Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board CPDC Meeting, Thursday, December 11, 2025

Date: Thursday, December 11, 2025
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 27m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDA0z6BSUCY
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 2026-10-28. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:04:07] All right, the time is 6.17 p.m.

[00:17:43] in this December 11th, 2025 Conference of Planning and Development Committee and the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order. Apologies for the late start of traffic and IT. So we have a couple of items to go through. First is administrative, which is the minutes of the October 30th 2025 CPDC meeting or before the committee for approval.

[00:18:05] Those are posted online, and I'll open the floor for a motion. uh and then we'll have a discussion on that is there a motion for the minutes yeah the minutes are posted online yeah that's fine we can we'll put a pin in the minutes why don't we take five minutes to go through the minutes does that work for you do you have internet access okay i don't

[00:18:42] think so it's on board docs i don't know my board docs and nothing is working on my end so we can

[00:19:19] put those up the work session or the meeting so we're doing in part of the cip work session we're

[00:20:27] we're gonna fold in a conversation of ed specs. I think you brought that up at the dais. So basically we teed it up with the CPDC meeting and then at the work session coming up with CIP,

[00:20:38] there's gonna be a bit on ed specs in there as well.

[00:21:59] Instead of a community advisory committee, you want to say a school board advisory committee. That's fine.

[00:22:14] There's no objection, that's fine.

[00:22:34] It's working for me now, I don't know.

[00:23:13] - So Ms. Marin, the background section is what's taken directly from the board docs cover sheet. - So this is just laying out the history of the Joint Facility Review Committee update and that was taken directly from board docs.

[00:23:35] Yes, yes, so the board direction to the clerks on minutes

[00:24:13] was at least for this interim period while we're working on the backlog to provide the summary of the meeting so that, the brief summary and so that's why these minutes are a lot more condensed than they had been in the past.

[00:24:36] - Okay, so the minutes above this very clearly state the tenor and the overview of what was discussed. The minutes for this facilities committee do not. The minutes for this facilities, for the update that I gave on the joint committee's meeting just says that I gave a report.

[00:24:54] So that's not very helpful when we're looking to understand what was said in the future, so. - Two reasons for that, and we can edit these and come back to them at the next meeting. but the joint facility committee has their own minutes and so that's one reason.

[00:25:18] And in board meeting minutes, when board members are giving reports, we don't actually go into the detail on the report. So for example, on the regular meeting minutes, for committee reports or liaison reports, it just says that that committee chair gave a report on the committee's recent activities and work.

[00:25:37] It doesn't go into the specifics. - Thank you, Mr. Jackson, but isn't that because then the committee minutes show what was discussed? I mean, there's nowhere now that's discussing what I have brought to the board as the joint committee. It's not here, and it's not, anyway, I don't really, I began my day at that meeting this morning, so I'm a little tired, but this just is not very helpful to say that I spoke about it.

[00:25:59] - So do we have the link to the minutes for the full joint facility committee? Well, I don't need to see it, but I guess my question is, could we put in there the link to the minutes the joint facility committee why don't we do that that would be great yeah just so that's captured in there so at least there's a link over to the full discussion that took place yeah and i know mr jackson you were telling me this morning about whether they were available or not so if they are then i'm cool to approve this tonight but if not i'd like to wait so so are you okay to approve it if we stick that link in there i am okay all right that's yes thank you then that technical

[00:26:33] adjustment i appreciate it so okay um so we'll make those two adjustments and then we can come back at the end not a big deal um okay so we'll defer the vote on that until the technical adjustments are made going back here on so the next order of business is gen item three logistics integration of community members of the facility planning advisory council's work into the conference of planning development committee so to set this up there's a document um on board docs there's basically two key decisions that i would prefer to have a decision point on tonight if not we'll we'll have another meeting, I think, in February where we could finalize it.

[00:27:13] So because of the changes that the board approved for FPAC and CPDC structure at the meeting last week, Mr. Dunn brought an amendment that the board approved where we went from two key amendments. Number one, we added the or related to the criteria section of community members.

[00:27:33] The second amendment was going from three community members to five community members. So because we've increased it from three to five community members, Ms. Sizemore-Hyser brought an amendment to an amendment that requires us to come up with a way to weight the votes so that the community member votes do not outweigh board member votes.

[00:27:51] So the first discussion point is the weighting of those votes. Now, I did talk to the clerk, and Kevin, you know how board docs works much better than I do, but in talking with the clerks, the recommendation was instead of like a .5 vote or a point two five vote or a fraction of a vote everybody on the cpdc to include the community members the board members and the city representative get one vote with board members getting an additional one vote apiece and the recommendation my understanding is that that recommendation was because of how board docs is set up in the counting of votes and board docs

[00:28:28] kevin do you have anything you want to add to that no that's correct and so with board docs we cannot really wait votes and so this is our way of basically addressing that and we would basically create an additional school board member CPDC vote and then that way when I load the votes in for each motion then they would actually show reflecting that waiting and everything would work seamlessly without us building some external platform to to calculate the votes okay mr. done thank - Thank you.

[00:29:07] One of my motions at the dais on Thursday was to obtain a legal opinion on the roles, responsibilities, and restrictions on community members serving as a member of CPDC. I would like to request that next time we have a CPDC meeting that we have a closed session to be able to discuss that opinion as a committee.

[00:29:32] Secondly, I'd like to suggest that we, and I'm happy to make a motion in this regard. Given the novelty of waiting of votes, I would like to suggest that we obtain a legal opinion or perhaps parliamentary guidance from our parliamentarian, Jason Morgan, on precedent for waiting of votes.

[00:29:57] I'm not saying I oppose it, but just what I don't wanna have happen is we do take some action now or 10 years in the future, and it could be about the renovation queue or whatever the subject matter is, and then there's a lawsuit, and they find that we have broken some law, broken some parliamentary procedure.

