and expanding the safety and security screening pilot program as well as supporting the next phase of vestibule installation i'd like to request dr reed to consider bringing a plan for how this money will be spent to the school board so that we can provide input to it because leaving it to the discretion of one-year subordinates while i greatly respect [00:46:54] their expertise money is scarce and we've spoken many times i know i've spoken many times about My personal concerns about the fact that we're funding security cameras in elementary schools solely through grants, which necessitates a multi-year deployment rather than kind of buying in bulk and having them all done in a more approximate time frame. [00:47:18] We've also spoken about vape detectors and the necessity of having those available in our bathrooms to identify persons, students who are engaging in vaping and making sure that they're um you know that kids aren't doing bad things in bathrooms and everybody has access to those because we hear a lot of stories of both middle schools and high schools so i i would like the opportunity to have a conversation about that uh with the school board and and have a better idea of where this money will go because i know we are in a scarce budget environment and there's a lot of security and safety enhancements that that should be prioritized generally but understanding [00:47:54] where this money is going would be would be especially important yes sir i can provide that mr lambert and i have visited several times about the different configurations for the use of those funds um so i'd be happy to provide that thank you i also just wanted to highlight the importance of the licensure pathway if i teach if there's anything that could be done to expand that program beyond the hundred slots that you have here do you anticipate that if you had additional slots in that program, that you could fill them? [00:48:26] At this point, it's brand new, right, in terms of our ability to particularly focus on our underemployed current employees. I would -- I think we've opened up the sign-up and registration opportunity. [00:48:43] Mr. Solomon, do you have any current data on the number of applicants? Not number of applicants at this time, however, the information sessions, we've seen incredible interest 40 per 40 attendees per each one and how many we held we've held two information sessions so far with two more on the horizon so so far we have an interest of 80 and we did have we kept the initial program at a hundred so and I know I've been out in schools and there's a great deal of excitement on the part of staff to have an opportunity to access the program as well as in the community so I I think it's something we can think about and perhaps look at [00:49:22] year end dollars to maybe expand that if it's possible do you know what the current number of teacher vacancies is in fcps we are all let me clarify all classrooms are covered with certificated staff member but our current classroom teacher vacancies are different than the certificated teacher vacancies it might be resource or support teachers outside the classroom but out of our let's go ahead Mr. Solomon why don't you I think we're down that's exactly right the total number of instructional classroom vacancies is exactly 94 out of well over 16,000 teaching [00:50:02] positions and are those 94 positions covered by long-term substitutes is that the usual remedy that's correct or they're positions that are not classroom teacher positions again I want to clarify there's a difference between we also have resource teachers that work in the central office as instructional coaches or teaching positions that do other work but the classroom all of our classrooms are covered with a certificated teacher so there are no classrooms without [00:50:35] a certificated teacher. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Don Miss Marin. Yes I appreciate the analysis and presentation and it all looks well to me them in your budget. I did have a question though around the summer school funds so here there's a point in the in the mid-year that talks about summer school sub fund but Dr. Reed in a in a recent update to the board from December 7th there was talk of reducing summer learning program reductions or reducing summer learning programs [00:51:12] by almost 10 million dollars so can we talk about that is that need to happen I just can't imagine reducing that summer learning that's so critical so a number of the summer learning programs have been funded with esser dollars which are the post-covid dollars those dollars are no longer available they had to be encumbered by september 30 of this year so the pre-covid summer school offerings were fairly slim in fairfax county public schools many of them were tuition based At this time we're looking at the utilization possibility of [00:51:49] Title One for students that perhaps need more supports over the summer. We're looking at multilingual student supports. There's a vast tuition based program as well as credit recovery and extended school year. So what we want to make sure is that we're able to fund as much of our summer school programming as possible but it's not likely we'll be able to fund everything we've been able to fund when we had extra ESSER dollars. [00:52:19] Well thank you and I mean it's not a surprise and I know Ms. Burden has been preparing us for this since the start. You know I know that the board has been able to use year-end funds at times to cover missing needs and I would hope that we could perhaps figure that out but with such a long summer break and we know how detrimental that is for our students it's really this is something I hope that we can keep our eye on to see if we can do something about it. I did just re-email it to you colleagues. Thank you. Yes ma'am and I we did have several board members have asked if we can take a look at what I sent in the Friday letter and do a recalibration if you will [00:52:55] reallocation. So we definitely are taking a look at that and want to make sure that what we are providing has an ROI or return on investment that is very supportive of our students moving forward But we do have fewer funds than we previously than the last four years for sure. [00:53:14] Thank you. Mayor. Dr. Anderson. Thank you as one of the board members who asked for that second look one of the things that I really want to elevate is that we take a look at who are the students who will no longer be who will no longer have access to those summer programs because looking at the list it's a lot of our students in our title one schools it's a lot of our students and the young scholars programs if we're really committed to equity we want to be sure that we are we have clarity as to who is going to be the most negatively impacted and any way to mitigate [00:53:53] that I think should be considered. So I am glad that this is a look that you and your team are taking and thank you for Miss Marin for raising in this conversation because I was just waiting for that plan to be returned. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Anderson we will go to a vote on these for the motion on the screen all those in favor of the motion as written on the screen miss marron mr mckelveen mr mcdaniel miss anderson dr anderson mr dunn miss lady mr moon and i can't see anybody [00:54:24] else i vote yes and miss st john cunning sizable i got you i vote yes too i'm all right and myself i'm having problems with my screen no worries that and myself that is unanimous moving on agenda item 5.04 action item policy 2418 reporting student progress to parents and guardians renamed to secondary grades assessment and grading a reporting and reporting on progress [00:55:01] of learning i call on miss lady for a motion i move that the school board approve updated policy 2418 secondary grades assessment and grading and reporting on progress of learning formerly called reporting student progress to parents and guardians as detailed in the attachment on board DOCS AND AGENDA ITEM 5.04 PROVIDED THAT IMPLEMENTATION OF THE POLICY DOES NOT BEGIN UNTIL AUGUST 1, 2025. IS THERE A SECOND? I SECOND. MS. MARIN. MS. LADY WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEAK TO YOUR MOTION? [00:55:30] YES. FIRST OF ALL I JUST WOULD LIKE TO THANK STAFF FOR THEIR EFFORTS AND TIME IN OUR GOVERNANCE MEETINGS AS WE REVIEWED THIS POLICY. WE ASKED A LOT OF STAFF AND THEY ALWAYS DELIVERED IN TIME FOR OUR NEXT MEETING I ALSO WANT TO THANK THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS UM MS MARIN MS ST JOHN CUNNING DR. ANDERSON MS SIZEMORE HYSER UM FOR BEING UH THERE AND LABORING THROUGH THIS UM AND I ALSO WANT TO SAY TO THE PUBLIC THAT OUR EFFORT BEHIND THIS WAS THAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR CONSISTENCY SCHOOL TO SCHOOL WE'RE LOOKING FOR CONSISTENCY WITHIN DISCIPLINES UM IN TERMS OF MATHEMATICS [00:56:09] versus english versus performing arts um we're fully aware that uh we you know for those who don't remember we sort of um sunset or we didn't sunset but we postponed the work of the grading committee so we could look at the policy um and i think we've learned something this year but i think we have more to learn um but anyhow i'm proud of what we've put forward um and in terms of the the the moms who spoke tonight uh lydia laura and deborah i thank you for your comments I want you to know that one of the things in here that we talked a lot about was the reassessment policy. [00:56:41] How do we hold our kids accountable to studying for tests the first time, but also how do we better understand that time is the variable in learning, and sometimes it takes a student longer in mathematics than it might in language arts and vice versa. Also, we have put in this policy. There was a homework policy, but we've rolled it into here, and it reads, homework is an essential tool for reinforcing learning and practicing skills that have been taught in the classroom. [00:57:04] HOMEWORK PLAYS A CRUCIAL ROLE IN PROMOTING BETTER LEARNING OUTCOMES AND HELPING STUDENTS DEVELOP SELF-DISCIPLINE, TIME MANAGEMENT, INDEPENDENCE, AND STUDY SKILLS. IT SERVES AS A PRACTICE FOCUSED WORK THAT ENHANCES A STUDENT'S UNDERSTANDING AND MASTER OF CONTENT. [00:57:21] WE HAD A ROBUST CONVERSATION AROUND THIS AND I FULLY EXPECT THAT WHEN THIS IS OPERATIONALIZED IN A REGULATION THAT WE WILL SEE AN EXPECTATION OF HOMEWORK. OTHER THAN THAT I THINK THE REPORT THE NEW POLICY SPEAKS FOR ITSELF AND AGAIN I JUST WANT TO THANK STAFF AND THE COMMITTEE FOR THEIR HARD WORK. [00:57:37] Thank you Miss Lady Miss Marin would you like to speak to your second yes this is the heart of what the board does it's the policy making this is how we institutionalize the wishes of the community and then the superintendent carries them out and I'm just thrilled that this board was able to do this work this year this is another one of those policies and unfortunately had not been reviewed in the timely manner that we'd like of five years but you know the governance committee really did some work and I'm just I think it's come out really REALLY WELL THE POLICY LEAVES TO THE SUPERINTENDENT MUCH OF THE DETAIL SETTING BASED ON THE COMMENTS [00:58:14] THAT WE'VE HEARD FROM SO MANY OF THE SURVEYS AND CONVERSATIONS STAFF TEACHERS FAMILIES SO YOU KNOW I'M GLAD WE'RE GOING TO BE ABLE TO RESOLVE SOME OF THESE MATTERS ONE OF THE THINGS THAT ONE OF THE FOLLOW-ON MOTIONS TALKS ABOUT IS MAKING SURE THAT LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ALIGNS WITH THE WHAT'S HAPPENING AND SO I HEAR YOU PUBLIC COMMENTERS THAT THOSE IF THOSE are the ways that we're communicating with students and families they've got to be up to date it's got to be aligned across grades and grade levels in schools so this is like a tremendous step to ensuring that there's more clarity more consistency and better communications for everyone and [00:58:54] hopefully it will reduce the stress on our students over the worries about the inconsistencies and the confusion. Thank you Miss Marin Dr. Anderson. Thank you I was very glad to be able to work on this policy with my colleagues in the Governance Committee and as well as the rest of the board when they had the opportunity to provide input it is a huge improvement over what was there before because previously the policy did not have the great details that we need to communicate to our families to our students this grading and how it's reported is paramount to students and their [00:59:30] families and there it has to be comprehensive it has to be very clear and it has to be consistent which was a very major theme in all of this work because students should not have various experiences depending on the school that they attend. They should not have various experiences in grading depending on the teacher that they have. So that's the work that I'm really looking forward to see the Secondary Grading Committee take on and to bring forward. One of the things that I also want to highlight because we actually just had this conversation this morning while there is language here regarding homework I am looking for the superintendent to be more explicit in terms [01:00:07] of what does that mean in the regulations because we still have elementary schools that are making decisions to not have any homework which does not necessarily prepare their those students for what's happening in the middle school for what's happening at high school. It needs to be appropriate for their level but it also needs to be present. [01:00:26] I think there are many, many ways to be equitable for our student body and provide homework to allow them to practice a learned skill, not to learn it at home by themselves. That is not teaching. It is a practice of a learned skill. [01:00:43] So I'm really looking forward to see what staff will yield regarding that. But I'm very excited about supporting this policy. There are a few more things that we're going to add in the next couple of pieces of discussion just to really tighten some of the components but overall I think we've done some good work here. [01:01:01] Thank you Dr. Anderson. Mr. Dunn. I think I thank my colleagues for the changes they've made to this policy. It's absolutely imperative that we have a consistent grading approach from school to school within our school system. The superintendent said many times we need to operate as a school system not a system of schools and what I have seen is that families students who move between schools and sometimes it's military families or just non-military families who are [01:01:37] moving from one place to another they experience vastly different grading environments and that means if you want to compare how students are achieving at one high school or one middle school one elementary school compared to another in the county it's almost impossible to make an apples to apples comparison and that shouldn't be the case even within departments within the same high school there can be differences and that is a sub-optimal outcome we need to make sure that we are consistent so that teachers aren't figuring this out on the fly so that they have a clear approach a consistent approach and so that when people are applying to college or applying for [01:02:16] jobs they will understand the grades that were awarded and understand the rigor of our system consistent with the daily excellence of our public schools. