Coraggio Consulting Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, January 22, 2026 Date: Thursday, January 22, 2026 Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia Length: 4h 41m (video) Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDga876-MWI 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [00:00:18] This January 22nd, 2026 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board will now come to order. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a moment of silence and a performance of the national anthem by Centerville Elementary Strings under the direction of Molly Henry. [00:00:37] - I pledge allegiance to the flag. [00:02:38] - Can we have one more round of applause for our amazing students? [00:02:59] Agenda item 4.02 announcements. If you would like 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 www.fcps.edu/boarddocs. [00:03:18] Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on Cox Channel 99, Verizon Fios Channel 11, and live streamed on YouTube and our website at www.fcps.edu/livestream. [00:03:36] Agenda item 5.01, community participation. The next order of business is community participation. We welcome all community members who are here and those who have 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 www.fcps.edu/schoolboard. [00:04:00] During the signup process, community members acknowledge that they were informed of the school board's expectations the proper decorum when providing comments these expectations are also available online and with the printed agenda and meeting materials in the back of the room we ask audience members to be respectful of one another shouting and outbursts will not be tolerated please hold your applause until the conclusion of a speaker's remarks audience members may not join speakers at the podium and should remain in their seats including when recording or taking photos we are grateful to all those who have come to speak to us today thank you for your cooperation school board members [00:04:34] will be listening but not responding madam clerk please call the first speaker jeffrey litz good evening madam chair vice chair members of the school board and dr reed my name is jeffrey litz and i am the founding a founding member of the fairfax county federation of principal supervisors and administrators and as acting president for the past four years i represent nearly 1400 educational leaders who serve our schools staff and most importantly our students tonight marks [00:05:09] a historic moment for FCPS when this board votes to ratify the first ever collective bargaining agreement for our bargaining unit which is comprised of some of the best and brightest school leaders in our country you are not only simply adopting a contract you are affirming a shared belief that collaboration respect open dialogue are an essential component to providing strong nationally recognized schools and programs that help to ensure student success in 2023 you unanimously approve the first ever collective bargaining resolution in FCPS history, recognizing that principals, supervisors, and administrators, like all [00:05:46] educators, deserve a meaningful voice in the conditions that shape their work. The agreement before you aims to create improved working conditions so that our unit can do their best work for students. It provides stability, clarity, and fairness, allowing educational leaders to focus their time and energy where it matters most supporting teachers strengthening school communities and meeting the academic social and emotional needs of students when leaders are supported schools function more effectively and students thrive on behalf of our members thank you for your leadership your partnership your commitment to moving Fairfax County forward we look forward to continuing [00:06:26] this work together in service of every student and every family we serve thank you Aaron Sterling good evening school board members my name is Aaron Sterling and I serve as the interim vice president of Fairfax County federations of principal supervisors and administrators FCF PSA I'm here to speak on the historic agreement before you the approval of our first ever collective bargaining agreement as you consider this landmark agreement I urge you to consider the breadth of professionals who make up our bargaining [00:07:04] unit while we proudly include our senior managers directors and building principals we are more diverse than our title suggests our bargaining unit has over 400 distinct job titles across the entire school division. When you think of who is a member, think of educational specialists and assistant principals who represent our largest member groups, our Title IX investigators, our FERPA officer, our DSSs and DSAs. We have specialists for MTSS and behavior intervention, software and database engineers, senior security center Operational Analysts and Managers for Grounds Maintenance. The depth and complexity of our [00:07:43] roles and the collective experience within our bargaining group are critical to our service and our school division's excellence. They are the front line and behind the scenes professionals who work tirelessly every day to support our students, staff, family and our schools. [00:07:59] As you consider your vote, please consider our diversity and the vital services our members provide to our school system. The agreement is a shared commitment to world-class professional working environment for all represented by FCF PSA. Approving it is an investment in the entire fabric of our school divisions leadership and operational structure. It is a direct benefit to every student, family, staff, and schools. I want to thank the senior FCPS staff for their positivity and collaboration in this process. On behalf of all the diverse professionals I thank you for your commitment and respectfully urge you to [00:08:38] approve this foundational collective bargaining agreement thank you Katrina Chaney good evening school board members my name is Katrina Davilis Chaney and I currently serve as the interim treasurer for the Fairfax County Federation of principals supervisors and administrators I am here this evening to speak to you on this historic occasion as you consider the approval of our first-ever collective bargaining agreement this agreement is more than a [00:09:15] document it is a profound testament to the shared commitment of our entire membership spanning over 400 distinct job titles the CBA represents all of our dedicated school-based leaders as well as the essential central office professionals who keep our division running our members put in countless hours of behind-the-scenes work that allows our division to set national standards members of our organization provide essential leadership in areas such as maintaining buildings, supporting teachers, building community partnerships, transporting students, supporting technology, providing instructional frameworks, ensuring [00:09:52] safe educational environments, and many other key roles within the division. The depth and scope of their work touches every FCPS building, student, parent, and community member. This CBA lays a powerful new foundation for collaboration across the division. [00:10:10] By clearly defining our partnership, it gives us a vital framework to work as one unified team. It will allow us to bridge the gap between different parts of our system, ensuring that every leader, regardless of their location or title, is equipped and empowered to focus on our single most important mission: the success of every student in our schools. [00:10:31] Approving this collective bargaining agreement is an investment in unity, stability, and world-class professional leadership across this entire school division. On behalf of all the diverse professionals we represent, I thank you for your commitment to this process and respectfully urge you to approve this foundational agreement this evening. [00:10:49] Thank you for your consideration and for all of your work. Bacall Bacall, Jackie Buckingham, Keena McEvoy. [00:11:09] Good evening. I'm Keena McEvoy, co-founder of the non-profit DMV Unplugged and member of the group FCPS Parents for Intentional Technology. [00:11:24] FCPS must turn their attention away from technology companies selling a product and focus on experts neuroscience and learning these experts are telling us that screen dependence at school is harming learning and overall development regarding technology like ai a precautionary principle must be utilized the newest tech cannot be presented as a harmless carrot after which we must race last week the brookings institution published a pre-mortem on ai and education their conclusion is quote given the current trajectory of generative artificial intelligence and its implementation and use, the potential risks to students overshadow the benefits." [00:11:59] Also last week, four experts testified before the U.S. Senate, including the following from Jared Cooney Horvath, cognitive neuroscientist: "When tech enters education, learning goes down, and it is all biological. It's not that tech isn't being used well enough. [00:12:14] We have evolved biologically to learn from other humans, not from screens, and screens circumvent that process." expert stated quote asking students to drill down on their schoolwork in an array of digital distractions isn't just bad for test scores it is inimical to learning end quote regarding ai's excuse me regarding fcps's rush into ai in partnership with open ai it's easy to understand why technology executives send their kids to schools that do not do this from the brookings ai report quote rhetoric arguing that technology adoption in and of itself represents innovation [00:12:52] and progress is not only false but undermines society ability society's ability to discern how to effectively harness ai to advance children's education end quote we do not know these answers if they even exist and our teachers children and families should not continue to be ai guinea pigs we are not preparing our children for the future by harnessing them to addictive products [00:13:12] built for corporate product profit thank you paula prosper successful completion of algebra one by eighth grade is promoted as a path to equity and access but how is this goal actually playing out for our students some fcps schools appear to achieve successful completion but they're reducing rigor removing topics and relying heavily on the decimals calculator that allows [00:13:51] students to complete sol problems without really understanding what they're doing these schools then recommend that their students repeat algebra in ninth grade to gain the full depth and breadth of algebra skills. This is not exactly successful completion in eighth grade, even though they may spin it that way. Those of us keeping to the full curriculum are pouring our heart and soul into providing supports for students who are working incredibly hard. Even with outsized efforts, some students are unable to find success, becoming frustrated and demoralized. These students also will repeat algebra in ninth grade, but with a crushed spirit [00:14:29] and a dislike of math. We can't wish every eighth grader into being developmentally ready for a high school level math course. We've always offered a foundational year of pre-algebra in eighth grade, yet FCPS plans to remove it. In the name of equity, we're forcing all our students into a single option and removing student-centered flexibility and choice. [00:14:52] Instead of refining our tools to enhance civil rights, we're cramming all students into a course that may not be serving their needs is this equitable i've not met a teacher or curriculum specialist who feels that pushing every single student into eighth grade algebra is a good idea not one single person except dr reed let's try let's stop trying to be bigger and better and faster than the supposed competition and instead focus on learning on fostering the skills and enjoyment and appreciation of math. Let's keep pre-algebra as an option for the 8th graders [00:15:31] for whom it is the right place. Thank you. Jack Shelton. Kathleen Mallard. Good evening, Superintendent Reed and FCPS School Board. I'm going to talk once again about student safety. [00:16:12] As we begin 2026 with a new Democrat governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Attorney General who fantasized about killing the children of his opponent, you're probably relieved that you no longer have to contend with that former governor and administration, which desperately tried to keep citizens, especially our young people, safe from gang members, MS-13 for example, human traffickers, which occurs in every high school and FCPS per your admission, child porn, violent criminals, etc. [00:16:45] A new governor is moving ahead at breakneck speed to overturn common sense safety precautions, and state Democrats are flooding the state legislature with bill proposals as soon as Governor Spanberger was sworn in. Some of their suggestions include reducing the severity of some robbery offenses, increasing parole eligibility, removing mandatory minimum sentences for rape and production and distribution of child porn, and recommending that local and state police not cooperate with ICE. [00:17:17] Knowing public school districts, Fairfax also included, to ignore Title IX, girls' sports protection and privacy in locker rooms. Some members of the FCPS school board embraced socialist teachings. A former member of Sizemore took her oath of office on a people's history. [00:17:35] That talks about the constitution, the two-party tradition, patriotism, even populist reforms are tools to keep the masses in their place. anyway fcbs school board as a whole has consistently pushed that far-left ideology this does not keep our students safe we need them to understand the realities of our culture [00:18:02] also policing pronoun usage george becerra good evening dr reed and school board members i'm here tonight to throw out some suggestions on student input first the renaming of the school board student representative to be the student superintendent student advisor councils represented and to the school board. [00:18:37] As I have learned two decades ago, SAC is the only body that is allowed to vote for who that person will be. Even if a candidate who makes the final candidate is not a SAC member, is not allowed to vote in the election. How democratic is that? From my understanding of the composition of SAC, there's no clear, fixed, or consistent way SCPS chooses their SAC representatives. [00:18:54] It allows each high school sponsor to do what they want. Maybe the group who should choose the student representative should be all the students in SGA at each high school instead of the 100 out of the 50,000 high school students you have. I do realize that most SGH classes are not represented of their school community in terms of race and gender, and most sponsors are not as diverse as our student body, but we must start somewhere for change to occur. [00:19:14] Dr. Reid, as you invent new parent input with your family vision groups, you now need to do this for your diverse student population. Second, there should be three student represented to the school board, just like the board's three at-large members. Third, for the student represented to have an official vote. [00:19:29] Time for the school board to mention this to Richmond in an official letter every year until it happens. At the same time, the student representative can state now how they would vote on matters during their student rep matters. Accountability works at all levels. Fourth, why does Langley, Madison, Langley, and Marshall have the graduation ceremonies at Constitution Hall? [00:19:46] Is this a privilege or entitlement for these schools? Has SCPS ever asked a student of other high schools if they would like to have their ceremony there? This opportunity should be given to all high schools and on a rotational basis. Finally, for SCPS to create a yearly student Congress conference where student leaders the county student human rights ambassadors academic clubs youth groups sga sac and more and more together to network and tackle issues together thank you very much please play the [00:20:19] video testimony submitted by panos haryatzi hello and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today i would like to talk about how technology at school impacts our students of course technology can be useful in education but when it is not deployed carefully and without proper safeguards it can do more harm than good and when that happens it should not be used by default simply because it exists. Right now classroom technology of CPS is creating significant collateral damage to learning. Students are routinely distracted and many are able to bypass existing internet filters with ease. Tools like Lightspeed have been proven ineffective and students [00:20:58] quickly discover workarounds that spread faster than IT can respond. This is a known and ongoing issue. As a result, this creates a growing burden on teachers. Teachers are being forced into the role of technology police, constantly monitoring screens and forcing rules and dealing with misuse. [00:21:13] instead of doing what they are trained to do: teach. This is not fair to educators, and this is not an effective way to support learning. This is not a classroom allowance problem. It's a system-level technology and policy problem. Last year, I raised these concerns directly with the superintendent, Dr. Reid, who referred us to the Chief Information Technology Officer. [00:21:32] We followed that guidance and had multiple discussions. We were given assurances that improvements were coming. One specific promise was the creation of a parent-facing technology portal, separate from the IT ticketing system, where parents could report technology misuse and emerging issues. [00:21:47] That portal has still not been implemented and no follow-up has occurred. AI is part of a conversation, but it's not a core problem. AI simply exposes existing gaps in safeguards. When students misuse powerful tools during learning, that reflects a failure of guidelines, not