Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Date: Thursday, February 20, 2025
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 3h 27m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0YrjbCVd3c
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 2026-10-30. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:31] This February 20th 2025 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will come to order at 7:00 p.m. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a recorded performance of the National Anthem by the Daniels run elementary school singers under the direction of Michelle McCartin followed by a recorded performance of lift every voice and sing by the Justice High School Chamber Choir under the direction of Miranda Lansbury.

[00:00:59] I pledge allegiance more round of applause for those talented kids before we begin our meeting.

[00:03:43] this evening I want to recognize and express our sincere appreciation for our school board clerk and deputy clerks in honor of school board clerk appreciation week. Our school board clerks play a vital role in our school division's success and our board's smooth operation. They keep accurate records of our meetings and decisions, manage important documents, and record all official actions properly. They are often the first point of contact for the public, families, students, and employees contacting our board. Acting is a critical link between our school division and the community beyond their daily responsibilities school board clerks dedicate extra hours to attending our meetings and providing invaluable

[00:04:21] support to board members their hard work and commitment help ensure that our students have every opportunity to achieve their full potential so again i extend our deepest gratitude to our school board clerks for their dedication which does not go unnoticed and i will say that that we are truly grateful for all you do, so thank you.

[00:04:46] Wasn't in the script, got 'em. All right, agenda item 2.02, announcements. If you would like to review a copy of the meeting agenda, please see the back of the auditorium. To obtain copies of any items or supporting materials being presented tonight, please reference the QR code on the agenda or visit fcps.edu/boarddocs.

[00:05:08] Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on Channel 99 and live streamed on YouTube and our website at fcps.edu/livestream. Agenda Item 2.03, Custodian and Food and Nutrition Services Appreciation Proclamation, School Year 2425.

[00:05:24] I call on Ms. Anderson for a proclamation. - Whereas custodians are the first employees to arrive in the morning and the last employees to leave at night, and our custodians rise to the challenge each and every day to ensure schools are safe, clean, and ready to receive students. And whereas we honor FCPS's custodians, field custodians and building supervisors who are responsible for the daily care and safe operations of all facilities and buildings on a year round basis, school facilities represent a significant investment on the part of the citizens of Fairfax County and FCPS custodial employees ensure they are kept clean and in good repair.

[00:06:02] And whereas by providing clean and safe school environments, FCPS custodians have a direct impact the educational success of our students and whereas FCPS custodians take pride in their work and seek additional training leading to certification as professional custodians and whereas we recognize that helping our children fulfill their highest potential build begins with healthy access to food and balanced and nutritious meals at school studies show that these are often the most nutritious and sometimes the only meals in a student's day they improve student health making it easier for students to learn and erode in

[00:06:40] inequity we're focusing on exposing while focusing on exposing students to a variety of diverse meals and whereas Food and Nutrition Services is committed to serving every student by offering numerous programs to support student nutrition and academic achievement by serving over 20 million meals per school year and whereas we honor the 1300 FCPS school cafeteria staff and food and nutrition professionals who make these meals possible and operate the division's food services programs to ensure

[00:07:14] every student has access to healthy meals regardless of food allergies medical conditions or cultural or and and philosophical dietary preferences these essential valued employees who prepare and serve school meals help nurture and nourish our children through their daily interactions in support of our students.

[00:07:37] And whereas the hard work contributions and unending dedication of our Food and Nutrition Services employees have been an example for all of us, and for that, the FCPS community is extremely grateful. Therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board recognizes thanks and extends its highest commendation to custodians cafeteria workers and food and nutrition services employees who whose attention to detail compassion and high standards benefit all students employees and members of the FCPS community. Thank you Miss

[00:08:13] Anderson is there a second. I second. Thank you Miss Marin all those in favor of the proclamation Miss Marin Miss Dixit Mr. McElveen Dr. Anderson Miss Anderson Miss Sizemore Heiser Mr. Moon Miss Lady Miss St. John Cunning and myself

[00:08:30] That is unanimous for board members present right agenda item 2.0 for school bus driver bus attendance and crossing guard appreciation month proclamation I call on mystics it for a proclamation there is the celebration of school bus drivers bus attendance and crossing guard appreciation month honors the vital staff who ensure our Fairfax County public school student travel to and from school in a punctual and safe manner.

[00:09:08] School transportation is an important issue for all citizens of Fairfax County as students, staff, parents, drivers, pedestrians and neighbors. And whereas our FCPS bus and van driver must complete a rigorous training program of classroom instruction, student management and behind the wheel training.

[00:09:28] Our 1,037 FCPS bus drivers and 80 van drivers drive a total of 81,404 miles daily to safely transport our 131,000 FCPS student riders to and from 43,329 bus stops.

[00:09:48] They log in over 16 million miles per school year. And whereas our FCPS bus attendants accomplish their duties and often go beyond the requirement of their position as they regularly work and communicate with school administration, public officials, parents, and students in order to prioritize students' safety and well-being.

[00:10:10] And, whereas our FCPS crossing guards are at their post every day in all kinds of weather, directing pedestrian, bus, and automobile traffic to ensure the safety of our students arriving at and leaving from their school.

[00:10:26] They're often the first and the last miles as our students navigate to and from school and now therefore beat resolved the Fairfax County School Board recognizes February 2025 as school bus drivers bus attendants and crossing guard appreciation month and wholeheartedly commence them for their diligence in safely transporting our guide are guiding our school children of FCPS is there a second second Mr McElveen all those in favor of the proclamation.

[00:10:57] Ms. Marin, Ms. Dixit, Mr. McIlvain, Dr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Seismore-Hyser, Mr. Moon, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunningham, and myself, that is unanimous for board members present. Congratulations. I would like to welcome all those in support of our school bus driver, bus attendance, and crossing guard proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:12:16] I would like to welcome all those here in support of the custodian and food and nutrition services proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais.

[00:12:48] agenda item 3.01 community participation the next order of business is community

[00:14:46] participation we welcome all community members who are here and those who signed up to speak this evening additional information about signing up to provide comments at school board regular business meetings and public hearings can be found on the school board's website at fcps.edu school board during the sign up process community members acknowledge they were informed of the school board's expectations for proper decorum when providing comments These expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room. We ask audience members to be respectful of one another. Shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated. Please hold your applause until the conclusion of the speaker's

[00:15:22] remarks. Audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain at their seats until including when recording video or taking photos. We are grateful to have those of you come speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation. School board members will be listening but not responding. Madam Clerk, please call the first speaker.

[00:15:41] Kara Danner. I am here to urge you to take decisive action to implement healthy middle school start times. This is not just a logistical decision.

[00:15:57] It's a matter of student health, well-being and academic success. You've committed to addressing too early middle school start times. Your discussion should now focus on how to do it. The time for hesitation is over, set a timeline and lead the way forward. The term healthy middle school start times has been intentionally used center the conversation on the needs of students. The health benefits of later start times for adolescents are well documented and should be key to the board's messaging to the public. This change ensures our students have a school schedule that supports their physical and mental health. It's not about semantics.

[00:16:31] We want healthy elementary school start times too. Half of our elementary schools start between 9:10 and 9:20 a.m. which creates challenges for families and young learners. Some of the proposed solutions also benefit elementary schools. that value should be a part of this discussion additionally most of the solutions modify the high school start times to meet the AAP recommendation that teens not start school until 8:30 a.m. continued public engagement must be meaningful the board and administration should consistently communicate the options health benefits and commitment to improving all start times this messaging should come not just from the board but from the superintendent and

[00:17:10] through school principals parents and staff need to hear that this important changes happening and why. From here discussion needs to be about which option works best for Fairfax students. Now is the time to make a decision. Do not let another year go by without prioritizing the health and success of our students. Take action. Please direct the superintendent and staff to create a timeline that includes meaningful community engagement to allow for potential improvements to the proposed options. Finalize a plan and move forward

[00:17:41] with implementation. Get to yes on this. Our students are counting on you. Aaron Miller. Thank you. I'm Aaron Miller. I'm talking about concerns over educational outcomes in the boundary review process. My community has serious concerns about being reassigned to schools pyramids with significantly lower academic outcomes than students at schools to which we are currently

[00:18:16] assigned. We as well as other parents in our neighborhood specifically moved to this area for its schools. Now the school district is effectively threatening to undermine those decisions. The risks of being transferred from a high-performing school pyramid to a lower-performing school or a less safe school is a legitimate concern of parents and I'm not aware of any member of the school board or consultancy acknowledging this issue or expressing any desire to minimize the risk. Consistent with the school board's own strategic priority, goal number three, the education of our children is our top priority and not the optimization of travel times. The rejoinder is that there have been no decisions made at this time. This does

[00:18:55] alleviate concerns by the time decisions are made or decisions are even on the table it will be too late the guiding principle in this process must be first do no harm and breaking up communities to move children to lower performing schools is doing harm there's also a concerning lack of transparency we ask that you engage the community in a genuine dialogue not just sit silently as parents raise their concerns the lack of genuine communication makes it appear as though decisions have already been made and that through consulting is only a half million dollar pretense of engagement and objectivity. We would also like information on how to contact individuals for our region who

[00:19:34] are serving as community advisors. It is not clear how they can represent our region if we can't communicate with them. More importantly, we'd like to be better engaged with the school board in a genuine dialogue versus the current approach that only begs questions and fosters concerns.

[00:19:49] Our neighborhood representatives stand here today to start one-on-one discussions with members of the school board. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope the school board will commit to a real engagement moving forward. Keena McEvoy.

[00:20:07] Hi. My name is Keena McEvoy, and I'm the co-founder of DMV Unplugged, an advocacy organization with a goal to eliminate the interference of technology with the growth and development of children.

[00:20:26] The school board will soon be considering results of the cell phone pilot and revisions to the student rights and responsibilities. I urge you to follow the science, the momentum of a social movement, and actions of large school divisions like Los Angeles and New York City and make bell-to-bell phone-free education a reality for all Fairfax County students, as the Virginia Department of Education has advised with their guidance released this past August.

[00:20:48] Our neighbor Arlington County responded to the VDOE guidance and have shifted to a bell-to-bell phone-free school day, and the DC Council passed a similar measure just last night. The science, the resources, and the guidance are there to support the move to be fully phone-free, which I've provided to you previously.

[00:21:04] In addition to going phone free, FCPS should better engage and support parents regarding concerns with technology. Currently, FCPS utilizes the Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship Curriculum. As I've expressed, this website is overwhelming and has a technology industry bias.

[00:21:19] Please listen to what Richard Fried, child and adolescent psychologist and author of Better Than Real Life, says about Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship Curriculum. I quote, "The schools that show their students the Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship curriculum are shooting themselves in the foot. That's because the program normalizes the heavy consumer tech use characteristic of today's youth that is dragging down their academic success. Likewise, as schools struggle to handle an epidemic of youth emotional problems, it's ludicrous that they provide students this curriculum promoting kids' social media use, which is tied to youth mental health problems. Schools have a duty to terminate this hidden marketing

[00:21:55] program. Perhaps schools should ask themselves why industry-funded, including Mark Zuckerberg common sense media provides this program to them for free end quote please request that our division reconsider the use of common sense media programming it is not supporting families and students it's promoting a social media dominated culture that we should reject in the best interests of children thank you Alex Berg I'm here to talk about the

[00:22:34] boundary review process as well I wanted to echo what Aaron conveyed to you all and encourage and implore the board to engage in meaningful serious earnest dialogue around this issue I am concerned that to date we've engaged in checking boxes to arrive at a predetermined outcome without the ability to have our voices heard the constituents invest a lot in this community financially their time we are the fabric of this community we're not just data points in a census we deserve to be heard and I think that's a reasonable ask this issue affects our children we're not talking about something trivial we're not talking about bus

[00:23:13] schedules we're not talking about stop signs we're talking about outcomes for our children that is a serious matter and I want the dialogue to reflect that I've been concerned with some of the dismissive engagement that Aaron and other people have received I've heard that you know they've heard from other people well if you don't like Herndon high school just send your kid to private school I don't think that's an acceptable outcome either private schools in this area can cost upwards of $50,000 they have exclusive admission standards and we moved to our neighborhood specifically to be able to send our kids to

[00:23:49] Langley in a financially responsible capacity. It's damaging to students to switch pipelines, lose classmates, and have their experience upended. Fairfax County is one of the wealthiest counties in the country, but it's operating at a $300 million deficit. The budget for FCPS, as I understand it, is $3.7 billion. Our taxes have been increased as a result to help with this budget.

[00:24:15] i think it is perfectly reasonable to be heard on this issue and again engaged in meaningful earnest dialogue when i left to come here today i told my kids i was going to speak at a school board meeting and i didn't have the heart to tell them why i ask you would you be accepting of this outcome i don't think so thank you guru salabavi thank you for the opportunity here and thank you

[00:24:50] for your leadership and driving educational excellence in fairfax schools my family moved from New Jersey to Virginia seven years ago. And when we looked at the reason for picking a community, the school pyramid was the number one choice.

[00:25:08] Everything else, in terms of what kind of a house we want to live, what budgets we had, was all driven by the educational excellence of the school pyramid we live in. The boundary review process, as I understand, that's not the North Star.

[00:25:29] We are optimizing for logistics. We understand it's important, but that cannot be the North Star. The North Star has to be educational excellence. And the ecosystem that Fairfax has built because of your leadership and efforts takes time to build.

[00:25:45] And ecosystems are, in a lot of ways, fragile because of tangible and intangible factors. It's hard to disrupt them, very hard to build back. So as you're making this decision, I think the importance of keeping this ecosystem, Keeping the educational excellence as the number one priority is what we want to see.

[00:26:07] Secondly, there has been talk about this boundary review process. The only thing I keep hearing is that it's not been done for a long time, hence we need to do it now. But what I would like to see is that how many parents are asking for this? Where is the data to show that any parent that is requesting this boundary change?

[00:26:26] None of my neighbors who are here are asking for this. We are really happy with our schools. We are happy with the travel times for our school kids and I think our import it's it's a very important fact of our lives so disrupting it and not having seen the decision is is not is not a comfortable situation to begin.

[00:26:49] So I hope you will Tamara Heimer everyone my name is Tamara my family and I including my two children moved to Fairfax County two and a half years ago primarily like others for the quality of the public schools.

[00:27:19] I'm a big believer in public schools. Thank you for your leadership in making Fairfax County schools great. I'm here today to request a reconsider reconsideration of the timing of the boundary review process as well as more transparency in the process and a consideration of educational outcomes.

[00:27:39] I understand FCPS believes that population growth and school capacities are a driver for potential boundary changes. I would ask the board to consider the significant disruptive changes being made by the federal government policies under the new administration, which are likely to impact the demographics and population in the D.C. area, namely a reduction of federal workforce, elimination of remote work, and relocation of agencies outside the DMV.

[00:28:04] As of February 8th alone, Virginia is already registering a 12 percent increase in unemployment, a figure that is expected to get much worse as more spending is cut. In addition, the proposed elimination of the Department of Education and funding for education could have a disruptive impact on school systems with this backdrop of instability and uncertainty I would urge the school board to consider delaying changes to school boundaries that will break up long-standing communities change the housing market and change future population growth until the impact of the new policies on our schools and communities are clear on the issue of transparency I stand with my neighbors and asking for more meaningful dialogue

[00:28:43] on this issue we hear repeatedly that no decisions have been made if my neighbors have noted and yet we are kept in the dark about being about the process and when we follow up with our representatives receive form responses without any meaningful addressing of our concerns and finally I would also urge you to include educational excellence as an outcome in this process rather than just transit times and capacity concerns for all of our children thank you please play the video testimony submitted by Stephanie Lundquist Aurora

[00:29:21] Good evening. The last two FLECAC monthly meetings were canceled, but it probably doesn't matter. You already know how you'll vote on whatever they say, right?

[00:29:38] You appoint far-left extremists to the committee and then implement the insane actions that they propose. This year, they are hoping to push gender identity indoctrination into elementary schools. Will you be voting in favor of that, too? Not long ago, 84% of respondents on a survey told you that we don't want our kids in shared sex classes for sensitive family life education lessons.

[00:29:59] But, of course, you ignored us and now have a little pilot program doing just that. In early February, you had school administrators present videos on the code of conduct that included bathroom and locker room use based on gender rather than sex. That was after President Trump issued his executive order connecting sex-based facilities use to federal funding.