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Dunn. I will take a turn before we go to the next step here. I want to be clear this is not about consistency for consistency's sake right. I think one of the things that we hear from parents every school that we visit is that they don't live in a in a bubble right. They talk to each other from school to school and so they are very aware when one skills one school's practices vary significantly [01:02:52] from another school's practices and so what governance committee and I want to thank our chair Miss Lady and and the rest of the the team have pulled together here is an attempt to bring consistency to areas that varied greatly in an effort to enhance rigor enhance academic achievement and to kind of put a direction to the policy that we have and so I'm grateful that we are seeing or find way of looking at the gradebook and at how retakes are done, you know, because all of these issues that you hear about from students, from parents [01:03:31] and from staff, staff has been very clear about their concerns on our grading policies, need to be addressed. And for folks who are wondering what the next steps here are, the next steps are that the grading committee will take our policy and come up with their recommendations and ultimately those recommendations will result in regulations that then schools have to implement the regulations are set by the superintendent and so I think this couldn't come at a better more important time given the rollout of the basal materials for for our our language arts given the superintendent's [01:04:11] stated objective of moving the math curriculum up faster than the the review had been planned by a year and the efforts around really investing in the academics of our youngest learners so that they are on a trajectory of advanced math starting in elementary school and so I'm grateful for the work that's been done and we still have a long way to go because this is just the first step but it's the right step in the right direction all right I call on Dr. [01:04:49] Anderson for a motion. Thank you. Mr. Chairman may I talk. Yes I'm sorry Mr. Mr. Moon. Thank you I you know one thing that I want to emphasize upon is related to consistency consistency within the school and within the department you know based upon my own experience through my own kids how a a one teacher in the same school could be so much different from [01:05:24] another school how a a a grades from one class could be so different from another class you know creating anxiety on the part of a lot of students and parents that's i'm hoping that uh grading uh is the review committee will address that through regulations and brought to the board thank you you Mr. Moon. We're just getting a clarification on something really quickly. I call on Dr. [01:05:59] Anderson for a motion. Give me one second to get there. I'm sorry can we just take a quick break [01:06:31] please. We'll recess for two minutes. Dr. Anderson it's been fixed. It's when we pasted in the [01:06:50] the things got changed. You're much wrong. We fixed it. Board members please return to your seats. [01:08:49] Fun times. All right we are back. All right I call on Dr. Anderson for an amendment. Okay I move [01:09:42] that the following be stricken. Upon request a formal I'm sorry from the formal reporting section of the of the policy to be stricken are the following. Upon request a formal report will be mailed home. [01:09:59] The new language should read a formal report will be mailed home to the student's address of record unless parents caregivers opt out of receiving a mailed formal report. Is there a second. Ms. Seizmoorheiser, Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your amendment? [01:10:16] Yes, I would. I think there are a couple of reasons why this has to be worded in this way. One, that seems to already be the practice of the division. It is one where there are funds already allocated, and most schools do have the funding to mail reports. [01:10:35] Secondly, we cannot rely on our families having to opt out getting a report, Because if you look at the well, the data of CIS use varies very widely across our division. We have schools in which only about 56 percent of the families have ever accessed CIS. [01:10:55] So they're not going to be able to access the report cards if that is the only place where it lives. We have to send this home to the families so that they can become greater partners in their children's education with us. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. [01:11:10] Ms. Sizemore-Heiser, would you like to speak to your second? Yeah, just briefly, I think it's really important, as Dr. Anderson said, to make sure that our families can be full partners in their children's education. And while I think there's a lot of room for us to help partner with our families on using SIS and using electronic systems and encouraging opt-out once they're familiar with where to find that information online, in the meantime, I think families should automatically be getting their children's report cards so they can see how their students are doing and better support them. [01:11:39] This is really about family engagement and not presuming families are going to know where to go to find out that information online or have the access or availability or time. So I think it's important. And we already I think apparently the start of the practice of putting it here in the policy will be good. [01:11:55] Thank you. Miss Sizemore Heiser. Miss Marin. Yes I'm happy to support this and I definitely think it should be an opt out. You know, in communications, there's a practice that a message needs to be communicated to the audience up to seven times before they actually absorb it and even act on it. [01:12:14] And report cards, I think, are the thing that, you know, families don't want to miss out. So maybe we don't need seven times. But, you know, we cannot solely have this be electronic for a number of reasons, just like with textbooks and content and accessibility. But also, we cannot rely on students to be the sole deliverer of academic information. [01:12:34] We have to you know once students especially get to middle school. So the seventh and sixth graders they are not quite yet magically able to communicate all the stuff that they couldn't do just a year before. So you know this has been an ongoing message I know I've carried to the superintendent that all through the grades we have got to be informing our families and the students and sometimes even our staff as to what is happening academically. [01:13:01] So I think over communicating the academic information is the way to go. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Mr. Dunn? I'd like to thank the folks who spoke tonight regarding textbooks. I think it's directly relevant to this motion because I think we've gotten a little too excited about bringing lots of electronic systems into our schools, not all of which are accessed or accessible. [01:13:29] I can speak that when I was employed by the Department of Defense, I had to access 12 different IT systems just to find out how much vacation leave I had accrued, find out my payroll to do direct deposit, rather than everything in one place, it was in lots of different places and we heard that tonight. [01:13:46] I think we need to get back to textbooks, physical textbooks that you can take home. I think we need to get back to teaching handwriting, taking notes, really back to the basics because our current school system we're doing too much you know reliance on artificial intelligence and all these things but if we actually get back to just hard copies pen and paper we will actually get greater engagement and better outcomes thank you thank you Mr. Dunn seeing the others we will go to a vote for the amendment that is on the screen all those in favor of the amendment Miss Marin [01:14:22] Mr. McIlveen Dr. Anderson Mr. McDaniel Miss Anderson Mr. Dunn Miss Lady Miss Sizemore Heiser, Mr. Moon, and Ms. St. John Cunning, and myself. That is unanimous. The amendment carries. [01:14:42] We are now back to the main motion as amended. Ms. St. John Cunning. All right. Seeing no others, we will vote for the motion as amended, which is on the screen. All those in favor, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Dr. Anderson, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Dunn, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Seismar Heiser, Mr. Moon, and myself. That is unanimous. The motion [01:15:20] passes all right moving right along I call on miss lady for a motion for an omnibus follow-on motion thank you I move to approve the following follow-on motions to direct the superintendent to ensure that FCPS regulations and processes promote the consistent seamless and optimal use of learning management systems and grade reporting technology by students staff and families to achieve the successful implementation of this grading policy I move to direct the superintendent to present to the board along with the [01:15:57] presentation of the report from the Secondary Grading Committee options for ways that student work habits are to be reported separately as indicated in section six section four sorry of policy 2418. I direct the superintendent to ensure that courses listed on student transcripts reflect the campus/location where the course was taken. I direct the superintendent to update the FCPS school profile that is shared with all colleges to include information regarding how students apply for online campus courses and academy courses and how they are selected. I move that the board retire two policies policy 2436 pass/fail option [01:16:37] and policy 3205 homework on August 1, 2025 since the content of these policies is no longer included in revised policy 2418. Do you want to reread the end of that motion that that last one where it says since the content? Since the content of these policies is now included in revised policy 2418. Thank you very much. [01:17:06] is there a second? I second. Would you like to speak to your omnibus follow-on motion? I would. I'd like to speak to two of the follow-on motions. I believe in transparency and ensuring all Fairfax County Public Schools transcripts reflect an accurate account of each student's academic journey. As a member of NACAC, the National Association for College Admissions Counseling, Fairfax County Public Schools is committed to honor the NACAC Guide to Ethical Practice in College Admissions, which indicates that secondary schools should provide accurate, legible, and comprehensive transcripts. This motion will ensure that moving forward, all student transcripts will accurately reflect the campus, online, [01:17:45] Bayes School, FCPS Academy, and platform, online or in person, for each course taken. At present, all classes taken through the online campus during the school year appears if they were taken in person at the Bayes School. For example, if I'm a student at Langley and take a course through the online campus, that course is listed as being taken in person at Langley. This is misleading to college admissions counselors who, when evaluating student transcripts, are not aware of the platform. Many of them would love to know that the applicant took an online class, demonstrates independence, executive functioning skills, etc. At present, if a Langley student takes cosmetology, pharmacy, engineering, math, [01:18:21] or any other Academy course at Marshall Academy or any other Academy, it is listed as being taken at Langley, the base school. This is misleading to college admissions counselors who, when reviewing transcripts for admission, are led to believe that all Academy courses and all online courses are offered and available at Langley when they are not all offered and available at Langley. Per the motion regarding the Fergus County profile, this is a document is uploaded along with the student transcript to colleges where a student applies for admission. It helps the college understand the student's transcript. Per the motion regarding accurate transcripts, it is important for colleges to know about our academies and [01:18:58] how students apply and are selected to take these courses. They also need to know about our online campus this will help level the playing field for students from the same high school applying to similar colleges and similar majors again this is about transparency and ensuring our transcripts are both accurate and comprehensive thank you thank you miss lady miss Marin would you like to speak to your second yes so first I just again want to point out that this is a great way for our board to work you know we've got the committee we've got the changes we're doing an omnibus we're doing all the things super efficiently like this is just so great and I think because it's so [01:19:34] obvious that these are needed changes and I also want to thank Ms. Lady for educating me and the committee about the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC, and learning about that what becomes after high school and these grades we know are what our students rely on to get to that place after high school. [01:19:52] So I look forward to learning more about that content and being more of an expert in that. But look these all of these add-ons really again just continue to strengthen and you know the sunset or the retirement of the two policies homework and pass fail again a great way for us to just be more efficient put it all in the same place so people don't have to go looking for policies everywhere once the superintendent has put into the regulations how it's all going to work. Thank you. Thank you Miss Marin Dr. [01:20:20] Anderson. Yes I'll just speak to I think the one that speaks to reporting work habits which we just voted to be reported separately. One of the things that happens in secondary school is that a lot of the safety nets are removed. In elementary school we have the parent conferences. We have the one teacher with whom the parents and the students can really develop a deep relationship with. By the time we get to middle school it's seven teachers and all of a sudden a lot of those opportunities are no longer there. And for the most part we rely on having the digital communication to determine how my child [01:20:58] is doing. But opening up SIS as a parent which I do regularly to my children's chagrin does not necessarily give you a sense of how they are as students as learners your child can have an A and be a terrible student just because they can pass the test and get an A so knowing that they need to participate more knowing that they need to study more however that can look I think will be important things to communicate so I'm really hoping that we can get to a work habits um communication to parents that is helpful but not necessarily deleterious on the workload [01:21:36] of the teacher but as it stands right now it is totally insufficient to really be the communication tool that we want it to be with our families thank you dr anderson miss sizemore heiser yeah i just want to speak briefly to the same one that i think that's the second um sorry the third the second in the omnibus motion that um originally dr anderson and i were going to bring you know we heard some of our speakers say earlier, and I waited to make my comments at this point, say earlier about homework and work habits and study habits. And this is exactly what that's getting to. And, you know, we learn more and more. I mean, I can tell you as a college professor, the importance of our [01:22:15] students knowing work habits and study habits. And we can't wait for colleges. We can't wait till they get to colleges to know that. And so it's important to partner with our parents to make so that they do know how student work habits are. And I think we can, you know, we're looking for options for Dr. Rhee to present to us that aren't burdensome on our teachers and you know can take into account teacher workload maybe a drop down meaning whatever it may be but also can give some sense of how student work habits are doing because we recognize more and more the importance of executive functioning skills and work habits. I'm hopeful this in conjunction with the more clear statement about homework and our policy will really help guide the secondary grading committee [01:22:54] as well in looking at work habits and homework as well as looking at consistency across departments and a balanced and fair approach to assessments as well so i just wanted to sort of mention that is that you know we heard about this today and it's really important to support partnering with our families on student work habits thank you miss sizemore heiser miss sawant yes i very briefly wanted to speak to the third and fourth add-on amendments that talk about listing where a student has taken a course as well as updating the FCPS school profile to include information on how you apply for online campus courses and academy courses. FCPS [01:23:32] offers so many different academy courses that students can take in whatever specialized field that they have to go to and sometimes students are taking transportation to go to another school every day or every other day so that they can take those courses. We have such a high level rigor of these courses and in the new courses that we're passing for the new school year we've been adding weightage to these CTE courses so that we can get more students to take this as well so I think it's really important that we also share with colleges and share on our profile what these students are actually doing in these courses and give them credit for taking that extra time out of the school day whether it's taking that online class or going to a different school so they can take those academy courses. [01:24:07] So I know that students are really going to appreciate these two amendments. Thank you Ms. Sawant. Seeing no others we will go to a vote for the omnibus follow on motion. All those in favor. Ms. Marin, Mr. McIlveen, Dr. Anderson, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Anderson, Mr. Dunn, Ms. Lady, Sizemore Heiser, Mr. Moon, myself, Ms. St. John Cunning, are you there? [01:24:38] I am. I'm sorry. Again, I'm having problems with my screen, but I vote yes. Thank you. That is unanimous. The omnibus follow-on motion carries. All right. Agenda item 5.05, action item, strategic goal 2 report, safe, supported, included, and empowered. [01:24:58] I call on Dr. Reed for a presentation on the strategic goal 2 report. [01:25:02] So good evening and I'm not sure is it Janet are you going to be driving this all right so this evening I'll have the opportunity to share our 2425 goal to report and a reminder to the public that the board also held a work session on this topic on December 3rd so we spent quite a little bit of time already reviewing all of these documents and the full report is posted on board docs if you [01:25:51] are interested in reading the full report and data analysis. So let's go ahead and go to the next slide Janet please or dancing. Are you running