Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board PEC Meeting, Monday, December 15, 2025

Date: Monday, December 15, 2025
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 39m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m4jFFzQ2yQ
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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[00:08:16] Okay, this December 15th, 2025 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board Engagement Committee will now come to order. Okay, so the first thing, and you guys have seen in your office and seen on the board map, on board docs, and the discussion about proclamations and the red lines where we were just trying to tighten up the proclamation language.

[00:08:42] And just if you guys have any questions about that, I think one of the things that we were that we thought about recently was how we that is not included here because we had a proclamation that I brought up which was the family engagement proclamation and how we have that proclamation that a board member brings up and how we make it a an annual proclamation like what are your thoughts about that like certain ones because we've never recognized our family engagement team.

[00:09:19] And I kind of think that that's the engagement. Our community family engagement team should be annually recognized. - Are there any proclamations? 'Cause one of the things that they did in coming up with the list that they currently have is they collapsed several into one, et cetera.

[00:09:37] Are there any proclamations that it would feel natural for that one to be slotted into? That's where I would start.

[00:09:53] - Yeah, I mean, we're going to do that, but I'm sorry, I'm not following you. - No, but like where it would collapse. I don't think that it would collapse into anything because it covers a lot. So family engagement would cover like family liaisons.

[00:10:11] It also covers interpreters. - Do we have a list of what is currently in there? - Yes. - We'll pull that list. I will note that this isn't that proclamation.

[00:10:27] Another board member has also brought up needing to do an ISTE recognition, which is separate from the proclamations. The recognition would be more like we do with VHSL and others, and we don't do an ISTE recognition, and they've asked about that too.

[00:10:43] I think Ms. St. John, coming to your point, this goes to a broader question of do we need to look at the categories or what's included? - I'd be in favor of that, but I don't have any of that material.

[00:11:02] - So if you look at, did you... - That's a fun, whoa. I love the infinity screen.

[00:11:39] - That includes proclamations and recognitions by month. - Can you remind me what a recognition is? - Recognitions are similar to proclamations, although the language is shorter, it's around 150 words.

[00:12:01] It's more like a paragraph and it's for things like VHSL, National Board Certified Teachers, Purple Ribbon, all of those slightly truncated.

[00:12:20] - What month is it that is in, like, yeah? - We did it in, was it November? I think it was November. - The other question I don't know if we solved at the end of last pack was to add the one for the community advisory committees as well that you did as one of your recognitions last year, Ms. St. John Cunning.

[00:12:46] I don't remember if that was added and I'd have to check, but I don't necessarily see it here. That was in July. Oh no, it's there, sorry, it's there. - Yeah, Mr. McElveen brought that.

[00:13:03] - The reason I'm trying to find something to insert it into is because we could literally have 100 proclamations a year for every job classification so like I think it could go into the one that says school staff appreciation also that yeah you remind me what the name of it is again Marcia it was the family engagement it was a community engagement family and community engagement is what it was so

[00:13:39] it folded in like really are the whole office of family and school partnerships and that includes family liaisons, that includes interpreters, that includes our libraries, the people that man those library centers, our community engagement reps that are out and registering people.

[00:14:02] I think there's about 3,000 people that fall under that. I mean, I'm happy to roll it into anything else. Can you put the – I'm sorry.

[00:14:22] I was trying to see if there's any place else that would make sense. Just a unique category, that's all, because we've got the hippie instructors as well and the family lit instructors.

[00:14:59] I mean, we could put it under staff because they're all staff, and I know what you're saying. We could have... Well, maybe we could think about this and the other one that was mentioned until the next meeting and have ideas for how it could be included.

[00:15:24] I'm not opposed to adding one, but, you know... Well, and the process, too, I wasn't... The process to doing it is editing the governance manual. Right, the process. would make a recommendation that would go to the full board and then they would approve it for any one that we wanted to add as an annual proposal any change okay

[00:15:51] the recommendation's been around february but we could talk to the board member who's brought it to our attention um yeah we'll make a note to ask the board member who brought it to our attention as to when it would make the most sense i think it was by february so maybe september or december december definitely has been an open time for us like we only you guys only have that one

[00:16:28] proclamation um we have no proclamations coming up at the second december meeting so that's definitely has room in advance of the next meeting could we highlight on here the ones that are not tied specifically you know like if we've just chosen to call it that or whether there's like to actually recognize that work was done previously?