[00:30:19] We've seen this in Loudoun County. We've seen it with various, the missing middle in Arlington County. We've seen it with data center proceedings with the, just lots of stuff that you're probably familiar with, Mr. McDaniel, from your work on the county.

[00:30:35] And I just don't want to have the FCPS be vulnerable to a legal challenge. So getting authoritative, definitive legal guidance in advance of making any decisions as a committee on how we should wait, how we should do it for the convenience of board docs, I think would be prudent.

[00:30:58] - Yes, ma'am. - I appreciate the innovative approach to trying to make this work, but I do not support creating a new mode of voting. agree with my colleague that we really need to be cautious and I think it could be really just a time-consuming thing to ask legal to go and do this I think we need a little more time I'm aware there were some people who couldn't make it tonight even though this was a scheduled meeting just given the discussion at last Thursday's regular session I think there are some more people who'd like to be here I've been out of town I'd like to digest this a bit more so I would like to just wait I don't yet want to ask council to proceed with this I'd like to

[00:31:37] have a bigger discussion but on the face of it I am not interested in creating a new creating a precedent for a new way of doing business just on the fly because of this mr. done sorry just while I can say something I was there not a joint facilities meeting today so I just didn't see it on the agenda that there was going to be a briefing on that so I just wanted to see if it might be possible for so legal did send a memo around and I'll be careful I say, but that was addressed in the memo, the questions that you're raising.

[00:32:14] So there's no particular, as I said in my opening comments, there's no particular pressing need to make a decision tonight. We just need to figure out either a path forward or a decision. So there's no problem on my end of scheduling a closed session to make sure that we're good with that. The board did bind the structure for the requirement to have community members not be outweighed by, or excuse me, community member votes to be outweighed by board member votes.

[00:32:37] So with that as kind of the baseline for the discussion, we can certainly have a conversation for closed session. I think we have a February meeting. I can't remember if it's January or maybe both, but we can certainly have a closed session to talk about that. - We have a meeting in both January and February. - Okay, there you go, January.

[00:32:53] So after the first of the year, we can have council come and cover that memo. But that memo was sent around. I don't know if you guys saw it or not. - I think that was just today. - It was either yesterday or this morning. - What are the dates in January and February, Kevin?

[00:33:08] The January meeting is January 15th and the February meeting is February 19th, but that's gonna be right before the PM work session on the budget. Okay, that's right. Yeah, we scheduled an earlier meeting on that day 'cause of the budget work session.

[00:33:23] Ms. Barron. - Well, granted, I wasn't here on the Thursday regular meeting. I don't think that, I think the information that whatever is in this legal memo that was just sent would have been good for the board to have for that decision.

[00:33:45] So I just feel like there's a lot of cart the horse here and I definitely need more than a few hours to know that something's in my inbox so I would just like to table it completely we can talk about it next time but I don't want to put any action forward we have a lot of priorities including the CIP before we meet again so I really would like the staff to focus on that and not this particular thing we can do the closed session conversation and I guess I obviously there's a memo from legal there's something that's closed but I don't know why it needs to be a close conversation to talk about the makeup of a committee that was already talked

[00:34:20] about in public I'll work with counsel and I'll work with the clerks to make sure what we can be very clearly can I can't discuss an open versus close that would be great I'm not making any I don't know so I don't want to I don't want to say one thing that turns out to be something else mr. done okay can you please make sure that mark can you please invite John Foster and or I don't know if so never worry participate in the memo at all but whoever are the authors of the memo are there and prepared to speak to it.

[00:34:51] I just want to make sure we're not talking just amongst us since legal is not a regular attendee at CPDC meetings. That's fine. So the next discussion point, which similar logistical issue, when we went from three to five members, the original document had a phase-in schedule of the three members, and that was based on the audit committee original phase-in schedule of two members.

[00:35:15] So the original document phased in one member on a one-year term, the second member on a a two-year term, the third member on a three-year term, but now that we're going to three to five members, we need to figure out a way to phase in those additional two members. The recommendation here is just something that I came up with with the clerks.

[00:35:31] I have no pride of authorship if the committee wants to do something different. It's really immaterial in my mind, but we do need to figure out, and perhaps it could be a part of the conversation. That document that I sent you earlier, Kevin, it's right there under that second discussion point where it says 2-1-2-2-1-3.

[00:36:05] So effectively, we would take the additional two members, and one would get a one-year term, the second would get a two-year term, and then that fifth person would get the three-year term, and then at the end of each of those respective terms, it would start the three-year cycle. And the point of that was to try to not have everybody rolling off at the same time as well.

[00:36:23] So let me ask, does that make sense from the timing perspective? Not saying that's what we have to go with, but just -- Can I be recognized? No, no, go ahead, please. Can you clarify the second bullet under changes approved where it says changing criteria dash or related?

[00:36:42] I don't know what that means. Yes, so your amendment, it took the original criteria and added the comma or related to it. I think it had more than that. Was it more than that? Okay. Whatever your approved criteria is, I thought it was just the or related, but whatever that is, that's going to be the change so we can update the document.

[00:36:59] Okay. Yeah, there were more subject matters that were explicitly called out. Right. Can I ask, is the audit committee, I never served on the audit committee so I don't know, are the two people who serve on the audit committee, are they staggered?

[00:37:18] They were staggered. Originally they were staggered and then they started the rolling in of the cycle and again that language came right from the governance manual appendix, I want to say appendix L, which was the audit committee original application process.

[00:37:35] Is it not just possible to do one-year terms that are renewable? We can just keep renewing at an item. Under the approved changes, it's a three-year term instead of one-year term. But in terms of the actual roll-in of those members, we can do, you know, we can figure out how we want to do that.