Janet is OK. Thank you. So goal to essentially there are six measures. [01:26:07] Recall from the work session that we reviewed all six. Tonight's presentation really is going to be focused more specifically on measures a D and F data for the remaining goal to measures. Of course will come part as will come as part of our student experience survey and that's currently being piloted and will be fully administered in the spring. [01:26:29] And at that time we'll share the results again on this slide the baseline report and goal to addendum are hyperlinked. So the first part of this we're going to take a look at attendance and chronic absenteeism. We know this is a really important data point. [01:26:46] The attendance in school is connected to performance in school. So we know students who attend school tend to achieve and we know that students who are chronically absent are those who are missing 10 percent or more of the school year. And one of the things our principals really want to make sure our public understand is this is including excused and unexcused absences. [01:27:10] So it's really important to think about attendance as just time outside of the classroom. As we think about our current data we are consistently outperforming the commonwealth. And last year both FCPS and the state saw a noticeable decline in chronic absenteeism. [01:27:31] We largely think that our students are more consistently looking at attending and that You know I think we've also seen recovery hours occur and we've talked about some of those drivers of recovery hours and improvement but we are very much so pleased that we continue to make gains in terms of student attendance. [01:27:55] When we think about chronic absenteeism we've also seen a really a significant increase in the number of our schools who met the video he level one characteristic in other words the rate has increased from 67% which was our baseline coming into last year 23 24 and we moved that from 67 to 96% so we felt very positive and I think the board and the public can be thrilled with the performance of our students in terms of attendance and our staff and how hard they worked to increase that. [01:28:33] This was a heavy lift on the part of staff and I'm very proud of the work that our staff did on this. As we think about the percent of students who were chronically absent, we also had been asked by the board to make sure we looked at all of our student demographic groups and were very clear about the progress made in each of those demographic students. [01:28:57] And I think that one of the notes for questions that came up in our work session is that 48 percent of our students who were chronically absent in 22-23 were no longer chronically absent in 23-24 and this was a significant increase from the prior year where only 39 percent of those students were not chronically absent. [01:29:19] So again by all measures staff and students have and our families have made a consistent effort to create growth around chronic absenteeism Janet if you'd go to the next page. Thank you. When we look at this this figure shows the line of annual progress that we need to remain on to achieve our 2030 strategic plan goals. [01:29:42] The yellow line charts the actuals and for all students each year while the dark blue line represents the targets for all students. The remaining lines show targets for student groups with the lowest and the highest levels of chronic absenteeism at baseline and for 2324 which is the purpose of this goal to report. [01:30:03] We actually exceeded our annual target and we are on track for our 2030 goals again big shout out to staff students and families for their work on this. As we look at this in terms of grade level we spent quite a little bit of time at our recent senior leadership meeting looking at this and even though we've made gains across every grade level I think it is interesting to look at our kindergarteners actually in our seniors so our students starting and ending our school experience tend to have the most [01:30:40] chronic absenteeism maybe Mr. Want can let us know as a senior why that may be occurring but we were also really reflecting on what happens in eighth grade right because when we think about our middle school experience and what that experience is like we really want to think about each grade level on its own merit. So again this is where we see our improvement and again each grade level is improved but we want to look at those areas where really we have some opportunities. [01:31:14] So if we look at a number of the types of gains these are many of the supports that have gone on and again attendance is monitored weekly across the division by region and school and reviewed by senior leadership weekly let's go ahead and move on to discipline disproportionality and this is an area where we spend quite a little bit of time in our work session and continue to work on ways in which we can reduce disproportionality as we look at our [01:31:49] percentage chart again by one or more discipline referral and again i want to say that we have an really an amazingly low percentage of discipline across the school division and when we think about the types and I think we're gonna hit that here shortly the types of the topics that the discipline is really referring to these are well I'll just I'll give you a couple of the data's I think the data point we really want to also say that it's not realistic to think we're going to eliminate all discipline students actually do make mistakes from [01:32:27] time to time and part of our role as educators in partnership with our parents is to teach through those opportunities and to make sure students understand the impact of decision making and have skills to make better decisions in the future. I want to make sure our community knows that the majority of our students 91 percent of our students in Fairfax County Public Schools had no discipline referrals last school year. [01:32:53] honestly an amazing data point 91% of our students had no discipline referrals last year while we did see some slight upticks and recorded discipline incidents some of this is due to an increased focus on actually documenting the discipline incident and I will say that kind of a spoiler alert for next year board we are going to probably have more incidents because we've taken a much harder line on cell phone usage and so there are going to be a number of we've already seen this a number of discipline referrals around that topic and that is [01:33:32] necessary if we're going to take the line that we've taken at this time six groups in the gray boxes had higher rates of discipline than the discipline average for the division and our focus continues to be on reducing this disproportionality when we think about the growth targets these targets were set on percentages as opposed to risk ratios and this is we're trying to be clear because risk ratios are what the state looks at but they're not as easy honestly to understand here again our goal is not to get to zero but rather to bring the student groups with the higher rates down to the success range [01:34:11] where some groups already are so it does provide an important barometer and we will continue to work on that if we look at the risk ratios and again this is something we look at for the state level a risk ratio of two for example means that a student from that group would be twice as likely to receive a discipline referral as a student not in that group so when we look at our two and plus two over last year it's really our economically disadvantaged students and boys in particular that hit that two mark so we continue to look at these [01:34:49] two groups because they had three consecutive years of risk ratios and those are the focus of the work that dr. King and our department around discipline disproportionality are working on and plans are enacted right now and we believe this data will continue to improve or will improve and take a different trajectory this year. [01:35:10] When we look at out of school suspensions with one or more out of school suspension overall again just under 2 percent of all students received an out of school suspension last year which means that 98 percent of Fairfax County public school students did not. [01:35:29] Again this rate is very very low so we had to look at changes going out two decimal points and again saw very little changes from the baseline. As we look at these growth targets, we continue to set growth targets for out-of-school suspensions. Our target for the 23-24 school year for all students was 2.0 and we did meet this target. However, we did not meet the target for all groups, which again impacts their risk ratio and is the focus of the work on the team this year. As we look at the [01:36:06] out of school suspension risk ratio here we look at six groups that had a risk ratio higher than two and in this case boys have seen a decline but still remain above the 2.0 so again for the 2 percent the fewer than 2 percent of our students where this is a factor we have work to do and the smaller that end size the more volatile our risk ratio is going to look so we continue to work on those and we hope that next year that that data will look improved the out-of-school suspensions [01:36:42] tend to be much lower again we took a grade level span in response to board questions and again interestingly they peak in eighth grade and then decline again by grade 12. so it looks like again we have that seventh and eighth grade look and I think when we talk through a little bit about how to build culture it is difficult when you're in a school with simply two grade levels because you're getting to know kids on one and kids are leaving by year two so we've [01:37:16] got work to do in the middle school area on our out of school suspensions so these are the five core strategies that the discipline disproportionality team are using in their efforts to create positive school and classroom environments again this was the first summer we required all school administrators to take training on discipline code use and implementation all assistant principals also were brought in and so again trying to centralize and formalize a [01:37:51] calibrated response to student behavior. The SR and R has been reviewed and revised and principals associations are working with the team to develop a tool to make sure we have greater consistency. We're also updating the discipline dashboard and providing restorative justice staff that are trained at least two at every school. So we we believe that these strategies are going to have a much more positive impact as we look at data next year. So the final section of this presentation focuses on student academic inclusion and I want to remind [01:38:31] the board that this is an area of focus. We began our summer work with universal design for learning and continue professional development along those lines and we have as our vision in Fairfax County to be a model system for inclusive education moving forward again as a reminder this is a floor not a ceiling and this isn't an aspirational slide but it is a slide that identifies that video in video e indicators five and six are a starting point for monitoring these rates and the cells in green mean the target for the year was [01:39:08] actually met we clearly have work to do on our inclusion work as we think about our future inclusion targets and data we were asked in the next steps document to identify some other data sets other than just the tool for video eat and these are data sets that in collaboration with dr. Koston who's our inclusion consultant we've really tried to identify some other key metrics to monitor and these are the ones that were suggested to us to point I also want to note that at the [01:39:47] end of the additional data points where we talk about our twice exceptional student access that committee will be beginning their work in January and we really look forward to the reflections and recommendations coming from that committee it's important to note again that the video indicators do not report the entire range of possible placements during the school day and so this chart was created to look at the percent of students that are included in grades K through age 21 for the last school year and the extent to which they were included. [01:40:26] So you can see in the dark blue it's students included in general education for 80% or more of the day and yellow again 40 to 79% of the day light blue who spend students who spend less than 40 percent of the day in an inclusive setting and light green represents those students who are in a separate public private or residential or hospital setting we're working to grow that dark blue portion and again as we continue to make progress and placement possibilities the next slide is more of a line graph which shows our performance on indicator 5a as it relates to the [01:41:06] the VDOE targets, and currently we estimate that around 59 percent, which is in the little green X, met the criteria for indicator 5A. There's a lagging timeframe with VDOE, so this is based on our internal data that we believe that that's where we're at, which is still below the 73-1, but it is headed in the right direction. [01:41:30] This slide shows the data for indicator 5B. In this case we want our data to be below the blue target line. So again it's sort of counterintuitive to see a graph going down and feeling excited about that but that's what we want to see. [01:41:46] And the estimate for SYA 2324 is at just over 12 percent. You can see the little green X there of our students met the criteria for indicator 5B which again signals that we're going to be relatively flat on this indicator. [01:42:04] On the state reported 5C indicator we did meet the target and we anticipate we'll continue to meet this target through the 23-24 year when the state data comes out. [01:42:19] During the goal one report we received and reviewed preschool inclusion data however this slide also includes the estimates for the 23-24 school year and we estimate that just under 24% of our students will meet this criteria which is still below the state target but significantly improved over where we were even just a couple years ago and that's become a just a high priority we're going to be bringing folks in to walk through some of our preschool programs and adjust modeling in January. I'm really excited Dr. Presidio and his early [01:42:56] childhood team have drawn out a four-year plan where we're going to be looking at the development implementation and monitoring of inclusive classrooms both that preschool and through our elementary middle and high schools when we look at our 6b criteria we're estimating slight improvements and unlike the previous slide this target we want our student data to move below the blue line again so it's coming down but not as quickly as we'd like but um this line has remained relatively it's headed in the wrong direction for a few years [01:43:33] so we are pleased that we're headed um in the right direction and finally we continue to see improvements in thank you in indicator 6c which is for students receiving special education services in their home again this progress towards the state target we want the um line to be below the blue line and if you see the green x we're at 6.91 and we were at 8.4 8.53 so we continue in the last several years to bring that data point in alignment with where we need to be our strategies [01:44:10] for inclusion again i just want to share our five big ideas it's key that we build the capacity of our teachers and stay focused on our universal design for learning planning we also need to make sure that we're providing instructional resources that differentiate instruction And make sure that we have cross departmental teams that are utilizing, excuse me, UDL practices as we expand our twice exceptional work. [01:44:34] I want to call out the work of our neurodiversity specialist who has been an active member of both of these teams and actively is ensuring alignment with the neurodiversity work as well as providing additional guidance and insight into the direction of the multi-year plan for inclusion and the work products being developed. [01:44:54] Our neurodiversity specialist brings an equity focused lens that's centered on the student experience, uses language that is affirming of neurodiversity and recognizes the required mind shift or mindset shifts to alter some of our existing systemic barriers for our neurodiverse students. [01:45:13] This work is continuing and remains a center focus of our instructional program this year. In conclusion for goal two I want to share a few key takeaways. We did again as a key takeaway we did meet our annual growth targets for chronic absenteeism and out of school suspension overall last year but did not meet our targets for discipline referrals or for most of the inclusion measures. While we made progress we didn't hit all targets for inclusion measures. This year we're [01:45:48] to continue to focus on sustaining our progress on chronic absenteeism reducing discipline portionality by focusing on the universal efforts as well of prevention and consistency and creating stronger systems of academic inclusion under the guidance of newly consulted experts in the field so Mr. Frisch that is the presentation for goal two and I'm happy to take any questions thank you Dr. Reed Mr. McDaniel I think you might know where I might be going with these comments maybe I appreciate the work your staff has done but I need to [01:46:24] call out an area missing again and I feel like it's Groundhog's Day because I think there's a third time I've called it out we're not tracking or at least it's not reflected in this slide disproportionate discipline for LGBTQ kids and I know it's difficult to do I know there's privacy concerns I respect those but we've got to figure it out because it's a glaring gap I don't want to call it a blind spot because we know it's there but it's a glaring gap in [01:46:53] our data and we need to figure it out. Yes sir. Thank you Mr. McDaniel. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I too want to focus on some of the discipline discipline and formation that you've just shared. I very much appreciate the statement that you've made that most of the students in Fairfax County public schools are doing what they need to do and they're not receiving referrals. You mentioned 91 percent of them which makes it a little bit hard for me. I struggle to understand why when we have our black student population [01:47:31] which are I believe nine point something of our population. Mr. Solomon nine point one nine point seven nine point something our black student population NFCPS nine point eight. [01:47:46] Thank you. I was very close and yet are receiving the actual for last year was sixteen point four three of the referrals and I and I agreed with you when you said at the work session that discipline is an opportunity to learn. [01:48:02] But it seems as if the people doing the learning are our black students our multilingual students our students with disabilities and our economic economically disadvantaged students. This worries me to no end and so I'm really looking for some more robust work because this gap has grown from the years before it was 12.7 percent for the group that I'm speaking about. [01:48:27] So we're definitely heading in the wrong direction, even if it meant across the board discipline increased across the system. But it definitely increased for certain groups of students. So I would love to hear how we're going to make a sharp turn to to address that, because this cannot continue at this pace. [01:48:47] Yes, ma'am. And I think that one of the things we talked about in the work session is as the overall discipline becomes less and less. For example in the one or more referrals were less than 9 percent of all students when we talk about 16 percent of that 9 percent that's not 16 percent of the students it's really 16 percent of the referrals that were provided. [01:49:11] So I want to make sure that Dr. King has a chance to talk about her plans because this team is something that Dr. King is leading Dr. King want to share some of the key strategies because I think as Dr. Anderson put. um out there we definitely need to make a sharp turn on this absolutely dr um reed and thank you dr anderson for the question you know we recognize that we have work to do in those areas dr anderson and we're not going to shy away from it we've been holding um bi-weekly um um office hours thank you [01:49:47] office hours with principals around discipline and we're finding um why there's some inconsistencies so we have to beef up our training each year we did robust training this past summer but we realize that the large group training is probably not the best strategy to use when it comes to the expectations on how we're tracking the data when it comes to discipline and the equity and student conduct team is working closely with individual principals court and we're tracking data through the discipline dashboard that is going to be updated with this year's [01:50:24] data in January. So my team is working very closely with principals and with the region to ensure that there's consistency in how data is inputted into SYST. Sometimes we find that the data is not correct based on principals' perception on what goes into the data and what doesn't go in there, into SYST, I'm sorry. [01:50:48] Thank you, and I appreciate that, and that's actually a good segue into my next point. the work session I'm not sure if there was a slide of it tonight where you talked about the number of referrals that are provided across our schools. We have schools and this is elementary because I don't think the middle and high schools are at one all the way up to 837 and I couldn't be more grateful for you providing the data that shows that number per school and the percentage of each of those schools because I do believe having the enrollment pop the student enrollment number is really paramount because if you have a school [01:51:27] of a thousand a school of 200 there's context there to be had. So having said that I'm further troubled because some of our schools range from 10 percent of their students receiving referral and there's one that is at 52 percent that it is more than half of the school. [01:51:45] So I'm wondering what is a reasonable threshold? Should that be the target that we have as a measure? Because I don't think having zero discipline is it, but a school in which where half of the students have received the referral, it raises a lot of questions for me, and I hope it does for you as well. [01:52:05] Yes, ma'am, it does. And I think that goes to what Dr. King was just talking about in terms of the weekly office hours around consistency and what is being entered into the system and what we're able to view based on what's been entered again this is last year's data and this year I believe one of the real focus areas is to make sure that across our 141 elementary schools we're entering data in a similar way as well as across our middle and our high schools but there is huge variation as we shared at the work session no question and this just makes [01:52:42] it even more glaring the last point that I wanted to make you talked a little bit in terms of the middle school experience that it's hard to create the connection with a two-year school what are you seeing and the data with our schools that do have students for three years so great question I think we could pull that I think you have that just pull it real quickly I don't know that WE HAVE THE SEPARATE GRAPHS FOR THE SIX AND THE MIDDLE SCHOOLS. [01:53:17] BUT I CAN CERTAINLY PULL UP HERE KIND OF WHERE WE SIT WITH THE OVERALL REFERRALS. NUMBER OF STUDENTS WITH A DISCIPLINED REFERRAL OF COURSE IN ONE CASE OBVIOUSLY IT'S A MUCH LARGER SCHOOL SO IT'S CERTAINLY PERCENTAGE WISE. [01:53:38] YOU KNOW I THINK IT'S STILL IN THE BALLPARK BUT PERHAPS STILL HIGHER ON THAT END. I think one of the keys is to look at, though, what are the discipline referrals for? And if I recall, in the Goal 2 report, actually, many of these were for being out of class, for getting to class late. [01:53:58] I know, Ms. Neal, you're nodding. There were a couple of those. Would you mind just enumerating what we're talking about here? So a number of them were classroom disruptions, being late to class, being in an unauthorized area of school. Those were the types of things we were seeing. And we did provide some of that additional analysis to the board on a Friday letter. [01:54:16] No, I appreciate that, but I don't think that's my question. I guess I was trying to understand, are we seeing the evidence of what you purported, which is having a longer relationship would create, would have some positive impact onto discipline? I think it's attendance as well, and I don't think we've pulled out the attendance data to look. [01:54:36] And the discipline data, we haven't quantified in terms of topic areas. But I think it's certainly better than some of our two year schools, but not other two year schools. So, you know, that would require a deeper analysis. [01:54:52] We also have our secondary schools, right, that are 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. And that's a much longer relationship. Are we seeing that as a positive impact? Well, we wouldn't in seventh and eighth grade because it would still be two years, right? One year in seven and one year in eight. So they wouldn't be part of the equation. So we go back to those three years where we have six at the middle school. [01:55:11] I would love to hear your feedback once you've taken that deeper dive. - Yes, ma'am. - That was your time, thank you. Ms. Seismar-Heiser. - Thank you, and I'll actually pick up just right there and say I do think you should look at the secondary schools 'cause while there is separate administration, they're all under the umbrella of one administration. [01:55:29] So I think that would be good data to know to see if those relationships with the families especially build because those families are there for six years. So I think that would be an important piece to look at. And I appreciate the conversation around the discipline disproportionality. [01:55:45] It is concerning just the differences in discipline. And that's where I would say I'd love to see more of the work highlighted on our neurodiversity specialists and that mindset shift especially for our students with disabilities. And in the longer report the greatest challenges were for students of color who had disabilities. [01:56:03] And so our greatest disproportionality. So I'd love to see more of that mind shift work work here as well. And so just to kind of mention that I think and especially getting into the schools. I know she's been doing a lot of good work really getting into the schools and to the admins who are working with our students. I think they do a great job. [01:56:21] But there's always room for improvement. I wanted to thank you for the next step in including that information about other potential data collection points for inclusion. I know we mentioned this at the work session but I did want to bring it back up to say that while I appreciate that slide I think it's 33 hang on if you get to the right slide. I do appreciate I think slide 26 I apologize that includes slide 25 includes the the pie chart slide that talks about the different groups of inclusion that you included um slide 25 well that one sorry 26 sorry my on my [01:56:57] computer says 25 it's really bizarre I must be blind today um anyway that includes in that gold part the students that are included more than 40 but less than 80 percent of the day because the the state indicator data is only asked for the data on students who are included more than 80 80 percent or more or 40 percent or less and so those middle kids don't even get reported to the state. [01:57:19] So I appreciate you including it here but we don't seem to track their changes on any of the other slides or year after year. So I do think it'd be important to track what happens with all of our students. So just something to put out to you all as you're building this data out for next year. [01:57:34] I'm glad you put it here but it would be good to see where their numbers are. You know are we are we having more of those students moving to 80 percent are they more falling what happens to that number. The other thing I wanted to mention is you know you all mention this every single time on slide 32 when we talk about the strategies for inclusion I think these are some really good strategies but if we don't look at program delivery these don't work because we have to look at the settings to make sure that they are settings that support inclusion and support what the students need now. [01:58:13] Otherwise you can't really place students in the best setting for them if those settings don't exist. So I'm just going to point that out. I'm hoping as you work with our consultant that will come up. And the reason I bring that back up is on slide 34 with the key takeaways the last bullet on that slide 35 it says 34 on mine so I must be looking at an older presentation. [01:58:37] It's it says creating systems that actually includes the stronger IEP and placement processes and targeting support to teachers under the guise. So, again, it's not placement processes, it's placement options and settings in general. I think we can look at IEP and processes, but we've got to really look at what the other options are. [01:58:57] And I know that's my time, but I appreciate the report. I appreciate the inclusion of the other, and I look forward to continuing to work on this with you. Yes, ma'am. And I think the program delivery options is really, what you're saying is important, because if there aren't other options, it doesn't matter what you're, you can't consider what you don't have an option to do, is what you're saying. [01:59:14] So get that. Thank you. We have a quick go back. I have one last point. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Miss Sizemore Heiser. Mr. Dunn. Thank you. Just over the past year as a new school board member we've had a number of presentations on discipline disproportionality but I think that's not actually the main objective I think the main objective is a safe learning environment for our students. And you know as a as a tertiary goal we want to make sure that to the extent discipline is being meted out it's not you know disproportionate on certain [01:59:53] groups which would evidence bias right we want to make sure white students are punished at an equal rate to black students etc but when I look at the report page 52 that the stats across all groups appear fairly similar white White students are at 94% with no discipline referrals, black students are at 84% and everyone else is kind of in between there. [02:00:25] So I don't see extreme variations that we've seen in other studies of traffic stops and things like that. This seems to be within the bounds of reason. On the other hand, in terms of creating safe learning environments, I met with students from most of the high schools attended by Mount Vernon District residents last year and every group of students reported that there was only one or two bathrooms open in their high schools and that generally they tried to refrain from using the bathrooms because bad things happen in there and what are they? They might depend on the school and I understand [02:01:03] that lack of video cameras, lack of vaping detectors, security personnel may cause certain high school principals or administrators to shut down most of their bathrooms, but that also is a problem because most of our middle schools and high schools are, you know, horizontal and laid out as mazes rather than a compact and contiguous way. [02:01:24] So I really would urge greater attention to how do we create a safe learning environment because that benefits all students, right? student whether you know likely to engage in disciplinary issues or not will benefit from being feeling safe feeling like they're building a relationship of trust with their teachers or other trusted adults and and so that's the question we really need to be addressing because if we only focus on discipline disproportionality we're focusing on a secondary issue and not getting back to the core issue of having a safe learning environment do you have any thoughts on [02:02:02] Yes, sir. I mean, I completely agree. I will also say that I'm very proud of the work of our security specialists and our security assistants and our school resource officers in our middle and high schools. And you mentioned high schools in particular. And our high school principals have really worked hard. So in addition to our middle school principals in terms of getting administrative staff and security staff out in halls. And I don't believe we're locking bathrooms at this point this year. [02:02:32] WE HAVE THE E-HALL PASS SYSTEM THAT STAFF ARE UTILIZING TO CHECK WHO IS OUT IN THE HALLS. THE CELL PHONE PILOT ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF HAVE INDICATED THERE ARE FEWER MEET-UPS OUT IN THE HALLS. [02:02:49] SO A LOT OF THE HALL BEHAVIOR AND BATHROOM BEHAVIOR HAS IMPROVED AS A RESULT OF SOME OF THOSE LAYERED SECURITY STRATEGIES. Dr. Anderson mentioned that, you know, some schools, middle schools, high schools, are well north of 9% in terms of discipline referrals because you said 91% of students across the system, but they're well north of that. 50% are not far away from that. [02:03:16] Is that simply a data coding issue because you mentioned people enter data different ways or is it what does that reflect does it reflect some principals are more likely to make discipline referrals as a reflect that some schools just need more support. [02:03:32] So I think it's a great question right and one of the challenges that we have is we have a number of variables right and you can't always control to figure out which variable and you're asking which is it right. And I think that this year we're really working on the consistency, and that's what Dr. King is working on, making sure that what we enter into the system, we don't wait until the end of the year to look at, but we're looking at regularly because they're looking at it weekly. [02:03:59] So if we start to see a disproportionate number, either high or low, where are our