[00:16:52] - Yeah, the one that is, we went with this last round of edits, we went through and double-checked everything. The one that is really FCPS specific is the January one for Mentors and Volunteers Week, 'cause that was actually nationally recognized in April, but there was so much in April, and we had previously done it in January, that's why we left it there.

[00:17:17] Most of the other ones though, we cross-referenced, are added in for months. - All right, my advocacy would be to visit this at the next meeting and make a decision.

[00:17:33] If we do it, we can have the change in place by February if the board's amenable. - Okay, then just for reference, the next meeting of the Public Engagement Committee is February 23rd.

[00:17:48] - Then they could have the change in place by March. - There you go.

[00:18:05] i don't know if you guys have any other questions about the proclamations and the redlining and any other things there that you would like to which item are you on well i'm i'm we're still with proclamation discussion because basically um you know we were just going to discuss and you guys have everything the redlining on it everything that was done on it i don't have anything attached to that agenda item yeah the red lines that already were already done were already approved by the board with the last term of the last uh year we did not do any new edits okay for um

[00:18:45] proclamations for this round because we weren't sure what needed to be done happy to do them though to have them ready for february no i apologize i apologize i had them in my book and i second guessed myself because i thought we had done it but i'm like oh maybe we did and i had that question anyway so um so um the next item that we're going to go to

[00:19:14] is um strategic governance manual and you guys should have the red line for who's you guys have it no yep it's posted and i'm happy to walk you through these are edits that are coming out of my office um miss st john cunning would you like me to walk through why we're proposing what we propose do i have to do the motion for it does someone have to you don't have to do the motion i would just say that they seem pretty straightforward i'd like to make a motion

[00:19:46] to accept them we're changing the time and re and and making it clearer um what the pro who speaks to what or what the categories so i'd make the motion to accept these and move them onto the full board i don't think the time change matters much because the lottery now but it does disincentivize people from feeling like they have to get up at the crack of dawn to do it, and it keeps staff from having to do anything that early.

[00:20:23] Right. Part of the issue is the way that Google has now changed their forms. It's prevented us from being able to set times for it to open, so we have to manually open and manually close. Previously, the former deputy who was serving as interim, because of her hours, she tended to be here at 6 a.m. in the morning and so she was opening it but my staff I don't currently have anybody and I don't want to ask anybody to be in the office at 6 a.m. so that's why we're proposing eight which is when the office opens it changes nothing for the people who are actually filling

[00:21:00] out the board I mean like right so they just have to yeah so I'll make that motion if somebody wants a second well from what I can tell we've got the time change to 8 a.m. some stuff getting bolded and then iterating out who the speakers are like what categories they fall into

[00:21:30] and eliminating the text at the bottom which basically did the same thing oh i'm sorry yeah it's poorly formatted sorry about that um so what it does here is adds if there's more than three just making sure to know that the um there that there will be a lottery if there are more than and three student speakers and 10 individuals.

[00:22:00] The previous language had it be determined by a random lottery for everything, and that the student slots will not revert. Speaker wait list will be created. This just clarifies the language here. And then just some moving things around to make a separate guidelines section.

[00:22:21] And then just clarifying that someone who may speak on the wait list, if they have not spoken on the last two regular meetings before it was a case of anyone and everyone, and we had some questions about that. Then language that if a speaker registers but does not speak, they are eligible to speak at the next meeting.

[00:22:41] And then this next one is speaker decorum and expectation section I added, just to have that clarified. I know there was some question from some people about wanting to make sure that there was more language added to the decorum, but I think that was about the general meeting, and I didn't add that into community participation.

[00:23:00] in terms of public hearing and then i updated in terms of public hearing i added that it will close 432 work days we've had some issues where it hasn't been easy to get out the tech check emails so we updated that language to give a little bit more time to the public and our staff to make sure that everyone has what they need then we added the signage to the portion of public hearing because it was only in community participation before and then just updated this email because it had the old citizen participation email there as well yeah i'm fine

[00:23:40] with all of it so can we have a motion to i already made a motion okay okay okay it's approved um the the only thing that was discussed before with decorum and this we discussed this in terms of what the expectation is in terms of what decorum should be and if the chair has the ability to cut office speaker if they're not following decorum they do i think there's an open question as to

[00:24:16] whether it's politically wise right and there's also so we do have legal guidance from council on literally the only thing that a speaker can't say at the at the podium is one of the words the fcc bars from being broadcast right that's the only legal thing um it's like the seven words that carlin used to talk about right and so there's no legal requirement that there is public participation but if we're going to have public participation there needs to be a wide berth for what people can say even if it's objectionable no and I recognize

[00:24:54] this I think this discussion started from a couple of sessions ago when we had very robust participation and there was some people that were shouting you know the audience and I do believe somewhere escorted out and so it's like that's from the audience, right?