[00:37:52] Because we did approve technical adjustments. We gave the clerks the latitude to make technical adjustments, and I would consider this a technical adjustment to comply with the addition of two extra members. However we want to phase people in, whatever works best, I mean, whatever the committee wants to do, I'm totally fine with.

[00:38:09] Understanding that we approved three-year terms, is there a benefit? That wasn't something that was discussed at the dais. So do you feel strongly about that three-year term versus renewable one-year terms, just to match what other people do?

[00:38:30] Although, how was the term of service of the citizen members on the audit committee? I believe it was three years. Three years. Three years as well. Okay. So I'm realizing that when we thoughtfully updated the advisory committee, you know, guidebook and advisory committee protocols, that was the function of the public engagement committee of the board, and they have not been part of this.

[00:38:56] And, you know, I do think it's unfortunate that this all went through on Thursday without key information like the number of committee members and how they're going to vote, but it's the public engagement committee that's really supposed to be talking about terms. And again, I just think this needs a bit more work to be consistent with how we've approached other committees.

[00:39:17] So I don't know why we would wanna have this one be different for any other reason. I think it needs to be something that gets worked on with public engagement. That's what we did with the rest of the committees.

[00:39:32] - Gotcha. Well, so the board's proved the structure with the two changes. So we have a charge from the board as well to come back with a way to integrate the two changes that the board approved. So if we want to ask someone from PEC to have a hand in that, I suppose we could, although PEC isn't necessarily the keeper of the advisory committees.

[00:39:52] But, you know, again, if we're going to have a conversation in closed session about item number one, the discussion point of waiting for the community member votes, we can chew on this for a few weeks and come back with a way to figure out how to roll with these additional two members. Because it doesn't have an effective start date until April 1st, 2026, so we do have some time on that.

[00:40:11] And I guess... Go ahead. There is another suggestion that's coming to me as I'm sitting here. You could also adjust this slightly to do three people on a one-year term and then two people on the two-year term, and then that way it allows the board to appoint two sets per term.

[00:40:35] Because right now, if you do the three-year cycle, then you would only appoint one full set every term. That gives you more flexibility for your consideration. That makes sense. Okay, so the name plaques are still up.

[00:40:56] Do we have more turns? So what I'm hearing is now that we've had this conversation, we will have another agenda item for the January meeting where we can flesh this out a little bit more and we can think about it for the next few weeks. And we'll be able to do the closed session in January?

[00:41:14] Well, yeah, if we need it to be closed session. If we don't need to be closed session, then there would be no point. But I would suspect it probably would be a closed session. You think it also depends? No, it's fine. I'll follow up with staff to see if it's closed versus open. I think it also depends on what else the chair and vice chair already have on the docket for closed meetings.

[00:41:32] You know, there's a method to scheduling closed meetings, so. To be clear, I was referring to just a closed meeting of this committee, not the full board. That was your, was that, Mr. Dunn, was that your suggestion? To have the closed session in January? Well, a closed session of the committee.

[00:41:50] Yes, that's correct. Not the full board. Okay, all right, I want to make sure I understood that. That's like audits sometimes have closed sessions. Yeah, I think it has to be really clear, like Mr. Jackson just made a recommendation, like, can those be fleshed out? I still don't understand why we can't just start everyone at the same time in April.

[00:42:09] Why are we dovetailing them in or scaffolding them in? It was to have staggered terms. That was the point of the stack. But didn't we just say that audit doesn't do that? The audit member, community members are still staggered. And then, so the April 1 ending date, so whoever is currently on, oh, it's no one because it's us.

[00:42:30] Okay. Thanks. Okay. All right. And then the next item on this list is discussion of FPAC work and CPDC work for the year. So at the board meeting last week, I did make comments that we would bring in anybody from FPAC that chose to attend. Talk about the items that they're working. I know we have staff here as well. Talk about the items that they're working on and how do we integrate that into the work schedule for CPDC and ideas to tackle some of that work starting April 1st, 2026.

[00:43:01] as the committee structure changes over. So we have, who do we have from FPAC? Priya Swamy. Priya, and I see Brian up there as well. And can I ask, the hard copy agendas that we received are different from the agenda that's on the screen?

[00:43:18] It technically isn't supposed to be called an agenda. That was just details on the discussion points that we were going to have, but point taken. Just for the consistency of the board doc. No, I got you. Yeah, so the board doc, this document is basically the background document for item 1.03.

[00:43:36] It should not have been called an agenda, but I got you there. So discussion of FPAC work and CBDC for the year. I will open the floor to have a conversation. I know Priya and Brian, you guys are on Zoom. Feel free to jump in here, raise your hand, and Kevin will make sure that you guys can speak.

[00:43:56] We'll do a quick mic check. And then maybe I'll turn things over to, I know Brian, you're kind of new-ish here. so any input that you want to have on the work that FPAC has been doing and how we can best integrate that, you're certainly welcome to jump in here.

[00:44:14] But Priya or Brian, do you guys have any input on what items that you're working on that you would like to see CPDC take up, Brian? Sorry, can you hear me again?

[00:44:33] Yes, we can. I'm more listening to that just because with the shortness of the meeting, I couldn't find the job here, so I'm watching the two little ones at the same time, so um i'm more just kind of more listening than participating tonight no worries thank you yeah

[00:45:14] and i understand how um how um these changes will be affecting some of the the work that fpac has done so rich learn okay thank you um mr don um if if i may suggest based on work done by fpac over the past two years and discussions uh held this year um one topic

[00:45:49] that i think it would be worth discussing uh is energy management and in particular virtual power plants which I believe is a topic Ms. Swami brought to FPAC. A similar and related topic is the use of ESCOs and similar arrangements to maximize energy savings and perhaps getting some kind of report from facilities on are we currently using ESCOs and similar arrangements and are we we headed in a direction to use them more,

[00:46:28] especially to upgrade some of our HVAC systems or other energy intensive systems in our building. I think what we saw at Hayfield Secondary School is a dire need to upgrade our HVAC generally.