outliers, that conversation is happening in real time this year. I think that there's probably everyone has a sort of a threshold for what they are going to tolerate and I think what we're trying to do is say let's have a system threshold so that what we tolerate looks similar across all schools. [02:04:25] Having said that we're an imperfect people and imperfect people are going to still work in ways that that they have had some tradition in working with as we learn new skills. And that's what the team is working on, as well as our regional assistant superintendents. [02:04:43] I believe we're going to be more consistent. I don't think we have spontaneous outbreaks of inappropriate behavior in certain places. I think our students in general across the county, as I mentioned in the report, over 91% have had no discipline referral. [02:04:59] And 98% have not been suspended even for a day. So the vast majority of our students are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing based on the data that's reported. [02:05:15] - Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Ms. Heismarheiser. - Yeah, just briefly, when it comes to discipline disproportionality, I think, just to make it clear, that that's different than discipline itself. [02:05:30] Like, we all, I think, want to make sure that we have a safe learning environment for all our students. And that, and I appreciate very much the work on making sure that discipline is reported consistently across all of our schools, because we want to have an apples to apples comparison, right, as to figuring out what's going on if we have disproportionality and where we have it. [02:05:47] We can't do that till we have an apples to apples comparison. So I think we all believe to make sure that students are having consequences for their actions as well as an ability to learn from their actions because they're kids. But we also want to make sure that discipline isn't being meted out disproportionality based on a student's identity. [02:06:05] And that's that the tension there. So I just want to bring that up. I wanted to also mention I really appreciate your inclusion of Pog/Pol access and outcomes as part of the inclusion measures. I think that's really important that all of our students are getting that robust education and that chance to demonstrate those fortunate graduate skills. [02:06:26] I would recommend when you're looking at inclusion measures maybe to look at disaggregating at the secondary level what classes students are being included in. And this goes to our 2E students as well as access to electives I would maybe try to disaggregate how many are in advanced classes how many are in honors classes how many are in gen ed how many are access to electives. [02:06:47] I think that would give us a lot of data and information as inclusion looks at the secondary school. I know one of the charts show that inclusion goes down when students enter middle school. So I just think that would be important data as you do this work. Yes ma'am. [02:07:02] Thank you. Thank you Miss Sizemore Heiser. Seeing no others we'll go to a vote for the motion that is coming onto the screen. Miss Anderson for a motion. [02:07:18] I move that the school board approves the Goal two strategic plan report for us for school year 2425. Is there a second second Dr. Anderson would either of you like to speak to the motion Miss Anderson. [02:07:35] Yeah I held off speaking before because I wanted to have my colleagues have a chance. I would really like to thank staff for all the hard work here. I appreciate the fact that we've we've talked about this extensively in the work session and I am appreciative that staff stays with me as I ask all my data driven questions. [02:07:54] I do think it's a significant issue when you're talking about the difference between 94% of our general population or 91% of our general population and 84% of our black students. So I see that as a significant difference, and I'd like us to make sure that those numbers are closer together. [02:08:10] The way that's going to happen is by actually accounting for discipline when it is occurring. And the way that that disproportionality is actually showing up is it's not that some of our students are just not doing things that require discipline. it's just that it's not being coded. [02:08:25] And so I love the fact that we're doing the norming work necessary to ensure that that is taken care of, because as we do that, it means that there-- I mean, that was the information that was in the last presentation that Dr. Anderson referenced earlier. And so I do think that it's really important that we continue doing that work and make sure. [02:08:45] We have work to do across the board here, but that's the purpose of this, is the opportunity see where we stand against where we stood and so I like the fact that we're moving in the right direction on some stuff and then we still recognize that we have work to do in others. Thank you Ms. Anderson. Dr. Anderson? Just briefly because I did share most of my statements but I did want to go back and say exactly what Ms. Anderson said. I do find there is a significant difference between 94% and 84% particularly because the 84% are the well I'll just leave it there one of the things that I also want to say finally is that while I think [02:09:24] coding could potentially be part of it and I love that work of ensuring that it's not personality driven because I've been a teacher I've been in the classroom some people some teachers have high thresholds and they could take a lot and some have low thresholds and so the discipline looks different so I appreciate that work happening but what I did not hear and I'm hoping that it was just an oversight rather than something that is not taking place is the cultural competency work that needs to happen in order for us to look at how our students come to our schools we don't have the same background the same norms [02:10:02] and so how we present is very different and how that is received may be misinterpreted and viewed differently resulting in some of these referrals so So I'm hoping that that work is still present. I know we have equity leads everywhere, but I didn't hear as much of it as I would have appreciated in these presentations, because that's also a significant component. [02:10:26] How are we receiving our kids who don't conform and don't look in the way that we expect them to look and behave in the way that we expect them to behave, but not necessarily misbehaving? I'd love to hear some more on that. But thank you. [02:10:43] Dr. Reed. want to hear some more of it right now yeah yes ma'am Dr. King I know that's a high priority so I was trying to wave over here Mr. Frisch saw me waving our ECR team is working in conjunction with our equity and student conduct team we're doing training not only at the district level but at regional levels and with schools who we realize their data is up we're working closely with those principals as well on exactly what you talked about Dr. Anderson thank you Dr. King. All right I'll take a really quick turn before we have our last. If overnight the coding [02:11:21] issue were to be solved we will be here next year let's say it happened this year and the data that we're looking at will be compared to this past year's data right and we're going to be talking about all of these increases in discipline disfor referrals at all these different schools and what the heck is going on so I hope when we have this conversation as coding becomes more consistent that we are cognizant of the fact that we are using different data at that point can you speak [02:11:56] to what that might look like you might have some schools that have one referral or 10 percent going to 30 percent if you know that doesn't necessarily mean anything has changed well yes sir I think it's possible we could see a decrease in disproportionality and an increase in overall discipline. I have already foreshadowed that with the cell phone enforcement this year we have seen more discipline incidents or opportunities or conversations which are likely being recorded [02:12:30] as part of our calibration. So we are going to see I believe more discipline data even as we work on reducing the disproportionality. Thank you. Mr. Moon? Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. [02:12:47] This is something that I brought up at the work session when we were discussing this. But for the benefit of public, I'm going to bring it up again, is as we look at the discipline data based upon student demographic, at the time I did ask whether we could also take a look at a reform and adjudication data based upon those who are making decisions and make your reforms yes sir I think one of the that we're adding that as a [02:13:21] category to track as you've requested thank you Dr. Reed yes sir thank you Mr. Moon Miss Lady thank you chairman Frisch just I want to thank you for this hard work I'm very impressed with the improvements someone yes you can get on your bingo card who worked in the school system 27 years you know it's this is a tough thing to tackle but I also want to uplift and point to the work we're doing with strategic plan around learning and especially in when it comes to reading and mathematics often our students act out because they're behind [02:13:58] they're not understanding they're not following and I think that the new benchmarking the new math curriculum and the things that we're doing are going to be a huge difference maker in the ability of those students to be reading my fifth grade reading my third grade and engaging in higher levels of mathematics at a much younger age and I just do know that as someone who is a lifetime educator when kids are understanding what's going on it's much more easy for them to gauge and we'll see less of this this acting out so I hopefully over time we'll see this decrease as well but I just want to commend staff on the work and I know everyone at the school level is working incredibly hard we have a lot of gifted educators in our school system who are [02:14:36] working hard to build relationships with young people who are acting out for a variety of reasons we don't always know those because those are symptoms of the deeper problem but we care about all our students and we're gonna do our best and just thank your staff for all the hard work thank you thank you mr. Dunn we talked at a previous school board meeting about spring sprouts and IP fit and at the time I had asked whether students benefited from attendance recovery programs because we bring them back for a week and you know two hours can meet a full school day or something like that right and and at the time you [02:15:16] said well you can't really teach a day worth of content in an hour or two so I just wanted to that was a surprising response at the time to me so I just wanted to having read the report ask more about you know it seems like you're pursuing some measures most measures that are focused on reducing chronic absenteeism and they're focusing and actually getting kids into school right but then there's also attendance recovery which is allowed by the state may be encouraged by the state, but I don't quite understand, other than enabling us to reduce, you know, the percentages of chronic absenteeism, how [02:15:53] does that actually accrue benefits to the individual students? And I'm cognizant of a lawsuit that was recently, there was a news article about the other day, about a Connecticut student who graduated and sued a school district for, I think it was $15,000, so not very much, but because she graduated and couldn't learn to read. [02:16:12] and I remember when I was you know six seven years old the same phenomenon happened in in Texas where we were living at the time someone graduated school didn't learn to read and this Connecticut student graduated with honors so quite extraordinary that she was just you know voice-to-text all of her essays and everything else but how do we how do we make sure that there are actual benefits that students are gaining from these attendance recovery programs and it's not just about you know fudging the data. So for sure we don't want to fudge data Mr. Dunn. The attendance recovery programs are very carefully constructed and very carefully [02:16:52] documented so there's we want to make sure the data is correct. What I what I recall you asking was are we seeing what is the ROI right or the impact and I I want to be clear that two hours is not the same as a full day for sure however in the two hours that students were attending the spring sprouts we were able to do activities science I know I visited several of the sites during spring break there were science and then there were several field trips as well to outdoor settings reading and mathematics there weren't all of the content but reading math and science were [02:17:31] prioritized we also went back after that conversation and checked in and what we found was that the attendance patterns for students who were in spring sprouts they were more likely to be in attendance regularly that next week as well so we felt like there was a residual attendance pattern impact but I don't think we could really measure the academic impact for the two hours other than to say that, you know, the group projects, the science, math, and reading, were continued over two hours, and I don't know, Ms. Neal, do you have another bit of data on that, please? [02:18:09] Yeah, I think one of the benefits that we saw with the Spring Sprouts program is that we're seeing that those students who participated last year are not chronically absent this year, so the majority of those students, so I think they're on that pace this year to be engaged in the learning and not missing school in a way that they're going to miss that instruction. [02:18:26] I think that's a huge data point, and I don't think that's really explicit in the presentation and the report, so I would just encourage that to be emphasized and put in bold in italics with a little neon sign around it that attendance recovery is effective in reducing long-term chronic absenteeism, because if it's not just that was going to be my question until Ms. Neal said that, whether the changes were enduring or just, you know, the next couple weeks after the program happened. [02:18:57] so that that is very positive and I'm very reassured to hear that thank you yes sir thank you Mr Dunn I will call for a vote for the motion which we will put on the screen all right all those in favor Ms. Marin Mr. McIlveen Dr. Anderson Mr. McDaniel Ms. Anderson Mr. Dunn [02:19:22] Ms. Lady Ms. Sizemore Heiser will Mr. Moon and Ms. St. John Cunning verbalize their votes all right Ms. St. John Cunning and Mr. Moon are also in favor and my I am in favor as well that is [02:19:45] IS UNANIMOUS AGENDA ITEM 6.01 PERFORMANCE REVIEW HUMAN RESOURCES MONITOR REPORT CORRECTIVE ACTION MEMO I CALL ON DR. REED FOR A REPORT ON THE EXECUTIVE LIMITATION FOR HUMAN RESOURCES CORRECTIVE ACTION MEMO DR. REED THANK YOU GOOD EVENING CHAIRMAN FRISH AND MEMBERS OF THE BOARD AND THE PUBLIC TONIGHT I AM PRESENTING THE CORRECTIVE ACTION PLAN FOR EXECUTIVE LIMITATION NUMBER FOUR A REMINDER THAT DURING THE DECEMBER 5TH REGULAR MEETING THE BOARD DIRECTED THAT I RETURN THE evening with a corrective action memo or corrective action plan to address the [02:20:22] items shown above and I'll wait till Janet catches up with us here I think you've got it thanks Janet so this would be the corrective action plan topics and this these were identified in our December 5th meeting and so with this plan this evening to the best of my knowledge information and belief I've gathered updated information and evidence that I believe supports the continued compliance with the board's executive limitation associated with this topic. [02:20:55] So tonight's presentation and the memo which is posted to board docs in its entirety provides and outlines those steps that the division is going to take to ensure continued compliance with this executive limitation. So I'm going to address each bulleted item Janet if we can go ahead and move it. [02:21:14] Thank you. one I want to address is to look at the training and personnel development as well as plans for increased training opportunities. So one of the things that's important to note here is to make sure that we have a consistency related to training and personnel development regarding our rights and responsibilities of staff and addressing plans around current training opportunities for high school athletics and school-based administrators athletic staff student services staff and other staff involved with high school athletics in this case our chief of [02:21:51] schools office who oversees our schools as well as our athletics and activities program will be responsible for these data points we also want to make sure that we're identifying areas to expand our current training or develop new training that might be needed to address gaps that could be potentially connected to rights and responsibilities in this area we will plan the chief of schools office will plan to provide an update to the board on this work no later than April 24th of the coming spring. [02:22:26] The next area that