[00:25:18] Not from-- - Right, but then it went down to like, if people are speaking or like if, I mean, obviously whatever we say is decorum and if the chair could cut someone off would also obviously apply to us unless, you know, so that as the same decorum we expect from the public, we should expect from each other.

[00:25:40] So, and you know, I guess I just wanted your thoughts and your ideas and what you're saying is, it's the seven words. - Well, the chair has the authority to cut somebody off at the podium. I've only seen it done once. And if I was chair, king of the world, I wouldn't cut anybody off unless they put us in jeopardy with the FCC.

[00:26:07] Sometimes allowing people to share even objectionable comments is illustrative, right? People teach us, everybody teaches us something. Some teach us what to do and some teach us what not to do. - Right, I think it's the appetite what people have for what's acceptable and I just I know we had discussed it before so I didn't want to just drop it in terms of and I think it sounds reasonable with I'll ask if we have your foster to send committee members the guidance that he provided previously right I think that would be helpful

[00:26:38] because that that way we know what's acceptable and so then we will move on to the next subject that we had discussed and we kind of discussed this and we really didn't oh well I should follow the script huh yeah so forth so

[00:27:14] we're gonna advisory committees and the public engagement committee and the ongoing questions about the existence of the committee considering that now we are going to be creating a toolkit and we've been kind of on hold with a toolkit because IT has been trying to give us the platform that we've spoken with IT we've gotten together with them like which would be the best platform that could be used that's not an internal well that's a out facing instead of inward facing and I think they've come up with they've been investigating a

[00:27:51] cup a couple of platforms and I think they've determined the best one and so now I think we're a go with that and I know our colleague Sandy Anderson has developed toolkits before and was chair of chair of PAC before and is willing to develop those toolkits so if we have our manuals if we have everything we have the toolkits then the question was what is the function of pack I think if if miss Anderson wants that she's got great design skills but if she wants to design something along the lines of what peck has been talking about I think peck

[00:28:29] would still want to kick the tires on it after absolutely and then we can vote to send it on to the full board for approval I'm eager to do that I think a great it'll be i've had so many advisory committee members of the years be like i have no idea what's going on when they first get in um and i'm always trying to get them to you know go have coffee with the chair of the committee or whatever but having a toolkit i think will be very helpful no right and i think that it will it's something that they can keep referring to because the way we've discussed it it would be like little little lessons uh that people could keep going back to

[00:29:03] along obviously with going and having coffee and meeting other people but um definitely that design with our input of what we would like to see um put in there and so i'm just throwing that out as a consideration um we could go back and also look at the original motion language had details about what needed to be included in the toolkit right um that'd be helpful too okay mr mckelland do you have any ideas okay i think there's eagerness around the next discussion item

[00:29:42] for sure yes the school board student representative the second 5.10 um and there's you guys should have a form of thing or it should be of how many representatives other school districts have and more than anything it's just we started discussing it and i think where we kind of got stuck on was where and how that representative would be selected so i'm a big fan of like when we're changing something to make it as easy on the people who have to change it as possible i'm

[00:30:19] wondering if and i'm completely open to the number of people like i see alexandria has three i'm not opposed to having three i don't think we should have three at the meeting at the same time i think we can help relieve the burden while giving the experience to people if they rotate through and And we can put, you know, like you go every third or they can pick the ones themselves.

[00:30:42] Maybe they have conflicts or whatever. So I would prefer like if we're going to do it first, maybe we select them, the two or three people, the same way that the other one is selected. And then they rotate through like every second or third meeting, depending on how many we pick.

[00:31:04] The other thing I would note is that I heard rumors this weekend that in the next census, they might add another magisterial district. We're going to be squeezed tight on that dais. So maybe it'll coincide with the renovation of Luther Jackson and it won't be a problem.