[00:30:20] When do you intend to tell Fairfax County's taxpayers that we will be covering the federal funding you won't be getting? And speaking of your ridiculous proposed $4 billion budget, you should consider making cuts to administration and unnecessary programs and training trips to Orlando and Houston, right, Dr. Reed, to cover any teacher's raises.

[00:30:42] It's absolutely obscene that a local school district superintendent has a higher salary than the governor and even the president. And while our mid-career teachers make about $91,000 per year, our district's equity officer enjoys an annual salary of $258,000.

[00:30:59] These figures clearly show that you prioritize equity indoctrination over education as our children struggle to read and do math proficiently. The district's irresponsible leadership is costing taxpayers and, more importantly, our children, fortune.

[00:31:20] Chair Frisch, that was our last public speaker. Thank you. Agenda Item 4.01, Student Representative Matters. I call Ms. Sawant. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This month we held our first two meetings of the Portrait of a Graduate Student Secondary Voices Advisory Committee, a student-driven cohort to shape the future of student-facing portrait of a graduate skills.

[00:31:41] With student representation from SAC, SEALS, Madison Wings, AVID, and many more student programs, this committee has been providing feedback on the student-facing portrait of a graduate grade band skills in the vertical articulation charts to better match the experiences that we have in our classrooms.

[00:31:57] Our student group has facilitated peer feedback through student interviews focused on each of the five skills and are now developing recommendations for the curriculum instruction team. They are now in the process of analyzing student data from a Pear Deck that was sent out to all secondary students in the past two months through our advisory lessons, and the end of the year project will showcase the findings at the Portrait of a Graduate Teacher Innovator Symposium on April 9th. I'm really looking forward to what the committee will take on this year based on the progress that we've made this month. Given this time of year, I also want to touch on the insightful conversation that we started to have about chronic absenteeism

[00:32:33] at our most recent Superintendent's Advisory Council meeting. From the attendance specialist that we had the honor of speaking with, one of our takeaways was that teacher mentoring was an effective way to reduce absenteeism in the classroom. Some teachers use positive messages about how students have been behaving in the classroom or feedback through talking points to form stronger connections with students by being that trusted trusted adult and showing them that someone cares about their engagement in school however our teachers have so much on their plates and it's not possible to implement this evenly across all schools the multi-tiered systems of support in the early warning reminders have also been effective in

[00:33:11] preventing students from slipping into absenteeism and starting that conversation when they need help the thing with chronic absenteeism as we is that it's not always correlated with academic performance in school. There are students who are chronically absent who happen to have great grades. The signs vary so much. Students in this group mentioned that having a conversation with someone when there were early warning signs of absenteeism was much more effective than getting an email that they were missing too many days of school. I look forward to sharing the student proposals when they present in March. Last Monday I also met with the student leadership development program

[00:33:47] to talk about the student representative experience and it sounds so crazy to say but I am more than halfway through my term and we are already thinking about who will be at this dais next year but I just wanted to say that it was so amazing to hear what all of our student representatives had to say about policies that they were passionate about this went from going to Richmond to support a certain bill that was being passed or high school sports or the cell phone policy so on that note for any student interested in student voice and FCPS and potentially working on this board next year, the first round of applications for student representative closed this Monday, February 24th. Lastly,

[00:34:25] I also wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the threat at Edison High School earlier today. My heart goes out to every student, family, and staff member affected by this. Thank you to our security teams, school resource officers, and the Fairfax County Police Department for their action to keep students safe while investigating this situation. While we all hope that incidents like these never happen, the reality is that we always have to be prepared. Our school resource officers, our crisis teams, our threat assessment management unit, and our emergency response plans are critical, but so is ensuring that our students and families have access to the mental health and support resources to know what

[00:35:04] to do when threats like this occur. Today's response worked because someone spoke up. Speaking up is so important, using our tip line is so important, knowing to deal with these situations as they continue to face our country is so important and i hope that we can continue to raise student awareness on how to understand and be prepared for these incidents just like our fire plans and just like our tornado plans we all have a role to play in school safety thank you well said agenda item 5.01 action certification of closed meeting compliance in order to comply with section 2.2-3712d of the code of virginia it is necessary for the

[00:35:44] board to certify that since the fairfax county school board convened a closed meeting on february 20th 2025 to the best of each board member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully exempted from any public meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered by the board during the closed meeting do i have a motion dr anderson do i have a second miss lady all those in favor miss marron miss dixit mr mckelveen dr anderson miss anderson Ms. Seismarheiser, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Ms. Lady, Ms. St. John Cunningham and myself. That is

[00:36:19] unanimous for board members present. The motion carries. Ingena item 5.02 action item confirmation of action taken in closed meeting. No action was taken in closed meeting. Ingena item 5.03 action item strategic plan goal 3 report. I call on Dr. Reed for a presentation of the strategic plan goal 3 report and I remind the board that we recently had a multi-hour work session on this

[00:36:45] topic and that how late we stay here tonight is entirely up to us all right Mr. Frisch um I do appreciate the amount of time the board does give to these um reports and this evening uh you know I think our goal three report obviously is the core of our work here in the school division so uh as I present this um this is let's go ahead and jump to slide three please I'm not sure who's moving those tonight okay thank you Thanks Janet.

[00:37:25] So there are six measures in goal three and this evening as the board knows we've focused on three of them this year and last year. This year being our first actual move into this area and these are reading by third grade algebra one at least algebra one by eighth grade and advanced coursework taking patterns in high school.

[00:37:48] So we do for those of you watching at home have a comprehensive document actually that's attached to board docs and this evening I'll just be presenting some summary slides and also you know I think it's time to talk about our math expectations as well and I'll do that in a few minutes when we get to the algebra so first let's take a look at reading by third grade we're gonna take a look at our SOL data and our VAP assessment scores we know that reading by third grade is critically important by the end of third grade students begin to stop learning to read and really begin using reading to learn so if students are

[00:38:28] behind after third grade it makes the attainment of further content that much more difficult that's why this is really a key goal for us so reading on this is also considered an asset for persistence and advanced coursework we know if our young ones are reading by third grade they're more likely to to graduate on time and more likely to participate in post-secondary education so again third grade reading is critical so let's take a look at the past three years and one of the things i think that's really important to note is that fcps continues to outperform virginia and have similar

[00:39:07] results to those of other northern virginia school divisions we also have a traditional slide seven please janet thank you we also have traditional benchmark districts over the years that we have benchmarked with fairfax county public schools which are school divisions of the size and complexity that fairfax county is and so we want to make sure that we also shared that we do have some of the highest pass rates while we're not where we want to be at 70 percent for third grade we between now and 2030 want to make sure we make incremental gains to continue

[00:39:43] to give our third graders the best chance possible. So as we look at the next student group slide, I think it's really the overall pass rates increased by about one percentage point. But we do continue to see gaps between student groups, which we discussed at great length in the work session.

[00:40:03] I also want to say that this is the first year of our new literacy curriculum. And really big props to the board for doing the work around the science of reading and our early literacy initiatives several years ago prior actually to the Commonwealth making this a priority and I think that vision is paying off.

[00:40:22] We're looking at student reading and writing right now in our elementary schools and really seeing some strong performances and so I know the board shares my grateful thanks to the many many elementary school teachers who have had to learn this new curriculum this year and the heavy lift that they have had, but we really believe that over the next several years we're going to have an opportunity to really increase our reading scores.

[00:40:48] And we've had quite a team, honestly. Noelle Clemenco, our assistant superintendent in instructional services, has led seriously an unprecedented amount of professional development over the last number of months and last summer. So we're very proud of the work, and we know it's going to bear strong fruit.

[00:41:08] We also have some select goal priorities, and one of the things we really have talked a lot about is what is the intersectionality between some of our work. In this case, looking at attendance, some of this seems like common sense, but it does really play out.

[00:41:25] For those students who are not chronically absent, they tend to be stronger readers than students who are chronically absent. We also know that students who've had a pre-kindergarten experience tend to have stronger third-grade reading scores than those who have not had a pre-k experience so I think that some of the things that are being advocated for by this board in our county really do make a difference so it's nice to see that what we think it's going to work actually really bears out so last year our VAP performance for third grade reading is an assessment given for students on an adaptive

[00:42:03] curriculum. Last year we had 60 students, which would be 63rd graders, that participated in this assessment. And while there was an overall decline in scores, we're going to need to continue to focus on our VAT performance to hit our 2030 goals. We also have a goal of wanting to make sure that as many of our students are able to take the standard assessment also as possible. So this is a target area we're going to continue to work on. Looking at progress monitoring with our new basal curriculum, one of the things you can see on the left side of the slide is a lot of the new work and on the right side you can see some of our

[00:42:42] outcomes as we do a lot more check-in and real-time data looks so that we can provide real-time resources and support to students. What we are seeing are increases in our third graders who are mastering standards in reading from fall to spring and we really hope that we continue to see support and improvement in these scores as our students continue to work through the curriculum in benchmark so the next slide again we're going to currently continue focusing on a combination of universal targeted efforts support and process we're also

[00:43:21] going to make sure that our third grade reading stays top of mind for our school improvement plans and we continue to be excited about the opportunities for personalized support for students we're still utilizing the all-in for Virginia high-impact tutoring which is supporting personalized support as well as in our title one schools title one supports for our students we have made sure that students were identified as high risk on the reading screeners are receiving an individualized student reading plan which guarantees an additional two-and-a-half hours of intervention each week and that's

[00:44:00] something that's I think really important we have to maintain high expectations for our students but in some cases provide higher levels of support but we don't change the expectation so the next part I want to talk about is our second major goal area here in goal 3 which is algebra

[00:44:18] Algebra 1 by 8th grade. Again, I want to say that this is becoming our new floor, not our ceiling, which is to say that we really, I was just mentioning to Mr. Dunn this evening that I was speaking to an executive principal in Region 3 in the Mount Vernon area, and we're really looking, I think we have five different elementary schools selected where we want to offer an algebra section in 6th grade in each of those elementary schools, because that will enable our students to be able to be in algebra trig by eighth grade so we're really thinking that that's

[00:44:54] an important idea at this point and one that we need to actualize because 84% of career choices currently are dependent on mathematics as we look at quantum and AI and other large language model manipulation mathematics is becoming more and more critical so in terms of why it matters we know that algebra one is a by eighth grade is a data point tracked by the Office of Civil Rights because we know if we have students who finish algebra in eighth grade they're more than twice as likely to go on to post-secondary education I think this is critical and we're making significant

[00:45:34] progress I also want to say that I think we just recently this weekend received math data for the Commonwealth and it's my understanding we're right now at about 50 out of 50 in terms of our states and I think one of the things we can think about here in Fairfax County is I'm gonna as I've talked to several of you about this I think it's we're not going to raise performance by changing how we measure our students we're only going to change that by changing the experience our students have in the classroom we're going to have to have I believe larger graduation

[00:46:12] requirements for mathematics and I think we do need to think about a fourth year of mathematics here in Fairfax County I also think that we have 40 other states in this country who require algebra trig for a graduation requirement and we don't in the Commonwealth of Virginia but we could here in Fairfax County and if we want to be the tech center of this nation we must graduate students with a strong math proficiency. So I really trust that our board of supervisors also recognize that and note that as we think about budget priorities and making sure we have enough educators to teach

[00:46:47] these advanced level of mathematics courses for our younger and younger students, this work really does matter. So let's take a look at the number of our eighth graders passing a high school mathematics SOL right now and this includes last year we had about 62 percent of our eighth graders pass any high school math as well and this includes algebra algebra one geometry or algebra two compared to 53 percent across northern virginia and 43 percent across the commonwealth i think we are working so hard in this area and i'm very proud of our students and our educators and it positions us

[00:47:26] to take that next leap I expect that we're going to be we're making we're on track progress and I expect we're going to hit this goal by 27 28 of our eighth graders minimally in algebra let's take a look at the verified credit again by student group and the growth that has been made again while we've had more students enter algebra in eighth grade we've also maintained verified credit levels so I'm very proud of that data point which means the students are prepared and are able to compete and are able to be successful.

[00:47:59] We need to maintain those high expectations for each of our students, regardless of the neighborhood and school in this county. To improve these pass rates, we're currently focused on a number of strategies and just props to our K-8 teachers, because, you know, we don't just spontaneously break out in math skills in middle school.

[00:48:19] This starts in kindergarten. So our elementary through middle school teachers are working very hard And as well as we're taking a look at, I think we've had our math director here talking about some of the improvement network work products we're doing.

[00:48:38] And as you know, we've moved our math curriculum committee up a year. So this is a full court press to work on mathematics here in Fairfax County. So the third data point we want to talk a little about is successful completion of advanced coursework in high school.

[00:48:55] Why does this matter? One of the things we've talked a lot about is access to programming and wanting to make sure that with dual enrollment, advanced placement, international baccalaureate, that we have access for students in each of these programs.

[00:49:12] And you're going to see in goal four some really interesting data slides that our senior leadership looked at this week that are so powerful because they begin, you begin to see the levers that can make this data very actionable. So we're thrilled about that.

[00:49:29] So let's take a look at the next slide where we can see that 85% of last year's seniors, those who graduated in 2024, did successfully complete advanced coursework, which is a gain of a percentage point. That's a very high data point, by the way, to have 85%.

[00:49:46] And our multilingual learners had a 7% point gain year over year in taking one of these AP, IB, or dual enrollment courses. That's significant. While we still have gaps, we are making progress in this area. Next, when we think about universal and targeted strategies, this is where you're going to see in goal 4 some of the really specific counseling around student course taking patterns and requirements and access points to these courses. Further, we've added some significant adjustments in our multilingual learning programming and

[00:50:24] course sequencing for the first time ever actually we have elementary literacy materials that were directly purchased and intended to work with multilingual learners and I know you all are in schools quite a bit and I've seen young students work with these materials and teachers very excited to have them and those I think are going to yield strong gains So very proud of the work of our students in that area.

[00:50:52] So in summary, I just want to note that our reading pass rates increased by one percentage point even without our new materials and new work and we do expect larger gains next year. We've made significant gains in the amount of eighth graders earning verified credit in Algebra 1.

[00:51:10] And finally, 85% of students in last year's senior cohort completed advanced coursework. So again goal 4 is going to provide I think some excitement I don't want to have a spoiler alert but it's probably going to be my favorite goal report of the year.

[00:51:26] So Mr. Chair this concludes the goal 3 presentation. Thank you very much. We will get started with Mr. Dunn. Thank you. So on slide 10 it shows that reading pass rates in school year 2020-2021 was 89%.

[00:51:49] And this year it's 72 percent. And obviously last year it was 76. I'd be very interested in the data preceding the pandemic by, you know, going back 10 or even 20 years if we have that data.

[00:52:04] Because what, you know, to go from 70 to 76, 72, I just don't know if 89 was consistently maintained. Was it in the 90s? You know, do you have any sense of where that was historically and where we're trying to get back to? So, Mr. Dunn, that's a great question and note that we're on slide 10, Janet, please.

[00:52:24] The end size for slide 10, Mr. Dunn, at this point was 60 students, 6-0. So the volatility of students passing or not when we're talking about the VAP assessment is going to be somewhat significant, right?

[00:52:39] It's not if you had thousands of students, you have less volatility in the data. but i will ask uh dr presidio if you have a sense of where we were i know we used to have more students take the vap but we may have to come back to you with the more specific history beyond the three years sorry i we'd have to look up the specific pass rates but what i would say the reason the slide is formatted this way is the format of the vap assessment changed in school year 2021. before that it was actually a portfolio based assessment where students could

[00:53:15] submit work samples it changed in school year 2021 to a multiple choice based assessment more similar to the sol and when it did change we had fewer students taking it but i'm not exactly sure what the pass percentage was prior to that but we'd be happy to to get that for the board thank thank you um i'd also be interested in getting more historic data based on slide eight just being able to see changes and pass rates on grade three reading as well as by student group.

[00:53:48] This captures, I'm assuming it's this most recent school year, but seeing how they've varied over time by those groups and if long term we've been making progress or we're holding steady for those groups and whether additional planning efforts need to be made based on Different groups would be important, I think, for the board to understand.

[00:54:13] Can you provide more information? So if you could include that in a Friday letter, if you don't mind. Yes, sir. Thank you. I'm interested in the funding source for the individual reading plans you mentioned. That sounds like a great thing. Who qualifies for the individual reading plans, and is that coming from the federal government that we may lose that money?