the board asked for responsive documentation here is on the adherence to all governing code and legal requirements. Area two then on this plan focuses additional measures taken to ensure that we have adherence to all governing code and legal requirements. [02:22:45] We do stand ready to cooperate and assist as needed in the external review that the board authorized on December 5th. Again, the Chief of Schools Office is responsible to ensure responsiveness to the outside council recommendations as the Chief of Schools Office oversees our schools and our athletic and academic programs. [02:23:09] Thirdly, making sure that in order to explain the measures taken to ensure that employees are prepared to perform the duties of this position, our chief of schools will lead a review of existing timelines to complete required VHSL and FCPS training for new coaches and make sure that the onboarding for our new staff is complete and aligned with expectations. [02:23:36] Also, the implementation of best practices for assessing awareness, knowledge, and duties for staff connected to registration, including internal and external student transfers, as well as high school athletic eligibility requirements, again, based on our recommendations of our external legal review. [02:23:54] We want to make sure that existing processes for consistently documenting and tracking student transfers and high school eligibility requirements across all schools and programs will be done in collaboration with the Department of Information Technology student services principals and DSAs specific to our tech formats and any procedures such as checklists and rubrics currently utilized need to be reviewed as well finally there will be a review and recommendations for refining existing procedures and for resolving concerns [02:24:31] related to these topics based on the recommendations or findings of the external review the timeline for this particular body of work will be no later than May 22nd an update will be provided from the chief of schools office next we have a situation where we want to be very clear around consistency of expectations and accountability structures and in order to increase consistency of expectations and accountability for our staff our chief of human resources is going to be reviewing and updating our current hiring [02:25:09] regulations procedures and practices as needed based on again recommendations of our external legal review one of the things that we think is going to be very important is to develop a workflow map that illustrates those steps and athletic hiring processes along with the duties and responsibilities of all participants given that our athletic hiring process is extent essentially done at a school-based level it's important that all 25 of our high schools have a consistent workflow map that's accountable and has checks and balances again will be our HR department will be working with staff to develop [02:25:49] and provide training to all staff involved in the athletic hiring process based on recommendations of the external review further our HR department will be reviewing existing internal controls and reporting procedures and making recommendations to ensure compliance with FCPS hiring policies and regulations and finally in this area developing a standardized template to ensure consistent management of all athletic staff our HR departments committed to having that consistent standardized template across all high schools and all programs an update on this work will be for shared with [02:26:27] the board no later than May 22nd 2025 next in addition on this topic our chief of schools and chief of human resources will be reviewing the existing codes of ethics for athletic staff these have been established by organizations such as the national and interscholastic athletic administrators association and be making recommendations for revisions to any current fcps practices as needed there will also be a review and recommendations by our chief of schools and chief of human resources related to the administration of school-based athletic programs [02:27:07] in accordance with current professional best practices existing fcps and vhsl rules policies and expectations this update from the chief of schools and chief of hr will be shared with the board no later than may 22nd 2025. so chairman frisch and members of the board with this corrective corrective action memo to the best of my knowledge information and belief i believe THAT THE UPDATED INFORMATION AND EVIDENCE SUPPORTS THE CONTINUED COMPLIANCE WITH THE BOARD'S EXECUTIVE LIMITATION ASSOCIATED WITH THIS TOPIC HUMAN RESOURCES AND AT THIS TIME MR. CHAIRMAN [02:27:45] THIS CONCLUDES MY PRESENTATION. THANK YOU DR. REED AND MS. ANDERSON. I'D LIKE TO THANK YOU FOR GOING INTO SUCH DETAIL ON EACH OF THE DIFFERENT AREAS THAT WE BROUGHT FORWARD. I PARTICULARLY LOVE THE FACT THAT WE HAVE DATE CERTAINS THAT WE CAN KIND OF CHECK BACK IN WITH YOU. I LOOK AT THIS This is a framework for the way that we can be approaching other consistency issues across, so I am glad to see the depth that's going on here because I think that other issues that we've recognized in terms of disproportionality of discipline and things like that, this type of nuanced look at each of these practices, I think it's a great path forward to make [02:28:24] sure that we're actually addressing all of these issues, as I know you have since you joined us you you've addressed them as they as they appear so I appreciate the work that you did here and I know that this will be a large a large undertaking of our staff but I think it's essential work to keep us keep us moving in the right direction yes ma'am thank you Miss Anderson Mr. Dunn I want to thank you for uh bringing this um although the motion was somewhat incoherent I really appreciate the the detailed response which uh happily adopts many of the motions that I had put on the agenda last week including the code of ethics for athletic coaches [02:29:03] i wanted to ask a couple questions you have a couple different deadlines in here april versus may how did you determine them and are they and do they make any assumptions about when how long the external legal review will take so thank you mr dunn the staff that came together to provide feedback on this that was reviewed felt like the April 24th deadline we really had to coordinate with the office of professional development as well if we're going to create new professional development work and we don't want to continue to wait because we currently are in the middle [02:29:39] of our winter sports season right now as well as spring sports season fast coming so the TEAM FELT LIKE THEY COULD PROVIDE AN UPDATE THAT HAD ENOUGH WORK ATTACHED TO IT BY APRIL 24. THE OTHER TOPICS WERE A LITTLE I THINK ASKING FOR A BIT MORE WORK AND SO I THINK THE UPDATES BY MAY 22nd SEEMED REASONABLE AND THIS IS WORK SOME OF WHICH I KNOW THAT THE EXTERNAL REVIEW IS INTENDED TO MAKE UPDATES TO THE BOARD SO WE ARE HOPEFUL THAT IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE A [02:30:14] complete um how do i want to say it could be a sequential right as updates come in we want to be able to act on those in real time uh because we think it's that important and i know the board does as well well i i commend you for taking a proactive approach and working in parallel because we we can't wait for a lot of these fixes that are obvious that have been uh highlighted by the payfield football situation um may i ask um uh will these changes when when you say there will be an update for the board in April and May. Does that mean that the changes will be fully [02:30:49] implemented by then or simply an update on your progress of developing new professional training or a code of ethics? I think it will probably be a combination, Mr. Dunn. I think there will be some things that may well be in that development phase still by the time of the update whereas there are others that may be completed by then. And my intent is to make sure that as these work teams our chief of schools teams our executive director for athletics and activities tom horn chief of schools dr giovanni ponce right our chief hr mr solomon and our assistant superintendent [02:31:26] in hr franklin jones that these staff are going to be providing regular updates on this work which i'll provide to you in the friday letter as i traditionally do do you anticipate that all these new changes that will be implemented will be fully implemented before the next football season It's our expectation that all of the updates will be fully implemented for the fall season. [02:31:50] Okay and finally can you talk a little bit about you know whether this is targeted specifically at Hayfield or does it instead address the larger issues that were raised because we talked last week or two weeks ago about the fact that Hayfield was something of a symptom rather than the disease that we've become aware of numerous other allegations at other schools and other sports and so we really have to fix the systemic issues that have been highlighted by hayfield and and other allegations that have been raised i think that's correct mr dunn i the um the need for us [02:32:26] to have clear bright line rules and regulations around the topics we've addressed this evening is critical and as i mentioned i met with mr horn is beginning to convene a work group to look at our fairfax county rules and regulations moving forward what we commit to writing what we're convicted about around our sportsmanship needs and as I've shared before we have to have bright line clear accountable and checks and balances around these rules because what we have right now is we have all 25 of our high schools making a lot of site-based decisions and [02:33:05] which are good decisions and our staff want to make good and right decisions what we need to make sure is we have a system for checks and balances and support for staff who are making these decisions. And the creation of some of these templates that are standardized, the hiring practices that have HR centralized oversight, eligibility, like with centralized checks and balance, I think will strengthen our entire program across all schools and all programs. [02:33:35] Is this also intended to remedy the various deficiencies and the FCPS rules and the FC, sorry, not FCPS, the VHSL rules and the VHSL enforcement regime that became apparent during the Heyfield football situation. For example, they waited until the very last minute, you know, months after they became first aware of allegations just on leave of the playoffs to enact any proposed penalties. Is there any work in here that will include working with VHSL to clarify those rules and make sure that they have a better enforcement regime that acts more quickly on potential allegations? So first and foremost, I want to be focused on our house, right? Like what [02:34:12] we're doing here. I think that's my number one priority. Number two, I think it's always important to collaborate with our Commonwealth partners. I've spoken to Dr. Hahn recently. He's fully committed to making sure we stay collaborative as we do our work here in Fairfax County. [02:34:30] I don't know. So I think I'm going to leave it there. We're definitely going to continue collaborating and we need to make sure that here in our house we're clear around our expectations and our accountability for these structures got it thank you yes sir thank you mr dunn dr anderson thank you just a few things um it sounds as if from what you're talking about there there's going to be a significant perhaps i'm reading into this a little bit but there will be a an expansion of maybe mr horn's role as the athletic director for the division to ensure that centralized [02:35:08] consistency? I would say that's a yes, ma'am. Okay. I just want to be sure that they're appropriately staffed. I'm not sure how many people are in that office, but I very much support the idea of centralizing some of the processes to ensure consistency across the division. So thank you for that. Two things that this also raises for me, and I don't know if it lives here, but I want to elevate it to your attention, and we've talked about this before, the inconsistency in the end of season survey some schools engage in that for each of their sports and some schools do not [02:35:44] I would love to see that become part of the norm and as you're evaluating practices to include that because I think that's going to also be a very helpful and meaningful way to get feedback from the community regarding what is happening in the schools and lastly I see some space here for once Once all of this work is completed and is brought to the board for us to perhaps update our policies. [02:36:11] Miss Marin this is for you so that these whatever recommendations whatever actions you put you put into place that they don't become actions that are in place because you are here that it becomes part of the fabric of FCPS. [02:36:27] So I'd like to see how we can elevate that into that to the policy level. But that's all for me. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Just briefly I don't want to repeat much of what my colleagues have said but I think I appreciate you and your team coming back with such detailed plans to address the consistency in training issues that have arisen and I really appreciate really the deadlines and the dates that you have here and how quickly you came back to us with these plans. [02:36:56] I think this will be a great way to start. I think once you have this framework in place for athletics, I think it would be great to sort of embed into next year's EL a little more information about consistency around these areas of being prepared to perform their duties, valuable training opportunities, and accountability and expectations for employee behaviors. [02:37:18] I think that'd be good to embed in the EL for next year in a broader scale as well. I think, you know, we've seen, you know, I think it's great to start with athletics to create a framework and then we can expand it from there. But I think consistency seems to be the theme of the night between the grading policy and now the EL. [02:37:35] So I look forward to hearing that as well coming forward. Thank you, Ms. Sizemore-Heiser. I call on Ms. Anderson for a motion. I move that the school board finds that the superintendent is in compliance towards executive limitation number four, human resources. [02:37:53] I further move that the school board approve the monitoring report with the corrective action plan based on the superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive limitation number four human resources as outlined in the strategic governance manual. Is there a second. Second. Ms. Sizemore Heiser. [02:38:09] All right seeing no hands we will go to a vote for the motion which is on the screen. All those in favor. Ms. Marin Mr. McElveen Dr. Anderson Mr. McDaniel Ms. Anderson Mr. Dunn Ms. Lady Ms. Sizemore Heiser and I cannot see Mr. Moon or Ms. St. John Cunning. [02:38:29] I have my hand up on my screen but I don't know why it's not showing I'm sure it's showing someone it's just not showing us but I see you now Mr. Moon and Miss St. John Cunning and myself that is unanimous the motion carries all right I'm going to skip that recess agenda item 8.01 academic matters. [02:38:56] So thank you Mr. Frisch and members of the board and those watching at home this academic matters this evening I think is one of our most profoundly important goals that we've had in the last year or two several years and I want to share what we're doing this evening making sure that algebra one is a priority and that we have our students and I want to say this carefully minimally completing algebra one by eighth grade is not the goal for every student because we believe eighth graders can be completing [02:39:32] algebra or geometry or algebra trig or pre-calc but minimally we want to make sure that all eighth graders have completed algebra one so as we look across this work I want to share that one of our strategies a key strategy in ensuring that we're going to meet this criteria is our algebra access network improvement community last October we shared a video with you that highlighted the work of this algebra access network and dr. Amy Hunter was here to talk about that and speak to this work last year it's very important because this is [02:40:08] a critical foundation and support strategy this is also a multi-year commitment again year one we focused on increasing in enrollment for the following two year year two we designed school systems that supported the success and of course in year three reflect and refining to ensure systems continue the learning network or the access network has a three-year cycle to it and again it uses learning improvement science and we used to call it plan do check act but it's plan to study act here in Fairfax but it's an [02:40:47] important cycle of inquiry that needs to happen as we make these commitments and shift in our practice as we look at our data points for this work cohort one and can see on the slide had four schools then we had five or 15 and then 18 and I can say that across all cohorts our network schools have increased the percentage