[00:46:44] And I was surprised coming out of the pandemic with all the pandemic dollars that we didn't come out with brand new spanking HVAC everywhere, but maybe those dollars went other places. I know we will get data through the facilities condition assessment, but having some understanding of how we can use third parties and their financing without spending additional dollars on our part to actually get better HVAC systems or similar energy-intent systems and still perhaps saving money I think would be useful to know, especially at a time if anyone's

[00:47:21] tracking utility regulation matters in Virginia as I am for my consulting business for the Virginia Corporation Commission just authorized virtual power plants to be established in Virginia so I think it's a very opportune time in addition to that there was a lot of work that effected on private-public partnerships bringing in Gilbane and other people to do presentations within the last two years, writing a couple memos, doing reactions to the P3

[00:47:58] report we received last year, and I think there's more work that could be done to lay the foundation, perhaps for exploring that down the road by FCPS. Thank you.

[00:48:14] And for staff, could we actually get a copy of all the memos that FPAC has sent directly to you? Because some board members have not seen them. Can we get a copy of those memos? We can find those for you.

[00:48:32] Yeah, let's recirculate that to make sure that we're not missing anything that, you know, we don't need to be missing. Sure, shouldn't be a problem. Okay. I can also communicate to Katie Herman. She has all those memos. Yeah, whoever has the memos, let's just get a copy of all those memos that have been sent around. I don't want to miss any of the work that's been done or have any balls be dropped.

[00:48:51] For what period of time? Two years. Last two years? Yeah, two years. I mean, since the term started, I think that's probably reasonable. Do you want those directed to this committee?

[00:49:06] Yeah, just send it to the whole committee. That's fine. Yeah, that works. And then I think, you know, I did have an idea, and I kind of, you know, I think we should kind of chew on this of how best for CPDC to tackle some of this work that's been done, because we do not meet as regularly as FPAC meet, as FPAC met.

[00:49:30] There's some interesting language in the governance manual about the ability for committees to set up working groups. So one of the thoughts that I was having and kind of chewing over in my mind is the ability to set up working groups that specifically work on some of these topics that we're discussing here. I think the memos that have been generated could inform the topics that we would then decide to pick up and potentially small working groups can be kind of tasked out with doing some of that work without requiring full committee meetings. But, you know, that's, we can flesh

[00:49:59] that out a little bit more in January if we need to. It's fine. Did you hear, did you hear that?

[00:50:25] Oh, sorry. I thought you might be interested in it. What I was saying is the governance manual does allow for committees to set up working groups or yes, working groups, so small subgroups of the full committee. So since we're expanding the committee from five members to ten members, I think that would be a good opportunity to set up working groups with some of the topics that we identify that the FPAC's been working on. That way we don't get bogged down in having to have the work directed through full meetings of CPDC.

[00:50:53] So one idea that I did have is if there's a member of CPDC that has a particular interest in a topic area, you know, like virtual power plants, for example, you could be able to work as a subgroup, a working group, directly with some of the community members to flesh that out more, because we do meet less than FPACnet, and we don't really have like work session time, so to speak, to do some of that heavy lifting that they've been doing, but that was an idea that came to mind.

[00:51:17] - That's great, thank you. I wasn't aware of that, so that would be very helpful and useful to be able to report back to CPDC. - Ms. Mira. just thinking about the meeting we had this morning myself and mr. McDaniel for the joint facility committee with the Board of Supervisors and I'm happy to go into a summary of that but you know it's become clear to me as this one board member that there's a lot that we could learn about facilities today it was about the 22 32 process and even though we have had conversations about it there's a lot more to it I think the same could be said of what was in the last which

[00:51:56] the first joint committee meeting there's a lot of background about how the funds what funds fund facilities so i don't i i think we should deliberate about what kind of work topics we want to work on because there's things that are really you know connected to us and things that are more you know i don't know about the data centers and you know that did that come up today no that was a different remaining but there are things that we really need to dig deeper on and like how do we transfer that knowledge to the other decision-makers that were on the boards with you know even ed specs like that could be I think something that is

[00:52:34] more pertinent than talking about you know data centers that we have zero control over so I think I'd like to establish some parameters on what we work on as being things that we can actually influence and maybe like legislative advocacy or somewhere else you know let's weave that in so yeah Yeah, when we do discuss that, I would like to keep that in mind.

[00:52:54] Thanks. Mr. Dunn? I fully agree. I just wanted to mention since -- and I didn't mean data centers. I'm sorry if I misspoke at all. I was talking about virtual power plants, which is just using like batteries and such for, you know, energy storage and distributed energy management.

[00:53:14] I did want to mention about the 2232 process, since you touched on that, that Ms. Sizemore-Heiser and I attended a meeting last year with the Planning Commission which was focused on the 2232 process. And I know the staff for facilities and the staff for the Planning Commission are continuing to have some dialogue about creating different buckets.