[00:54:33] So my understanding is it's actually a new VDOE requirement. So, I'm going to ask Ms. Klemenko to clarify that, but these reading plans are not an option, and they sort of nominate themselves. So, Ms. Klemenko? Absolutely.

[00:54:49] Good evening. So, this year, with the implementation of the Virginia Literacy Act, the VLA, one of the components was to move to a new assessment, a one-on-one assessment with students, and this is in the primary grade, so not yet at the upper elementary, so grades K through three are involved and the students who score in certain areas on this new assessment called the vows are required to have a reading plan so the teachers complete a reading plan which is in parent view so parents can see the reading plan and see the progress the student is making and then we have progress monitoring that happens throughout the year so it is a state

[00:55:26] requirement we're waiting to hear how the requirements will continue up to grades four through eight for next year and and who funds it is that just come out of our county budget or does the state provide additional funding so we have received over time some some funds from the state but basically it's been added to the workload it was internal FCPS systems that created sort of the template and put it into our SIS and did all of that work so I would say it's this particular thing is funded by FCPS and approximately how many students receive individual reading plans or does it vary by school by group etc it

[00:56:05] absolutely varies by school some of our schools have a large percentage of students and some have have very few we certainly can provide the board a more of a more of an outlook on that the one good news is is that we saw a large number of kindergartners this year because it was a new assessment we weren't familiar we weren't really understanding where the expectation was for a kindergartner but when we went to do winter testing because this happens fall winter and spring many of the kids moved out of the risk area so that that's good news so i think we're getting um you know good information that we can act upon in a timely fashion but we

[00:56:44] can provide numbers for you that would be great i mean especially i'm interested in schools that my district students attend um is there for the individual reading plan is there a format or a curriculum or that that's been developed that would we bought from a vendor the state's provided so that you know there's consistency to how reading plans are developed and implemented i know we have the same concern with like ieps and things well i know that we many states have required reading plans already so i think we're a little late to that piece i think it's a great idea right like if students are not to have a universal screener and if students aren't reading

[00:57:23] at level let's provide more support i mean it makes total sense as mrs clemenco mentioned we actually our team built our plan because our staff recall have a new reading curriculum new required training and the plans if you're a k-3 teacher so we need to be celebrating our kindergarten first and second and third grade teachers because they just they were sort of asked to do everything new this year so we did create some of that for them but miss clemenco you want to talk a little bit about what types of interventions those might trigger absolutely so along with having to

[00:58:01] choose an approved basal benchmark advance they also provided a list of interventions and your interventions will be targeted some might work on decoding phonics some might work on comprehension so based on the results of the assessment students were given we were able to kind of preload if students were struggling in this area this would be the appropriate intervention so that teachers are are in more of a mode of being able to use almost drop-down menus, right, because, and so that we can ensure there's a match, an instructional match.

[00:58:32] That's great. And I'm interested in the math curriculum. You know, for years I've read about, you know, superior outcomes in terms of math in Finland and Singapore in particular. Are we using, and I've heard of Singapore math being used in U.S. schools, are we using Curriculum or are we aware of best practices lessons learned from foreign countries that we can import here or are we just using?

[00:58:56] American based curriculum that I'm just trying to understand why American students and I'm not talking about Fairfax County specifically differ so much from some of our foreign counterparts. So I will Well, I provide the first part of the answer. I'm gonna ask Dr. Presidio to talk a little bit about what our current curriculum is recall that we are moving our curriculum selection up to select textbook curriculum which I think is very important what I will also say is in the one of the most recent Tim's reports which is in an international math comparison report one of the research pieces that particularly has caught my

[00:59:34] attention over the years is that in the United States we tend to provide a disproportionate amount of review in other words we tend to review almost we review more than many other countries like we go to third grade and we spend a lot of time reviewing second grade or we are in algebra trade but we're reviewing geometry right like so the data the research says that when you spend that much time reviewing and I'm talking not Fairfax County but just the US writ large you're not going to cover as much content and therefore you're likely not to perform as well on the international assessments so that's one data point so

[01:00:11] it's not curriculum based but it's how we use our time so dr. Presidio a little bit about our math curriculum here yeah absolutely I would just add to the first part of your question too I mean I think sometimes when you look at these international comparisons there are other factors that you have to take into consideration besides curriculum how much planning time to teachers have how many hours are they actually working with students versus receiving professional development how homogeneous is the population how many multilingual learners they have so there's a lot of different factors that sometimes I think cloud the research a little bit but our math curriculum we're excited to be going through this adoption process because we know that we

[01:00:48] need updated materials our materials that we have right now are things that we've purchased and created to be aligned to the Virginia state standards so that's always where we have to start with our curriculum that's kind of the floors making sure we're aligned to the state standards so then we obviously can go beyond that can you talk a little bit more about the pilot and you know Algebra trigonometry. I'm familiar with trigonometry, not algebra trigonometry. So can you just talk about, you know, what what will happen?

[01:01:16] Oh, you're talking about the sixth grade? Yeah. I don't want to get too far ahead of our teachers that are going to be doing the pilot. But essentially, it's an algebra course, right, in sixth grade, and we do offer it in some parts of the county, but not all parts of the county. So what we want to try, not try, what the commitment is, is we want to make sure that we have at least one section of algebra in every elementary school by sixth grade.

[01:01:39] in the county because only if we have that do students have an opportunity to get to algebra trig by eighth grade and is algebra trigonometry for old people like me the same thing as trigonometry or is that a different version of trigonometry the nomenclature may vary but it's really second year algebra so often the sequence is algebra one geometry and what they call algebra two slash algebra trig we have a lot we have different names and different types of courses but essentially some places it's just called trig right but it's I

[01:02:09] I think algebra 2 trig is what we're talking about and honestly that course is a graduation requirement in many parts of the country and I'm going to advocate strongly that we adopt that even if the Commonwealth isn't I think Fairfax County Public Schools should linemen's apprentice exams welding exams it doesn't matter whether you go into industry post-secondary or the military there's an expectation that that level of content has been mastered.

[01:02:37] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just Dr. Lee, just a couple of questions. The additional support we provide on reading two and a half hours for the students who eligible to receive the additional help. Is that individual one-on-one setting or how is that provided?

[01:03:08] So, great question, Mr. Moon, and I think it's somewhat dependent, but it's a special intervention block. So, Ms. Klemenko, I think in some cases it is, but in other cases, small group. Most of the time, it would be a small group, and when I say small, you know, it can be three to four students.

[01:03:25] It could be a few more, but yes, mostly small group. We wouldn't really, in most schools, have the personnel to deliver one-on-one personalized intervention. okay the next question is maybe just this is a nomenclature a question but for the reading I think on slide number 12 a providing provide personalized support for students who face individual challenges I think this is how that is phrased individual challenges whereas on algebra 1 on page 7 slide number 17 and

[01:04:02] And the phrase that I'm looking at is provide a personal life for students who are underrepresented, not individual challenges, but who are underrepresented. Could you tell me the distinction?

[01:04:19] I think that probably we got we took I would guess in terms of the slide writing. Miss Neil, do you want to take a stab at that? Same thing goes with slide number 21, they use the word of underrepresented as opposed to individual challenges.

[01:04:42] Whether you meant different things or you meant to say individual challenges, but there were typos? Yeah, when I think about individual challenges, we think about probably more individual challenges in the sense of reading struggles perhaps, like often you think about in third grade comprehension right our students versus fluency maybe they're a fluent reader but not comprehending so you think about what an individual challenge might be I think when we think about underrepresented I think sometimes we think about opportunity to actually be in the class the barriers sometimes

[01:05:20] for example we still I think we're getting rid of it now but we still have an Iowa test to take some advanced courses we need to eliminate some of the barriers to the advanced math classes so that's how I would distinguish those. Dr. Reed, if you, one of our major goal is to have all our students take algebra one by eighth grade. Yes. It's everybody. Yes. And amongst everyone, there will be students who will have individual challenges as opposed to underrepresented by whole class. Right. So whether you did not really mean to say

[01:06:00] underrepresented by it's there or am i really understanding misunderstanding two different concepts here so with an iowa test for the math there are some students who struggle with that type of test so that can become a create an under representation if they have a testing challenge for that test so if we remove that barrier then it takes that um because the test may not be i mean maybe we should have used the same term so let me ask miss neil because you guys chose those terms so what were you thinking in terms of what the thought was there no I think you're right Dr. Reed the assumption was when we're

[01:06:39] looking at the reading we're thinking about things like students who may have difficulty with encoding or decoding there's a specific challenge that those students academically need support with a lot of times for our students who are trying to access algebra one there may not be an academic issue there may be an information barrier other barriers that we need to remove in order to make them be able to have access to the class okay one of the reasons that I did ask that question is first of all so to clarify whether I was understanding I guess I was misunderstanding two different concepts but a lot of times we use the

[01:07:14] word underrepresented when we're looking at different subcategories subgroups but that's not there wasn't the intent I think that was not the intent I don't believe maybe I I think we're looking for for me right now where we're seeing biggest discrepancies is by region or pyramid it's not necessarily by student group if that makes sense but I'm gonna what terms were you thinking yeah I mean I think we were trying to just portray the idea that for some of our students it's not an academic reason why they're

[01:07:54] not showing up in the class there may be other navigational barriers or other informational barriers that are precluding them from accessing the course okay yeah from from my vantage point You know if you want to have every every eight all our eighth graders to take as well one by eighth grade all our students take as well on by eighth grade.

[01:08:14] If there is any students with the challenges will provide necessary support and that's what I'm looking for. And hopefully you can all understand that that should be our goal to help everyone. correct thank you yeah I think we also part of the underrepresentation non-academic challenge we have some pyramids that don't have for example the AAP centers right or don't have the level or numbers of advanced math in their elementary programs we've talked about that some of the

[01:08:53] centers some students are not able to access that so we want to make sure that those barriers and also things like the Iowa test those barriers are removed so that those neighborhoods right now that don't have access the class isn't even offered have that access so I think obviously if there's also an individual academic concern we want to make sure we mitigate that too for every students thank you mr. moon dr. Anderson thank you just kind of picking up on

[01:09:32] something you just mentioned about schools about some pyramids without AP centers is it just the one or is there more than one so I'll have to defer to Dr. Presidio on that and when you're talking centers are we talking middle school okay I think we're more than just one middle school yeah like more than one pyramid without an AP center it at the middle school not at the elementary level is it so it's just the one pyramid I'm sorry I couldn't make out what you were saying off the top of my head I wouldn't be able to tell you specifically the pyramids at the middle school I think we

[01:10:12] have it's more than one though that doesn't have an AP middle school center at the middle school level all students can all students can get access to the centers but they might have it obviously have to be bused farther okay thank you because I know we had that we have that issue in the Annandale pyramid I just Wasn't sure where else that showed up, you know, you talked about go for being your favorite.

[01:10:36] Go three is my favorite. You know, this is the land where I would love to wallow for a very long time, although I will not. But I do have a few questions about thank you for providing kind of the comparison information with the other school divisions.

[01:10:55] Are there any opportunities? What are are there some lessons to be learned with that? Are there activities and strategies that other divisions that are ranking a little bit above us are engaging in that perhaps we can mimic? So I know that's work that our instructional team's been doing, Dr. Presidio.

[01:11:15] Thoughts on strategies we've picked up from other divisions as your teams work with schools on strategies for improving, for example, the reading, I think, is what Dr. Anderson's referring to. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the positives from the Virginia Literacy Act has been bringing school division leadership from around the state together to share best practices.

[01:11:39] I wouldn't say that there's necessarily anything, you know, profound that we have seen another school division doing that we're not doing. But as we think about implementing new approaches, new pedagogies, you know, in alignment with the science of reading, having that network run by the University of Virginia to make sure that we've got you know the best technical assistance possible I mean I do think that's a real benefit thank you I just while I think with the with the third grade reading SOL we're fourth with the algebra we're second of the way B schools so that's kind of an exciting thing to see so thank you for providing

[01:12:17] that I would love to see it though for the math SOL because I know that's one of the data points that was shared in this goal report. Can you speak a little bit if you have this regarding any comparisons that you've drawn with our with the performance of our students that are our sixth grade students, particularly that are in middle schools versus our sixth grade students that are at the elementary schools?

[01:12:42] Have you had any conversations just determining how students are performing based on those what's offered at those different configurations? so i don't think um you know at this point in terms of performance i know our regions look at that data dr presidio i don't know that we have different course offerings uh at this point yet at our three six seven eight schools no we don't have different course offerings and if you're asking more like what are the standardized assessment outcomes we haven't run the analysis recently for the goal three report here that way i mean that's something we could produce if the

[01:13:20] board would like though yes i would very much be interested in that particularly because i know And especially in the future, that's going to become more important because I know of all of the efforts that are being placed, particularly at the reading, that we've had to do a little bit differently for our sixth graders that are in middle schools.

[01:13:38] So I would be interested in terms of how that approach has impacted outcomes.

[01:13:55] Yeah, I think that's it for me for right now. I just make some comments when we vote. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Ms. Dixit explained why she didn't she's wallowing in the back.

[01:14:18] She's coming there she is mistakes that you're up unless you'd like me to come back to you I'm sorry. This is I guess the most interesting part for me for I think a lot of us is an education piece of our that's what we're here for.

[01:14:41] And I've been to the school recently Oak Hill Elementary and the progress I have seen and this talking the principles from the reading and kindergarten to K to three especially third grader has been incredible. They're reading off the charts and they're in writing and the writing piece was really amazing to watch.

[01:15:03] So definitely is an improvement. I just know this is going to get better and better. I had a question about the math resource teacher. Does do all our elementary school have one and what's the percentage of the rise.

[01:15:20] So I do not believe all schools have a math resource teacher. It's some schools do. They trade staff for that and some don't I think that's one of the required request from I think from the some of the schools who don't have it that really helps them to get the math assistance and and also a lot of our schools have great math program like like you like women talked about before math counts math Olympiads and and robotics and some school don't and this all really helps with that algebraic thinking and yes going into that.

[01:15:56] whole goal of so what can we do because p elementary school is all run by the pta and some pts are really good about it some pts don't have the resources so how do we take care of that inequality not that and i know title one schools have that yes i was going to say all of our 50 title one schools we funded for math olympiad correct but there's yeah but still i believe that if you're really looking for that algebra and first by eighth grade, that math love for math has to be there in elementary school.

[01:16:30] So what do we do and maybe any ideas you can share? I think funding all of the title one school math and science Olympia because many of the non-title one schools already had it but I think trying to make sure and I know our instructional team and our school's team and equity office are working very hard to make sure that we We have across the entire division, math Olympiad and science Olympiad, because who doesn't love math and science?

[01:16:58] We know, you're right, the problem solving and working together, the thinking, it's critical. We have funded it in the areas where our PTAs have perhaps been less strong, but I think continuing that to increase that I think is important. That's part of our goal four report, is how are we providing those supports to meet the academic needs.

[01:17:20] sorry one of the ideas it could be that the schools who it should not be a PTA run programs like in middle school there's a teacher sponsor for any clubs and I think we we don't have that resource at elementary school level I guess because there's no specific teacher for subjects and it becomes a little bit harder but at least if they can get like a sponsor a lot of students and parents want to do it too but they just need I think a teacher to do it so I feel that is a

[01:17:54] really in big inequality we have because these are really driven by PTAs and I was one of the PTA board members who started a lot of clubs so as I know and again in the high school you know this is again really great numbers we are seeing them every year you know increasing by the year but I think there's still like you said there's a long way to go to having more students who have advanced courses there's a like still there is a lot of in 50s and 40 percent range and I know

[01:18:33] there's always a room of improvement but I really wanted to emphasize on that that we have a lot of students who who are not taking an advanced course so looking at that thank you yeah you bet Thank you, Ms. Dixon. Ms. Sizemoreheiser? Thank you. And I know I asked most of my questions during the work session, but a couple things came to mind as I'm listening to this.