[00:31:23] But I'd be in favor of two or three people. Maybe we add a second one and then the following year we check in to see how it went and we add a third. I think the more kids that we can get experience doing this, the better.

[00:31:43] - Yeah, I mean, I think if we wanted to open up too i i could support that and i think um i maybe maybe we would start off saying that they would rotate you know every other meeting um and then you know if they as you said if they have conflicts then they could um you know switch right i think that would be helpful given we have seen depending on the student rep some are able to make most of the meetings i think this year for

[00:32:18] instance Ms. McConaughey wasn't able to make the last one because she had a chorus concert the same night as the board meeting and her course teacher just would not let her out of it there was another they shouldn't because school comes first and we we stress that to them that school comes first but I think there are times when they're not able to make events and I know there's been events that she's wanted to participate just with the student development leadership program and she's not been able to do that either due to the

[00:32:49] complex so i think if there was two they would be able to split the work i think that geographic thing was something we discussed i'm going to throw something out there just to see what your ideas are um i think like you said doing it the way we we've always done it is easy but now that we've got this leadership cohort going like what were your thoughts about having one that is the way it's always been done and then selecting one from our leadership cohort just a thought

[00:33:28] no i mean i think my preference at least for the first year is not to change the overall structure of the election process i know some years they've had like 120 run through sac so i mean you already have a process and a lot of people participating it's gone up you know there were years in the past where you'd have like 12 right and it's 10 10 times that now so i'd stick with that process the other thing i wanted to um mention is that in the old days um the uh the expectation was that the students would also attend the work board work sessions and i haven't seen that since i've been

[00:34:06] back on the board i may have stopped during covid right but i think they're struggling to fit it in with their schedules because we tell them that school a is to come first b um i think it also depends just on the availability to have a car like last year our student rep had a car this year our student rep doesn't have a car which has made her getting to things more difficult but we now have a an uber set for students we worked with transportation and the different departments and FCPS and what we

[00:34:43] identified was the best way to was to create a uber kid account so to speak and so where the drivers are more vetted and so we can offer a student uber which has made things a little bit easier particularly for our student leadership students but not all parents are still comfortable with their kids taking that even with the additional verifications so I think with the work session the biggest issue is balancing with school and getting here during the day when the parents work make a motion that tech over email work up the

[00:35:23] language for a new new student representative what is it called on the regular meeting agenda new new business item that says and we'll work this language out but like adding a second member from a do we want to do a different region or different pyramid it's I think it's geographic location 'cause you could have one from Hayfield Pyramid and Edison Pyramid and they're the same geographic.

[00:35:57] So east, west, north, south. - I think for the first year, it would be, I think it's very hard. I think it, I don't foresee a situation where you'd have two TJ kids, right. But I do think just starting it by saying different high school pyramids, just to start, right.

[00:36:18] - And it's kind of been all over the place since I've been on the board. It's never been the same school twice in a row. It didn't used to be that way, but it's gotten a lot better in part 'cause I think student leadership program. - So the board will, or the committee will work out language to provide to the board for new business that would add a second person that would trade off responsibilities and meeting attendance between the two and that they would be from different schools.

[00:36:50] - I think that's a great idea. And then we could just move this forward 'cause there was just a lot of debating back and forth. - And I can in the interim look at governance manual to see what else has to be changed to make it work?

[00:37:06] - For a very related item, and I think Carl has mentioned this as well, is that I'd like to bring up in future PEC meetings, adding an additional board member for each district for the leadership development program, given the fact that we had 400 applications.

[00:37:25] I don't think, I mean, it's more logistics and Kevin may need more support, but we're already doing the stuff, you know maybe we can put it on the agenda for the next peck to move it forward so have two each board member would appoint two two okay i think that's a great idea because the kids loved it and the more again the more we can get students involved so i move that pec create a new business item in order to add a second member from a different high school pyramid as a student representative to the fairfax county school board that will trade off responsibilities and meeting

[00:38:03] attending great and we'll figure out the specific language over like google docs and such okay do you second all right it's unanimous for everyone at the table and yeah we are adjourned so the december 15 2025 meeting of the fairfax county school board public engagement committee is adjourned at 4 38 the next meeting of the public engagement committee will be held on february 23rd 2026. i know it's a busy week thank you for coming out i appreciate it

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