[00:53:41] One bucket for major renovations and then a separate bucket for maybe lighter touch projects so that you have different levels of community engagement depending on the scope of the project. That was kind of the rough informal agreement we reached, although obviously consultation with the board, but it might be beneficial for my colleagues, Ms. Marin and Ms. McDaniel, to also be designated by the chair of the school board to be the people who also engage in those discussions with the planning commission, so then you maintain unity of conversations rather than having different parts of the board

[00:54:20] having separate dialogues about basically the same or related subject matter that is an excellent dovetail into what I was just going to ask miss Merritt to do would you like to give an update from this morning's joint facility I would I would but I really appreciate that that a idea mr. Dunn because also I believe miss Sizemore Heiser is the Planning Commission contact and as we know she won her election so after Tuesday that will be vacant so on that that's a great idea yeah so 2032 so absolutely mr. Dunn you mentioned so it was like February and really what we did at the meeting today

[00:54:56] was hear from the county about what the 2032 process is and just kind of all get a level setting and the link is posted on their committee website and I am getting the you know the links all together and I'm happy to share but you know the history seems to be that like a 2014 the county really looked at the that's the code 2032 and there were three I just saved it to my desktop if I could just pull it up right here so the 2232 by state code has requirements that a public engagement process be had when it's referring to location the

[00:55:35] extent and the character so in 2012 it was kind of agreed upon that the bond process did due diligence about location right because people are voting on the bond there's clearly engagement but in 2022 the Planning Commission expressed interest understanding but I believe it's generally right but so not verbatim but in 2022 the Planning Commission wanted to have a more formal process because there seemed to be times when the school's projects were coming to the Planning Commission and the project information might have been incomplete or changed and they just want to really be sure that the community engagement

[00:56:14] piece was happening so that's what changed in 2022 and then earlier this year was it even last year might even 24 that the schools and the Planning Commission part of the Education part of the Planning Commission went over that the way that is being implemented now with 2232 is taking a really long time and so that brought us to the topic being on this joint committee today which is what's going on what has happened how can we make things better and as part of the presentation and I'll pull it up to share just among us they did outline four projects that the schools had gone through the 2232 and

[00:56:51] showed that it was above 60 days which is the minimum that is required for public engagement before it goes forward but the body can ask for more and so indeed it was more than 60 and it showed it was under one year so so we the next step is to have the staff are going to work more on it and really see if we could get to clarity on how to bring things to the Planning Commission that satisfy the 2232 that are more complete so there's not as much back and forth and using of time so that is the next step we don't expect that it will be

[00:57:27] updated by the January committee meeting the first one or the second but that is what came out of that and then I'll pause there because the next subject was about MOU, but I'll pause there. - Thank you, Mr. Dunn.

[00:57:43] - I just wanted to highlight, I believe that narrative is missing a very important chunk of information, and this is not from my personal involvement, but I can just tell you I've had dozens of hours of conversation about this and read a lot of stuff.

[00:58:01] So this committee, CPDC, I believe under the leadership of former school board member Karen Kees-Gamara, when she was chair of CPDC, devoted a year or two years of work, and I don't know if Miss Pitches was on at that time, to developing an entirely new approach to community engagement, basically solely intended or primarily intended to address the Planning Commission's concerns about 2232.

[00:58:33] Now, even though that was done, that very laborious time intensive work, and it was successfully implemented, I believe. It's at least partially reflected on the facility's website. In the conversation that Ms. Sizemore-Hyzer and I had with the Planning Commission last year, there was concerns expressed that it did not meet the Planning Commission's expectations, and former Planning Commission member, Ms. Strandley, had extensive thoughts on that and shared at that time different documents by email and otherwise.

[00:59:03] So just be aware that there is that piece out there that you might need to consider and wade through all of the documents. - Yes, thank you. And I did wanna say that I did request that our staff send to the county a link to the communications process that we have.

[00:59:24] And I will resend it around, my email's super slow, but I'm not sure if the county received that. But you're right, so there's some disconnects here. It seems like ensuring that whatever we put forward is as complete as possible is really the linchpin, that that seemed to rise to the top of the conversation.

[00:59:47] - There was also some concern about the fact that there was perceived to be, and maybe Mr. Davis knows this, an MOU that was not entirely lawful, and FCPS was using that, and the planning commission disagreed and when they discovered that.

[01:00:05] So that's a whole thing as well. And again, I'm referring to things that preceded my time, and I'm sure there are people who can discuss this at greater length, but just these are things that need to be resolved within 2232, it's definitely not a neat little package, it's got a lot of hot messes in there.

[01:00:28] - Yeah, I agree, and I think the key takeaway from the 2232 conversation, at least in my mind this morning, was discretion. There is, the state code is very broad in terms of what it allows localities to do when they interpret and implement the 2232 process. So we just have to have a conversation with the county side and the planning commission to make sure that we're getting back to something that everybody can be on the same page with.

[01:00:54] - And that's a good segue to the MOU, but before I talk about that, I wanted to share that I had asked, in hearing that the, Mr. I'm happy to wait, I don't want you to, are you okay, okay. In an effort to be more clear about the expectations and not rely on agreements or assumptions.

[01:01:14] I said, does the Board of Supervisors in the county have policy or regulation or something that we could really code in so that we all know? And the response was, well, we wanna keep our flexibility, which is fine, but not to the point where it creates a lack of things being done on time and included.

[01:01:31] So there was this kind of conversation about, let's be flexible, but we also need to know what we're doing. So going into the MOU, I know our staff has started compiling MOUs for all sorts of different facilities, and really the ones I've seen have pretty much all been out of date.

[01:01:49] And I shared an example of four different high schools around my district that all had different MOUs, ranging from 2003 or 2007 to 2014. And so the commitment there from the county and our staff was to gather existing MOUs to see what was out there although I said well if they're all expired I'm not sure you know we could just start new with a new template but really the point that I made is that our community use policy needs to be updated with what we needed to have and I know it was updated maybe two years ago but there's stuff in it that needs it needs more clarity based on what I am thinking from this

[01:02:29] joint committee meeting as well as my participation as our liaison to the Fairfax County Athletic Council, FCAC, Fairfax County Athletic Council, because there is a lot of wasted time and money and a lot of frustration at the joint facility use, I think because these MOUs are out of date and there are not agreements written down that are updated.