[01:19:00] And it's in particular around the conversation around access to advanced coursework and CT completion coursework. And I appreciate the conversation earlier at the dais around that access. One of the challenges I know in expanding our CT offerings, especially expanding our academy offerings is just funding to do that right so um you know access has to be done in creative ways that doesn't that generally can be budget neutral so it's one of our challenges but the other challenge that i've brought up before and i'm kind of curious where we stand with it is access from a

[01:19:32] um from the lack of electives perspective so if you have a certain number of students who are asked to take intervention classes during electives because they may have IEP goals or other goals they need to work on and there's no place to work on them outside of intervention classes how do they then get the elective spots to take CTE classes. So it's a great question besides more Heiser I know this year we're trying some at some pilot schools providing some of those

[01:20:06] strategies or support classes in non master schedule courses that I think I'm using the right terms because we know that sometimes it's the electives that are the most engaging for our students. So I know that we're going to probably take a look at the success of those using the advisory time and other times but we're really I think the pendulum swinging back to really trying to think about how do we serve the needs of the whole child making sure they have the supports and scaffolding and access to the courses that may bring more joy than math if

[01:20:45] that's possible well i think it's the use of the intervention time and i appreciate hearing about the pilot because you know it's something i've been advocating for for about five years on that so i'm really glad to hear about i was curious what the status of that was yes ma'am uh dr presidio i know dr edmunds heard is really you all have worked on that so perhaps a brief update please yeah it's we're piloting a couple different things and the strategies for success alternative uh to take place during advisory time we've got like five schools that are piloting that now it's been going well we're providing support obviously to those schools and the goal is to try to have

[01:21:20] that alternative uh offering in all of our middle and high schools for next year for next year i'm I'm sorry. That's the goal. I don't know if we're going to get there. Yeah, that's what we're working towards. OK, that's good, because I know expanding from five schools to all of them would open up that opportunity. And I hope that you're looking at also consolidating some of these intervention blocks.

[01:21:38] You're not doing strategies or personal development for one elective and then math or literacy for another elective, in which case you lose both of them. So I'm hoping you're looking at other alternatives. You know, I appreciate hearing about that. So I would just like maybe in a Friday letter to get more information on the status of that pilot.

[01:21:54] I think the other thing I want to just talk about is training right like if we're gonna be expand access working with counselors right to make sure they have the training to raise awareness of CT programs the academies and also really making those individualized decisions for students not worrying about these intervention electives and also helping our families understand that these skills are still being taught right and maybe even I would love to hear more about embedding executive functioning and organizational and social skills within core academic classes, especially in the special ed classes. So that way you don't have to take an extra class to work on those

[01:22:31] skills in isolation. So I think there's a lot of strategies here that you could use that would help expand access. No, I 100% agree. And again, in our goal four report, we're going to talk a little bit about how we've expanded AVID, particularly at the elementary school, to think about those study management skills that should also be part of helping with our executive functioning.

[01:22:53] it's not only but it's a support and scaffold for that um so i i agree i think that's great just to keep my avid is also separate elective during high school so in elementary school expansion is great maybe build those skills early so um that's really what i want to ask about i'd love to get more information at some point about how you're expanding access to counselor training counselor training yeah right and um through maybe allowing students to have access to electives and intervention needs. Yes I think that is I will provide some data an upcoming Friday letter on

[01:23:29] that because there that is a tug for sure. Absolutely thank you. Thank you Ms. Sizemore Heiser. I call on Ms. Dixit for a motion. Your light was off. One second Ms. Dixit. Mr. Dunn for a go back. Thank you. I just wanted to ask so this is a pipeline right from K through 12 in terms of literacy and and math but you know they're one of my earliest memories from growing up was a local high school students sued the school district for graduating them when they were unable to read

[01:24:06] and there's been recent news stories about similar not in fairfax county but other districts um and and you know we we definitely have as a result of pandemic some students who are not on grade level for reading um at the middle school and high school level and so what what are are there is there an option to establish individual reading plans and maybe is that required under the VLA for students who are beyond the elementary level so that we can make sure that every student can get on track and we don't say just because you're past elementary you're kind of on your own in terms of making

[01:24:42] reading progress and I can I can speak from you know my sister's a teacher and and taught has taught students to read who were at that high school level and it takes a lot of work but it is certainly possible to get students back contract. That's a great question. Ms. Klamenko, do you want to talk a little about what we're doing in secondary? I don't believe reading plans are required by BDOE other than for our primary students, but Ms. Klamenko? Sure. So as of right now, there's no reading plan required by the state, especially at the high school. We may see some of that next year for middle school, but as a division,

[01:25:19] We've always been very intentional about understanding where our students' reading challenges may lay. So we have screeners that we give to students so we can identify where they might have reading deficit areas, whether it be in the word recognition or the comprehension side of reading.

[01:25:38] With that, then we have our MTSS system where the data, if they were identified as being really below grade level significantly below grade level they would potentially be in a reading intervention I know we just had a conversation about interventions but sometimes students need some very intense reading and so they are put into a class that they take during the school day and that can happen in middle school or it can happen in high school Sometimes the plan actually does exist, and it exists in our MTSS workbook.

[01:26:16] So there's still a plan for kids and intentionality around screening and progress monitoring and ensuring they're making progress. But for some kids, it is a multi-year sort of progress, because you are absolutely right. The older kids are, sometimes the longer it takes to make the progress.

[01:26:34] Do we have data showing how many students receive this support for reading interventions at the middle school and high school level and whether it's effective at getting them to the level they need to be at? So keeping in mind that in the state of Virginia, the students do have to pass a reading test in 11th grade, right? So we work very hard with students to ensure that they make that milestone and our pass rate is extremely high in 11th grade and for those kids who do not pass in 11th grade we have some intensity in 12th grade to ensure that they do meet at that standard

[01:27:14] of course we can run course enrollment data as far as how many kids are engaging in in those reading intervention electives. Thank you that's all. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Dunn. I call on Ms. Dixit for a motion. I'd like to make a motion that the school board approves the goal three

[01:27:37] strategic plan report for school year 2024-2025. Is there a second? Second. Dr. Anderson, Ms. Tixit, would you like to speak to your motion? No. Dr. Anderson, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, I would. I often get confused about our role with these goal reports. Are we approving it just because this is the data or approving it because we're saying that this is the progress that we find to be reasonable? And I think I'm falling in the same second category.

[01:28:09] And while I am seconding this motion, I think that's because we were the meeting managers for this goal, I'm not going to be able to support this for the following reasons. There were six major areas that were in this report: reading by third grade, algebra, advanced coursework, reading SOL pass rates, math SOL pass rates, and science SOL pass rates.

[01:28:32] And then going through all of that data, only two of those six areas were the targets met, which creates a lot of concern for me because I know they're going to get exponentially more challenging by the end of the life of the strategic plan. So algebra and math S.O.L. pass rates those were the two areas in which the target was met overall.

[01:28:52] And then when I reviewed the achievement gaps they're widening in two areas which is the reading and the algebra across the subgroups same in and reading S.O.L. but the math and And science and the advanced coursework, I do have to say those are narrowing.

[01:29:12] So that's good news. But a little bit more alarmingly for me is the performance of the subgroups. We have some subgroups that did not meet targets in any of these areas. Our students with disabilities did not meet the target in any of these six areas.

[01:29:30] Our economically disadvantaged students, multilingual students and our Hispanic students did not meet the targets and five of the six areas our black students and three of the six areas so these are great concern to me because as you said this is the work this is the meat this is the reason why we're here and so those are really high concerns for me and in most areas there are some incremental gains but in a couple of areas there's actually an incremental decline um in terms of of student performance and I'd like to understand a little bit better. How are we going to expedite this train a little bit

[01:30:08] to even meet the end goals of the of the strategic plan if you'd like to answer you may but I just wanted to offer my rationale for my position this evening. I think I responded in the work session. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Anderson. All those in favor of the motion on the screen. Miss Marin mystics it Mr McElveen, Mr McDaniel, Miss Anderson, Miss Sizemore Heiser, Mr.

[01:30:37] Dunn, Mr. Moon, Miss Lady, Miss St. John Cunning and myself, all those opposed Dr. Anderson will the clerk read the vote. It's 11 when the motion carries. Thank you. Agenda item 5.04 action item financial year 2026 proposed budget.

[01:30:57] I call on Mr. McDaniel for a motion. Thank you. I move the school board adopt the FY 2026 advertised budget as detailed in the agenda item. Is there a second? Second. Ms. Sizemore-Hyser. Would you like to speak to your motion, Mr. McDaniel? Sure. There was a headline today that came out that I was quoted in, and it said, FCPS, in air quotes, planning for the worst with federal aid at risk and county funds limited.

[01:31:24] And I read the headline, and I thought, well, that's a bit splashy. But as I got to thinking about it more, of course we prepare for the worst. That's just a good governance item. You prepare for the worst, and you hope for the best. whether this year or other years.

[01:31:42] And I think this budget does just that. We are preparing for a challenging budget year, and dare I say years ahead, but we're also hopeful with what we think our community is gonna come to the table and support.

[01:31:58] So I'm happy to move this budget forward because it does just that. One other note, this is not the final budget. The key word here is we're adopting an advertised budget. We're starting a conversation, And that conversation will last for weeks, months, and it will be back and forth.

[01:32:16] The Board of Supervisors will be at the table. We're meeting with them next week. The community will be at the table. Staff will be at the table. FEU will be at the table. We will all have a seat at the conversation. When I was at the Board of Supervisors meeting last week and I heard the county executive present his proposed budget, I took away a concern that I want to underscore here at this meeting, which is the federal impact that we potentially could be facing.

[01:32:44] 168 almost 170 million dollars of funding is on the line and unfortunately with this administration someone could wake up tomorrow and just decide i'm pulling out of your bank accounts as they did in new york so that volatility and that unpredictability is something we have never had to deal with under any administration of any political affiliation it is a new dynamic that we're just going to have to grapple with for the next four years and it's unfortunate it's a shame, because that $168 million is feeding hungry kids. If we lose that funding, we could

[01:33:24] potentially be in a situation where we have to choose between feeding hungry kids or giving the staff pay raises or funding programs that we've come to expect. So that's the situation that we're in. So when I go back to the headline, we are planning for the worst because we have been dealt a not so good hand. I want to thank the Board of Supervisors because they are dealing with a hand that's almost as not good as ours through no fault of their own and we'll have that discussion next week I want to thank dr. Reed and all of her staff Lee as always Alice Matthew for the work you've done I want to thank our staff

[01:34:00] and I want to thank the community because historically the community has supported our budget we in Fairfax County whether we have kids in schools or not a lot of people touch our school system and we're proud of our schools and as a parent now whose daughter is enrolling in Greenbrier West and will be a proud Greenbrier West Panda let me tell you something I am so excited to be a parent in Fairfax County Public Schools and I am proud to move this budget forward thank you thank you mr. McDaniel miss Sizemore Heiser would you like to speak to your second yes I would I'd like to sort of pick up right where

[01:34:39] my colleague left off as a proud parent of two graduates on the other end of it who have been incredibly successful because of the education they received in Fairfax County. I am proud to second this budget. I am grateful to again Dr. Reed, our budget team, Lee, Alice, Matthew, my partner in budget here, our budget chair, Mr. McDaniel and our colleagues, but especially to the Board of Supervisors, the state and our community.

[01:35:05] One of the best things about living in Fairfax County is knowing how much our community supports and respects and values a strong public school system and recognizes that a strong school system is truly not only the bedrock of our economy here and one of the reasons many businesses and people move to Fairfax County, but also the bedrock of our democracy as we're teaching students to be stewards of our economy, stewards of the environment, stewards of our democracy, productive citizens with critical thinking and analysis and knowledge.

[01:35:35] I think that is so important that everybody who comes to our school who moves to Fairfax County, their kids deserve and get an excellent education and our and our community stands behind that. And we're going to need our community more than ever. And we recognize that this budget is the start of a process.

[01:35:52] This is our advertised budget. And we recognize the taxpayer fatigue that's, you know, real in our community and the uncertainty of our times of the federal government. And so we've tried to have a budget that has the least amount of resources necessary for us to continue to do our job as well as we can.

[01:36:10] The bulk of our budget is for compensation increases for our excellent teachers because we know that excellent teachers are what makes an excellent school system. You cannot have a good education without excellent teachers and we need to compensate our teachers especially considering that our compensation increase is in line with our surrounding jurisdictions.

[01:36:28] We also recognize that schools have been asked to do even more than they've ever done, from feed students, to provide mental health services, to engage with families, and our principals and teachers are on the front lines of doing that work every single day, and we need to compensate them for that work.

[01:36:44] We're not the leader in Northern Virginia in teacher salaries, but we need to be the leader in keeping and attracting the best teachers we can. We understand that taxpayers are tired. We have millions of dollars of expenditures that we've had in the past that are not in this budget we've done we've looked very carefully to make sure that our dollars are really being spent 92 percent are spent in the building that goes directly to supporting our students in the classrooms we're really grateful to the board of supervisors who have been traditionally and still are strong public education supporters we recognize that they also have many competing

[01:37:21] priorities and let's be real in this environment right now with the uncertainty of the federal government and of our federal workforce here in fairfax county the one thing we need to have certainty in is that our children in this county will continue to be fed that our children in this county will continue to have an excellent education that we will still take care of the next generation and i believe this budget does that so i'm proud to second it thank you ms sesmerheiser mr dunn i think there's been a lot of great uh work performed under the superintendent and it's reflected in the goal three uh report tonight and i think there's a lot

[01:37:58] of um important work to do coming out of the pandemic and what's absolutely essential to accomplish that work, to see it through to the end, to see every child be guaranteed a world-class education is stable funding, especially at the federal level, which is under-delivered for so many years. Just for one example, the federal government committed to fund 40 percent of the cost of special education, delivers a fraction of that less than 10 percent today. That's a cost that has to be borne by Fairfax County residents because they're committed that every child

[01:38:36] will receive that world class education. The state government under funds Fairfax County by 568 million dollars. Again, Fairfax County residents have borne that burden of billions of dollars for decades.

[01:38:51] And it's time the federal and state government step up and deliver their fair share. But if we're going to be subject to threats of cutting off grants, cutting off money for school meals and other things, it's just one additional challenge on top of all the challenges we have already, not just uniquely as Fairfax County, but in our moment in history to improve and strengthen public education.

[01:39:17] And so, you know, I wish the federal government could take the money and take the drama and Instead focus on what can we do to strengthen public schools in our communities across the country and if they want to redirect money from certain programs to others, focus it on fully funding special education.

[01:39:40] Focus it on making sure every child is fully fed, breakfast and lunch, free meals for everyone. It's simpler, it's more direct and ensures no child goes hungry. strengthen our STEM education so that every child is prepared for careers of the future, whether it's being a rocket scientist or being a welder. So there's a lot that needs to happen to strengthen our public schools. We already have a world-class school system, but we can do more to improve it.

[01:40:12] And I'm hopeful that with this budget and with our discussions, both with our colleagues at the state and local levels we can continue to invest in our public education system that's the foundation of local prosperity our local economy our quality of life and in our educators and staff for the reason that our children are not just educated but cared for fed transported safely every day and every year thank you thank you mr dunn miss marron yes this

[01:40:49] budget is one portion of the legally sworn duty of the school board and that is to be stewards of public funds and public expectations to have the best public schools possible. So at the same time the board has worked to get the money from the General Assembly to clear recommendations to fund the clear recommendations from the state's own research showing that Fairfax County is missing half a billion from the state to provide the level of education we know children need and deserve to be successful.

[01:41:17] The Capital Improvement Program that's the management of our 8.7 billion in facilities that require renovation, maintenance, and upgrades for safety and optimum learning and work environments in public facilities. So with that, I want to share these three points. This budget is reasonable in terms of needs and investments and in terms of competitive wages for personnel to implement the services.

[01:41:38] Quality has a cost and this budget is the bare minimum. For a long time, Fairfax County has banked on three thriving factors to entice individuals, families, and businesses to set up roots here. One is access to federal government-related work. Two is office space, including for national and international headquarters.

[01:41:57] And three is our public schools. In just over a month, the first asset, federal jobs, has been sieged. The proposed budget was presented just days after the new administration took office. We know the county has had decreased commercial revenue and is laden with empty office buildings.