student intent. [00:22:03] Parents are not asking FCPS to eliminate technology. We are asking for thoughtful deployment, stronger protections and meaningful parent involvement. Other districts include parents through technology advisory committees and use more proactive approaches such as whitelisting approved educational sites rather than relying on reactive blacklists. [00:22:20] Technology should support learning, not compete with it. Right now the balance is off and parents are asking for action. Thank you. Please play the video testimony submitted by Vanessa Robertson. [00:22:38] Good evening, my name is Vanessa Robertson. I have a seventh grader at Holmes and a kindergartner at North Springfield. I believe that AI is detrimental to the social emotional health of students and that its use will degrade the quality of education at FCPS. If we're to use this technology it needs to be rolled out in a slow and controlled manner with parent and teacher input at every level to ensure that the tool makes sense for its intended use. The social emotional consequences are well known and have been acknowledged by Dr. Reed and the school board. [00:23:04] I'm concerned the desire to be seen as an early adopter is overshadowing these known issues. The Brookings Institution published a report this weekend titled "A New Direction for Students in an AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect" which discusses a lot of the things that the parents and groups like Parents for Intentional Tech, FCPS TechSmart, and The Balance Project have been talking about. The conclusion was that at this point in its trajectory, the risks of utilizing generative AI in children's education overshadow its benefits. It's worth reading yourself. One of the points was that the investment into technology does not necessarily correlate with improved teaching and learning outcomes and can be detrimental. My experience with FCPS over the last eight years has provided multiple other examples of technology degrading learning. [00:23:43] I'm afraid we'll just add AI to this list if we rush it into the classroom. Some examples of of technology degrading learning in FCPSR, no longer teaching spelling because of autocorrect and spellcheck, instructing algebra students on the use of an online graphing calculator that's allowed on the SOL rather than focusing on the material, teaching division on the computer even though there's no division symbol on the keyboard, no longer teaching cursive but also not teaching typing, acknowledging that cell phones are distracting and addictive, but giving every kindergartner an iPad for up to an hour a day. [00:24:12] The inventors of this ed tech don't allow their own children to use it, and they send their kids to schools that are low tech. They're profiting off of us, not helping us educate our children. Also, I'd like to note that the cost for the enterprise licenses for OpenAI's ChatGBT is $25 per month on the low end per license. [00:24:28] We have over 16,000 teachers and 180,000 students. It's only free until June, 2027. - Chair Anderson, that was our last public speaker. [00:24:44] - Thank you. Agenda item 6.01, student representative matters. I call on Ms. McConan. - Good evening, I'm glad to be back with you all. today i would like to talk about something i've talked about many times but will continue to do so students in fairfax county public schools have experienced a changing gradebook almost every year of our academic careers from pandemic era grading to post-covid adjustments and now the rolling gradebook pilot students and families have had repeatedly adapt to new systems at this point in time it's important that we commit to making this the last major shift and that means prioritizing consistency as the rolling gradebook continues to be piloted clear communication is [00:25:22] essential not only for the students but also for families many families are still trying to understand what this new student system represents how it differs from previous grading models and how it supports fairness and equity the rolling gradebook is meaningfully different than the gradebook used during the coveted years yet those distinctions are often unclear without explicitly explaining those differences confusion persists and that confusion directly affects student stress family trust and teacher student communication another important consideration is how this grading system interacts with FCPS's quarter-based reporting structure. Because students are still evaluated and reported on by quarters, skills should be eligible for retakes by the end of [00:25:58] each quarter in order for students to meaningfully use the retake policy. Without this alignment, students may technically have access to retakes, but not in a way that actually impacts their reported progress. Ensuring that the grading structure matches the reporting structure is critical for both fairness and transparency. Teachers play a major role in making the system successful. While the beginning of the year training is important, it is not sufficient on its own. [00:26:19] Training should include ongoing check-ins through the year to ensure teachers fully understand how the gradebook works in practice. This allows the division to be proactive rather than reactive, addressing questions and inconsistencies before they grow into widespread confusion for students and families. The strategic plan goal of moving all eighth graders to algebra is a great goal. [00:26:36] However, this is not completely realistic. When schools remove pathways for students without providing alternatives to prepare them for the course, you will end up with students in classes they are not prepared for. On paper, things will look fine, but as you look into classrooms, you you will see students falling behind in the name of progress. I've seen this in my school and around the county. [00:26:52] When you remove the standard classes students could take in the name of AP or honors, students will end up falling behind in one class. This affects their confidence in not just math, but all of their classes. If students feel like they are in over their heads in middle school, this does not set a good tone for their high school years. If I could vote, I would vote against the gradual removal of algebra. [00:27:09] Students should encourage to take algebra, but that should not be the end-all be-all for students who might not successfully pass the class. We want to make sure students are in classes are adequately prepared for and not overload teachers or students with unnecessary work. In the Student Advisory Council, students are continuing to engage deeply with the division's strategic goals. [00:27:27] Currently, SAC students are finalizing their research topics. They recently had a thoughtful and meaningful discussion with Dr. Reed that helped them inform and refine their research directions. This work will culminate in a student presentation this spring, giving students the opportunity to directly share their findings and recommendations with division leadership. I also recently met with students in the Student Leadership Development Program to conduct student representative 101 as much experience as I can share halfway through my term during the session we discussed the role of student representatives how board meetings function and how students can effectively advocate within this space several of these students have already begun attending board meetings they're doing incredible work independently and demonstrate with that when students are given access information encouragement they're more [00:28:06] than capable of meaningful civic engagement finally I want to highlight the continued initiative in the works at the end of the second quarter a student focused FCPS policy website this project is designed to make FCPS policies more digestible and accessible to students by translating complex policy language into clear student-friendly explanations. The project will also include a social media component using platforms like Instagram to share short informative posts that increase awareness and understanding of policies that directly affect students. This initiative will be developed in partnership with the Student Advisor Council to ensure accuracy, relevance, and student voice throughout the process. For students watching, feel free to contact me to get involved at [00:28:41] faith.maconan@fcps.edu. Thank you for your time and thank you for your continued commitment to centering student voice and student experience in the work of this board. Thank you. Thank you. Agenda Item 7.01: Certification of Closed Meeting Compliance. In order to comply with Section 2.2-3712 of the Code of Virginia, it is necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on January 22, um, 2026, to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters were lawfully or lawfully exempted from open meeting [00:29:20] 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 mr mckelveen do i have a second mr moon all those in favor mr frisch mr mcdaniel miss marron mr mckelveen miss st john cunning miss lady miss dixit mr moon mr dunn dr anderson and myself that is unanimous for all board members agenda item 7.02 confirmation of action taken in closed. I call on Miss St. John Cunning for a motion. I move to expel the student who committed [00:30:00] a serious offense in violation of school board policy by participating in a group assault using a knife to assault a student and participating in gang behavior. Is there a second? Second. Mr. McDaniel. All those in favor. Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Miss Marin, Mr. McElveen, Miss St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. That is unanimous. I call on Mr. McDaniel for a motion. [00:30:33] Move to expel the student who committed a serious offense in violation of school board policy by engaging in behavior in the community that is detrimental to the school environment in violation of the commonwealth's laws. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. [00:30:56] That is unanimous. I call on Ms. St. John Cunning for a motion. I move to expel the student who committed a serious offense in violation of school board policy by participating in a group assault using a knife to assault a student and participating in gang behavior in violation of the Commonwealth's laws. [00:31:14] Is there a second? Second. Mr. McDaniel, all those in favor. Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Mr. Dunn, Dr. Anderson, and myself. That is unanimous. [00:31:30] I call on Mr. Moon for a motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move to expel the students who committed a serious offense in violation of school with policy by participating in a group of assault using a knife to assault a student and participating in gang behavior in violation of the common versus laws. [00:31:50] Is there a second? I second. Thank you, Ms. Marron. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marron, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. That is unanimous. I call on Ms. St. John Cunning for a motion. [00:32:10] I move to expel a student who committed a serious offense in violation of school board policy by participating in a group assault and participating in gang behavior in violation of the Commonwealth's laws. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. All those in favor, Mr. Fresh, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. That is unanimous for all board members. [00:32:39] Action item 7.03, comprehensive boundary review. At this time, I call on Dr. Reed for brief remarks. Thank you, Madam Chair. This evening really is the culmination of 18 months of work that we've gone through several cycles of community feedback, several scenario iterations. We've literally heard from thousands of our community members. We've had a significant amount of review by our Volunteer Advisory Committee, which I thank. [00:33:13] I also thank all of the community that has come out and provided feedback and the countless numbers of staff who've supported this work. I believe that at this point, this is a great beginning for our boundary work. It is clearly not the end, and I think the five-year progressive cycles that we'll see are going to allow us to reflect on the process and further refine it So that our expectation would be that each five-year review will generate better and better results for our boundaries and ultimately for the best use of our facilities and program placement. [00:33:50] So I know that there's no process that's perfect, particularly first time out, and we can't let perfect become the enemy of progress. I believe this is a great start, and we do have some sites within the boundaries flagged for review in the next calendar year, and I'll be bringing back recommendations for those January 2027 decisions. [00:34:15] And then we have flagged sites for a five-year review coming up, and I look forward to the continued journey and want to especially thank our community for being such a really collaborative partner in this work and our advisory committee members I think there's just been a lot of effort put towards this and a lot of excitement about reviewing what went well and what we could improve as we look forward to continuing this really important division level work so thank you madam chair thank you Dr. Reed I call on Mr. McDaniel for a motion I move that the school board approve boundary adjustments as [00:34:52] described in the superintendent's recommendation is there a second second thank you Mr. Dunn Mr. McDaniel, would you like to speak to your motion? I would. [00:35:08] I'm happy to move forward the approval of the superintendent's recommendation. I think in teeing off of the comments that the superintendent made, these adjustments represent a step forward in the overall process to slowly and methodically align boundaries across the division to equalize enrollment, to deliver equitable access to programming, and to efficiently operate the eighth largest school system in the country. [00:35:33] This is the first time, as we've said, in over four decades that this process has been undertaken i want to thank the community for their participation and their patience which saw record numbers of input in public meetings tens of thousands of pieces of of public input dozens of meetings i also want to thank the boundary review advisory committee members for all of their work over the recent months and all the effort that they put into helping staff and the superintendent complete final recommendations when we sat on this journey in July of 2024, it was my hope that the politics would stay out of boundaries, which traditionally typically had not been the case, and that instead we would make data-driven decisions [00:36:12] coupled with community feedback. And I'm confident tonight saying that that occurred, so I'm happy to move forward and I'll be voting for approval. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your second? Yes, I would. [00:36:27] This was a big challenge, undertaking the first countywide boundary review in 40 years. the last county-wide boundary review that was undertaken involved the closing of a high school fort on high school in the mount vernon district and the merger with groveton high school to create west potomac high school it was fairly traumatic for for my community at that time and so i made every effort to ensure that i reached out to every pta pto ptsa hoa civic association to offer to [00:37:00] present to them on what was happening, make sure that they had a firm understanding of how they could get involved, how they could have their voice heard. And I present over 30 times and I published 15 newsletters on school boundaries. And I think the result was that there were no surprises in the Mount Vernon district. And I think that's positive. But what it reflects is that we had excellent members on the Boundary Review Advisory Committee, Kathy Hosek, Cynthia Peverell, Marie McCain. We also had, you know, the firm commitment of the superintendent of [00:37:36] FCPS leadership to really educate and reach out. We had more community meetings on this than we've perhaps ever had on any subject in the entire history of FCPS. It was certainly an imperfect process. There are many things to to critique, many lessons learned, but when I look just at the Mount Vernon District in particular, I see attendance islands at Fort Hunt and Groveton Elementary eliminated so that children are closer to their schools more walkable bikeable increased opportunities for family engagements to participate in parent-teacher conferences and school events i [00:38:11] see that we reduced overcrowding at riverside and groveton elementary that we eliminated a split theater at riverside that we brought more students to some of the under-enrolled schools including Saratoga and we also reduced some overcrowding at Stratford Landing. We really brought more students to those schools that were yearning for more students because with more students comes more programming, more teachers, more funding, more opportunity. In addition we decreased bus rides and improved walkability and bike ability for a limited number of schools and I'm proud of the changes that have been made. Again focused on the Mount Vernon [00:38:50] district, and I know that there are some conversations that will continue in the coming year. I look forward to those. I look forward to robust community engagement before any decisions are made or any options developed, but I do believe this process, while flawed, ultimately resulted in positive change for a limited number of communities, and it also highlighted things that have been out there for a long time and were not receiving sufficient attention. For example, the under-enrollment at Mount Vernon and Lewis High Schools. [00:39:23] These were issues that the communities had been concerned about for a long time, but now they're on the radar of SCPS leadership. They're on the brain of Dr. Reed, our superintendent. And so you have her commitment, you have the school board's commitment, you have the SCPS leadership's commitment to address them. [00:39:40] And that's something we didn't have before. So I think that's something we can all be grateful for, that although the process wasn't perfect, good came of it. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. And I know since we're here last, there were a few changes that are made here. Dr. Reed, could you just quickly highlight those please for tonight's vote from when we had presented this a couple of weeks ago? Tonight is the same as the prior [00:40:13] Thursday in terms of the revisions. We haven't made further revisions from the revised recommendations. but let me check with staff to confirm that uh mr schuster we made further revisions since the revised amendments oh okay for some reason i thought the walney oats was newer and was not i think we put that i think to your point that that was an adjustment from the original recommendation for sure um but i believe i mentioned it last week but um i appreciate you calling it out again i think that it is an adjustment we made after scenario [00:40:51] after the adjustment after scenario four so i think it was after the first community hearing but prior to the second i believe sure thank you i know there are many adjustments at the adjustments i do want to recognize that this has been a huge effort it's not just the brack committee members which are unpaid community people who gave months and months of their time and energy and i want to to thank all of the BRAC members who represented the Mason District Schools I I won't name them because I'm sure I'll leave somebody out but there were six of [00:41:28] them and they were all wonderful I also want to highlight all of the efforts with staff even starting with Janice Szymanski and all of those night meetings and then mr. Gordon came in and picked that up as well as the communications office Angie Elgave Lisa Hall they were at every meeting that I I was at. And I wasn't at every single meeting in the county, just the ones for the Mason District, but I know that they represented in the same way and countless others. You're not the only ones. [00:41:58] I'm just going to lift that up here, as well as Dr. Reed and many others. So that alone has been huge. Did I get everything that I want out of this? Absolutely not. There are some things that I wish didn't happen. I wish that the rollout for Park Lawn and Glasgow happened differently because that has been on the table for a long time. And I shared this at the work session and I will share it here where those were board directives and they came in late. And so that created a lot of issues for our community, rightfully so, because on one hand, I'm sending [00:42:36] it out of my newsletter on the other hand the explorer tool that we have trained them to use did not reflect those changes so people continuously felt as if oh there must be some error somewhere I'm not impacted lots of lessons learned I do want to ensure that we have the opportunity to know what those lessons are and so doctor just one more question we had a parent earlier who talked about an after action and I know you've raised an after action what is your plan with that is this going to be a community converse is this going to be publicly available or is this just for your team [00:43:15] to review or will the board be engaged can you talk a little bit in terms of what your thoughts are yes ma'am so we're keeping a skeleton group of the advisory committee together over the next five years and I was really pleased that a number of members want to continue in the next five years. [00:43:36] I'm sorry? Not so skeletal. Yeah, well, and I, you know, when you put that much time and effort into a project, you really, I think, take a great deal of personal interest in it. I know there was just a lot of commitment to the project. [00:43:53] So I think our first couple meetings, we're working on the schedule for this spring for that group to convene. I think that's part of the conversation, right? As a group, they've certainly seen all the data, all the reports, attended the meetings. And I think that that group will really help frame what that after-action report should look like because we want to continue to refine, reflect, and refine this process. [00:44:17] And there isn't anyone in the county that wants to improve it more, I think, than the committee that deliberated for many, many hours. And our community is invested in that. So we're looking forward to continuing to improve the process. And as soon as we sort of frame what we think that should look like, I'll certainly bring it to the board. [00:44:37] And if there are more questions or more direction, we're happy to include that and integrate it. But you do anticipate there'll be a public-facing part of that review just because, again, everybody's invested in that. Everything about this process has been very public. [00:44:57] Thank you. one of the questions that I don't want to miss asking because I've gone through the entire presentation I made a list like I usually do you know these are the highlights and these are the concerns I'll take a go back please. Absolutely. Miss Dixon. I want to I want to begin to thank by thanking FCPS staff and Dr. Reed for their tremendous work on this effort. A comprehensive division-wide boundary view of the scale has never not been undertaken for more than 40 years and [00:45:36] is to present a significant and complex effort. I would like to thank my fellow board members for their leadership throughout the process, the volunteers who served on the Superintendent's Boundary Review Advisory Committee, and many parents, students, and community members who took the time to show up, engage, and show their perspective. [00:45:58] While this work is difficult and deeply personal for families, I appreciate the transparency and community engagement that informed the final recommendation. I support moving forward with this action and I cannot thank everyone enough who has ever showed up for these meetings or gone to the Boundary Committee of Community Meetings and all the effort the community has done. [00:46:27] I think we could not have done this without you. So I'm really grateful to our community members as well. Thank you. - Ms. Marin. - Yes, I had planned to start with something differently but I'm just confused why we're not seeing the final recommendations presented. [00:46:45] There's six changes from what was publicly presented on January 8th, and there's two more changes on slides about year one recommendations. So these recommendations actually have never been publicly presented. January 8th, the superintendent delivered the recommendations. [00:47:01] We had a public hearing January 10th from which the superintendent was responsive to, and what's posted now has not been presented. So, you know, I guess we are not clear on when we get presentations or not, but I think it's important that we know exactly what we're voting on. [00:47:20] I don't want to hold it up, but at the same time, I had to say something. So I will reserve the rest of my time to talk about the actual process in case anybody else wants to weigh in on whether we should be having these at least eight slides shown publicly for the first time ever. Thank you. [00:47:38] Mr. Frisch. Thank you. As I vote for this motion tonight, I do so with gratitude for Superintendent Reed, FCPS staff, and our BRAC volunteers for the work that they've put into this over the last 18 months. [00:47:57] I wrote years in my remarks. I think at times I think we've all felt like that's how long it's been. And to the many, many Providence District families who have actively engaged in this process alongside them. I'm also grateful that Dr. Reed has expressed a willingness to listen and to adjust and to commit to future work, including by placing the Greenway Downs, Jefferson Village and Kingsley Commons communities on the list of flagged school communities for continued boundary work to culminate in January 2027 with a proposal that unites these neighborhoods at Graham Road Elementary School. [00:48:36] I'm also grateful that Dr. Reed has included Briarwood Trace and Briarwood Farms on the list of flagged school communities to address over the next two years as her team works to determine potential future capacity options at Oakton High School. [00:48:53] Superintendent has committed to sharing a detailed plan to address the various aspects that we'll be tackling in these flagged communities including the two that I've identified tonight and I look forward to continued robust communication in the impacted communities so that they are actively engaged throughout the process whether they are on the group that will be addressed in the year ahead or in the longer term solutions as well so I will be casting my vote in favor and I appreciate all the work that my colleagues have put into this as well [00:49:30] including supervisor Sizemore Heiser who is no longer on our board but uh was engaged at the beginning on our governance committee and to the many staff members at in our schools who have shared their perspectives as well miss lady thank you um so not to date myself but i was a senior in high school the last time i think boundaries were touched in this county so as a proud graduate of madison high school i'm pleased that we are getting to the finish line with this work i too want to thank the brack committee especially christina williams who who kept in touch with me often throughout the process and Dr. [00:50:09] Reid and staff. Again, I think that this is an exercise in listening. I think this has been a good exercise in understanding that there are lots of pathways and access points, if you will, within neighborhoods that we may not have been aware of when we've embarked on the work. [00:50:26] And so the dialogue with communities has been really important. I really want to emphasize the fact that I didn't get a single email or phone call or anyone come up to me at any BRAC meeting and say, please move me from my school. [00:50:44] And I think that's a beautiful thing. I think we absolutely need to celebrate that we have close to 200 schools in Fairfax County and people love where they go to school. And I used to work at Marshall High School, which we called small school, big heart at the time. [00:51:01] And, you know, as a Madison graduate, that's the last place you'd go work. I literally had people calling me, being like, what are you doing? Like, have you lost your mind? I step inside that building, and within a week, I'm like, wow, the magic in this place transformed me. [00:51:19] And I share that just because in this position on the board, I go into all the schools that are within my district. And there is unique, special wonder and learning and creativity and innovation and community in all of our schools. [00:51:35] So I think that's important for us to make sure we stay, as Dr. Reed always says, in the light around what's so positive about being a resident of Fairfax County Public Schools. One other thing often people said to us during this work was that we're in neighborhoods who were split. [00:51:53] they said look we don't care which school you send us to just put us together just keep us together as a community because we're not right now and I think we addressed a lot of that so again thank you staff thank you Dr. Reed we will continue to engage in this work I think that when we passed the policy and said we were going to do it every five years I do hope that in the future that we will get more to programming I'm a believer in bringing programs to schools instead of putting children on buses to send them to programs and I hope we'll get closer to doing that work with fidelity um in the next round um and i'm honored and excited to uh vote in support [00:52:30] of this um tonight thank you miss st john cunning so i too want to echo my thanks to um the fcps staff you guys had a very heavy lift our superintendent uh the brack committee um all the community meetings and everybody that staffed those um it was incredible to see the type of dedication and work that was there I appreciate speaking to families and parents collectively as well as individually I appreciate the people that picked up the phone to call me to have long in-depth conversations as well as [00:53:05] students I echo what my colleague just said that when you walk into any individual school it is amazing and people love being in their school and I think that sometimes when you are from another school you can't see that and And because I've had the privilege of working in different schools, I completely understand that feeling of saying, oh, this is a great school, and now I'm going to this school, and how am I going to fit in? [00:53:29] And then all of a sudden, you're in. You've just bought into it. I also want for the public to recognize that this board took this on when a lot of people advised against it, because we knew it wasn't going to be easy. [00:53:47] We knew it was going to be a heavy lift, and we knew we would not be pleasing everyone. but we recognize the importance of the work collectively and for everyone. And we did this work without anticipating certain things that were thrown at this board, like the Western High School, and we're talking boundaries, and now how does that happen? [00:54:09] We did it when the climate, the political climate, and an administration is attacking Fairfax County public schools, and we're trying to defend that. I, as a school board member, did not anticipate coming into this, doing boundary work, and then having to do all of this other work. So I really appreciate that we remain consistent and true to this process because we believed that it was important for our families, for our students, for our staff. And I really appreciate everyone that came out and just voiced their opinion. [00:54:45] you were heard. It is the first step. It is a beginning. We know it's not the end, but I think that as we move forward and as future boards move forward, this process will be refined. There will be lessons learned. The community will get adjusted to it. And overall, it will make for a greater division. And at the end of the day, that's why we are all here to have a greater impact on our students and our community because we know strong communities and strong schools are what this county is known for. I'm very proud of the work that everyone has done from the top all the way [00:55:25] down to the bottom, and every piece has been critical in getting to this point. So thank you to everyone. Mr. McElveen. So I want to begin by speaking from personal experience tonight. When I was a student at Marshall High School, when Miss Lady was there, not as a student, - My closest friends came from outside my elementary school attendance boundary. [00:55:54] I grew up in West Briar, but my best friends, the ones who stood at my wedding, the ones I still speak to every day, they came from Wolf Trap. They were part of the very community now being reassigned from Marshall to Madison High School. I share this not to oppose any specific boundary change. [00:56:12] I share it to remind us of what hangs in the balance tonight. To amplify the fact that what we are doing tonight have life-changing consequences for children and ripple through their lives in ways we cannot fully anticipate we are reshaping communities determining friendships that may last a lifetime connections that will sustain them through joy and hardships alike this is a profound responsibility if these changes we are voting on tonight had been effect then when i was a student the course of my life would have been very different i want to express deep gratitude to those who've worked so hard on [00:56:49] on this effort. Dr. Reed, your leadership throughout this process has been nothing short of extraordinary. I cannot imagine anyone who's worked harder, engaged more deeply with our community, or demonstrated greater command of these complex issues. Your team, and I won't name anyone or everyone, they have been exemplary as well. The community engagement you've led, while more extensive, and yes, I've complained at times, perhaps too extensive than any of us anticipated, has been unprecedented in its scope and sincerity. You deserve our profound thanks for the grace and determination you've brought to an enormously difficult task. [00:57:25] To the members of the BRAC committee, you volunteered countless hours to help make an opaque process more transparent. To amplify community concerns, to ensure every voice was heard, you represent the very best of public service in our county. And to the advocates from communities around the county, those who sent thoughtful emails, who invited us into your homes, who took time from work and family to meet with us even tonight, thank you. And finally I want to recognize the community leaders who have championed this kind of comprehensive review for years, including our facilities planning advisory committee. I want to acknowledge their years [00:58:01] of dedication to this vision. Everyone involved in this process wants what's best for children and our schools. That shared commitment has been inspiring to witness. I have struggled deeply with how to vote tonight. Everyone involved has tried admirably to make the best of a difficult situation, to make lemonade out of lemons. But despite the tremendous effort invested, I believe this process has not yielded results commensurate with its cost. [00:58:27] The juice has not been worth the squeeze. Throughout this journey, we've spoken of doing big things for our school system, yet the outcome before us tells a different story. 