[01:02:52] So I do see it as part of the joint committee plan because we're trying to save resources and until we get our policy with what we need to deliver our mission and what the community needs ironed out then the mou comes from there so it's a big ball of yarn yeah and there are things on the table like the turf allocation and i said well allocation and use and maintenance are all tied together and if we just have a turf allocation policy which is i think what exists from 2011 and then we have a maintenance like it's got to all come together because otherwise

[01:03:28] we remain in this position of maintaining facilities for the entire community, and then we're using our instructional dollars now more and more to do that, and that is lessening our ability to meet our mission. So that's my lens, is I want to get us out of the business of maintaining facilities for the entire community's use.

[01:03:47] I want it to be a fair share. Sorry, can you clarify, these MOUs, are these MOUs with third-party organizations like soccer clubs and other organizations? Some are. It varies. There is no template. could be a high school, the school board, and the board of supervisors.

[01:04:06] It could be a boosters club, a high school, private or non-profit soccer, you know, sports league, and the park authority. There's many iterations and not a format, and so-- - And they're not limited to just athletic. I mean, that was one example.

[01:04:22] So, like, for example, our SAC MOU, for the SAC classroom spaces, that's a big one. - 1988. - 1988, correct. could even go into you know shared parking lots things like that so it's I mean dozens of MOUs across a whole bunch of different topics well and even the MOUs with the parking lots that's a good point Mr. McDaniel because facilities like we recently our board signed a lease for tens of thousands of dollars to lease space for our school buses to park now what if there's a library parking lot or you know something that's undeveloped we could park it there seemingly for free

[01:04:58] or at least for costs to the county rather than paying a private provider to lease that space so that's part of the shared or joint use or co-location that's going to come up on the agenda i believe at the second january meeting but there's no mou for that kind of thing you see or no standard waiter or even approach it and at a minimum we should know what our legal obligations are if they are legal because mous generally are not legally binding but we should know what our promises are informal or otherwise and be able to categorize those and have those in the spreadsheet a database or something else, and update them, but I'd also say sunset them, because there

[01:05:36] might be some organizations that have gone out of business or some sports that are no longer being practiced, and I do know that the use of our fields are increasingly encumbered by outside organizations.

[01:05:51] I have a middle school where I recently put in a cricket field, right? there's not a cricket team at the middle school and so that is an investment I believe a hundred thousand dollars or in that neighborhood of dollars now if the middle school decides it wants to use that field for something else then we might be creating a legal liability so there might be not just legal agreements but legal risks associated with this but there's also a question that I think from a strategic level if you take a step back does FCPS want to own athletic

[01:06:27] field, right? Like, if they're being used by, you know, outside organizations, perhaps FCPS could make a decision at some point, well, we just want to hand over those to the park authority to manage or the county to manage as a common resource. We'll use them sometimes, they'll use them sometimes, and then they're off our books. We don't have to pay for them anymore. Just kind of like outsourcing responsibility. I'm not advocating for that, but we do need to be thinking broader, because I do appreciate Ms. Mayor's point, if we're spending budget dollars that are for the public that's not our mission

[01:06:58] our mission is the students yeah exactly um and this is why i i asked at the outset that the park authority be at the table because when all three of us are at the table that's when we start to see these things and um exactly i mean i asked today to our mou's legally binding do we want a contract like that's we need to figure that stuff out and write it down um because you know the example i like Abe was my daughter's in Southlake's varsity soccer and the last time the turf allocation policy was reviewed of them, she was one year old.

[01:07:33] And we're having all these problems and I don't wanna leave these problems for the next future boards. We try to do our policies every five years, maybe that's the thing. And I do hear from the County Athletic Council, Mr. Dunn, that indeed there are more private recreational groups coming in, and again, what is our mission?

[01:07:48] It's to educate kids, it's to provide our residents' use and then, so that's why that community's policy update so important because we can articulate that that as a school board that's the hierarchy and when we run out of space and money well that's just it I've also learned that no other county around us has any kind of community use like we do loud in Prince William whether it's because they have parks and rec space or what but nobody does what we do and I think that what I'm seeing is there's a lot of miscommunication and dispersed work and I really think we got to figure

[01:08:23] out how to get out of the business of managing the community's use of our schools because that's not our job so and do we even get those community use dollars so those come back to us i don't think so and that's something that could also be stipulated or we recognize like what's in kind right if we if we park school buses at a library well that could be in kind and it needs something more sophisticated and succinct than what we're doing now that's a great question it depends on who you ask we get a portion of community use dollars I think we and there's a budget question out there there's a response from the budget

[01:09:02] department I have to go back and dig up but it's a very small portion of the community use dollars that's collected like I think it's a few hundred thousand dollars it's not it's not all that much you know what the total revenue for convenience is I do not off the top of my head I don't want to say one way or the other if the the split of the community use feed is kind of a it's a little convoluted so basically the county collects the fees and gives us our share of the fees and you know I mean I I guess I've always struggled with

[01:09:40] community use I've never dived into it but why if it's our buildings right clearly our buildings and we're letting them be used I mean if if there's a third party who uses the Fairfax County Government Center do we we don't get a cut of that and we're not the reservation agent for that so why would the county be the reservation agent for for community use if it's our building our land and and they are budget constrained that seems like the opportunity to I mean we could just contract out to a third party not the county to manage this on behalf and make it more profit centric right I don't

[01:10:18] disagree with you so it's it's I know Mellie you've been really on top of the community use side of the house because you've done a lot of research yeah if I'm saying anything that's not accurate correct me please no I agree with you I I mean, I think that's the question, like that could be something the CBDC works on.