[01:42:13] That's number two. So that leaves one reason for people to remain here and to be here, and that is our public schools. public schools are more than ever the economic engine of this county and as such for Virginia given the breadth of our reach. So anything that we need to do right now of anything it's to think about and center how is promoting the investment in world-class public education in Fairfax County how is that happening? And so I'm really looking forward to next week's discussion with the Board of Supervisors and County Executive Brian Hill because we as a board are responsible for 13 billion dollars and we must have a seat at the table with the county board of supervisors to be

[01:42:53] one fairfax to work on a different way to fund our public services we are in a new era so offering the same kind of proposal year over year just won't cut it anymore so ultimately the board of supervisors is responsible for the economic health of this county and our board stands ready to be partners at the table i guess we'll sit at the table but we're still ready to engage in uh in the difficult work to create better plans ahead for our thriving community. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Marin. Mr. Moon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also put the motion and thank you for the work

[01:43:33] on the part of budget chair and budget vice chair to work with the superintendent and rest of my colleagues to craft something very reasonable because this budget proposal budget that we are voting on is to trying to ensure fair and comparative compensation for our employees, which is not optional investing in our people is an investment in excellence and we must act decisively to attract retain and support to dedicate dedicated educators and other other staff to work for our students having said that what has not been brought up my colleagues

[01:44:11] yet is that uh preparing for the conversation with the members in the board of supervisor next week that's a Tuesday coming up just in a few days that there is a gap of close to 120 million dollars between a what county executive has proposed and what we need considering even including a a the additional funding we are expecting from state government putting aside the federal funding uncertainty the 120 million dollar equals to four percent of a compensation

[01:44:50] which is a huge amount which we cannot afford not to have so that's a conversation we need to have honestly with our supervisors whether they believe that we can continue not adequately compensating and our teachers and other staff members you know normal years in olden days olden days we used to give our employees step plus cola cola cpi last year was a 2.7 percent instead

[01:45:30] is about 2.5 percent you put that together that's 5.2 percent if you have to do away with the four percent because of 120 million dollar gap that seven percent compensation increase you put in in our CBA has to be if that has to come out of that that's going to put us our salaries for teachers to be at the bottom in in northern Virginia school districts that's something we cannot afford to have so that is the most important aspect of a conversation we need to have

[01:46:07] next week we cannot just look to general assembly on Tuesday because conversation we'll be having is with members and the board of supervisors. Thank you Mr. Moon. Ms. Dixit. I'd like to support this motion too. At this stage in our country public education is at crossroads. When we as public school officials we must protect it. This is one of our attempts is to keep our school

[01:46:44] well-funded and keep it world-class with education that we provide in Fairfax County. If we do not meet the needs or requirements of our teachers and staff, we may lose our teachers to neighboring counties and other places and that we cannot afford because this is our staff which makes our schools great and the teaching. So I would like to work with the Board of Supervisors and state legislators to see if we can match the request of this board of this budget by

[01:47:23] Dr. Reed and really like to get it funded fully. So I just want to make it happen and really wish that will come true. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. St. John Cunning. So I want to thank Dr. Reed, our staff, our budget chair and co-chair for taking on this monumental tasks during a challenging budget climate coupled with the chaos and uncertainty that has been created since january 20th i'm looking forward to working with the board of

[01:47:57] supervisors next week i know that they value education as much as we do i'm not going to talk about all the figures that our my colleagues have discussed but i am going to tell you this the one thing i know is that regardless of what happens we have staff in our schools that are committed and dedicated and show up every day to do the best for our students with or without resources they make it work and our children are getting what they need whether it's walking into a clean building that they're proud of whether they're being nourished receiving an excellent

[01:48:36] education in the classroom and having access to enrichment programs now more than ever we need our community to offer their gifts by volunteering in your local schools and raising your voices to advocate to protect our public education an investment in the education of our children is a promise and hope for a better future it is an investment in our community and demonstrate that we value the importance education plays as the corner store cornerstone of our democracy thank - Thank you.

[01:49:14] - Thank you, Ms. St. John Cunning. I will take a turn. So this is a bare bones budget. And I know that because we start from the superintendent already cutting more than $50 million in programs and services before we even start.

[01:49:33] $50 million. And then we look at what the new investments in our schools are. There was a time on this board when we would be presented with budgets with like 25 line items of new programs, Initiatives and things all well-meaning all important all things that would be valuable in our community This budget is not that this budget is two primary things keep up with the increasing cost of educating our various student populations and Invest in our educators and operational support professionals

[01:50:09] We can't do this without them in addition to the historic opportunity to past the collective bargaining agreement that we we've recently approved and fund it with this budget we can send a message that not only do we value our educators here in Fairfax County just as much as we do other public servants like firefighters and police officers we can also say you're welcome to come join us if you're in Loudoun or Pris William or other jurisdictions

[01:50:48] And, you know, I can't think of anything more important than ensuring that every student has a world class educator in their classroom and that we acknowledge with our budget our moral obligation to say teachers working conditions or students learning conditions and that's what this budget is investing in.

[01:51:12] So I will very much look forward to supporting this budget and our conversation next week with our colleagues on the Board of Supervisors. Miss Marin. I just wanted to share a reflection so when Mr. McDaniel talked about the oncoming excitement of being an FCPS parent I was right there 15 years ago Mr. McDaniel and I remember walking my daughter to kindergarten and being so relieved that now she was at school and that was the year that an 80 million dollar budget cut was proposed and that's how I got into where I am today

[01:51:49] and again we can't keep doing the same things and talking about this missing gap. 15 years is too long you know to keep doing this so again i'm very excited for next week thank you thank you miss marron we will go to a vote for the motion that is on the screen all those in favor miss marron miss dixit mr mckelveen dr anderson mr mcdaniel miss anderson miss sizemore heiser mr dunn mr moon miss lady miss st john cunning and myself that is unanimous the motion carries congratulations all right agenda item 5.05 action item willow springs elementary school renovation

[01:52:28] amendment of contract samaha associates pc architectural and engineering services i call on miss anderson for a motion that the school board approves amendment one for samaha associates pc increasing the total amount of the contract of three million five hundred and fifty five thousand six hundred and ninety seven dollars and authorize the division superintendent or the chief operating officer to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board is there a second second miss sizemore heiser miss anderson would you like to speak to your motion no Thank you. Ms. Seizmerheiser, would you like to speak to your motion?

[01:53:02] Just briefly, Dr. Reed, could you just give a little background on what we're voting on here today and the change to the amount of the contract? Yes, ma'am. Actually, Ms. Szymanski and I have discussed this at some length, and I'm going to ask her to give a specific, both a brief background and the amendment breakdown.

[01:53:23] So, Ms. Szymanski. Certainly. Thank you, Dr. Reed. This is for extended services for our architecture and engineering services to perform the Willow Springs Elementary Renovation Project. We brought the architect on, and since bringing them on into design, there's been a few events that have incurred additional fees brought forth by the architect.

[01:53:44] One of the major categories was asking them to go back and add in net zero design ready features. So that was something voted on as part of the FY25 through 29 CIP. at that point the design had already progressed but we actually asked them to come back and do some additional design work make a more efficient mechanical system and that did include additional time and resources needed to do the the redesign another big component is some unforeseen zoning challenges that we've had on this particular site it's a it's a unique site and that the parcel is actually bifurcated and there's two different zones on it and again without getting

[01:54:22] too far into the weeds the architect had designed a design that assumed the lower threshold for that floor area ratio that far density that's come up in other discussions and they had reasonably assumed that if they used the lower threshold for the whole property we would have been okay and we moved forward with this design it was one that we were excited about worked well with the phasing and the occupied nature the county came back and said we had to look at each section individually and so the section that's on a conservation zone that just so happened to be where the addition was being placed and so it exceeded that

[01:55:00] threshold at that point we had tried to see if we could rezone the property now we had done that on justice mosaic etc but they were not willing showing willingness to do that so we were really left in a bit of a challenge and the one interesting solution we were able to come up with here is we were able to ask the architect to redesign it and actually put the addition not on the conservation zone and move the addition to the other side of the existing building so again there were a lot of fees and rework of the design in order to accommodate that in order to get the zoning passed and to be able to get a

[01:55:37] permit if you will to do the work so there's just a bunch of circumstances that warranted needing to do additional fees for this project thank you i appreciate that i appreciate that explanation both on ensuring that we're good stewards of the environment and i know when we pass the net zero requirements the long-term savings of being net zero not just in terms of the overall environment and doing our part to to be environmentally conscious but the long-term savings to our schools itself um is is going to be you know seen in many years so i think that's important and understanding that you know the zoning laws do impact and sometimes there are changes that happen that do

[01:56:16] cost more money in design when we have to rejigger things to meet some of these interesting zoning requirements so i appreciate that explanation thank you miss Sizemoreheiser mr dunn uh thank you um did did did we not know about the conservation zone when we hired this design firm we i believe i you know this does uh precede me i do believe we knew about it again i think there had been a reasonable interpretation that we would have been able to look at the parcel as a whole and then a different interpretation came out from the county um and again we had to look at the

[01:56:53] ratio of just the conservation part of the parcel um in proportion to the piece of the building that was sitting on it instead of looking at as a whole so did the did the county adopt a different approach to zoning than it normally applies to schools in this in this case was it breaking with precedent i don't think so again i think it's just it was a different way to interpret that we caught us off guard. I don't know if that's really different from what you would see elsewhere. I really don't know. Have these costs already been incurred, or is this for work that would be incurred in the future? Because we're adding a million dollars to a two million dollar contract

[01:57:32] roughly. Correct, yes. So right now the work has been paused in hopes that we can get this approved, and so we are, you know, looking to have this work approved so that we can continue and meet our project schedule. What kind of contract is this? Is this firm fixed price or what kind of contract approach was used here? It's just a lump sum for a fee. It was a percentage based on a projected cost of the construction. So there's an estimate out there of what it will cost to construct the

[01:58:07] building. Correct. And they get a percentage of that as a fee. Correct. And has that estimate changed over time? If it has, it should not affect the overall price that we pay the architect. Now that is different from maybe contracts that FCPS has held in the past. Some past contracts from years past did have a clause in there that you would get automatically more if the actual bid price came in over the estimated. In the new contracts, we're saying, hey, yes, this is the basis of the total fee we're going to pay you. We have to come up with the number somehow, and it

[01:58:44] be based on a certain percentage of what we think it'll cost but at the end of the day it's the scope of work that we're getting for that price if you will so i i just find it uh strange that we would take the design back to make it net zero because there's been discussion at a prior work session in the past year that certain environmental mandates from the school board have not been followed through and that i think there was disclosure not saying you did anything wrong I think it was before your time, but for example, not building or renovating schools to have

[01:59:21] solar-ready roofs to the extent that the school board had previously provided policy instruction many years ago. So why are there seems to be selective implementation of environmental mandates? Yes, and that's something we're actually trying to actively correct with this particular project.

[01:59:38] I believe when we had that discussion, not in 24, early 24, we said, hey, projects that are really, really far down the line on design, we're going to keep those as is. They were already in for permit.

[01:59:54] We needed to maintain the project schedule. But projects like Willow Springs, since they were earlier on in the design, we said, hey, we'll pay the extra fee and we'll actually get them to redesign it because we're not too far down the line and we can upgrade the mechanical system design, the envelope design, et cetera, et cetera.

[02:00:10] this is actually an example of one of those projects and then anything moving forward it's not redesigned it's just doing it uh outright that way um um is have there been different options developed so i mean is this the only option the school board has i mean is there not one that would not cost an additional million dollars i believe the zoning is the most viable option to have this project be built there we could look at taking out the net zero work but

[02:00:50] But again, we were following the approved CIP, so we felt in the best interest of the project to go forward, get this price, and do the project per the jet work that we're set out to do. But I remember the presentation just a few weeks ago on the CIP is that we don't have enough money, $14.5 billion, to get back to a 20 to 25-year renovation cycle, and we definitely, beyond that, is an amount of money we would need to have all buildings be net zero.

[02:01:19] So I'm just trying to understand, is every building going forward going to be net zero? Because I understood from the work session just a few weeks ago that that was not the case at all. So, Mr. Dunn, I think what staff is saying is that we will be responsive to what the board expects in terms of the net zero.

[02:01:37] And the most recent direction that had been provided by the board was to, where possible, make the net zero correction. So I think if we want to go in a different direction, the board would need to direct staff to go in a different direction. But that's the most recent direction where possible.

[02:01:55] So that's why this was brought this evening. So where possible means there's pick and choose which schools get net zero and not. So what's compelling the recommendation for this school to be net zero and maybe others not be net zero?

[02:02:11] It's where we are in the process of both the architecture and in the design. where a building is fully designed it may not be possible you know we're not going to go back but we're in this case there was a situation where because of zoning it was delayed so we were able to adjust the design staff felt it in that moment we should adjust the design in alliance with what the board expectations were more were most recently provided that that's very helpful can you just clarify for schools that are early in this process

[02:02:46] this point or earlier and all future high schools will is the commitment to make all of those net zero since they're at an early stage or not even in the design stage yet yes sir that's the commitment as we understand it from the board at this time okay thank you net zero ready actually is what the sorry what's the difference net zero ready would be the ability to maybe have the solar are placed on them or the types of net zero accoutrements would be available at that point.

[02:03:20] So the plan was that, or the expectation is to be able to, in projects that are still available to be adjusted or in the queue, that we do conform with what the board's wishes were as last we know them. But at the end of the day, there was a decision made to make this net zero.

[02:03:39] If we didn't make it net zero, we'd be spending less money. We could use the design we have. I believe that's correct. The net zero design does cost more. Thank you. Initially. And then the goal, of course, is that over the life of the use of the building, we would make those funds up.

[02:03:58] So, I mean, it's a bit of a trade-off pay now, pay later type situation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. We're going to take a five-minute recess really quickly. Thank you.

[02:07:52] Board members, please return to your seats.

[02:11:25] All right.

[02:12:07] We are back. Dr. Anderson? Okay. Thank you. I think for the most part, Mr. Dunn asked most of the questions that I had, but for two. I heard you say a little bit, Ms. Zemenski, I don't know if I could see her yet, that some of the increase is for the net zero work and some is for the rezoning, the bifurcated sections. How much goes to which activity, roughly?

[02:12:46] Roughly speaking, I think the net zero component is about $300,000, so roughly one-third. The zoning piece is a little bit bigger than that. And then there is a third and final piece. We had a calculation error on the program or the size of the building at the time of award, and we needed to make the building a little bit bigger just to meet all the accommodating programs.

[02:13:11] So there's a component of that as part of the price as well. But that's roughly the breakdown. Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. And the last thing that I see here is that this increase is going to be handled by the 21 bond. Is there impact to other projects? I'm particularly sensitive to this as one of the members that represents Falls Church High School.

[02:13:30] It's been it raises concern. Well, it has raised concern in the past. Can you just speak to the impact of whatever projects were slated to be handled by the 2021 bond? There will be no other impacts to other projects.

[02:13:46] As part of the CIP approval for adding that net zero, we made sure in our cash flow that the budget could accommodate that, and we had enough contingency for instances just like this, so there will be no impacts to other schools. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Anderson.

[02:14:01] Mr. McDaniel? Thank you. Question for staff. What is the property zoned now? What's the zoning district for the property? Right now, the property is bifurcated, so there's two zones.

[02:14:17] One is RC, or conservation zone. The other one is R1. And the issue, if I'm understanding it correctly, is the floor area ratio on the RC side of that bifurcation. Is that fair? That is correct.

[02:14:32] Okay. Well, the county, I mean, did anybody ask the county for a rezoning? We did, and that was not seen as an option. That was the feedback we received. So is it reasonable to say that we've exhausted all options? That is correct. Minus this move. Okay. So effectively what's going on, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the county is making an interpretation, and interpretation fundamentally depends upon discretion, but they're making an interpretation that the square footage on the RC side must be calculated differently

[02:15:08] than the square footage on the R1 side, which I suppose makes sense because RC is different from R1, but it's ignoring the fact that it's the same piece of dirt. is that kind of a reasonable layman like I'm a fifth grader I can explain it in that term sure that makes that makes sense from my perspective so this is not the first time this has happened and I guarantee you this will not be the last time this is happened this is a common problem with the county zoning process and what we've effectively created here not we but the county is the self licking ice cream cone where we are now taking a million dollars out of the taxpayers

[02:15:47] pocket on one hand and sticking it in the taxpayers pocket on the other hand and through the zoning process. This needs to not occur, because it's the same people paying for it. At the end of the day, it's a discretionary interpretation. We have projects coming down the pipeline that could result in the same thing going on again.