of students participating in algebra 1 by 8th grade from 56 to 70 percent and that's a significant increase for all of our cohorts and at [02:41:23] this pace we continue to make progress to hit this target I believe well before 2030 which is our goal and our strategic plan. I want to highlight two specific schools. Sometimes we talk about this in the aggregate across the entire division but I really want to highlight the work this evening that has happened at South County Middle School and Longfellow Middle School and for example in the network in South County they've increased their enrollment in Algebra one are higher by 17 percentage points and seven of these percentage points are students earning [02:42:00] verified credit and again it's all of our students and specifically they redesigned their academic advising process to actually make sure we were intentional and strategic to add our multilingual learners and this has resulted in many more multilingual learners also taking algebra one or algebra one honors this school year and what we're finding and I'm so proud of our staff in this work as we have the conversations with our students many of our multilingual students come with a strong math background and language has been a bit of a challenge but I know one of the [02:42:39] topics we've discussed is the achievement gap closing fund and one of the things we're trying to make sure is that we can also provide math text materials, and I do agree that math textbooks are important, that we have provide some of our math text materials in home languages so that students don't lose time and content as they acquire English. Also want to note that Longfellow Middle School has gained 19 percentage points since joining the Algebra Learning Network. These are huge data points to have a Longfellow middle school already at 91 percent they're [02:43:18] gonna hit the hundred percent mark well before our 2030 goal and again this is every eighth grader this isn't some eighth graders this is every eighth grader and I couldn't be prouder of our team again I want to share some student voice comments and want to make sure that you have a chance to we can't always bring students to this evening and it's almost 10 o'clock so I'm sure they're done studying and probably up to bed but these are student comments and they wanted to have these shared around their confidence in mathematics and at [02:43:55] the end of the day that is our core mission is the education of each and every one of our students I want to also bring you some staff voice and I think we're really working on our belief structure around what we believe our children are capable of doing. A reminder algebra in eighth grade is a key data point because we know if students complete algebra by the end of eighth grade they're twice as likely to go on to post-secondary education. It is a critical data point. I will finish my comments by suggesting again that one of [02:44:32] our goals is not just algebra by the end of eighth grade but making sure our middle schools have 8th grade sections of geometry and algebra trig and other advanced math courses for many of our students math is their Friday night lights right and right now in this country math limits 84% of our career choices so it's very likely that as I come to talk about goal 3 after the winter break it's very likely that I'm going to be proposing increasing math requirements for graduation I think that one of the things we talk about in the [02:45:05] Commonwealth is changing expectations by changing how we measure student experiences and I think we change expectations by changing the student experience and many of our students stop taking mathematics at the end of their sophomore year and that's not acceptable in today's world any longer. [02:45:24] I think we have a commitment to making sure our students are better ready for those next steps when they leave us. So that's foreshadowing but we'll have that conversation after winter break. Thank you Dr. Reed. Ms. Lady. Thank you and thank you for this work in math. I'm very excited about the opportunity or the idea of additional math credits at the high school level. At present really our students can graduate with just two math credits because of the AFTA course that we teach which is sort of like let's get on a treadmill for a little while and let's count it as a math course but that's not really advancing you much beyond geometry. I also hope you [02:46:02] know as a former counselor I was often talking with families who feel like once their students have met the standard diploma they the student wins the battle you know in trying to push them but yet the parent wants the student to be college-bound I'm hoping that perhaps what you can do is also pull data I'm assumed this could be clearinghouse data related to the readiness for mathematics you know what I if I was explained to parents is yeah you'll go to NOVA or you'll even matriculate to a four-year school but you're gonna take a math assessment and you might be paying for remediation courses that don't actually count towards college credit because you stopped taking math in high [02:46:39] school so I just really really appreciate this work and I think that that we need that data to help the the the initiative to add an additional math course for graduation requirements so I appreciate the work and in yes you said it limits 84% of the of the career options out for our students if they can't master math and I would also add successful completion of chemistry. [02:47:02] Well of course I mean being a chemist I would agree. Miss lady one of the things I you know I didn't mention I appreciate you sharing I it's not just more math it's minimally our students need to understand algebra trig and that is not simply for our students going to university or post-secondary education our students who need to pass a lineman's exam or our students who are going to be underwater welding or going into the skilled trades have to understand algebra trig. [02:47:35] It's on apprenticeship exams. It's an industry standard. I worked in a division that included the naval shipyards on the west coast and the naval shipyard commandant said the kids coming that are going to do underwater welding and do work in our technical spaces have to have algebra So 40 other states in this country require that for graduation. [02:48:00] Virginia is not one of them. I think Fairfax County needs to be one of them. So our kids when they leave have doors open for them. I couldn't agree more. And my apology for being remiss around career paths. But it's absolutely a must. [02:48:16] So thank you for the initiative. And I look forward to seeing us adopt that. Thank you, Miss Lady, Dr. Anderson. Thank you. Can you remind us again? Because I think I asked this the last time. [02:48:32] time but for some reason I can't pull that information as to how schools are selected for participation. I would be happy to have Dr. Presidio share that. I kind of think they self-selected to be honest with you. [02:48:47] But we may be moving into a different model. But right now they self-select. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. And we only have I mean within the next two years, all of our schools will have participated. But right now it's self-selected. [02:49:03] okay so right now I think we have 18 of the 25 middle schools are participating that's well will be are currently participating yes I'm sorry so right now currently we have 18 schools participating that's right okay so we don't have a lot left to capture well we have the 2030 trajectory right we want to be a hundred percent and as I said I predict we'll be there by 27 28. [02:49:31] thank you would it be possible for you to share the data that across the schools that are are participating with all of the various subgroups in terms of the impact of participation of this program in this program. Yes ma'am. OK. Thank you. You talked a little bit about course taking patterns. [02:49:50] Can you speak to how are students being tapped to enroll in an algebra by eighth grade. Just kind of walk us through the trajectory a little bit. Does it begin in seventh grade. I just want to understand that a little bit. Well so to answer that I think it's looked a little different pyramid to pyramid. I know our recent teacher I'm not sure what we call the teacher work day or day where staff were doing professional development students weren't with us. I actually visited the Annandale pyramid math teachers at the elementary and they were working on goals that their pyramid [02:50:26] had set and again pyramid being elementary through high school. So making sure that because math starts at birth probably but anyhow the I think math in kindergarten you begin to develop your big ideas around mathematics in kindergarten and those build you can't wait till seventh grade to prepare kids for algebra in eighth grade so it's really I think a k-12 process it's also part of why we moved up our math curriculum committee work by a full year they're meeting this year and had not been slated to meet until next year but we recognize how important it is to [02:51:05] our students success so dr. Presidio do you have a kind of a sense or miss Clemenco about the work being done to guide our mathematics at this time so to address your question specifically as a reminder we do have open enrollment in grade 8 so any student who successfully completes math 7 math 7 honors are may take Algebra 1 or Algebra 1 honors. It is open enrollment. With that said, we know that sometimes, you know, we have some historic patterns where our Math 7 honors students naturally gravitate towards algebra and our Math 7 students [02:51:43] don't. So that's part of the NIC, is really helping teachers think about this differently, because the state says Math 7 is adequate preparation for Algebra 1. And so students who are being successful in Algebra 1, often it takes some extra encouragement if the if the student and the family aren't already feeling like the student is ready so that encouragement can come from teachers it could come from an advanced academic resource teacher it could come from a school counselor really encouraging the student to to take that that next step does that answer your question it actually does and I appreciate what Dr. [02:52:17] Reed shared regarding you know preparing from kindergarten but clearly we are we've entered these children's lives at the middle school level I just really wanted to hone in on the actual activity that has resulted in what you shared regarding Longfellow in South County. So is the main, just one more, is the main strategy just teachers reaching out to students and encouraging them to sign up? Is that the key piece that is raising these numbers? So I think, I mean, you know, I think it's really trying to just change what our [02:52:54] our county is expecting and our county is resetting our default to algebra in grade 8 now that's easy for our kindergartners to be like okay we've got that long-term goal we're going we're going to be we're going to be in algebra one the curriculums all changing but you're absolutely right we're hitting some of these kids midstream where they didn't experience the curriculum changes all the way up and so for those that's what we're spending time with the teachers and the NIC really thinking about okay we need to think about students a little differently and think about their potential and that that they can achieve in algebra 1 and if and what are the barriers that we might be seeing if [02:53:32] we're thinking about algebra 1 being our default the students coming from math 7 what do they need to be successful how do we encourage them to take it and then how are we sure that we're prepared and that we have the the supports in place for them to be successful I don't know if I'm answering your question I'll let you know after dr. Reed finishes because she was about to say well I think there are two things I just want to have us sit with and think about. Number one is we have to have a tight math curriculum and that's built on big ideas around mathematics. And when I'm in a [02:54:10] kindergarten classroom, I'm just going to give you one example. When I'm in a kindergarten classroom and I see rabbits and ducks being added, that's a problem. That is a huge problem, right? Like it's You stop in your tracks because you can only add the same thing. [02:54:26] You can either add rabbits and rabbits or ducks and ducks, but you cannot add rabbits and ducks. That is a big idea in mathematics. And why that's important is because when you get to third grade and fourth grade and you get to fractions, you can't add one-fourth and one-third. What do you have to do? [02:54:42] You have to make them one-twelfth, right? You have to make them the same denominator to add them. And why is that important? Because when you get to algebra, you can't add X and Y. You can only add X's and X's and Y's and Y's. So that big idea in mathematics starts in kindergarten, which is why when we're in kindergarten classrooms, what do we want to see? [02:55:04] Rabbits and rabbits, ducks and ducks, right? We don't want to see rabbits and ducks added. That's not a big idea in mathematics. So that's number one. Number two, one of the things the international math study has repeatedly said about the United States and why we lose ground as our grades go up in our international math comparison is we review more than any other country that's assessed. [02:55:27] And so one of the things I know that Dr. Hunter has done is looked at the curriculum and where are we reviewing more and how do we compact some of this curriculum that we know our students have seen and seen and seen, right? So I think those strategies, making sure we have a tight curriculum, making sure that we're reviewing appropriately, but not over reviewing. [02:55:50] In some cases, the research around the work in the United States was a fourth of our year was review. That's too much review, right? So I think that there are multiple pieces here, multiple variables. It's our belief in our students. It's our understanding that algebra in eighth grade is a general ed expectation, right? [02:56:10] All students can do that. And algebraic thinking starts in kindergarten. Three plus box equals five is algebraic thinking because you're solving for an unknown, right? So anyhow, this is very possible and there are multiple strategies we're utilizing to get there and we will get there. [02:56:27] Sure. So let me just kind of envision a little bit to 2031. So 2031 in all of our middle schools, it's not necessarily going to be open enrollment into algebra. It's going to be that is the class that everyone will be taking. That is minimally the class everyone will be taking. [02:56:43] I won't consider it successful if we don't have sections of algebra trig in every eighth grade in every one of our middle schools. Not for everybody but there should be students full sections or multiple sections of students in algebra trig pre calc because we have students that math is their like I said their Friday night lights. [02:57:01] Sure. But minimally they should all be in algebra. OK. So I just look forward to seeing that plan kind of laid out a little bit in greater detail in the out years because I'm having a hard time in envisioning the transition, because coming from where we are right now, which is a decent start where we're encouraging students to participate, counselors, et cetera, and fortifying the curriculum, I think we need to have this approach from both ends. [02:57:31] But I'm not seeing how do we make that full transition yet. So I would love your thinking on that. - Yes, ma'am. - And just lastly, when we're talking curriculum we're talking about the textbooks can you just speak a little bit particularly because we had the parents here who are asking like how can we follow along and I've shared with you and I've shared with this board who were here in the last board way before you got here if I see one more slide deck being the instructional because I see it with my own children and that is it that is the reference material it is insufficient for our kids so can you [02:58:09] You tie in the materials that will follow this plan. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. I can. We, as I mentioned, we moved the Algebra Review Committee up a year. They're meeting this year and they're making a recommendation for secondary textbooks beginning next year and then two years out for elementary math textbooks. [02:58:33] So those are coming. I don't know. And we haven't had a report yet from the committee. Or maybe we're having a spoiler alert, Ms. Klemenko? Do you have information? I will just say that today was the very first day that we had our first review of the materials. [02:58:50] It's not the committee that you all select. That comes a little bit later in the process, but to follow this spring. And we actually are going to be looking at all of the materials right now. And then we will phase the purchase and the implementation. [02:59:05] And we're looking at them now so that we can look at things as a continuum. It could be that we buy a textbook series that goes K to Algebra 2, if we're lucky, or K to 8, just so we can get that continuum. So we want to look at all the products this year. [02:59:21] And we've just started that today. Very exciting news. And this will be a resource that kids can bring home, not a class set of materials to remain in the building. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Sawant. Thank you Dr. Reed for on slide mentioning kind of some of the resources that we have for multilingual learners because I do go back to the multilingual learner summit that we had in August where some multilingual learners will say, you know, I'm behind in English but I feel ahead in math and I want to have the resources in math class maybe in my language so that I can also keep up with that pace. [02:59:53] And specifically for Longfellow Middle School when they were talking about the specific interventions for multilingual learners like the academic vocabulary instruction and anchor charts, could you just describe in a little bit more detail like how that would manifest in the classroom and what students would use so I can share it with the student population after this. [03:00:10] Anchor charts are critical. And anchor charts are like paper on the wall, like giant poster paper, which illustrate big ideas in current math content in that class in student voice. So that when you're working independently, there's something to anchor your thinking, right? [03:00:28] You can be resourceful in terms of utilizing-- It could be order of operations, right? I'm just making that up, right? It could be order of operations and then student voice, what that means and when you use it and what order you do. Like you might do multiplication first and then addition or what's in the parentheses before, what's not, so forth. [03:00:49] So anchor charts are critical, but having anchor charts in language that students understand. So it's important it be in student voice based on the students in the classroom. And then you also mentioned academic vocabulary. So it's with some students and it could be for a variety of reasons. [03:01:08] It may not be because they're multilingual, but academic vocabulary is more technical. So making sure we teach into that before the actual lesson. So the academic vocabulary doesn't slow down the math fluency in an instructional math lesson and I'm going to. [03:01:24] OK. All right. There you go. Thank you, Ms. Sawant. And thank you, Dr. Reed. We will go ahead and move on to. I will preview for the board that beginning in the new year, Superintendent Matters is going to be following new business just before board matters. [03:01:47] So there will not be a mad dash from the podium to the dais. But agenda item 8.02, Superintendent Matters. I call on Dr. Reed. Thank you, Chairman Frisch. [03:02:02] This evening, just want to thank all the staff just for a tremendous first part of our school year. As you know tomorrow Friday will be the last day before our two week winter break and just want to thank our staff for all their hard work and our students for all their hard work and our families for their hard work grace and patience through all of the opportunities we've had this fall. [03:02:26] I want to mention that I have had a number of school visits since last we spoke Poplar tree elementary mcnair upper and lower as well as woodson hutcheson attending different concerts and had a chance to be part of the fcps cares of the quarter award with miss st john cunning to honor one of our teachers at mount vernon high school mr cooper i know mr dunn and i were attended an event last spring that mr cooper featured and just an outstanding educator and [03:03:00] very proud of his work and just a whole host of music and sporting events just a lot of excitement our girls wrestling season has gotten off to a great start i've attended two of their you know i guess meets so far and there were over 200 girls registered for the woodson meet and 150 at the the Herndon match so just a lot of excitement as it is an Olympic sport just really excited having a chance to watch our young student athletes in their new [03:03:38] sport competing so just want to wish everyone happy holidays and hope folks have some rest and renewal and I do want to let our community know that I've instructed staff to try to unplug so please we want to try to have folks not be on email and not be on devices and just enjoy uh being present with friends and family so i know you'll appreciate that because everyone will fresher and ready for a brand new 2025 so thanks for all your work thank you thank you dr reed agenda item nine consent agenda our adopted rules [03:04:14] of parliamentary procedure roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through a board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting the consent agenda is on the screen is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing hearing and seeing none the consent agenda is approved agenda item 10 new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled for a [03:04:53] ITEM 11 BOARD COMMITTEE REPORTS I CALL ON MIS LADY FOR A REPORT FROM THE GOVERNANCE COMMITTEE I THINK THAT MY REPORT TOOK PLACE EARLIER THIS EVENING IN THE ADOPTION OF THE GRADING POLICY AND THAT'S ALL I HAVE FOR TONIGHT THANKS THANK YOU I CALL ON MISS ST JOHN CUNNING FOR A REPORT ON THE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT COMMITTEE WE MET AT OUR LAST MEETING WE HAD SOME ACTION ITEMS THAT WE'RE GOING TO BE WORKING ON AND I'M REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THE RESEARCH WE'RE GOING TO DO TO BRING TO THE BOARD THANK YOU I CALL ON DR. ANDERSON OR MISS [03:05:31] St. John Cunning for the Skipped. Thank you. The Skipped Committee met just this past yesterday. Feels so long ago. And yes, it feels like a real long time ago. [03:05:46] But I was very excited by the conversation that we engaged in. The focus for this week's meeting was around early childhood. And it was one of the first times that the team actually broke out into various groups to tackle four questions regarding how to provide access, how to increase workforce and the last two questions are not coming to me but it was very exciting to be able to have all of the different voices in the room which are typically fairly quiet since we tend to do a lot of whole group but in the smaller group a lot of the community [03:06:21] partners they're so very ready in order to have this conversation and I could not tell you how I had the information from the goal reports, from goal report two with the heat map, no I'm sorry, goal report one, with the heat map regarding where early childhood centers are and what our reality is and it was illuminating to the folks there and I couldn't forward it to them fast enough so there was some good energy around that and so I'm really looking forward to the next meeting where we come back and perhaps put pen to paper regarding [03:06:56] What is the committee committee going to be responsible to to do to respond to all of that and even the workforce I have to share this this was the group that Rodney Lusk supervisor Lusk was part of and I happened to go and listen and they were talking about how could we prepare our kids the same way that we have teach for tomorrow but focus on early childhood academies in the places where we have the greatest need. [03:07:24] There's obviously a lot to unpack there but I'm excited by the possibility. Thank you Dr. Anderson. Agenda item 11 board matters. The next item on the agenda is board matters. I will call on each school board member to speak. [03:07:40] Mr. Moon. This is my holiday gift to my colleagues past Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Very generous. Miss St. John Cunningham. [03:08:06] I'm so sorry I'm having technical difficulties. I will also give the gift of time to everyone but before I sign off with board matters I want to wish everybody a restful holiday season and just tell everyone to spend as much time as you can with your loved ones and I know that there are people also spending their holidays the first time with the loss of loved ones so have those people in your mind and in your hearts but I look forward for for all of us coming back rested and relaxed. [03:08:41] Thank you Miss St. John Cunningham. Miss Lady. I too will yield my time, but I first must congratulate the Langley girls volleyball team for their state championship. That was an amazing match, and Dr. Reed and I had a great time watching that. And I want to wish everyone a wonderful winter break and happy holidays to all. [03:08:58] Just to clarify, yielding time. We're going to have 12 people yielding their time before they finish their remarks. Mr. Dunn. I just want to take the opportunity to thank all of the parents, caregivers, and community members who came out to participate in the school boundary community meeting at Mount Vernon High School on December 9th as well as all the other community members from across the county who have participated in those community meetings. [03:09:32] There will be additional opportunities in January I believe virtual one or more virtual meetings will be made available so if you miss the the first round there will be continuing opportunities I also just want to emphasize one point that's been made by the superintendent which is we have not started drawing new lines or new boundaries yet the voices of the community will guide the changes that get proposed the scenarios that get considered so I do encourage all community members from Mount Vernon district to continue to advocate for the [03:10:09] changes you'd like to see the changes you would oppose to make sure that your voices get heard and if you do go on to my website and find the newsletters that I've published on school boundaries there are lots of ways not just through the community meetings but otherwise to make sure that your opinions are heard your community opinion gets considered and it is an important issue not just for parents with children or caregivers with children in the schools but for the community and so as we move into this holiday season I want to wish everyone a bright Happy New Year and look forward to engaging with you in January thank [03:10:47] you thank you mr. Dunn mr. McDaniel I will take a rare board matter the budget committee thank you for everybody that responded to the budget priority survey those results will be transmitted to the board and the superintendent early next week and hopefully they will help to inform your budget development going in the new year so look forward to that a little light holiday reading dr. Anderson he just negated the fact that she wanted staff to unplug so I point that out but I [03:11:24] will take the time to not yield my time but to say congratulations and welcome to the new principal of Glasgow middle school Lisa Barrow this she had a robust welcome by the staff yesterday and they were very excited that she's there. Ms. Barrow is the former principal of Cooper Middle School and before that she was a principal at Sleepy Hollow Middle School so we're very excited to have her return to the justice pyramid. I was also very encouraged and I want to say thank you to the Mason District community who came out to the region's two and six meetings at Glasgow and Annandale regarding the boundary in the [03:12:02] virtual meetings as just discussed will be forthcoming and I also want to say thank you to Senator Warner's office who invited Wayne Oak Elementary School earlier this month in order to meet with the senator and to decorate his office for the holiday. It was such a treat and they were also given milk and cookies at the end of that visit and I wish you all a happy holiday. Thank you Dr. Anderson. [03:12:31] Mr. McElvey. Thank you. Last Saturday Mr. Moon and I had the opportunity to go down to George James Madison University for the state championship football game between James Madison high school and Oscar Smith high school and it was really incredible game Madison did a fantastic job they came up one point short at the and they had an incredible play at the end where they scored a touchdown with zero seconds remaining. So we're very, very proud of them. Wishing everyone a [03:13:08] very happy holidays and look forward to seeing you in the new year. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. Ms. Marin? Yes, it's been a busy season as the holidays tend to be. I was thrilled and delighted to see The Snowman, the movie, the short wordless movie being performed at Madison with the orchestra and chorus. It was just delightful. And then the girls wrestling match just previously before then, so a little juxtaposition. But yes, speaking of Madison, a shout out to the boys football team who rallied for the state championship and I thought you know they were playing at James Madison University so surely the stars would align but just you know so impressive our student-athletes you know thank you [03:13:47] for for putting it all out there and making us so proud I've seen our outdoor classrooms getting installed so south at South Lakes High School as well as some new murals there so it's really looking like just just a different kind of energy and from what I hear from students and staff they're really excited about it I I was pleased to go to the concert at Dogwood Elementary, our band and orchestra, and my own son's chorus concert, first time ever, at Terraset Elementary, where he not only sang but played the xylophone, so just so many people gathering to be with music and the holidays, and I was just beaming and thankful for the music teachers. [03:14:24] Over to Marshall High School, the Davis Center, the producers of our wonderful cookies that always have well they had their holiday dance so I went there and got to know some people and helped out. The Langston Hughes course did a five school tour last week in Reston to showcase their incredible the advanced course their incredible skills and also try to recruit some new sixth graders that are going in and I just think you know showing the younger students what could be really helps them with that transition. I also was getting started with the work with our Public Engagement Committee to figure out how we are going to bring on a second school board representative which was something that [03:15:02] we intended to do and so that's the task that I'm helping to lead along with others on the committee and elevating student voice and so myself and Marcia St. John Conning will be joining a webinar that VSBA the Virginia School Board Association is putting on about how to really incorporate the voice of the student reps into the board work so we also all had the legislative meeting with the Board of Supervisors and legislators, and on that point, if you're looking to get out of your house at the end of holiday break, Saturday, January 4th, at the Fairfax County Government Center, 9 a.m. sharp, you can talk to all of the state elected officials who represent [03:15:40] Fairfax. That's right, dozens of elected officials in one place. So don't miss out. I will be there, and I hope to see many people. I know our student rep is trying to gather some students. You can talk about all the things the state needs to do, like get the money and all those things. The boundary meeting, the last one of the year was held at Madison, and I just want to say it last night, I just want to say it's really, it's a lot of things, but it's an exercise in engagement and connecting. [03:16:07] And, you know, we focus a lot on the mental health of our students, which we rightly should, but, you know, I was reading data that Americans are more depressed and more lonely than ever. And so to see hundreds of residents gathered to talk about community and the lives we all want to build is really powerful. So I hope we can carry that commitment to showing up for each other into the new year. [03:16:26] Happy everything. Merry Christmas. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy New Year. Happy everything. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mayor and Ms. Anderson. I hope everybody has an amazing winter break. Thank you, Ms. Anderson. I always say really quickly, right before I talk for way too long, but I appreciate our work session, our evening work session with the city school board from the City of Fairfax we had a great conversation about our very special relationship with the city and also appreciate the conversation we had with our Board of Supervisors at their legislative work session I will be [03:17:06] looking forward to having more and more of those conversations we will be returning in January right into the launch of the General Assembly's work so we certainly have a lot of work to do and as we close out the calendar year I do want to congratulate everyone on this board for completing the first year of your term so your dedication to our students and staff and families it has been evident each and every month so I very much appreciate all that you've done and to those who celebrate I wish you a very joyous holiday season and a [03:17:43] wonderful new year. And I would like to say that we're done, but we're not. We have to return to closed session. So we will be back hopefully soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com