[01:10:35] You know, something that I've been trying to do through this work and with the Athletic Council is find that kind of information to understand and to, in some ways, to lessen, like, well, this is the school's property and the county's property and the park's property, in some ways.

[01:10:50] But then when it comes to, well, we're paying the bill, like a great example is the stadium bathrooms, right? So the stadium bathrooms, so 15 high schools did not have bathrooms, including Southlake's porta-potties. So the previous board authorized having them installed. Took three years, I don't know if it was 22, 32, took a lot of permitting, and they got installed prior to this school year.

[01:11:10] So then community use is like, great, so how do we get the keys? But the thing is, we staff them, we clean them, we secure them, we light them, we pay for the water. And so I brought this to the Athletic Council earlier this year and I explained that, and other sports, some teams were like, well, yeah, when we have like a tournament, do pay a thousand dollars for the weekend to have FCPS provide that service and so all these years right we're not being paid for that and that's why we're dipping into instructional dollars so I've been really pleased with NCS has seen that and been like okay yeah we do need to

[01:11:45] have like a legal liability waiver and a plan for security and are we going to need cameras and like that's just standard stuff that we don't have so I think that's a really good case study and we can use that to say, "Okay, now how do we expand that to all these other things that we've been footing the bill for, and we just can't do anymore?"

[01:12:04] Maybe we could have done it, but we can't, because we need that for instruction. If we're looking at naming rights, or we've had discussions of naming rights, other source of revenue, and we're limited by law in generating fees, so I'm not quite sure if there's a legal reason, maybe we need a legal opinion on this, if that's something that would prevent us from managing our own facilities.

[01:12:24] I don't think we would be precluded from that though, but that just seems like something that we could do to generate money, especially if we dedicate 100% of community use fees to maintaining our infrastructure, because looking at the CIP, and perhaps Ms. Davis has a comment, our deferred maintenance backlog is we're spending a fraction of what we're supposed to be spending.

[01:12:47] - I mean, our deferred maintenance backlog is, what was it, 300 and some million dollars right now, so it's incredible. And to your point, not only that to maintain them, but there's damage involved that we have to come through and take care of the damage sink or whatever it is. So there's a lot of fees involved in just that one MOU.

[01:13:06] - Well, thank you. And I know Mr. Muick and Mr. Gordon, their offices have been pulling stuff together. Like we had that call with the cancellations and really the cancellations are a symptom of the problem, right? So the county is concerned and we've reduced it way low. When we went over those numbers, most of the can, the highest number amount for cancellations were because of maintenance issues.

[01:13:27] And so if we're looking at this problem of cancellations, well, they're getting canceled because things are broken and not able to be used. And so I think that idea is getting elevated, but it's not really coming forward as the thing that we really need to end. Maybe, yeah, naming rights for more money, but this structure, I think, has worn its use out.

[01:13:47] And we need to, I'm trying to show data to support that finding, to help us move forward. That's my goal with this, but the policy is what is driving this setup. - Can I also ask, is your Joint Facilities Board intending to discuss with the county?

[01:14:08] They've talked about doing a special bond issuance, and please correct me if I'm using the wrong terminology, to do early childcare, like expanding SAC, or do you know what I'm talking about? And my concern is, they're doing this.

[01:14:25] I've talked to the superintendent before, and she said the county has not approached her to have a conversation and it seems our schools are the ideal location if you wanna have more daycare, right? And, or expand SAC, transform it into something else. Why aren't we involved in that conversation?

[01:14:41] Because instead of going out and building new buildings, which is costly, it's very expensive to build now, use some of our underutilized school space across the county. - I haven't, maybe I haven't, I've heard nebulous of discussions about bonding for that but i do know that when we started with the joint facilities task force sac specifically came up but the we love our acronyms sac is being discussed by skipped so the skipped committee which i think miss st john cunning and i can't remember who else is on

[01:15:18] that from our side but they're kind of taking a focus on the sac structure which is part of that early childhood education um but uh no i haven't um really seen any forward progress to your point and this committee's charge as per the board matter that the supervisors put in place earlier this year is to not introduce any new ideas for funding it's to reduce it's to find reductions now however our staff has said well we can talk about the split of the bond because we have double the amount at least double the amount of square feet and half the bond comes to us and half the the pond goes to the county but our buildings are used more and so that's why

[01:15:57] that occupancy use there's like a number of the occupancy rate like how many hours a day our buildings are used and it's way up there and it's used by a lot of people that sometimes make a mess right so I'm in damage things so I also want to elevate that but it's not on the agenda yet so I think before we talk about new money which I don't see an appetite for we could at least talk about the distribution of the bond and I have all sorts of questions about the bond program how it's done and how it's prioritized I don't I can't really find the foundational documents of that so I agree if they have the opportunity to do

[01:16:34] a special bond for child care then that raises questions of why don't we have the opportunity to do a special bond like a green bond right or special bond focus on facilities to kind of do a one-time you know upgrade of our facilities for maintenance the infrastructure backlog or to simply cover some of our dire needs right 41 year renovation backlog is not to anyone's benefit especially given the ramping community use we are often the only game in town for most of the facilities across the county we just don't have you know a wide number of community centers geographically

[01:17:09] dispersed we have onesies twosies here and there and and and so we need to take advantage of that and press the county to help us if there is flexibility in that bond authority and we're often told there's not until they decide they do have flexibility, we need to find out what that is.

[01:17:26] And I don't know if that means hiring our own independent financial advisory firm that is expert on bonds and such, but we do need to get independent advice and not just rely on the information that we're told, which I feel is perhaps not fulsome.

[01:17:44] - I mean, I think there's so much work that can be done here. This is why, you know, I continue to say we could spend more time on this. So today we hosted Chairman Jeff McKay at Western High School for a tour. so myself, so I scheduled the tour and Sandy Anderson, Riccardi Anderson and Robin Lady joined.