[02:16:07] We've been doing this for years, and it's got to stop, because the only people that lose are the taxpayers, and the only people that win are the dirt lawyers. No offense to the dirt lawyers out there, but that's the self-licking ice cream cone the counties created it's one of those fairfax ways so i'm looking forward to bringing this up at some point when it's appropriate in a longer term context thank you thank you mr mcdaniel mr moon thank you mr chairman thank you for a accommodating in my request to pull this

[02:16:42] agenda item out of consent so that we could have a little you could ask some questions have a little discussion uh that when i first saw his agenda item i was surprised at the a amount of increase from the a contract price with an architect that almost as Mr. Dunn described almost a 50 percent jump so that caught my eyes and I felt that that needed some explanation to public uh and and you know you provide you know pretty reasonable expect you know uh explanations of why the increase has

[02:17:20] occurred uh but one thing that still bothers me and hopefully this doesn't get repeated this is something uh mr mcdaniel has already you know alluded to is uh based upon my experience when you want to build something on piece of property uh if there is a joining related issues questions you engage a county staff and try to get their interpretations in advance before you do any substantial amount of design work i mean whether that was done it that way or we assumed

[02:17:58] And we went ahead with this substantial designing and then had to retract that. It's costing another $350,000. That part bothers me. I agree. And Ms. Zemanski and I have looked at this.

[02:18:16] This contract was signed in March of 2022 before either she or I were here. And so we're trying to make some sense of the contracting and what may or may not have been discussed with the county. But what I can say is that Ms. Szymanski and her team are spending a lot of time in discussion with the county on a variety of projects right now with the intent to make sure that we'll have less true-up cost needs moving forward.

[02:18:47] Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Mr. Dunn? When we say we spoke to the county, who did we speak to at the county? And I don't need names, but if you're just speaking to the lowest level staffer and you don't get the answer you want, you go and you speak to the supervisor.

[02:19:07] And if you don't like that answer, like, you should keep moving up the food chain until you're talking to the director of the zoning office. So what I'd like to understand, maybe you did that, but I'd just like to have that clarity because before we go spend $350,000, if we haven't spoken to the most senior person in the county responsible for zoning to say, are you sure you really want us to spend this money at a time when we're, you know, searching for dollars in the couch just to pay our teachers enough and make sure every kid gets a world-class education can you just clarify who we engage with and was at a senior enough level so we know this is the final answer and the head of that

[02:19:47] office and anyone above him agrees with this zoning interpretation yeah it's my understanding that was escalated with county staff at the leadership level again they were very firm on the fact that it's in a rc zone and we've seen that on other projects with that very strict interpretation of not exceeding their current ordinance far my understanding is that from past conversations that there's been almost a complete turnover in the leadership of the zoning office or related offices was that decision made by you know through your personal engagement or your

[02:20:22] subordinates engagement or is this a decision that was made some time ago that might be different if you have different personnel sitting in that chair no i believe we've had multiple conversations over the course of the project making sure that we've exhausted all of this it was the leadership on my team engaging with the county county side leadership thank you i appreciate it thank you mr dunn move forward with a vote for the motion on the screen excuse me chair i have my light on i'm sorry miss marron thank you i just have to point out that this is one of those things that we can also start to talk about on tuesday we're serving the same people whether our constituents

[02:20:59] are in a county building or on county parkland or a resident in our being in our school buildings there's a whole list of things that we need the county to be one Fairfax on I have the list for for Tuesday but everything from you know this kind of thing the crossing guards school-age child care but definitely the planning and zoning our outdoor classrooms were held up for a long time and so were the stadium bathrooms months and months and months when every day those facilities serve thousands and thousands of residents I want to know if there's a hierarchy of a system how do we fast

[02:21:37] track the needs of this school division to serve the residents when our facilities are used seven days a week we need the county to partner with us we've got to do business better with them thank you thank you Miss Marin the motion on the screen we will now vote thank you all those in favor Miss Marin Miss Dixit Mr. McIlveen Dr. Anderson Mr. McDaniel Miss Anderson Miss Seismar

[02:22:14] heiser mr moon miss lady miss st john cunning and myself opposed abstentions mr dunn will the clerk read the vote it's 1101 the motion carries thank you very much the motion carries agenda item 6.01 academic matters i call on dr reid for academic matters thank you chair frisch and board members

[02:22:53] tonight i'm excited to talk about our career and technical education programs here in fairfax county and so what we're going to do is uh turn the page and we're going to start uh by sharing a video so if we could uh roll tape please do you ever walk through the hall at school when the other children were in their rooms did you ever listen to the sounds that come from the rooms some rooms sound

[02:23:27] like this so i think one of the things that you know we're kind of uh we're talking about budget

[02:24:42] this evening and our future and i think we often in the commonwealth right now and in the county we're talking a lot about workforce development and i think probably the very best workforce development program we have is in our own school division our career and technical education programs are dynamic they're preparing our graduates and our young people for amazing careers that will carry and support our community for a long time to come.

[02:25:09] I might be on the page ahead of this or the slide ahead. Thank you, Janet. Right now, I just want to share that we have a variety of courses that are offered at middle and high school. We include 170 courses across the division and our current enrollment in career and technical education classes.

[02:25:29] We have over 65,000 students at this time. So along with our standard program, We have specialized programs that are also offered around the division. For example, our teachers for tomorrow program, which allows students to train to become educators in turn in our programs, get dual enrollment credit and even get a guaranteed interview or recruitment contract to come back and teach in FCPS.

[02:25:56] Additionally, we have I think I'm on the slide before, please think you know the next one we could go to slide five, please.

[02:26:13] Thank you so look here work based learning provide students with a continuum of career related experiences the work based learning can pit continuum is divided into three categories as you can see career awareness exploration and preparation and these allow students to advance through the continuum and experience identify and explore work associated with careers that might match their academic strengths and interests.

[02:26:47] When you think about the benefits of career and technical education, which would be the next slide, please, the benefits are really extraordinary. They're often active performance-based courses that allow students to really think about those career pathways that they have an interest in and also to learn maybe that they don't have an interest in that career pathway, which is just as important, honestly, so that they They don't head off to that path and then realize after they leave that that's not their interest.

[02:27:21] But it also helps prepare students to enter our community and to grow some strong skills and leadership skills and collaborative relationships. So this is just a brief highlight and we're very proud of our staff, our advisory committees and our students and their progress in our career technical education programs.

[02:27:43] So that is Academic Matters this evening. Thank you, Dr. Reid. We'll get started with Mr. Dunn. I just wanted to say I'm so excited by that video because I've been meeting with the folks in charge of the CTE program, and it's an amazing program.

[02:28:01] So diverse in terms of the offerings that are available and some of the newest options. I think welding is now one of the most popular programs. And I've been to visit the welding lab at Bryan High School, and it's just very exciting to meet the teachers, the instructors for these programs, to hear about the students' stories and the transformation that can be accomplished.

[02:28:25] But it has been said to me more than once that it's the best-kept secret of FCPS. If these programs were at a private school, it would be half the brochure because they're so amazing in terms of the offerings. And so I do want to encourage all of our community to learn more about these programs and students to learn about how they can benefit in terms of, you know, getting certification so they can go right out into the public and to the marketplace and earn a living wage right from the get-go without having to go to or pursue costly higher education.

[02:29:00] Is there any plan to make more videos like this, but instead of kind of across all, you The CTE programs make one for JROTC, one for welding, one for cosmetology, and so forth, so that there's more, in an age of Instagram and kind of very heavy visuals, there's a great web page, but not a lot of information, especially student-produced videos would be especially potentially useful.

[02:29:28] It could even hold like a prize or a competition of sorts. Those are great ideas, Mr. Dunn. THIS LOOKED TO BE A RECRUITING VIDEO PERHAPS FOR STUDENTS COMING INTO HIGH SCHOOL SO SORT OF WAS A BROAD SORT OF SPECTRUM OF CHOICES BUT TO YOUR POINT HIGHLIGHTING SOME MORE SNIPPETS SO I'LL DEFINITELY PASS THAT ALONG TO THE TEAM WHO ARE I THINK TAKING NOTES SO THANK YOU FOR THAT SUGGESTION THANK YOU THANK YOU MR. DUNN MR. MCDANIEL REAL QUICK I WOULD NOT LET AN OPPORTUNITY GO BY THE WAYSIDE TO NOT ADVOCATE FOR THE TEACHERS AND THE STAFF WHO SPONSOR THESE ORGANIZATIONS TO HAVE THE STIPEND

[02:30:05] It's a low impact, high impact, low cost, and I think when we're looking at ways to encourage this type of programming, being able to properly and fairly pay the staff who are in many cases necessary to sponsor this and to get this grant funding, we need to do that.

[02:30:25] So that's my plug. No, you've mentioned that before, and we actually are in the process right now of pulling the CTE budget for a full analysis. I know Ms. Burden's team is working on that to take a look at what that would cost and across the division. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Dr. Anderson?

[02:30:43] Thank you. This was a really cool video. I do agree. And if we are wanting to get this information in front of kids, you know, those little quick Instagram-ready TikTok videos will definitely do the trick. I also do, I agree with Mr. Dunn in terms of this is a well-kept secret, but it's also starting to get out into the streets.

[02:31:04] the rumors are out and people want more they want more access that's been the sticking point that i think we've talked about since i've been on this board like how do i get engaged in this if i'm at school x and it doesn't offer it and where the program is offered is beyond the capability of travel because of the big you know the large geographic area that fairfax county covers and i know you've talked a little bit about how some programs are more easily transferable or established in other places it doesn't have to be the big you know auto mechanic but which ones

[02:31:40] what's the low-hanging fruit in order to increase access here well yes ma'am you saw a brief i want to say flyby of the drone uh program there were a couple little drone moments um and that program is something that's a more portable program right the drone licensing because the equipment you don't need a particularly larger unique space you can use a classroom but welding for example you need special areas although they're not so onerous if we have schools that aren't completely crowded

[02:32:17] right like if we have spaces at some schools we're able to do that the firefighting is a different matter all together right but I think what we're trying to do is figure out what are those courses cyber security which is at one of our academy locations those are the types of courses I think that could be more portably placed and I think it's important to to think about which are the most portable and then where are the schools where we could add or our buildings where we could add more workplace learning options and then also thinking about how we partner with our community

[02:32:54] partners I know Daniel I can't think of Daniel's last name who works with one of our car dealers in the Tyson's area takes interns in the auto mechanics realm and so working with our community partners where we're actually able to place students in work-based learning areas that aren't necessarily classrooms but maybe even better sometimes right like work sites for actual active internships and the video II I think by error perhaps but eliminated or minimize some of the work based learning credits last year in their new accountability

[02:33:32] framework but I think they're working to fix that so that we're able to continue some of the work based learning credit that is in an externship sort of capacity thank you and I know we've had this conversation quite a bit how close are you to developing a plan that kind of outlines what are we able to do in the timeline in which we can accomplish it well goal four is really around a lot of these topics these high school course taking patterns and what we're talking about so you're going to see our theory of action and a lot of conversation in goal four about this exact topic okay with a timeline or is that we uh we

[02:34:09] have a obviously by 2030 we want to make programs accessible that's what the strategic plan said or says. And so I think one of the things we're looking at is where are we now as we're benchmarking data and what programs are we adding whether it's CTE or even other activities or access to programming. So I think you'll see more of that with the beginnings of a plan in our goal for report. Thank you. And just one last comment as you mentioned partnering with

[02:34:42] community I know the construction trades they've been really interested in partnering with us for that real world experience with students and to grow the apprenticeship programs so I hope that's also on your radar. Yes ma'am. Thank you Dr. Anderson. Miss Dixit. Thank you Dr. Reed this video was amazing actually it was one of the best videos I've seen since I've been on this board I can say And I wanted to just kind of piggyback on what Dr.

[02:35:17] Anderson said and my board members that location matters where these academies are placed and they're not placed in all districts or have access, students don't have access. And I understand some of these programs do need physical locations and like, you know, auto and cosmetology.

[02:35:36] But then there's so much in the science and tech space which can be done online. And that could be open to all students. I think there's a lot of room of improvement in our offering in that area. My own child took a cyber security program. He did the ComTS certification. But that's something he could have done, you know, from home too, like if had a computer access. The other programs, which I really think is going to be really important for moving forward it's technologies like ai based machine learning data science right um and we

[02:36:15] have good partners um i remember a gmu data science uh professor telling me that he really wanted to work with uh for west county public school to offer that so if we get that partnership in place and get their instructors to or somehow they are giving us the instructions too i think those courses could be really game-changing because do we do want to move that also the other thing I wanted to say is internship even though we some of these students are placed in work

[02:36:50] programs there are still there are not many opportunities in internship in general for our high schoolers you know I think TJ students have more internship opportunities than other students So there's a little gap we know kind of which I've been noticing and we really need somebody to work full time on internship program and get this started really so that all students get that opportunity.

[02:37:20] Yes ma'am I know that talk with Jen Glazer and her team because you're right I those those are important for students to find out what they love and what they don't love right. Yeah, and lastly, I will say that there is so much of industry, you know, organizations here.

[02:37:38] There's so much of technology and science and, you know, the companies here in tech space. I think a really good relationship with them and partnership for those, again, internship program, because I think there's a lot we could do in this space, and I feel like we talk about it, but we just need to take the next steps on that.

[02:38:01] Thanks. I agree with Ms. Dixit, this is one of the best videos I've seen since I've been on the board. So it was really fun and it caught my attention, which I think is the purpose of it, and it really showed off what we can do.

[02:38:20] So kudos to the team that put that together. A couple of things I wanted to mention, I love the idea of trying to get more awareness of our CTE programming and our academy programming, and I'm hoping that there's more plans around this video in terms of my colleague about social media and reels and all of these things but really also around intentional outreach the middle school families right because that's you know including I think high school outreach is important but for middle schoolers to be aware and their families really be aware of these programs so as they're planning out their high school as they're thinking about course as you talk about course taking patterns this is sort of embedded within that thinking and planning and same with that counselor

[02:39:00] training as well around that piece. You know, including the value, right? I remember when I toured the Marshall Academy, there was a whole competition who could be the goat of certifications, right? And who could be the goat of getting, you know, industry sort of Microsoft and cyber security certifications. And some of these students already had internships and leads to jobs. I think he said 30% of computer science or technology careers do not require a degree in computer science, but a certification. So it is really valuable from a career perspective. And I think need to do a better job of advertising the value of it too and even if you're going to college it

[02:39:34] can be an extra thing on your transcript to set you apart so lots of different areas i would still love to see some more intentional conversation about how to do programming in conjunction with pulli davis step the workforce awareness training and additional paths that do not exist at the moment for other students who may have the ability to stay here four to eight years and need to work on those job intentional job skills and self-advocacy and self-determination but could also access the

[02:40:08] academy and some sort of block schedule program with a half day poley davis step for students who may be on skilled career and college awareness paths and that gives them access to some of these very valuable certifications and skills and right now there's a little bit of shoehorning of that that I'm understanding exists but there's really not an intentional path and I think if we could create it and we could then talk to our families about it it would it would really really truly help address that seven that 65 to 80 percent unemployment rate right and I think it's really important when we're talking about providing paths for our

[02:40:45] students who are most vulnerable and have the worst outcomes and there's a thing that we could do that already exists but the structures exist so it's not like a huge heavy cost I believe so I just would really it's something I've been advocating for a long time I would really love to see more of that as we're looking at our Academy programming and last comment if we're looking at our boundary review work one of the things that we really looked at was access to programming right and that people talked about the educational excellence that's a part of it and I'd love to see as we're doing that work where we can maybe Maybe add some of this programming to the parts of the county that don't have it to help improve access.

[02:41:25] And I'm going to throw out the Braddock District as one that does not have any academy programming. In fact, I don't think there's any in the entire Region 4. Wow. And Chantilly is in Region 5. So there's none in Region 4, and that's the center of the county. Right.

[02:41:41] So when you talk about, and there's, I think both Edison and Mount Vernon have academies. But, anyway, is that my time? I apologize. I didn't hear it. But, anyway, I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Seizmerheiser. Mr. Moon? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, Dr. Lee, I really look forward to a goal full report discussion.

[02:42:05] I just want to give you a heads up that I would be interested in hearing from you or have a discussion on how we can provide work-based learning slash internship opportunities for all of our high school students before they graduate, whether they get to spend ONE QUARTER, HALF A DAY, FULL DAY, TWO QUARTERS, SOMEHOW, LET'S FIND A WAY TO GET IT DONE.

[02:42:31] WILL BE MY REQUEST AT THE NEXT DISCUSSION. THANK YOU. THANK YOU, MR. MOON. THANK YOU, MR. CHAIR. THIS WAS REALLY EXCITING, KIND OF VEERING OFF OF ALL THE STEAM AND, YOU KNOW, COMPUTER PROGRAMMING.

[02:42:56] I'M REALLY PROUD THAT MY DAUGHTER WAS ABLE TO ATTEND THE MUSICAL THEATER ACADEMY, WHICH resulted in her getting a very robust scholarship so when we look at these videos there's such a wide expanse of the kind of Academy offerings I'd like us as we move forward to look at the ones that we are seeing that have long wait lists because even though you know there's a perception that they're the information is not out there I know that there are wait lists for a lot of

[02:43:30] these. So we have to we have to expand them and it's not as easily done. I know for example at Edison where we have the Electrical Academy there's like I think a 200 student wait list but Mr. Wolf is a unicorn in terms of the certifications that he has and it's hard to find someone like him to be able to teach that program. So as we move forward I think we have to be intentional on looking at the programs that are successful and how we can try to find staff or train staff to train to to be able to come in and do that programming

[02:44:07] as a matter of fact I just recommended to one of my colleagues earlier that you know call mr. wolf because a lot of HVAC people hire our students and you're looking for an HVAC company so why don't you call him and find out the ones that are hiring our students and do business with them so I think that's how we can support some of these programs I think this is also a great opportunity for us to work with the Board of Supervisors because they have a workforce development plan and we know that one of the areas they're looking into is physicians in the health industry and I think that this would be

[02:44:46] something that we could look into to see how we can partner with them to do some workplace development and leverage the need that we're going to have in the community and leverage some programming with them and have them help us fund that because at the end of the day if we can employ our students and if we can have them make a living wage and live in the county it's going to be beneficial for the county and then the other thing I wanted to mention is that expanding some of these would be difficult because of space considerations I know that there's one particular school in my district that they said if we had an extra auto bay we could

[02:45:22] do it but we don't have the space for it so but I do want to commend all the staff that does this work because I see kids that are excited and just on a personal note I know a student that I worked with whose father at elementary school whose father was an electrician and he tagged along with dad and he is now at Edison at that academy and he said that that is the best experience for him and he has been waiting to get into that program and he was so scared he wouldn't because of the waitlist but he's excited to follow the path of his father and knows that he can

[02:46:00] make a living wage so that's exciting when we see that and see that the kids are making the connection. Thank you Miss St. John Cunning. Miss Marin. Yeah I just want to say that the ability to expand access to career and technical education is directly related to the boundary review.

[02:46:17] One of the four criteria of our boundary review is ensure equitable access to programs and facilities. And I was recently at a PTA meeting where someone asked me what does that mean? This is what it means. It means that if there's a program and you can't get to it because there's no transportation, that is not equitable access.

[02:46:33] So you know, and I've seen how the office has done a great job of marketing the courses and the careers as viable options. So I'm very eager to see your review of the programs, Dr. Reed. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Ms. Leidy.

[02:46:48] Thank you. and i'm afraid i know the answer but um are we going to be funding teachers for tomorrow centrally or is that going to have to come out of staffing at high schools um mr solomon do you recall where we are on staffing sheets with teachers for tomorrow staffing i apologize i may have to defer to my colleague miss marcy neal on teachers for tomorrow and i will get you that uh information in the upcoming friday letter all right because the the reason I asked was brought up earlier in the year as an ask to fund it because you know we need these we need these kids in our future right and

[02:47:27] because it's a school-based it used to be Academy based but that's the other comment I want to make is is give credit to the system for the amount of courses that started in academies but then became stapled standard at our base schools and we're trying to do that with teachers for tomorrow but it's not going to happen if we're not going to provide the funding the other thing I've brought up before i'm going to bring up again because i just at this point i'm going to ask the question has anyone even approached an auto tech teacher or an auto body teacher or an electric electricity teacher and asked them if we paid you you know an at contract would you do a zero period

[02:48:02] would you do a ninth period we've got wait lists full of kids who want these courses this is not required construction it is it is it is funding but we're talking about 15 000 for you know 20 more kids to get a course that that's that might be the reason they go to school so has anyone actually approached and asked our teachers if they are open to this idea so that's a great question i have not personally do we have is our cte team uh in that mode at this time or do we know yeah i don't i don't know there's been an official ask for that i mean i think it's something that can be looked into it means obviously adjusting the school day i don't think i don't know if you're

[02:48:41] you're talking about an eighth period for kids or if you're talking about adjusted um time i'm not sure well i'm talking about for high school kids if they came in at seven they could have that class of 750 and they could come every day um and then they would get the course and yeah transportation could be a barrier but we'll see where the kids come from and whether or not we can get a bus i mean i don't know but if we don't nothing ventured nothing gained and i'm here again asking for it and we i know that there are directors out there with a wait list full of kids who can't get who didn't get their academy courses and now they're begging them to take do you want personal fitness hey how about you try theater like i've been there i've lived it okay i'm not trying to be

[02:49:19] but we we need to try and give kids what is going to be a career path for them that's that's cte the other thing i want to uplift i do see it in the online campus i don't know if it's still called fitness instructor or not but that is an amazing course a lot of our schools have personal fitness but that course which is seniors only because you have to be 18 to sit for that that certification you know I worked hard to run that course at Chantilly we had kids from surrounding schools to make it run but they all went to college and they were they were trainers when they got there making a huge hourly wage to supplement their education because you can be an athletic trainer at like you know at a gym and anywhere so I'm glad I see it online but I'd like

[02:49:57] to see more of our personal fitness teachers aware of it and willing to teach it I think it was taught one of our trainers at chantilly um and then the last thing is i i do think that i do agree with the advocacy around internship work um you know i i think that um we've got enough going on just to to with reading and math um but i do having formally worked at tj um you know the way that model works is basically an early release and you know we do have seniors that have the credits that that they could be done at 12:30 every other day and be utilizing time to do that.

[02:50:34] So we need to try to not talk about it, but try to put some action to that as well. So thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Ms. Lady. Ms. Sawant. Thank you. CTE might be my favorite topic to learn about. It has changed my life and what I want to do in the future, being in work-based learning programs, being in CTSOs.

[02:50:53] And fun fact, I actually know all of the girls in that picture right there. They graduated a couple of years ago. One of the girls that I was friends with is now doing an engineering program at Purdue and just landed her dream internship this summer because of the CTSO that she was in. So I just wanted to mention that CTE does change lives.

[02:51:11] And I know that there was the Instruction to Industry Conference on Tuesday where 500 high schoolers got to go to Inova and got to do all those healthcare rounds. And I heard so many great things about that. So just lots and lots of amazing work being done. But with that being said, this was one of the first things that I mentioned when I came on board was the Senate bill in Virginia that got passed that said that you know a school could have a CTE organization even if they didn't have like a specific course that went along with it so for example if a high school doesn't have a specific medical course but it might be at an Academy that high school could still have HOSA for example but what I've heard from a lot of students who've tried to maybe adapt like HOSA or FBLA if they need a business

[02:51:49] club or TSA if it's a technical club is that teachers are busy or teachers would want a stipend to be able to sponsor that CTE club there's one club at TJ where the advisor for the CTE club has recently switched it's been a very hard transition and that advisor is still trying to pick it up so I guess my question here is what are the current stipends for teachers who are sponsors of CTSOs and what does that look like in Fairfax County right now well that's a great question I don't believe they receive a stipend okay that's something that I would strongly advocate for I think Mr. McDaniel was talking about that as well but that

[02:52:29] transition with that specific club has been hard to pick up because of that teacher so if there's anything that I would advocate for it is stipends for RCT sponsors. Got it. Thank you Ms. Seizmarheiser. Just one last point that I wanted to make when I was ending with the region four doesn't have any academy programs. I think what a great thing it would be to have maybe the low space academy program at a secondary school where the middle schoolers could also have access or at least easier to give middle schoolers tour and awareness and all of right like it just seems like there's

[02:53:03] it's kind of a no-brainer of a what space i'm sorry a ct adding the low low space so like a ct program that doesn't need a ton of space yes right we've talked about some of our ct programs like welding and woodworking they were talking about like a space program i was thinking what I'll say space for CTE program, I mean, but, you know, the ones that maybe need less space.

[02:53:28] It just, you know, when you think about trying to get the middle schoolers excited about it, like it seems like such a no brainer to put it at a school that has both populations in it to like a secondary school, like a secondary school that happened to have and region four happens to have two of them. So you could kill two birds with one stone.

[02:53:45] Just some ideas as we're thinking about that access to programming piece. And I thank you for my colleague for bringing up the fitness instructor certification. As a former fitness instructor, I can tell you that when there was it does actually for college students provide them a way to earn some money, you know, especially in off hours and different hours to help pay for college education.

[02:54:06] And it's a great way to stay fit. So I'm all for that. And staying with the stipends, I think we need to look at. I mean some of it is the amount of hours the amount of times but we need if we're going to encourage more creative ways provide CTE we need to look at ways to pay teachers to do that.

[02:54:22] Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. This is just a quick ask for information it doesn't have to happen right now but I think I'm a little confused regarding the additional duties of some of the CTE teachers. So if you could outline that somewhere because I'm not sure who it applies to what are some of those duties are we having after-school clubs where are those after-school clubs and I know that DECA Mr. McAvee just reminded me they do have some additional duties because I think they've had the the last one was on a non-school day and the teachers had to participate there I just want

[02:55:01] to get a sense of who is it that we're talking about and what is it that they're doing absolutely we'll provide that in an upcoming Friday letter yes ma'am thank you Dr. Anderson and thank you Dr. Reed. Thank you Mr. Birch. Agenda item seven consent agenda are adopted rules of parliamentary procedure Roberts rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of the board by a single motion many items listed have gone through board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance 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

[02:55:39] is there any objection to approving the consent agenda hearing you see no objection the consent agenda is approved agenda item eight new business the following are new business agenda items there will not be a vote on these items this evening but action is scheduled at a future meeting agenda item nine board committee reports i call on miss st john cunning for a public engagement committee report so we had a very constructive conversation at our last meeting uh we continued our discussion considering uh what it would look like if we had a second student representative

[02:56:16] on our board and we're going to continue pursuing that we've looked at what what is done in other jurisdictions we're also considering our discussions on proclamations and how they're divided geographically uh by district or uh who who owns the proclamation and maybe allowing um at large to be in charge of the proclamations for schools that serve the entire county and we also uh were having a conversation about aligning the flecat committee with our other

[02:56:50] curriculum committees um so those are the things that we're we have been discuss discussing thank you miss st john cunning miss lady with a governance committee report thank you chairman frisch um yes government has been meeting uh our last meeting we had a very successful meeting in that we have basically evaluated all that we need to accomplish and Dr. Reed worked very hard to come up with a plan moving forward and so we're our next meeting unfortunately because of circumstances is not for another month but we will be tackling probably about 11 policies in

[02:57:30] the 2000s so if you're interested in those join us I believe it's on March 28th might be our next meeting. But I just really appreciate the members of the committee and the work that's being done and really appreciate Dr. Reed and her support for helping us, you know, tackle what's been missed the last couple years. So thank you. Thank you, Miss Lady. Mr. Dunn for a report from the Comprehensive Planning and Development Committee. Yeah, it's been a very busy couple months for CPDC.

[02:58:02] At the January meeting, we requested the chair and vice chair to schedule two work sessions, One on design build and construction management at risk methodologies, along with opportunities for commercial office space conversion and optimizing utilization of existing FCPS assets.

[02:58:18] And the second work session on public-private partnerships and swing space. That work session has been combined and is scheduled for May 6. In addition, we asked the Facilities Planning Advisory Council to review the most recent report PRODUCED BY FCPS FACILITIES IN COORDINATION WITH ITS OUTSIDE CONSULTANT ON PUBLIC PARTNERSHIPS AND SWING SPACE AND PROVIDE ITS FEEDBACK TO CPDC AND THE SCHOOL BOARD BOTH ON THE REPORT ITSELF AND ON THE STAFF RESPONSE. MORE RECENTLY, WE ALSO ASKED THE CHAIR AND VICE CHAIR

[02:58:58] THROUGH A FORMAL MOTION TO SCHEDULE A CLOSED SESSION. MR. DUNN. You can continue, but I'd prefer it if you didn't mention what the closed session topic is.

[02:59:17] Oh, sorry. No, that was not the subject of closed session. It was the first one I was reading. We also asked to make sure that we are pursuing a board discussion, a board-to-board conversation on facilities issues.

[02:59:39] So once we have that board-to-board conversation as highlighted by the conversation tonight, Perhaps we can resolve some of the zoning permitting issues and save some some dollars and some time. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Dunn Agenda item 10 superintendent matters. I call on dr. Reed for superintendent matters. Thank you chairman Frisch Again, I just want to thank all of our custodian and food nutrition service employees as well as our school bus drivers bus attendants and crossing guards just really Want to celebrate their work. It is so critical and in particular our drivers

[03:00:13] And bus attendance in this inclement weather we've had quite a run of difficult weather want to thank our weather team We were on the phone just before 4 o'clock this morning. Just confirming we were a go so appreciate Mr. Lambert miss Szymanski mr. Muick miss Fazoli as we Are in the very early hours of the morning, and I think by now I think some of us are maybe a little tired But also last night, Mr. Solomon and our HR team hosting our career fair for federal workers in the community.

[03:00:48] Just really appreciate all the efforts and then our community members for showing up and being so interested in our mission-driven work here. Last week, I also had an opportunity earlier this week, last week, to speak to the County Council for Economic Opportunity as we prepare for the AI transformation.

[03:01:09] really want to make Fairfax County a point place for technology and appreciate Mr. Sethi joining me for that conversation. We've also had some winter graduations at Bryant and Mountain View. Just all the best to our student graduates and thank you to our many, many staff who supported them and our families who supported them. I had an opportunity to speak with the Centerville High School Honor Society on different leadership challenges and just continue to be impressed with our high school students and the commitment they make to improve their schools and their own education. Oakview Elementary School had

[03:01:49] kindness night and it was lovely to be there and just really be thoughtful about that. I also had a chance to speak at the Langston Hughes Middle School Honor a Roll Celebration and that was a great time. This past week visited Burke School, so with Principal Thomas Sweet and the Bears and a lot of great learning going on as well as Kings Park Elementary School with Principal Dottie Lynn and our Lions and we got to look at a lot of some of our benchmark advance work and then today joined a couple of our board members at

[03:02:24] Marshall High School for a world geography class on the powers of, I guess it was the French climate change or climate agreement, but just a lot of good work there. So lastly, just had a chance to see two shows, Lake Braddock's performance of Cinderella, and I actually could follow the plot. It was good. I struggle with Shakespeare sometimes, but I knew how Cinderella was going to end it was very well performed and produced and then over the weekend at Mount Vernon High School Walking the Winds American Folk Tales and just we have some outstanding student

[03:03:03] performances so thank you Mr. Frisch thank you very much I was going to say something in iambic spectameter but I couldn't think that quickly on my feet all right agenda item 11 board matters the next agenda item is board matters I will call on each school board member to speak Miss Lady thank you chairman frisch um first off i'm very excited to welcome principal mclaughlin as cooper middle school's new principal um she was promoted internally and we are very excited to have her also attended the hernan elementary school community meeting on their new principal search

[03:03:40] and uh we're excited uh because there's such great talent both in our system and outside so i know we will find someone um to come into that role um also made a trip to richmond to work on our northern virginia elected to talk with and work with our northern virginia elected officials met with several of them to talk about jlark talk about the importance of funding our schools talk about the fear in terms of department of education and the funding we get from the federal government we are partners with them they fully support jlark and hopefully in time we'll we'll see more of that

[03:04:19] money coming our way i also want to make sure people are aware that i'm meeting with supervisor beerman on the budget we're doing two presentations together uh two budget town halls the first one is march 28th at 6 p.m at the mclean community center and the second one is april 2nd at herndon high school so i hope folks in drainsville will come out and join us and hear about the county budget as well as the school board budget and then also i've been out doing some school and community events i also attended the mountain view high school graduation i will tell you it's incredibly inspiring to see those young people and hear some of their stories anecdotally

[03:04:52] and and just hear them really all just give accolades to the faculty and they literally everyone who works there it seems like these students find really care deeply about them and they're learning and they're in their future success that that was super special also attended the Robinson a speech and tournament at Robinson Secondary School. Wow, it's been a while since I've actually watched students debate. I went to a Lincoln-Douglas debate with one of my students from Langley, Inger Logan, who took second place in that division.