[01:18:02] And so that was after the joint committee meeting this morning, a lot of this stuff was fresh in my mind and we were talking about some of these things in the 2232 and I suggested I think we really should be talking about this more often and together and I don't know that there was much interest in that but that's why I think the data, the more we can share the data, it will be compelling to do it.

[01:18:23] I'm also wondering, Ms. Pitches, Do you have a different approach in any of this? Do you guys do community use? I'd love to know. Can you share with us? - Thank you, Ms. Pitchett, Chair Pitchett. - Sorry. We have a community use person that we employ, Giselle Gray, she's housed at Fairfax High School.

[01:18:42] And the way we do it, so when youth clubs use our fields, they are charged a fee, it's usually per athlete. I don't know if that charge is different all the time. And we have churches that use Fairfax High School or some of the other buildings.

[01:19:04] And everything gets scheduled through FCPS and Giselle. Yeah, and I believe 15% of the revenue goes to you guys. I don't know who in the county receives it. And then 85% remains with the city school board Fairfax High School that's how I mean it's a lot easier when you obviously we have four schools but we just having that one person sort of take care of it all and we have a there is a method to the madness like we know that we have to

[01:19:44] pay Fairfax County 15% and that is to cover electricity custodial staff to clean up anything just all the things all the utilities and we do have and we do FCPS does have a community's office and we use that as well right what I'm noticing though is that it's a lot of work and again nobody else in the area does this and I also know that there or I've heard that there are sometimes when school staff will schedule something where they need to rearrange an orchestra

[01:20:21] concert or back-to-school night and like they need to have the priority and if our policy doesn't say that and if there's an expectation that we're gonna there's an expectation now that principals are gonna do this stuff and like we just have to remove that because they are focused on instruction and even though they're not like directly in the system they're coordinating with NCS and it's it's just created this untenable situation in all sorts of ways in the school services agreement it says that all school in our agreement with you guys all school events come first so if something gets scheduled through community use and then let's say they decide to have a band

[01:20:58] concert that's so that is think that's interesting to know and I wonder if that's gonna be part of the MOU pulled it you know that agreement pull and that is true but there's instances where maybe something is canceled last minute it like cancels a whole tournament which we don't want either we don't want people to you know or there's an expect like so why did you have to change it so much or you need this block there's just a lot to it that is not codified that again creates frustration and wastes of time and money so that's really where I'm trying to get everything like and whatever we come to you might not please everyone because we have limited space and limited dollars but that's the

[01:21:36] reality yeah so in the city the stadium turf and Draper Park and Stafford which are the two athletics fields that they're across um fairfax bullbard from the high school are all maintained by parks and rec um the school board maintains the other fields that we just turf like baseball field and softball field we maintain um those fields but like i said we we do contribute a certain amount of money every year to parks and rec for the high school turf to help them with the

[01:22:14] Yep. There's something about the practice fields that the parks manage that. But then now there's this thing with the green days where teams are practicing out of season, right? So then that's now creating an issue because the community leagues, like again, because it's not clear who gets what and how things are prioritized. So this is the culmination of probably like three or four months or so. No, I agree. I love the conversation. I know we started late, but I do wanna end on time, eight minutes.

[01:22:46] We do need one quick housekeeping item on approving the minutes, but I do like the free flow conversation, and one idea that I just came up with, and I'm gonna add this to the, so we talked about virtual power plants, ESCOs, Triple P's. I do think once we get our community members on board and we're starting to create these kind of working groups, naming rights needs to be something that we look at.

[01:23:08] I know I've brought that up to the, I brought that up to the superintendent a couple of times. I think there's some appetite to look into that, but we probably do some homework around that. - Can I go back to an earlier agenda item, which is you had asked for input on the staggering of members and there is a recent example of which I'm aware in New Mexico where they shifted from a elected public utility commission to a appointed public utility commission and they did want to have staggering.

[01:23:44] was three members, and they started all three members at the same time, but they had one member appointed for one year, second member appointed for two years, third member appointed for three years, and so everyone started at the same time, but different durations.

[01:24:00] And so when people were interviewing, they understood I'm interviewing for a one-year position or I'm interviewing for a two-year position, right? And so you could start all five members at the same time and just have two for one year, two for two years, and one for three years, and then it'll naturally rotate.

[01:24:19] It will be a little uneven since there's an odd number, but that's one solution to address your earlier question. - No, I agree. I think that's, so that was the intention of, I think that we're on the same page. It maybe wasn't outlined clearly, but that, so they would all start April 1st of 2026, and then one year, two year, three year, two members, two members, one member.

[01:24:41] I just think that, and yes, whether we, you know, maybe it's one of those things where it's like, well, maybe I don't want to do this, I'll sign up for one year and see how it goes, that type of conversation. But no, I completely agree with that. So, all right, let's get these minutes approved.

[01:24:57] So we're gonna go back to item 1.02, approval of the minutes. And Kevin, I know you're gonna make those two technical adjustments, inserting a link, and community from community to school board. - Yes. - Is that done, or are you just, - You're going to do it?

[01:25:14] - Yeah, I'm going to do it. - Okay, all right. So that will be done. Is there a motion to approve the minutes as discussed with those two technical edits? Ms. Mirrens, is there a second? Mr. Dunn, any discussion? All in favor? That's unanimous, thank you.

[01:25:31] With that, our next CPDC meeting is January 15th, 2025. We might adjust the time. I know that 4:30 may be tough for folks, especially when bringing community members on board. But it's here, 4:30, Gatehouse 1600. This Fairfax County School Board Conference of Planning and Development for the reading is adjourned as of 7:25 p.m.

[01:25:50] Thank you.

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