[03:05:27] And I'll tell you the debate I saw, she actually I thought did pretty good against the TJ young man, but you have to debate both sides. And so apparently maybe when she had a debate the side she didn't agree as much with, but she came second to him but it was it was fascinating and that is an incredible thing for our young people I am aware that we have a few high schools that don't have a speech or debate team and I think we need to work on that and also we need to get into a more of our middle schools that would be something I don't want to see happen also was able to attend the Langley rise against hunger event a couple weekends ago and watched I was there when they hit the gong for

[03:06:06] the for packaging the one month one millionth meal in about I think it was about 10 years 12 years thank you mr. moon was with me that was really special it was great and then last night it was Franklin Sherman for the elementary school PTA meeting loved being out and seeing constituents got lots of great questions and so hopefully Duranesville folks I'll be out and about hope maybe I can catch an athletic gamer choir band or orchestra concert come up soon so thank you thank you miss lady mr. moon thank you thank you mr. chairman I am not gonna

[03:06:42] name all those places that I've been to left for last what four five weeks six weeks so but however one thing that I would like to mention to you is a attending you know several of us attended a Mountain View high school graduations and we saw how hard you know those students work to get to the point where they got you and one of the student speakers whom I'm gonna be meeting with tomorrow morning by the way to hear more about his experience with

[03:07:18] us his life story and also his experience with our school system if there is anything that we could do more I want to hear directly from him I was just you know gentleman that who came from a Honduras walk long way to Mexico and he was sharing a life story that how he was able to put his time with a lot of support from teachers at the school he working full-time and took it to his point and graduating at the age

[03:07:53] of 22 and he wants to continue pursuing education as well so i will learn more from him i am really looking forward to that i have having that conversation tomorrow and also we know that Mr. Dunn is going to be introducing proclamation for a late Mount Vernon Supervisor Jerry Highland at the next meeting, at the next meeting.

[03:08:18] But I recall when Supervisor Highland was retiring at his final, in Mount Vernon, I'm sorry, that was after he retired, he was being a recognized as you know giving a recognition for having served for 28 years at a Mount Vernon town hall meeting and the gentleman who introduced him at the time was then planning commissioner of Mount Vernon district who also retired since then. Those

[03:08:55] two gentlemen were in their 80s and still serving for public doing volunteer work and they were at for in two elections they were competitors they were opponents and they were complementing each other and also how a supervisor highland appointed him as his planning commissioner because he was the best person to serve in their world even though he was his election opponent i mean that

[03:09:31] said a lot about this gentleman's character i just wanted to show that in advance of that proclamation coming up. Thank you, Mr. Moon. Mr. Dunn? Yes, I'd like to congratulate and recognize Edison High School student Ashley Toodle, who recently competed in the Special Olympic Winter Games in Pennsylvania, where she took home two gold medals and one silver medal in skiing. I also wanted to offer congratulations to the Edison High School wrestling team for winning the National District Wrestling Tournament for the seventh straight year and their second consecutive region title. Also, congratulations to South County High School girls basketball

[03:10:08] player Layla LT Hull for hitting 1,000 career points. While earning this achievement LT helped her team bring home the win with a final score of 51 to 47. I also wanted to offer congratulations to Silverbrook Elementary's first place spelling bee winner Axley and our runner-up winner Charlotte. We have had some great recognition recently of our amazing staff by FCPS. Congratulations to South County Middle School Principal Justin Simmons, the Region 4 Outstanding New Principal, and Region 6 Awards to Mount Vernon District Schools. Outstanding Elementary School Teacher

[03:10:47] Nicole Oberdick at Gunston Elementary, congratulations. Outstanding New Principal Jen Fowler at Island Creek Elementary, congratulations to you as well. Outstanding secondary teacher Kate Kalfa, a biology teacher at Lewis High School, and outstanding professional employee Beth Curtis who is a school-based technology specialist at the Key Center. It's been an exciting few weeks and there's a lot of big issues going on. We recently completed the virtual community meetings for school boundaries. We will have more school boundary meetings coming up later in the spring once scenarios have been developed for public input. And we also

[03:11:27] this past weekend had the 38th annual Mount Vernon Town meeting where I participated with many elected officials from our county and from our federal delegation and was able to share some thoughts on the budget and other issues confronting our public schools.

[03:11:44] Thank you. Thank you Mr. Dunn. Ms. Seismarheiser. Thank you and I'm glad to be sharing some really exciting things happening in the Braddock District and first I wanted to start with talking about our students. I'm thrilled to learn that Irving Middle School eighth grader and Braddock district resident Adalie Schmitz was selected along with Irving's physical science teacher Marissa Basar to participate in Jason Argonaut's STEM program. It's a prestigious group of just 10 invited teachers and students to travel to Portland Oregon so congratulations that is super exciting.

[03:12:16] Also worth noting that students from Robinson Secondary School were among the 16 students selected to participate in Senator Stella Bukarski's formerly of the school board high school youth leadership program down in Richmond they got to attend the legislative session and sit in on the sessions and really learn about political leadership and what a great way to learn about and experience civics education so that was really exciting a couple of highlights from our excellent teachers in the braddock district we had um the 20th anniversary of robinson's choral director my my karanski and the um robinson second course

[03:12:54] actually hosted a gala performance in his honor and also just a kudos to paul arena who was the the region for outstanding secondary school teachers so congratulations I had the honor of attending the Bryant high school graduation as my colleague mentioned about Mountain View this is the sister school the Mountain View and it was such an honor to hear and really just grounding to hear the stories of some of the students and all the things they've overcome in there so in some of them their short amount of time here to graduate and move on to what I think would be very successful futures I want to thank the Kings Park Kings Glen PTA for inviting me to come speak to them on February 7th as a I mentioned former

[03:13:32] fitness instructor it was fun to go on family fitness night and I really as much as I love talking to the families I really want to go dance with the students and all the different line dancing that were going on so next time I'm gonna try to do both but it was really wonderful to meet with such an energetic and caring group of families and talk about boundaries and middle school start times and all sorts of great things speaking of which I'd also like to thank my colleague my partner on the Fairfax County Board of supervisors, James Walkenshaw, where we had a nice long meeting to talk about, again, similar things, boundaries, budget, CIP, middle school start times, and I'm grateful, as always,

[03:14:08] for his partnership as well. And I would be remiss if I wouldn't say thank you for attending Cinderella at Lake Braddock. It was really an amazing show, and it was the newer production, which I didn't realize it was a newer production, so it was incredibly funny and well-acted and clever. Same with watching along with my colleague, Sandy Anderson, Once Upon a One More time for you britney spears fans out there this is a jukebox musical based on britney spears music about women empowerment it was awesome so i'm sorry it's over but um if you get a chance to watch it come check it out um some upcoming theater performances frozen jr at irving middle school

[03:14:45] this weekend seussical the musical at robinson middle school this weekend and the 25th annual putnam county spelling bee at woodson high school march 7th and 8th happy black history month thank - Thank you very much. You have no idea how hard I'm resisting the temptation to make a Britney Spears song title pun, but I will defer.

[03:15:06] Mr. McDaniel. - I have no board matters. - Thank you. Dr. Anderson. - I'll hit you one more time, Mr. Frisch. First of all, I wanna say thank you to the Justice Choir for their rendition tonight of the Lift Every Voice and Sing.

[03:15:29] It was really wonderful for them to be able to share that with us. I was very excited to participate yesterday, along with Ms. Marin and Ms. St. John Cunning, at the Black History Celebration that took place at Carter G. Woodson High School, that was hosted by the Equity Office.

[03:15:48] It's just poetic justice that we were able to have that event take place at Carter G. Woodson, where he started National Negro Week, which became Black History Month. So it was particularly poignant. and those students who performed were just terrific.

[03:16:06] It was just a very impressive program. So thank you to staff who helped to put that together. I do wanna say congratulations to the Mason District students for a number of things, starting with those who have earned the Student Peace Awards this year.

[03:16:22] Their projects are impressive and inspiring, and I'm really looking forward to celebrating with you this, well, next week. We have Seg Nagel from Annandale High School, Shree Bala from Falls Church High School, the Muslim Student Association from Justice High School, the Send a Smile Club from TJ.

[03:16:43] Congratulations to all of you. Also wanna say congratulations to the Annandale High School Theater Company that were named the VHSL Acaquan Region One Act Champions. And Mr.

[03:16:59] oh my goodness, Mr. DeRose was very impressed and shared this with us yesterday. Was it yesterday, Mr. Moon? Yesterday, Mr. Moon and I, we visited Adondale High School with Supervisor Jimenez and Congressman Beyer to visit Annie Ray's class, the Crescendo Orchestra, as well as the theater class, which were inclusive opportunities for our students.

[03:17:26] And we had a chance to dance a little bit and participate. was really wonderful so thank you to the staff there for entertaining us. I do want to say good luck to these talented students and their teacher Miss Kylie Murray as they move on to the state championship to in Charlottesville. So again go Adams. Last month FCPS presented nine schools with awards for outstanding school communications and five of those were awarded to Mason District schools. In the newsletter category, Falls Church Academy and Wayanoke took home prizes. In the website category, we had prizes from Annandale Terrace

[03:18:05] Elementary and social media went to Annandale High School and Columbia Elementary. I do want to remind the community that the Brandmark construction update, it's been rescheduled multiple times, both times for snow. It's going to hopefully happen next week, the 27th at 6:30.

[03:18:26] So please mark your calendars. And I thought I heard the thing. That's it. Good night. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. McElveen. Pass. Thank you. Ms. Dixit. Good evening. I did want to share there is a National Engineering Week.

[03:18:43] It was February 2016 to 22. This year's theme was Design Your Future. It's about celebrating engineers and engaging students. FCPS Family and School Partnership has put out a newsletter with a lot of good resources for exploring careers and engineering fair camps and high school scholarship opportunity for students.

[03:19:03] So I encourage you all to look at the newsletter and encourage students to take advantage of those opportunities. Shantley High School received the best of the web award at the School Communicators Conference held last week. This is granted to schools that have websites featuring innovative and creative content that is up-to-date, easy-to-read, accessible and informative.

[03:19:26] Congratulations to Principal Amy Goodloe and Technology Specialist Emily Fallon. So proud of FCPS students to winning 809 awards for outstanding artwork, which includes a lot of students from Sully District. Congrats to 693 FCPS student Merit Commended Scholar.

[03:19:47] This represents a 10% increase in Commended Scholar for FCPS compared to 2023. We have many Sully students from in these students. Two Sully district students, St. Charlie Banerjee, Avinath Vijaram from TJ High School were among the eight FCPS region round science scholars.

[03:20:06] Congratulations to all those amazing students. And I did visit my Oak Hill Elementary, I said earlier with Mr. McDaniel and we had a really good time there. This is an amazing school with so many programs and there they have Chinese flex program but they're very proud of that they told us they do the whole they've actually bought a dragon for that through their PTA and and they celebrate that every year and we did I did attend the Mountain View High School graduation ceremony and it was very touching just like Mr.

[03:20:43] Moon shared we we were all in awe of the students how they made it possible for themselves and and moving to college after graduating. I did want to share the March 10th I am doing a joint town hall with the supervisor Kathy Smith it's a budget town hall at Rocky Run Middle School from 7 to 9 p.m. both county budget and our FCPS budget will be presented and we will be speaking with the constituents. Thank you so much, everyone. Have a good night.

[03:21:15] Thank you, Miss Dixit. Miss Marin. Yes, well, I do want to honor Black History Month this month, although we know that black history is American history. So we just particularly elevate it this month. But certainly we need to continue to elevate the stories that many of us don't know. There's actually a really neat book that was shared that evening. And I hope that we can get that more into our classrooms about local history and Black community in Fairfax. And I'd love to see more of our students on local field trips exploring because we really are the center of where that history begins. I was delighted to go to the

[03:21:53] middle school district performance last weekend. It was mostly Fairfax schools and some other Northern Virginia, but just amazing. I mean, these are what 13, 14 and 15 year old children singing Vivaldi and singing American folk songs from Appalachia. They sang a song from 1492. Just amazing. The Scholastic Art Show, I was delighted to go see that gallery. I encourage you, rethink your entertainment. Head over to Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale and just look at the art. It will blow you away. So that is there for the next few weeks. And next week I'm looking forward to attending an event hosted by Leadership Fairfax, which is going to

[03:22:32] to honor three individuals in our FCPS family in Reston. Two students, ninth grader Lucy Lynn Tomball and eighth grader Avery McCusker, recognized for their summer clothing drive and distribution event, completed as part of their Girl Scout Silver Award project in which they collected 383 pounds of clothing, organized 26 volunteers, and served 112 customers at a distribution event.

[03:22:55] So again, eighth and ninth grader. We're also gonna be honoring Langston Hughes principal, Dr. Herman Mizell, who will be receiving then Northern Virginia Leadership Award for educational leadership. Finally, I want to wish our Ramadan Mubarak for all of those who will be observing the holiday that begins next Friday.

[03:23:11] Thank you. Thank you, Miss Marin, Miss St. John Cunningham. I'd like to thank the tireless work our custodians, bus drivers and food service personnel do every day. I'd also like to thank the staff of our school board office. We couldn't do our work with all you do to support us.

[03:23:28] I truly do appreciate appreciate each and every one of you. This month we celebrate black history and the many contributions of black Americans to our communities and beyond. I encourage you to take time to learn about the rich black history right here in the Franconia District, including the Laurel Grove School located at 6840 Beulia Street.

[03:23:48] Built by formerly enslaved individuals in the 1880s, Laurel Grove School provided education for the first generation of black children born free, despite resistance from white residents. Operating until 1932 it remains the only surviving African American schoolhouse in northern Virginia.

[03:24:05] Today the restored one room schoolhouse serves as a living museum offering visitors a glimpse into the life of students in the 1920s. Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of celebrating the birthday of the late great John Lewis at John Lewis High School a place that carries his legacy forward every single day.

[03:24:23] Their dedication to service justice and leadership embodies everything Congressman Lewis stood for. I ended the night with the honor of stepping in to deliver remarks on behalf of Sherman Frisch at the FCPS Black History Month kickoff at Woodson High School. The evening was informative, joyful and enjoyed by all.

[03:24:42] I attended Bryan High School's winter graduation and celebrated a group of resilient, determined and hardworking graduates who have reached a major milestone. I wish them all the best in their future endeavors. Earlier in the month, I spent some time at Lewis High School at Lewis High School, first meeting the talented thespians after the rehearsal for the one act play Trifles, which placed second at the Aqua Quan Regional Theater one act competition on February 18th.

[03:25:09] I also want to send congratulations to the Edison High School thespians who also performed two Edison students, Nithi Pulaski and Cora Reese, received gold medals. Then I attended the district wrestling match. Congratulations to all the incredible athletes who competed and those who were supposed to participate at State on Saturday, but snow has postponed it until next week.

[03:25:31] Edison won the Aquaquan Regional Championship for the second year in a row. A huge thank you to Lewis High School for hosting the event and hosting the Lunchadora Room for volunteers and sponsors for their support in making this event a success.

[03:25:47] Although it is six days late I would like to wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day and send out the message that was this year's theme for Mount Vernon Woods Elementary and I think it's a theme that is important for all of us. It is to lead with love, teach with love, and learn with love.

[03:26:05] Our students and community will be the better for it. Buenas noches. Thank you. Ms. Anderson. Everyone have a wonderful evening. Thank you Ms. Anderson. Really quickly, I will have the Providence District Budget Town Hall with Supervisor Palczyk on Monday, March 10th from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.

[03:26:25] at the Jim Scott Community Center on Vaden. So I hope everybody will come out and RSVP. You can find more information on Supervisor Palczyk's website and our respective Facebook pages. And I will keep it short since we have a chance to end this meeting before 10:30.

[03:26:43] I adjourn at 10:26.

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