1,700 students out of 180,000 will be affected, and I'll continue. Mr. Moon. [00:58:46] Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to start with a statement saying that I concur with all the accolades for the efforts made by superintendent, our staff, community volunteers, especially those serving in a BRAC, and also community members who came to many, many meetings and expressed their concerns, their opinions, and also sent emails and tried to contact school board members. [00:59:20] I have not been able to return all the, you know, answer all the emails, but I have tried to do as much as I can. and I see a lot of good work done in the recommendation letters. I'm not gonna pinpoint which one could be done better because there were a lot of good work. [00:59:40] Like Mr. Dunn stated for the Mount Bottom District, it's a great, great work. Probably a lot had to do with the school board members' efforts to make sure the community is best served. With all that said, with all that said, I will be unable to support this motion. [01:00:00] It sounds as if this motion is going to pass no matter how I vote, but I need to make an important point. As someone who has been serving on the board on and off over three decades, have gone through many boundary changes. [01:00:17] I was not there when Fort Hunt was closed four years ago, so I didn't know what happened back then. But when South County Secondary School opened, Westfield, when we did major changes in western part of the county involving South Lakes and Oakton High Schoolers. [01:00:39] And in 2011, with Annandale High School, in 2013, in the Closter 3, 6, and 7, 21 and 23, I was not there. But all those boundary changes with a phasing implementation, we have never failed to provide transportation for the students who decide to stay at their schools with a phasing implementation. [01:01:14] It sounds as if this is the first time, first time, as long as you can remember, we do not have a transportation plan. Next agenda item is Collective Bargaining Agreement, and I'll be supporting. [01:01:34] I'll be seconding the motion, and I'll support the motion. We are putting in close to $18 million for 1,400 employees, but we have no plan for 1,700 students because it may cost. [01:01:53] For 2,200, it was going to cost as much as $10 million, but with 1,700, most likely much less than that, but we have no plan. Thank you, Mr. Moon. I'm going to go ahead and take a quick turn. [01:02:09] We've said for a while now that this has been going on for 18 months, but it's actually been going on for almost two years. As of February 13th, 2024, which is when we had our forum hearing to actually address the boundary policy, that was significantly out of date and we brought up. [01:02:29] And I will say that every part of this process has brought its own challenges, but that particular, based on the audience that we have here, it tells me that we're getting closer to right. And I have jokingly said all along that boundaries is if you give a mouse a cookie, it's the cookie. It's the first thing. [01:02:51] And when I thought today about who all I needed to thank, this has literally touched everybody in our division and everyone in our community. So it told me that I was right. This is the cookie. and we didn't get it perfect. It's okay. It took us a really long time to get to the point where we have to make all these iterative changes, and it's going to take us some time to get there moving through. So what I do appreciate overwhelmingly is the flexibility of the superintendent and how hard that she has worked to try to make sure that all of the communities [01:03:25] and my colleagues bringing forward different issues related to the entire county and what was going on in each of our individual magisterial districts just so that we understood what's what where we are and i appreciate the flexibility with the community that's understood where we knew we didn't get it right in this first recommendation and giving us a little bit more time to make that happen so i really appreciate all all the support and energy that this has gone into and I am fully in support of the motion to move forward here. [01:03:59] So we have a few people that have go backs. We'll start with Dr. Andersen. Thank you. I'll just pick up where I left off regarding, you know, I do my pros and cons list in terms of the highlights and the areas of concern. And I noted about 18 areas of significant highlights in schools throughout the division. [01:04:19] One of them is in Mason District, which is Mason Crest and eliminating that attendance Island there and not split feeder rather. The concerns I had about seven that are school related specifically and two of them continue to be my schools you know Glasgow and Park Lawn the two most detrimental areas. Then I also have concerns regarding the process which I've already articulated so I want to make sure that that's noted. Then I have concerns about the transportation and I won't [01:04:52] repeat what Mr. Moon has just shared but I do want to take this opportunity to ask the question of what are we doing here with transportation because we did not approve what you had last time. My understanding it's still coming back to the board for a vote and staff are continuing to work to try to see if there's a way our prior experience the data showed about 70 percent of students who had the option chose the option to be transported. [01:05:24] So they ran new budget numbers, which still seem too high. And so we've talked about, are there other ways to use hubs differently? So staff are working-- actually working all day today on this project. [01:05:41] And hopefully by next week, perhaps we can have something in the Friday letter. We're trying to drive the cost down as much as humanly possible because we're also in a tight budget time. Because, of course, we agree that if all things were equal, we absolutely want to provide transportation. [01:06:00] But we're also in a budget-constrained time. So staff are continuing to try to carve all the best possible paths forward. We also need to make sure that we're clear about which boundaries are being changed, right? That's why tonight's so important. I think we're also, once we know that, we would plan to likely survey families, right, that are affected. [01:06:23] If the number is actually lower than 70%, perhaps it's only 30% or 40%, then that would dramatically change the possible cost. So we need to make sure we identify the boundaries and then move forward with the ability to connect with families who will be impacted to make sure that we have a projection that's as close to real as possible. [01:06:44] Thank you for that. And so I appreciate that you'll give us some information in the Friday letter, but this really has to be public-facing. People want to know what we're going to do, so that would be the subsequent action. Yes, ma'am. The Friday letter would be likely an interim draft, right, like as the last working document. [01:07:01] And as is often the case, if there's feedback from the board on the Friday letter topic, we can engage, and then I can go back to staff. And we want to make sure that when we're ready to put it out publicly, it's ready for prime time. And I do hope that we have a really hard look at whatever that estimate will be because last time I felt that it was disingenuous to add all electric buses when we've never purchased those without a grant. [01:07:26] So I'm hoping we can be a little bit more, just a little bit better about whatever that estimate is. Yes, ma'am. In fact, we've calculated both, right? Diesel buses and electric buses on our new estimates. Just a few quick questions because those have been coming up. [01:07:45] Some of the schools in the new amendments are, in some word there before, have increased. And I know not to take anybody's fire away, but I mean not to be into anybody else's space, but I know this has been a huge conversation. [01:08:02] Can you speak to Chantilly going from 110 to 112 with that modular? Are we expecting for that to be entirely taken care of with the new Western High School? Yes, ma'am, that's correct. The three most impacted pyramids for the Western high school enrollment are Centerville, Westfield, and Chantilly. [01:08:24] So we know that as Chantilly's enrollment will skew towards the new high school in the western part of the county, that those students, and it's a very small number that we've moved to Chantilly, will not be impacted. And they're not in neighborhoods that would be close to neighborhoods likely to be moved to the high school in the western part of the county. [01:08:44] So we anticipate that when we come back to the board in June, with the recommendations for the Western High School boundaries, that Chantilly will not be over-enrolled at that time. And just two more quick, just wanted to ask about the SPA areas. [01:08:59] We can follow up with that after in another venue in terms of sending an email, and then maybe we'll bring the question back. But at this point, we have other folks that we need to move forward with. Miss Marin. So I'm very glad that this school board has authorized this comprehensive boundary review. People continue to remind me, especially other elected officials, that this is the hardest thing a school board can do. However, I think being on the school board during the COVID pandemic was more difficult, but this was still challenging. When the scenarios began being published, I committed four things to Fairfax residents, and I stated these. I will understand each change being proposed. [01:09:36] I even drove around to figure it out. I will communicate as clearly and as often as I can to inform the public about my decision-making. I was aiming to reduce upheaval in our school communities, particularly over short periods of time with lots of moves of students, and I aim to advocate for families to have the option for siblings to remain in the same pyramid in the secondary years. I'm really impressed with our residents. Civility ensued. Way to go, Fairfax residents. I've had taxpayers asking about the cost and value for the work, and I think it was valuable to have it done, know the experience, but now I would like to know if we really need a consultant, or have we learned enough that we could indeed do this? I'm eager to know what the next [01:10:14] steps are. What are the interim year works? Is it major projects like right-sizing capacity for Herndon High and Lewis, or are there smaller tweaks? I thought we were going to be presented that this evening, so that's unfortunate. I also think that in the future, school board members must have a clear role in providing input about the communities we represent at designated times during the process because never was I consulted from the start or throughout for my thoughts about the community I represent, and I think that was a detriment. [01:10:45] But to build on the efforts of a constituent or the words of a constituent tonight, things that happened, good things, balancing capacity, keeping communities together, access to programs. But I do have to highlight a few places that remain in not a great place in the community's opinion. [01:11:01] Tyson's Green and the Westbriar split. While that was reduced, there's now even fewer students who are in this split feeder. And while priority transfer has been given to them, if transportation is not included, it's not really, it's not fair. So we shouldn't have created a worse split feeder. [01:11:19] I'll quickly say also the Flint Hill and Oakton Elementary split, that remains unresolved. Lots of questions about Western and the transfer process, but ultimately we need to provide transportation to the kids who are covered by phasing as stated in the policy. Thank you Ms. Mayor. Mr. Dunn. Thank you. While there are good results that have come out of this boundary review that I mentioned previously I'll be unable to support the motion tonight because I don't quite know what I'm voting on. Throughout the past month it's been a moving target in terms of what the recommendations are and although I'm very [01:11:58] diligent in reading every new publication comes out, every amendment, it creates a lot of confusion and many of the people have come to speak tonight other public hearings that we have held they've spoken about last-minute decisions that were not reflected in the published maps scenario three scenario four the transportation question the cost what's involved who will receive transportation beyond the phasing policy that we adopted last summer at dr. Anderson's urging there's just there's just too much uncertainty so without having that knowledge without having those answers I can't support it in these [01:12:34] circumstances. Moreover, if you look at the data, we entered this boundary review with 22 attendance islands. We're leaving it with 22 attendance islands. We entered with 42 split feeders. We're leaving with 35. We entered with 800 classrooms and modulars and trailers, and it's maybe one or two reduced from that. That's not great success metrics. Now, again, that data doesn't necessarily reflect some of the positive work because we did eliminate three attendance islands. We also added three. So I think one of the things that came out is maybe attendance islands are not always [01:13:12] the terrible thing that we thought going in and that we reflected in the policy. So maybe we need to adjust the policy. In some cases, the people in those attendance islands value them and like them. And so we need to make sure that when we go forward, we're very thoughtful about the objectives we established, because although we had four priority factors in the policy, we didn't really say which of those should be the priority for this boundary review. So going forward, we really need to be very specific so that then all the efforts can go to accomplishing that particular objective. [01:13:45] Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. McElveen. So 1,700 students out of 180,000 we affected. We've created new attendance islands and split feeders. We've exacerbated capacity challenges at several schools. We've failed to address school communities that were desperate for increased enrollment and we've been unclear about when transportation will be provided and at what cost. [01:14:10] Whatever we intended, the results fall far short of transformation. It is incremental change at extraordinary cost. I don't think anyone can disagree with the fact that this has been lowest common denominator work. Here is the truth we must face. [01:14:26] Similar outcomes could have been achieved through targeted boundary studies without subjecting our entire community to two years of uncertainty and anxiety. And now, having established this process, we've committed ourselves to repeating it every five years, in perpetuity. We've doomed future school boards to spend the majority of their terms consumed by this work, just as we have been. [01:14:48] And we've been very clear that this is not just a two-year process. It is ongoing. We have many communities that will remain under the microscope for another year. Many of you know I was the only person on the board to oppose this boundary study from the beginning, not because I object to comprehensive boundary studies in principle. [01:15:06] In theory, in a controlled environment with unlimited time and resources, such a process could be valuable. I opposed it because I knew even then that we lacked the capacity to execute it in a meaningful and economical way. I knew it would consume our political capital and our community's goodwill, and I was right. [01:15:24] This process has prevented us from acting on middle school start times, delaying improvements to student health and well-being. It has complicated decisions about the Western High School, forcing families to make life-altering choices without complete information. The opportunity costs, all the things we haven't been able to fully address because of this undertaking has been staggering. [01:15:44] I recognize that reasonable people can disagree on this vote. I respect that some of my colleagues see this differently, and ultimately it will pass. I will go back again. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. So, as is our practice, we only have one go back for each board member. [01:16:04] So, seeing no others, we're going to go ahead and call for a vote. May I be recognized, Madam Chair? For what reason, ma'am? I'd like to call for suspension of the rules, if that's even actually a rule, to allow for additional go backs. [01:16:22] Okay, that would require a vote, a two-thirds majority, in order to pass. All those in favor of going to further go backs, please raise your hands. Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, all those opposed, Ms. Dixit, all those abstaining, that's myself. [01:16:49] Okay, so everybody please turn your lights off. Mr. Frisch. Just want to clarify that it is Robert's Rules that you speak twice to a question at most. So that is in Robert's Rules, but we suspended Robert's Rules, so here we go. [01:17:10] Mr. McElveen. I appreciate my colleagues allowing me to finish. I've never been in a situation of this enormity where board members haven't been able to speak their thoughts. I cannot in good conscience support a plan that commits us to this cycle of disruption every five years, that produces such modest results at such great cost. [01:17:32] This reflects not our aspirations for this system, but the limitations we've discovered along the way. Our community deserves better, our students deserve better, and the dedicated professionals that have poured themselves into this work deserves a process that matches their commitment with meaningful results. [01:17:47] For these reasons, and with enormous thanks to our staff for this effort, I cannot support this proposal tonight. - Mr. Dunn. - Thank you. I wanted to ask Dr. Reed, the very first community meeting was held at Glasgow Middle School, and the overwhelming verbatim words that I heard at that meeting, which I attended, was end the experiment. [01:18:09] End the experiment of some middle schools, Glasgow, Poe, and Holmes being six through eight, and the rest of the county being seven through eight, or secondary schools. bring this up because it creates enormous complexity when there are boundary shifts from one elementary school moving from one pyramid to another and it creates just difficulty when there is rebalancing that needs to happen among the elementary schools and across pyramids so I want to understand what is your plan to address that that key demand that we heard at the very first [01:18:46] community meeting so I think that having 6th 7th and 8th grade as a middle school is actually a preferred model and it's the predominant middle school model across the country so I don't know when one of the factors we looked at very early on was would there would it be possible to move sixth grade into middle school and other parts of the county and we were not able to make that happen because of the space available in many of our 7th and 8th grade schools. [01:19:25] So I think that to address the issue of moving students within pyramids where you have K-6 elementaries and K-5 elementaries, it would require, and I think we've had this conversation, it would require a year-out planning because you'd actually have to increase a particular school to 6th grade, an elementary school, to move to a 7-8 middle school pyramid. [01:19:51] So it's not impossible, it just requires us to be patient and a bit more disciplined in our approach if we're moving students in between 6-7-8 and 7-8 pyramids. I'd just like to suggest the experiment can be ended in one of two ways. [01:20:07] It's shifting all the 7-8 to 6-8, or it can be shifting the 6-8 back to 7-8. I would just ask that consideration and some planning and thought go into not just allowing that to linger as an experiment that started 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and then was left to fester for 30 years, leaving those pyramids kind of on their own with the problems that is entailed by being different from the rest of the county. Yes, sir. There are a number of topics that have lingered for 20, 30, 40 years that we're working on, so I appreciate calling that out. Thank you. Dr. [01:20:47] Anderson. Thank you. I am just going to pick up where I left off. We were talking earlier regarding the spa areas there were a lot of questions from my community in terms of how they are the way that they are which often doesn't seem to make sense can you speak a little bit to what will be happening with that part of the planning yes ma'am i i think one of the things with the we had a very short run-up to this particular first epic boundary study um i think we had a month about and one of [01:21:25] the things we noted, and it's our team that noted it when we began the process, and several of our community members also pointed it out, is that our, what we call SPAs, student planning areas, were not accurate. And I'm not entirely sure the origin of why they weren't accurate, but I think they hadn't been necessarily kept up, and I believe those are on the county side, but over the next five years, it's one of the things I noted in the white paper that is posted, is that we're going to spend time to make sure that when the next five-year cycle occurs that those SPAs [01:21:59] are accurate from the beginning because it saves a lot of time and it also prevents a lot of errors when you GIS map SPAs. They really should be accurate. So we were mapping inaccurate SPAs and then having to go back and correct. And I don't know, Brian, if you could speak to that. [01:22:18] Mr. Schuster worked actually fairly closely with the SPAs. If you could comment, Brian. Of course Brian Schuster senior manager in facilities planning that's correct our SPA's hadn't been updated for a while for various reasons and that's one of the things that we do want to look forward to with next studies is just making sure that there is up to date as possible. [01:22:43] Thank you. The other question that I had was regarding the number of schools now, some of it being of some of these shifts that have fallen really significantly below 80 percent. Is there going to be a plan for those sites to maybe have more programming that we can take out of places that are more overcrowded like Wayanoke Elementary and others? What's the thinking with those sites? [01:23:11] Yes, ma'am. I think that once the boundaries are set, then the teams that look at programming, and we have a number of unique programs that are placed on a space available basis, I think that all those different puzzle pieces need to be in place. [01:23:29] So once the boundaries are set, the program sites are determined, and the transportation then routing can be planned based on the students and the programs where they're placed. So there are many programs that are located in schools likely that are more crowded that we can now redistribute within reason to make sure that we are most efficiently using space. [01:23:52] We also have professional and technical programs that we'd like to cite, particularly in secondary schools and i think that that's as we look at some of our less crowded high schools those are really great opportunities where we've not been able to have space to place some of the programs we might like to place it's going to be an opportunity for us i think to be very thoughtful about having some more opportunities for our students given that we have a bit more space in some some schools i think that would be important because we have a school that i noted after some changes here would would be at 64% and my next one is the question regarding Riverside the AP move [01:24:31] that is going to bring the school that the school is at 79% can I get a little bit more background on that as a as a plan Riverside Elementary I think we're looking at Woodley Hills I don't even remember what so it was just something that struck me so I think what we're in some cases rather than moving students we're simply seeding the program in the receiving school so that we're not uprooting students in their current school but rather starting the AAP [01:25:07] program progression in a different school so newly qualified sections would indeed begin then in Woodley Hills rather than continue to be sent to Riverside but I also want to make sure that we have our program staff who are working with principals and our regional assistant superintendent in that area weigh in because that's a project that obviously they'll be working closely with principals and families on. Thank you. One of the speakers earlier spoke to a priority transfer. She was the speaker that talked about Tyson's Green, SBA 2810. What does that entail? What does that entail? [01:25:45] Well, so what we know is that some of our schools are not at capacity, so they're still open for transfers through our transfer portal. And so what we said is we looked at that particular neighborhood and because of the dynamics that they have shared and the request, we've said before we look at other transfers, as long as there's space, we would prioritize transfers from that neighborhood based on their geographic proximity. Thank you. That is very helpful. And my last thing, I do want to say thank you to Mr. Dunn for raising the middle school, the sixth through eighth grade. [01:26:21] You know, I've talked about that ad nauseum. I probably have checked in on that more than anything when we first started this process only to see it not come to fruition. But I would love with your skeletal crew that you're going to keep for that to be lifted back up as a priority item. [01:26:37] And so that's kind of where I am. Regardless of all of the things that have been said, regardless of all of the concerns that I have raised, And I do have, and we just talked about this this morning, and I have a lot of concerns regarding the progress, I'm sorry, the process of transportation, I will be supportive of this this evening, because there's enough there holistically that I can support, but I'm not happy for my community. [01:27:08] Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. Dunn. Okay. Dr. Anderson, did you need another go back? Okay. Seeing no others, we'll go ahead and call for a vote for the motion that will be on the screen shortly. All those in favor. [01:27:34] Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Miss Marin, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Dr. Anderson and myself, all those opposed, Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dunn and Mr. Moon. Will the clerk please read the vote. Eight three, the motion carries. [01:27:51] Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for a follow on motion. I move the school board to direct the superintendent to prepare a comprehensive project plan and timeline for all work included under the headings, "Sites for One-Year Review with Recommendations by January 2027," and "Identifying Flag Sites for the Next Review Cycle," in the white paper entitled "Comprehensive Boundary Review Executive Summary as Amended." [01:28:27] Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, I would. It has been remarked tonight that we passed the policy, the revised policy, 8130, governing school boundaries in July 2024. [01:28:46] Then we launched the school boundary review almost immediately in August and September of 2024. Going forward, I think it's incumbent in the spirit of good government and effective processes to ensure that we have a clear project plan and timeline that identifies who's in charge of what, when will things happen, when will meetings be held and where, so that the public sees evidence of good planning, which for this boundary process was lacking. [01:29:21] And one of my constituents rightly said that this boundary process has been mentally exhausting. And I think that's true for everyone concerned. staff, our public school board members, everyone involved who has tried to follow either passively or actively, who has come out to speak. [01:29:40] I'm grateful for all their efforts to make sure that their voices were heard, but it can be frustrating because we launched into this so quickly. So much of this boundary process has had a characteristic of flying by the seat of your pants. And when you're undertaking a large-scale reform, a large-scale change initiative, you should certainly engage in effective planning on the front end so that everyone can see when things will happen who's in charge and and not put all the responsibility on the superintendent herself which who did heroic work epic work attending every single community meeting there were dozens over the past 18 months it should be that leadership role should be delegated down [01:30:20] to a lower level to school administrators to assistant superintendents so that the people on the front lines every day educating your students educating the community and and and leading their their part of our county and from the education mission can also lead the boundary review and inform the conversation so that the outcomes are have a more there's there's greater awareness of what those changes might be when they might happen and how they might happen so people can get more involved that's the goal of this to uphold the spirit of good government and make sure that there is that [01:30:56] transparency and accountability that is necessary for any large-scale change initiative of this kind. Mr. McElveen would you like to speak to your second? No. Mr. Frisch. Thank you. I want to thank the motion maker for reaching out as per our recommended guidelines with the motions in advance so that we could consider them. As I indicated in my response these are things that have been discussed at work sessions regular meetings etc. and Superintendent Reed [01:31:35] has committed to them Dr. Reed your intention is to give us a project management plan with a timeline correct. Yes sir. And so we have a mechanism for holding these public comments to account in our EL work. I think the second or third bullet is on trust for the board and I have two school communities that are in this group and I have every belief that Dr. Reed is a person of her word and we have a process as board members for dealing with things that might be lacking. So I will use [01:32:13] those if necessary but I don't think it will be necessary. I do appreciate the sentiment and I've raised those questions at work sessions because I think those things are important. So we're going to get there. I don't think we need to direct work that's already being done. thank you. Ms. Marin, I appreciate the motion and I thank my colleague for bringing it. I think the motion is needed because there is so much insurgent right now and we don't have answers to the questions that we've asked and while I, you know, respect Dr. our superintendent, we need to be sure [01:32:51] that that's our role. This is an opportunity to make it clear that the board is directing the superintendent. I also had already mentioned in a work session, was it just last week or whenever, that recommending things by January 27 is going to put families squarely in the academic course selection window. That is not a good time to be starting to talk about recommendations of changing children's schools. So already I feel the need to be clear and I would even adjust that to make it sooner really and maybe I do offer an amendment but it's also unclear when are we going [01:33:27] to get a decision about transportation I don't think it's okay to be doing all this business by a Friday email that gets sent to the board by the superintendent I honestly can barely keep up it's not transparent and we don't have time to discuss it so these things have to be public I would like a plan for the community to know when can they expect recommendations to come out when can the BRAC know to meet I'd be happy to wait another month or longer for a more specific plan that said I would like to just take a moment to say we did it we passed boundary changes and can [01:34:04] we just take a moment to do to celebrate that we did something that hasn't happened before we dive into the next thing okay so it wasn't perfect we learned but we did something really challenging that other boards haven't done in a really long time. So thank you to our chair for leading us through and all the staff who worked so amazingly hard. [01:34:25] It's good to celebrate a little bit. Okay, so I will be supporting the motion. Thank you. Dr. Anderson. I was waiting for her to celebrate. She does like to do that. Dr. E, you said you were going to do this anyway. Yes, ma'am. [01:34:41] Thank you. Is there any harm for us directing you to do something you were going to do anyway? I am not going to comment on what the board may or may not choose to do. Oh, I was asking you, like, do you see any harm in it? I'm not going to comment on that. Okay, good enough. [01:34:58] One of the things that I see, if this is something you're going to do anyway, there's no harm in putting a stake in the ground. While I appreciate what the EL accountability can provide, I don't want to wait until after the fact to really get clarity on what we're expecting to get. [01:35:16] And the timing of the ELs and the timing of this work are not exactly in full alignment. So I would like to make sure that in the next month or so we have a plan that is clear because I have several schools in this boat and my people want to know what is the next step. [01:35:33] So if we could lay this out in front of them in advance, I think that would reduce a lot of angst because those are some of the questions that I had, too, which is what is that going to look like? When is it going to happen? Is it going to look like the same kind of process that we had for this boundary that we just passed? [01:35:50] And so I think this is definitely in order because, as Ms. Maron said, it is our job to give you a directive. And I'd like to think this is an easier one to take because you are already going to do it. So it should be whatever, waste your time, but I'm already going to do it. [01:36:06] I would love for us to just get a win out of this and communicate to our public that we are going to be very clear because once we give a directive, it no longer becomes optional. So I will be supporting this motion. [01:36:24] Ms. Lady. Thank you. There's a lot I could say, but I'll keep it brief. I think that directing our superintendent to do things that she has clearly stated that she's going to do undermines her professionalism, undermines our trust in her. [01:36:47] I agree with my colleague who spoke first to this. I mean, I have never had a situation where Dr. Reid said she was going to do something that she didn't follow through and do. So it's not that I don't support the motion. I know that in my work as a professional, if I had some edict in front of me for everything I was going to do anyways, I would feel like there was such a lack of trust in my ability and my professionalism to do my job. [01:37:15] And the next thing we're about to do, hopefully, unanimously, is approve a CBA of a bunch of people who are professionals who know how to do their job without being told each individual thing they need to do. So for that reason, I can't support this motion. I'm going to go ahead and take a quick turn. [01:37:35] Dr. Reed, would there be any problem with us putting just the same way that we have the strategic goal updates in our rotation of presentations? Is there any reason that as we go through the next little bit particularly, we couldn't add a boundary update occasionally so that we could let people know where we were within the process, both with the Western High School and with the six areas that were set up for January 2027? [01:38:01] No, I think we could. I know the skeleton committee, I probably have to come up with a better name for that, but our BRAC committee. It's the BRAC stars. We were planning to meet quarterly, but I honestly think we need to meet a little more often to kick it off because we have our review still we have to work on. [01:38:20] I think regular updates might reduce some of the temperature as we move through the process, so I think that's definitely possible. And, you know, I think that this is an opportunity, and I think as Ms. Marin said, you know, we have passed really an epic boundary. [01:38:41] And I think that, of course, I'm going to do the after action, but I, you know, so I want to also acknowledge Dr. Anderson's point, right? It is not a hardship to do what I'm already going to do or be directed. So I just, I think the degree to which we can move forward together in some fashion on this is actually quite important in some way. [01:39:01] So that's, I guess, what I would like to say. I think when we're aligned and working on a focus goal, there's really nothing that will stop us. So thank you. Thank you. And further, I apologize for being on my email right now. [01:39:18] I'm trying to get a letter out to the community about weather, and the outlook is not working. So we're really struggling. It's a national outlook issue. So I'm trying to โ€“ The outlook for email, not the weather outlook. I know. So we're trying I'm trying to get this done because the hour is waning. [01:39:37] So anyhow, because I hear we're going to have some snow. Thank you, Dr. Miss Dixit, so I'm going to speak about the all the volume motion just one time and just say that Dr. [01:39:52] Reed, I believe you would be addressing all these with or without the direction. And we trust you and your staff to do it. I do not think that's different motions are needed. We just did the whole boundary motion. [01:40:08] I just want to take a break from voting for a second, and I will not be voting for it. Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Dixit. I see lights still on, but I don't think it's because people want to still talk. So can you-- OK. [01:40:23] Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I think we're conflating a couple of things. Directing-- at least to me. Directing the superintendent, for me, it's not necessarily a lack of trust. It's ensuring the work is done. And she does the same thing with the principals. [01:40:39] She's giving you all many, many directives. It's not because you're not wonderful things, wonderful professionals, because just last month I talked about a whole lot of things that you all are responsible for. But we had a guidance all around grading. There's guidance and there are things that are expected. [01:40:57] And for me, this falls in line with that. But we also have to acknowledge that there have been some issues that were problematic in this process. And this is just one way to verify that we are going to address that. I don't think this is a negative conversation to do the job that we hold, which is to direct the superintendent to do things. [01:41:19] That's the whole job of, you know, of us to get some of the things done. So for me, Dr. Reed, it doesn't speak to trust. It just speaks to clarity. It just speaks to ensuring that the community is going to have something that is going to be addressed because it has been a concern very recently up until five minutes ago so that is my take on it so happy to support this motion and I'm hoping people can just kind of see that it it doesn't have to be a negative connotation mr. Dunn thank you I wanted to just address a couple of comments I [01:41:57] have no criticisms of dr. Reed for the conduct of the boundary process I think there's a lot of causes, but I wouldn't say any failures necessarily on Dr. Reed's part, because she put in superhuman efforts really to guide this process throughout. But I also want to differentiate, there's trust in Dr. Reed as a human being, but there's also trust in the office of the superintendent. If she resigns tomorrow, gets hit by a bus, God forbid, someone else will be in her seat. And we want, and if Dr. Reed isn't here, then who is going [01:42:36] to fulfill that commitment? It won't be a commitment by the next person because, you know, we have a five-year cycle. Five years is a long time. Will Dr. Reed be here in five years? Looking at the history of superintendents, probably not. So we need to make sure that whatever our expectations are, we reduce it to writing and we make it binding. We speak as a school board because there are infinite priorities each of us have individually and collectively but to put it in writing make it binding reflects the collective will of the school board and I don't think we can judge a superintendent in an EL for something that is not [01:43:15] formally directed to her otherwise it's just well I wanted you to do this well no the board never said that you can't you can't write a performance review if there's not a performance plan right And that's the whole idea of this. Moreover, whether we as 12 people have trust in Dr. Reed is irrelevant. [01:43:35] It's whether the public, whether the public has trust in Dr. Reed. And that public has lost some trust. I mean, if you've been at these public hearings, as I have, you've heard a lot of angst. If you've been in your communities, you've heard a lot of angst. You've heard a lot of frustration. And what the public wants is transparency. [01:43:51] They want clarity. They want to know what's going to happen when, so they don't have to spend countless hours trying to figure it out on their own. - Thank you. - Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. Frisch. - I'm gonna play with Mr. Dunn's metaphor. [01:44:07] If there were a bus and there were an accident and we were worried about the things we've not directed the superintendent to do, we would have to have a marathon meeting where we consider thousands of things that are in motion that this board has not directed, although we think they are important. [01:44:27] And I just, I think it's a difference of opinions. I don't think that we are both on the same side the question of whether this is going to be done I've managed a lot of people I know many people on this board have managed a lot of people when somebody tells you they're going to do it and then you tell them okay I'm taking an official action to ensure that you do it as somebody who's been managed by good bad mad sad and different managers over time it sends a message and my hope is [01:45:00] is that this superintendent sticks around for a very long time and that you know that we see our roles as board members not just to direct the superintendent but to be stewards of our voice in that process just as much as we are with the resources of the school division and we use it sparingly so that when we do direct the work of the superintendent it has more weight than we're just going to direct the things that are already being done just my opinion [01:45:34] thank you mr. Frisch seeing no others we're gonna go ahead and call for a vote on the motion which is on the screen all those in favor miss Marin mr. McElveen mr. Dunn mr. Moon dr. Anderson all those opposed mr. Frisch mr. McDaniel miss st. John Cunning miss lady miss Dixit and myself will the clerk please read the vote. 5-6 the motion fails. Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for a motion. I move [01:46:12] the school board to direct the superintendent to prepare and publish a comprehensive after action report on best practices and lessons learned from the 2024-2025 comprehensive boundary review in order to inform the planning and execution of future boundary reviews. Is there a second? Second. [01:46:33] Thank you, Mr. McIlvine. Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes. We've spoken extensively, and anyone who's paid any attention in the boundary process will know that there were, you know, a number of things that could have been done differently or better. [01:46:50] I think it's incumbent on FCPS, having undertaken the largest change initiative in its history, perhaps, to learn from what happened, what went well, what didn't go well, and what we should do differently in the future. Because if we don't learn from our mistakes, then we're just doomed to repeat them, right? [01:47:09] I think there's a famous cliche almost saying about that. If you look at after-action reviews, they're common in the military and large enterprises. It's routine. And what we have found generally is that FCPS is not a mature enterprise. [01:47:25] We just published our first employee handbook, which is great, But for an organization that's existed for 100 years, you would assume that they would have published one in the past. It's just a small window into the fact that when we launched this initiative, we didn't have any plan, right, from the very beginning. [01:47:44] And mature enterprises don't do it that way. If you go to most large enterprises, public-private sector, you'll find that they map things out almost to the nth degree, right, like they're building a rocket ship. And that's really how we should execute our large-scale boundary reviews. [01:48:02] Again, to say what resources are necessary, who's going to lead the effort, what will happen when. And it gives transparency so that everyone on the school board and the public can have insight into that. So in this case, we need to learn what was learned here, capture that, and then incorporate that into planning for the future. [01:48:20] Just as part of a fundamental principle of good government. Thank you. Mr. McElveen, would you like to speak to your second? No. OKAY. MR. FRESH. AGAIN, MR. DUNN AND I ARE ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE SUBSTANCE OF THE QUESTION. I JUST HAVE THE SAME REACTION TO THE APPROACH, BUT I WILL BE GRATEFUL WHEN YOU AND I ARE BOTH REVIEWING THE AFTER ACTION REPORT THAT THE SUPERINTENDENT HAS ALREADY COMMITTED TO AND WE'LL BE REVIEWING THAT IN SOME KIND OF A PUBLIC SETTING, I'M SURE. AND JUST SO I DON'T HAVE TO DO THIS FOR THE [01:48:58] remaining two similar comments thank you seeing no others we'll go ahead and call for a vote on the motion which is on the screen all those in favor miss marron mr mckelveen mr dunn mr moon dr anderson all those opposed mr frisch mr mcdaniel miss st john cunning miss lady mystics and myself will the clerk please read the vote it's five six the motion fails thank you I will call on Mr. Dunn for a follow-on motion. [01:49:32] I move the school board to direct the superintendent to conduct an evaluation one year after the implementation of any boundary changes to include consultation with school administrators and community members to assess their impact and report on any findings to include any recommendations for further changes. [01:49:55] Is there a second? Second. Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, I would. While we're moving less than 2,000 students, there are another thousand or so who might be affected by future boundary changes that are to be recommended on by January 2027, as well as the ongoing Western boundary process which should culminate this summer. [01:50:22] That's a lot of boundary changes. And what we've heard consistently across, I counted, nearly 20 different neighborhoods just on the Saturday public hearing and subsequent public hearings, was that communities had received no notice at all. Changes were made after scenario three and scenario four. [01:50:40] And so some of those changes have been postponed, others have been tailored back, but some are being implemented. And I think it's worth studying, especially for this, the first countywide boundary review in 40 years, what are the impacts of the changes we're making? [01:50:56] Not just an after action report on the process, But go and study the changes you're making. See if you're making good decisions. See if the changes are impactful in a positive way or a negative way. See if we need to make further changes to refine or tailor the changes that were made during this process and during future boundary processes. [01:51:18] That is what's called a learning organization. I've helped to build learning cultures in multibillion-dollar organizations and in startups. And that's just a fundamental principle that you should not just do things, but you should go and study their impact to see if they were effective or ineffective. [01:51:37] And that doesn't mean you necessarily reverse, you might just revise. But in some cases, you know, we need to understand for future boundary reviews, what are we doing and is that a good idea? Should we eliminate all attendance islands or should we just keep them intact? [01:51:53] That's one question that will come out of this. Should we keep split feeders or undo them? we'll have a little control group and then a group that's being changed. So we have an opportunity to learn. And although I think Dr. Reed is the bee's knees, she's probably the best superintendent FCPS has ever had, we still need to establish the requirements. [01:52:16] Otherwise, they won't be met. Thank you. Mr. McElveen, would you like to speak to your second? No. Thank you. Seeing no lights, I'm going to take a quick turn on this one. I actually am in favor of the idea of this, but I think the one-year evaluation is too fast because we have all kinds of things going on that don't align. [01:52:40] So if this had been more in line with making sure that we did some sort of review of what had happened previously before the next iteration of boundaries, then I would be more in favor of being able to support this. But for that reason, I just think that with all the churn that's still going on until January of 2027, I think that it's just too quick to be able to get with all the phasing that's going to be happening. [01:53:06] So I am in support of the idea that I just think that the timeline is a little bit off. So, Dr. Anderson. Yes, thank you. Is there an amendment? Like what would be the timetable that would be a little bit more reasonable? two years? I guess I'm wondering if was there any conversation about that? Would two years make it more reasonable, Ms. Anderson? This point, no, because I don't think that we'll have the [01:53:43] information because of all the phasing that's going on. So like I said, if we did it so that it was before the next start of the iteration of the next boundary review, I'd be more in line with that. But because the board hasn't decided when the five-year clock is going to start, I can't support this at that time. [01:54:03] Okay, seeing no others, we're going to go ahead and call for a vote on the motion which is on the screen. All those in favor. Mr. McElveen, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson. All those opposed. Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, and myself with Ms. Marin away from the table. [01:54:24] Can you please read the vote, Madam Clerk? 4601. The motion fails. Thank you. I call on Mr. Dunn for a follow-on motion. I moved the school board to direct the superintendent to utilize the next cyclical boundary review to reduce the number of trailers and modulars to the greatest extent practicable in order to enhance school safety and security for students and staff. [01:54:53] Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. McElveen. Mr. Dunn, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, I would. I'm extremely concerned about the fact that we have 800 classrooms and trailers and modulars across the county and I only derived that figure through going through the CIP the capital improvement plan which is a 300 page document on the website specifically we have 584 classrooms and trailers modulars in elementary school 53 in middle schools and 176 in high schools historically in [01:55:31] other school divisions across the country. Those are used temporarily for a few years during a construction project, but at FCPS they're in place for decades. First of all, trailers and modulars are not meant to be used for decades. These are, if you remember Hurricane Katrina, trailers are not meant to be used on a long-term basis. They're really not. They're not built to the same specifications as a standard school building. But secondly, from a school security perspective, when you have an incident of random gun violence, which is becoming all too common in our modern society. You have some students who you're able to lock down inside the school building protected [01:56:09] by brick and concrete, and then you have others outside with walls made of tin or aluminum. If you've read the story of the three little pigs, you know which house you want to be in when the wolf comes calling. And I just don't think it's fair or equitable to consign so many students, especially disproportionately low-income students, to a fate of being left in these trailers indefinitely. I think it's imperative that we identify what is the highest priority for the school board or one of the highest priorities for the next five-year boundary review so planning [01:56:48] can go into it over the next five years to assess where these trailers and modulars are located and where there are opportunities, especially as the number of students declines, to actually remove those trailers, remove some of those modulars, bring more students inside the building so every student, every single student, regardless of what school they attend, where they live, what language they speak at home, can learn in modern updated classrooms and schools with updated facilities. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. Mr. McElveen, would you like to speak to your second no thank you Mr. Frisch thank you so this one's a little different because [01:57:26] it's not a issue of superintendent commitment or not nor do I think anybody voting either way on this thinks that we shouldn't be moving forward for safety and security for our students but I don't want to put my thumb on the scale of a process five years out with no engagement yet at hand. Additionally one area that I think and you know we can communicate after about potentially partnering a previous CIP had analysis of trailer utilization over time and I think it would be [01:58:02] beneficial for the board and the public generally speaking to have that data as part of the staple reports that are part of the CIP so that people can see over time what is the trajectory of usage how is it impacted by facility construction what is the trajectory of usage by region by pyramid are there schools where they have a large number of trailers but they aren't necessarily being used by the school for classroom space so I'd be interested in getting more data on that to help inform future considerations when I had looked initially in about 2023 at Providence District's [01:58:41] use of trailers. Over the four previous years, trailers had gone down by about 25% in Providence District. I think the number was somewhere in the 18 to 20% range for the county in the same period. It's an elastic number, though, depending on where you are, because there's a certain number of trailers that move around the county depending on where the construction projects are. So not in favor of this, but I am in favor of getting more information to help inform future discussions. [01:59:12] Ms. Leidy. Thank you. And again, this is different than the others because obviously, and I've stated this before during the boundary work, that the number of trailers are of concern to me. And I did share with the maker of the motion my thoughts on this, that first of all, modulars are permanent structures with plumbing and bathrooms, and so I don't want to clump them with trailers or learning cottages, as I like to call them. [01:59:42] I also know that a lot of times the trailers are not used as classrooms. They're actually used by parent liaisons. They're used by partnering initiatives like EduFuturo. They're used for other reasons. [01:59:59] Yes, they're predominantly used as classrooms, but I would want to specify trailers used as classrooms because some of those extra spaces are nice because people don't have to go into the building. they can, if it's a parent liaison. I also want to just say that I, in my experience of where I worked in Fairfax County and where I represent in Drainsville, I don't agree that these modulars and trailers are disproportionately in low-income areas. [02:00:27] They're all over our county, and it doesn't matter. We'd all like to eliminate all trailers. But like my colleague, I think we need to do a little bit of gain more information about utilization over time um look at how the boundary we just voted on impacts uh trailers how many might be removed as a result of these changes and also i think it's um a bit of a challenge to vote on something that's five years down the road when the makeup of this board might be very different um i think that board um can can ask for those things i also know um in the after report um i believe the after [02:01:05] action report and we've talked about this uh already i think this is a priority for for facilities moving forward is to look at classroom trailers and do our best to remove as many as we are so again i agree with the sentiment but i think we need um i don't like the wording of it as it is and i don't want to vote for something that a new board would have to undertake thank you mr moon thank you madam chair uh with all due respect to uh my colleague from mountain district i am not going to be able to support this motion at this time i have always advocated for reducing [02:01:41] number of trailers being used for instructional purposes, but it doesn't necessarily have to do by going through a boundary review. I mean, CIP has to address these issues in the first place, but more importantly, one of the big challenges we experienced over the last 18 months of period of time during the comprehensive review is that even though when the board changed the policy, boundary [02:02:14] policy and included four major priorities or criteria, namely access to programming, proximity, enrollment slash capacity, and transportation. We did not look at all those priorities in addressing individual boundary change situation. So what I will be advocating instead is this to be part of next time we look at boundary policy to see whether we should maintain those those [02:02:49] priorities or we should tweak them we should strengthen them i think that's a better time to look at this one so let's wait until we get a report from a superintendent which she is going to be doing and then and then you know have this go through a governance committee governance committee correct governance committee and then brought to the school for discussion so you know Michelle Dawn I fully agree that we have way too many trailers being useful instruction we need to we need to reduce them we need to [02:03:22] input eliminate them but I'm not gonna support the motion this evening dr. Anderson thank you no surprise that I'm that I will be supporting this motion because in my time on the board I have watched the trailers explode in the schools in which I represent Park Lawn, Mason Crest, Wayanoke I could go on and on I could list I could my list of schools without trailers in the past five years in the Mason district is probably shorter than the schools with trailers so I'm very much interested in this oddly enough that you would make [02:04:01] the statements that you made Miss Lady I'm sorry to direct you but it just reminded me of a conversation I had with a with a constituent this week because they wanted to know well in five years you know what's going to happen here there I said in five years it could be a completely different board that negates all of this so none of these things are permanent none of these things are in stone forever because all of this work is at the will of the board so this could be in writing now and the next board comes in and removes it just like the next board can come in and say you know what we're done with boundaries we're no longer going to do that work. All of these things are happening. We are always putting [02:04:40] ourselves on the hook for things and hoping that it stands the test of time, but none of it is guaranteed. And in the spaces where we could at least begin to effectuate the work for the planning piece, I'd like to be able to have a hand in that. So I will be supportive of this, but that just reminded me of that conversation. Ms. Marin. Yeah, I gotta say I'm like intrigued by the meta-analysis of how our board does the work and the decisions that we make and will they stay or will they go and I mean that's the stuff I love to talk about and I love to like write down and make agreements [02:05:15] about so I think that we should do that more and then make decisions in that way but it's hard for me to go on a whim but what I will do is support this motion because I appreciate the urgency that it brings. I think there's too much comfort among policy makers and decision makers in Fairfax county about the things that we don't find acceptable so the cip work is not even we're not even thinking about how to fix problems true problems with our facilities in fairfax county so i support that at least this lobs this into the atmosphere as a priority because we've got [02:05:53] to do something about our students learning in places that are not safe and not comfortable it's unacceptable let's do something about it thank you miss marron i'm going to take a quick turn. I had two emails just this week from teachers that teach in trailers that actually have asked me explicitly to make sure that we're more careful about the way we talk about them because there are lots of teachers that actually like teaching in trailers and there are lots of kids that actually do better because it's a quieter space that can be managed. Usually the [02:06:31] Heating and cooling is specific to that space. When my own kiddo was in trailers when his school was being renovated, I know that that was the case for their class as well. And so I fully support the idea that we should get as many kids in our buildings as possible. [02:06:47] We have a lot of work to make that happen, and the boundaries is a step towards that. So I feel comfortable with the fact that that is in the policy, and I'm hopeful that the policy will survive long enough that it can be used again but we will see what happens in the future but at this point I I think that the only thing I want to say is that I just want us to be careful about we have lots of kids that are learning in trailers so I want to be careful about how we're talking about them in terms of their safety as well so we're doing everything possible to keep our kids safe and protected and I want to make sure that parents understand that as well so Ms. St. John Cunningham [02:07:27] I appreciate my colleague's last comments. I actually worked in a trailer for a lot of years and I really appreciated the space and how I could work with students. And actually a lot of teachers asked me, can we borrow your space so I can take kids there because it's quieter. So I appreciate those comments from my colleague and just letting you know that when I worked in my trailer, I loved it. Thank you. Mr. Dunfer, go back. [02:07:59] Yes, I do look forward to the opportunity to partner with my colleagues on gathering data, working with the superintendent. I think that's very important, and certainly if there are programs, especially third-party programs that are using trailers, I certainly have no objection to that. I'm more focused on kids spending the entire day in a trailer that might not be intended for that or intend for use for decades on end. [02:08:23] You know, Peter Drucker, famous investment guru, says what gets measured gets managed. And that's just a cardinal principle that you find in the military and other large enterprises that if you don't set it out in writing as a requirement, it's probably not going to happen. [02:08:38] Because at the end of the day, you're going to manage to whatever the requirement is. And that's why every single school in this county has a school improvement plan. It's not that we don't trust the principles. It's that we want to have measurable metrics, measurable improvement, and we set that out. [02:08:55] We want a 10% reduction in chronic absenteeism. them. We want reading scores for this demographic group to go up by 10 points, right? We put those in writing because then that's the expectation, that's the requirement, and then the school administrators, the principals, the assistant principals, the entire school organizes to achieve those objectives. So it's not a lack of trust because we have great principals, including in the audience today. It's because we want to make sure that we are clear both from the the supervisor and the subordinate and that goes all the way down the food chain on what the expectation is what the requirement is [02:09:31] and then you organize to meet that if you go into a battle you don't say hey let's win you say take that hill and you advance in that direction that's how you win a battle with clear direction so people can organize their resources accordingly I think we need to remember that we're going to be having a standing boundary review advisory committee for the next five years what are they going to talk about well let's set the agenda one of the agenda items should be reducing the number of trailers and modulars some people might like them so other people don't let's have that conversation with [02:10:06] the experts thank you thank you mr dunn uh seeing no others i'm going to go ahead and call for a vote on the motion that's on the screen all those in favor miss marron mr mckelveen mr dunn Dr. Anderson. All those opposed, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, and myself. All those abstaining. Mr. Moon. Will the clerk please read the vote? [02:10:34] 461. The motion fails. Thank you. Agenda item 7.04, ratification of tentative collective bargaining agreements between Fairfax County Public Schools and the Fairfax County Federation of Principals, Supervisors, and Administrators for the Principals, Supervisors, and Administrators bargaining unit. I call on Ms. Lady for a motion. [02:10:55] Thank you, Madam Chair. It is with a profound sense of pride and a great deal of personal enthusiasm that I move the approval of the collective bargain agreement between the Fairfax County Public Schools and the Fairfax County Federation of Principals, Supervisors, and Administrators. As many of you know, my roots in Fairfax County run deep. [02:11:14] Point of order. You have to read the motion first, and then I'll call on you to speak. Oh, you stopped me. I'm with my enthusiasm. Sorry, I got too excited. Okay. I move that the school board ratify the tentative collective bargaining agreement between Fairfax County Public Schools and the Fairfax County Federation of Principals, Supervisors, and Administrators for Principals, Supervisors, and Administrators bargaining unit with an effective date of July 1, 2026. [02:11:40] Is there a second? Second. Mr. Moon? Miss Lady, would you like to speak to you? Why, yes, I would. Disagreement? Wait, let me go back. I'm not going to start over. But as many of you know, my roots in Fairfax County Public Schools run deep. [02:11:56] Before I had the honor of serving on this board, I spent my career in the trenches as a counselor and director of student services right here in the division. I retired before collective bargaining became a reality for our staff, but I never lost sight of the immense responsibility our leaders carry. Standing here tonight, I don't just see a list of 1,400 positions. [02:12:16] I see the faces of former colleagues, mentors, and friends. I know firsthand the late nights, the complex problem-solving, and the unwavering dedication required to keep our schools running at the level of excellence our community expects. This agreement is more than just a contract, it is a statement of value. [02:12:34] I have reviewed this CBA thoroughly and I'm incredibly pleased with the results. It is fair, it is forward-thinking, and most importantly, it addresses compensation and pay raises in a way that acknowledges the expertise of our supervisors and administrators. [02:12:49] In a competitive region like ours, we cannot afford to lose our best leaders. This agreement ensures that we aren't just attracting talent, but we are honoring and retaining the veteran leaders who serve as the backbone of FCPS. To my friends and former colleagues in the unit, thank you for your patience and your professionalism throughout this process. [02:13:09] I'm thrilled to be the one bringing this motion forward tonight. Supporting the agreement is an investment in the stability of our schools and the success of our students. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting yes approve this historic agreement thank you mr. moon would you like to speak to your second oh thank you madam chair everything that has been already said by a five-year lady I want to echo as I was happy to support a CBA last year for FAU because there was a soul in it I feel the same way for this collective [02:13:43] bargaining agreement so I'm supporting this thank you mr. moon mr. fish thank you so in my second month on the school board back in 2020 I was reading this was like February of 2020 I was reading the legislative program that had just been circulated and I was surprised when I found that Fairfax County Public Schools had a plank in its legislative program that committed our lobbyists to lobbying against collective bargaining in Richmond and that that had been [02:14:18] there for 40 years we've never until recently never had collective bargaining in fairfax county and as the kid of a union worker who probably only had a middle class life because his dad had a union job while his mom waited tables until she retired it was very important to me that that change and so i was talking to our chair at the time miss karen corbett sanders and she said well here's what you do you amend the legislative program and i was like i have no idea how to do [02:14:53] that but she helped and we came up with language we changed it we were the only school division in virginia that year to lobby to change the law to allow collective bargaining of public sector employees should have gone farther they will soon and they did they changed the law and very soon after we went to work collaborating with the various employee associations that we had at the time on crafting a resolution Dr Anderson was chair at the time and it took a lot of hard work but we reached unanimous consensus to make that happen which then later resulted in our first CBA and [02:15:30] our first contract approval for our educators and staff and now here we are for our principals administrators and supervisors. This is such an important day because all of the eligible employees IN FAIRFAX COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE FINALLY REPRESENTED BY COLLECTIVE BARGAINING UNITS THAT MEANS THEY ALL HAVE A SEAT AT THE TABLE THAT THEY ALL HAVE A STAKE REALLY OFFICIALLY IN THE WORK THAT WE DO IN AN OFFICIAL CAPACITY OF RESPECT AND THAT WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER [02:16:06] FOR REAL NOT JUST IN RHETORIC OR OUR BEST EFFORTS AND SO I'M INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL TO HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO SUPPORT THIS MOTION I THINK PRINCIPAL LITZ FOR HELPING TO LEAD THIS WORK YOU KNOW while balancing the work of being Marshall's incredible principal but that's what being a principal and administrator or a supervisor or an educator is is about balancing a whole lot of competing interests and just making it work and collective bargaining is a tool that we now have and we will continue to use to make that happen to collaborate better and to focus on our shared [02:16:44] interests in supporting our students because teachers working conditions are student learning conditions. And our principals, administrators, and supervisors play a big role in ensuring that those are great places for our teachers to work. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Frisch. Dr. Anderson. [02:17:03] Thank you. Back in, I believe, December, it feels like 100 years ago, I offered the principal's proclamation where I talked about that our principals serve as instructional leaders, supervisors of teaching and learning, community partners, assessment and accountability experts, budget and resource managers, facility and operation leaders, public relations representatives and stewards of legal contracts and policy requirements. [02:17:34] Those were some of the words that I shared then. I am so, so very excited to be able to add that you are a collective bargaining unit as well to that. we talked about the teacher bargaining with you know a couple of years ago I was excited for that because when I was a teacher I was in a bargaining unit and coming into Virginia and realizing that there's no space for that was really foreign to me because I work in multiple states where that was an option when I was an assistant principal I was in a bargaining unit when I was a principal I was in a bargaining in a bargaining unit so I understand more than anybody at this table what [02:18:13] that means and that position, which can be quite precarious because you're also management in some ways. So this is, I am thrilled for all of you to be able to participate in the work that you have to lead each and every single day for you to have a hand in articulating how we move forward in a very real way. While I was very excited to participate when we started with the teachers and the 17 associations that we had at that time. [02:18:47] And it just took us a little while to find our way. I couldn't be more excited that we are here for you. I feel like we've come full circle in ensuring that there's multiple stakeholder voices that will be at the table in Fairfax County. [02:19:04] I also want to find out how to get some of the other folks that we don't necessarily, we're not able to hear their voices at the table to get them into this conversation in a meaningful way because this solidifies this for you it's going to be meaningful you're going to be able to hold us accountable to hear your thinking and to really articulate the things that you can bring to the fairfax county organization so i i couldn't be happier to support this today congratulations [02:19:35] Thank you. Mr. Dunn. When I think about school administrators, I think about Dr. Harry Bartow, who was the principal at my middle school and high school that I first attended, and what a profound impact he and his wife, Marianne, had on my life, and how I probably wouldn't be here today but for their example. We often talk about outcomes and data in [02:20:11] school board meetings, but behind every positive statistic is a school administrator who refused to let their ship drift. To our principals and directors, you're really the captains of our schools. You navigate the storms of tight budgets and changing mandates, always keeping your eyes on the horizon of student achievement. Without your leadership, our goals would just be words on paper. [02:20:34] You really are the the front line representatives holding the ship together. Thank you so much for tireless work and making our school division our district a place where every student can reach the shore of their potential really realize not just their interest but how they can be successful not just in a school setting but in in in the real world and so I'm so grateful that through this motion school administrators and other staff were able to be treated as equal partners in our educational mission not just cogs in the machine part of a larger enterprise one more [02:21:13] employee on the payroll but really as as leaders who are responsible on daily basis entrusted by fcps entrusted by the school board entrusted by parents and the community to make sure that their children achieve everything that their parents dream for them and everything that those children dream for themselves. So thank you very much for everything you do on a daily basis. [02:21:37] You are the reason with all the teachers and staff that our school division is the wonderful world-class school system that it is. Thank you Mr. Dunn. Ms. Marin. Well I won't miss an opportunity to go on and on about how amazing our principals, supervisors, and administrators are. I'm so glad that you feel fulfilled and you've been able to do this work and it's I think such an example to see our leaders learning something new and doing something new. And I think that's humbling and we could all model that, that it's always time to learn and do more. I also have to thank my colleague [02:22:12] from Providence reminding me of the journey that we took. And, you know, I have this challenge that it's hard for me to really be okay with how long things take. You may have noticed I kind of want to get a lot done and it's hard. But when I hear it said like that, I'm like, wow, we did push things through and now look what we've helped to do for the people that are so important in our school. So I just want to say we must honor this agreement and that means fund it. And not just us, the FCPS school board, by allocating money to it, but the board of supervisors by funding our request. Elevating the roles of the leaders of our schools that are the centers of our community [02:22:52] across this county 200 times over is a responsibility of the Fairfax County Board of supervisors. So effective July 1 this year we cannot as one Fairfax County government shirk from funding all of our collective bargaining agreements in FCPS. Miss St. John Cunning. Wrong button there. [02:23:19] I'm also really happy to support this and I have to say that I have been very fortunate to work in schools where I have worked with some of the best supervisors, administrators, principals and I think oftentimes the work that our leaders in our school do goes goes unseen the early mornings the first to get there the last to leave the being at sports events plays you know concerts all the time and dedication and being in a position where there are leaders in their schools and they are supporting [02:23:56] the teachers and the staff but then they're also having to answer to leadership and things coming down and having to be, you're in the middle and you're trying to balance all of this and nobody ever really sees how hard that is. Like everybody knows who their student's teacher is, but they don't understand the work that is going on behind the scenes and all that juggling to make it work. [02:24:16] I've been fortunate to work under some of the greatest people and principals and have seen the amazing work and tireless commitment that they have. And when you have a great principal, you have a great community, you have a great school, you have teachers that are happy, you have a great climate, and you have leadership that is happy. And I'm going to tell you, that is not easy. And we are lucky that we have some of the best in this county. So I am beyond happy to support this, because this is one way that we can show you that we support you, that you deserve it. Thank you. Ms. Dixit. [02:24:55] I want to support this agreement as well today. I want to thank FCPS staff, divisional leadership and the Fairfax County Federation of Principal, Supervisor, Administrator for their collaborative and professional work throughout this first collective bargaining process. [02:25:16] Meeting required timelines and aligning this agreement with the FI 27 budget cycle reflects strong planning and good fit negotiation. Every time I walk into a school and visit it and they're leading the leaders of the school, they said the whole tone in the school, the principal meeting the students in the hallway, calling them with their first name and giving them hugs and high fives. [02:25:41] It just makes me feel that this the principal is and the administrators are very aligned with the student population and and they don't do it for just show they really mean it. they do it every day. My kids went to FCPS and they graduated in 2020 and 2024, had amazing principal in all their schools and director of student services, got great education. So I'm personally very thankful to all the leaders in all the schools and would love to support this [02:26:16] and keep this collaboration, continued collaboration. Thank you. Okay, seeing no others, We're going to go ahead and call for a vote on the motion, which is on the screen. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Maron, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. [02:26:39] That is unanimous for all board members. We are going to take a very quick recess, but a real five minutes. [02:30:32] Watch. You turn hers on. Do you hear it? Turn mine on. [02:31:10] No, it's on. See it? That's fine. [02:32:27] Board Members, please take your seats. Board Members, please take your seats. Okay, we're going to go ahead and get going. Agenda Item 7.05, Policy 8542, Environmental Stewardship. This item was withdrawn from the agenda and has been referred to the February 10, 2026 work session and will be considered at a regular meeting at a later date. [02:36:12] action item policy 8410 leasing for school facilities I call on Mr. Dunn for a motion. I move to refer agenda items 7.06 7.07 and 7.08 to the comprehensive planning and development committee. Is there a second? I second. Ms. Marin Mr. Dunn would you like to speak to your motion? [02:36:42] Only very briefly. There's great work being done by our governance committee to revise policies that haven't examined in many years some of these policies are related to facilities and thus it's appropriate to refer them to the Comprehensive Plain Development Committee to obtain CPDC's input before they are formally adopted by the school board. Ms. Marron would you like to speak to your second? I look forward to a further conversation about these and the other forthcoming policies. [02:37:11] Perfect. Seeing no others we're gonna go ahead and take a vote for the motion that's on the screen. All those in favor Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marron, Mr. McElveen, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Dixit, Mr. Dunn, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson and myself with Miss Lady Away from the Table. [02:37:36] Agenda Item 7.09, Fairfax County School Board Electronic Participation Resolution. I call on Miss Dixit for a motion. [02:38:00] I move that the school board adopts its electronic participation resolution as detailed in the agenda item attachment on board docs. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. McDaniel. Ms. Dixit, would you like to speak to your motion? I just wanted to say this is a great solution to virtual participation for most of us who are working, have a full-time job or other commitments, and to be able to participate in the meetings. [02:38:30] So I would love to support this. Thank you. Mr. McDaniel, would you like to speak to your second? What Ms. Dixit said. [02:38:44] Thank you. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to support this motion today because I don't believe I've had sufficient time for conversation and questions to be responded to. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Anderson. Seeing no others we're going to call for a vote on the motion that's on the screen. All those in favor Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Miss Marin, Mr. McElveen, Miss St. John Cunning, Miss Lady, Miss Dixit, Mr. Moon and myself. All those opposed. [02:39:25] Dr. Anderson, all those abstaining. Mr. Dunn, will the clerk please read the vote? 9-1-1. The motion carries. Thank you. Agenda item 8-0-1, Performance Review, Technology EL-12, Monitoring Report. [02:39:50] Each year, the school board assesses the superintendent in part on the basis of the school's divisions. Reasonable progress towards achieving the 2023-30 strategic plan goals and adherence to a set of 13 executive limitations found on pages 14 through 31 of the Board's strategic governance manual. [02:40:09] The superintendent provides annual monitoring reports to the board for each executive limitation. The board then votes on whether or not the provided report is in compliance or if corrective action is needed. I call on Dr. Reid for a monitoring report on executive limitation 12 technology. [02:40:25] Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board and the public listening. Tonight, as the chair just mentioned, I'll be presenting executive limitation number 12 which discusses technology in Fairfax County public schools just as a reminder this is the statement for executive elimination limitation 12 and I want to note that at the time of this report to the best of my knowledge information and belief we've gathered information and evidence that I believe supports compliance with the board's executive limitation associated with this topic and this evening I'd like [02:41:00] to highlight some of the work that many of the IT team that's sitting right here has done in the past year led by Gautam Sethi, so I appreciate you all being here. I also want to ironically share that this afternoon we had a bit of a national Microsoft Outlook challenge, so for those parents out there, my apologies that the communication got out to you a little later than we planned but our IT team has rallied and national work I think is in better order so we're -- maybe it was about the EL but I don't think so. [02:41:39] But anyhow, if you're watching from home, the entire monitoring report is attached online for you to follow along. I want to remind those watching that there are eight areas of executive limitation 12, Items 1 through 4 are here, and items 5 through 8 are on the next slide. [02:42:04] Thank you. As you know, FCPS manages a massive enterprise infrastructure, and we support over 280,000 computing devices. Our technology work spans from foundational hardware repair to the operation of critical instructional systems like Schoology and the Student Information System. [02:42:26] Tonight I'll be sharing updates that are new since our last EL-12 report. One of our new or newly added bodies of work is our FCPS mobile app. This enhances community engagement, and this was a project that our instructional technology team worked very closely with our communications team. [02:42:49] The app in this case enhances community engagement by consolidating essential district and school information into a single user-friendly platform. It provides 24-7 access to critical resources like ParentVue, cafeteria menus, and emergency alerts. [02:43:08] It also streamlines how families receive targeted updates for their specific schools and reduces the need to manage multiple websites and bookmarks. supports automatic translation into over a hundred languages which ensures equitable access to communication as of mid-January and it's again kind of been a soft launch the mobile app has been downloaded by over 7,000 users and we're continuing communications through school newsletters actually this week I saw it in the principal toolkits to increase momentum and use as we move through the [02:43:46] winter and into spring it's also if you're watching a great location to get weather information if you want to download the app as we may have weather moving in in October parents and caregivers were enrolled into weekly light speed parent reports these reports provide parents and caregivers with consistent and transparent insight into their students weekly digital activity families no longer have to manually enroll to receive these services further more these reports serve as a direct portal for families to manage technology [02:44:22] use at home as well allowing them to pause internet access and restrict YouTube on school-issued devices during non-school hours a sample report is on the slide so you can see that this particular student report browsed 116 different hosts and visited an average of 287 pages a day and this goes Sunday through Saturday so families are able to see weekend and home use as well as we continue to have concerns about how our young people spend their time this is a great tool we've also this is another huge project [02:45:00] transition to the new online format for our SAT PSAT and AP exams as you can see from the screen we administered well over 60,000 of these exams online last year, and this was actually a huge undertaking and was done very smoothly without incident. [02:45:22] This provided a faster, modern testing experience. Over the last year, several events have been organized to share our work around artificial intelligence. Our Meeting the Moment event brought over 400 staff, students, and community members. [02:45:40] We've hosted training for our T-specs, SBITs, and principals, and continued to highlight and offer training for staff through our Department of Instructional Technology, Hours of Learnings. Our Fairfax Student AI Innovation Challenge, called Seize the Moment, launched this October. [02:45:57] And we have over 1,100 students from every high school in Fairfax County that are creating with AI. They're in a managed educational AI tool called PlayLab. Students will be presenting their final project on February 17th at the Fairfax AI Innovation Night at Herndon High School. [02:46:20] The Hornets will be hosting this incredible competition. It'll be great to see our community there. I'm really excited. I can't wait. All the teams were encouraged to submit their projects to presidential ai challenge and as of january 20th we have over 100 teams that submitted to the national competition and we're also excited about our new arrangement agreement that allows us to be one of the few school divisions that are working with chat gpt for teachers in a very controlled environment and a measured approach this is a secure managed version and it's only [02:46:57] authorized for staff use. Finally, our leadership team is working on developing a comprehensive AI roadmap, and we do have an upcoming work session where our board is going to engage with staff in a continuing conversation about how we're going to shape this new technology. [02:47:14] As we think about other new or newly added information, FCPS is establishing appropriate boundaries and ethical guidelines for the use of AI in educational and operational settings. We'll focus on regulatory alignment, clear expectations and guidance, and support. [02:47:35] Finally tonight, I want to share some updates about our IT cybersecurity work. We've made progress on our identity platform upgrade, and our teams have consolidated multiple authentication pages behind our one FCPS single sign-on page. [02:47:51] As of this past summer, our key systems like CIS, CSTARS, Schoology are now behind the new secure Fairfax County Public School single sign-on portal. This upgrade also supports stronger authentication for students, parents, and non-employees. [02:48:08] Over 40 applications have been migrated to this single sign-on page. In August in 2025, the Department of Instructional Technology finalized an FCPS Data Classification and Handling standard, which ensures that information, whether stored on our systems or processed by a third-party vendor, is managed in accordance with sensitivity and legal requirements. [02:48:32] This framework will advance our training efforts on secure data handling for staff. So, Madam Chair, this concludes the Executive Limitation No. 12 presentation. Thank you, Dr. Reed. I call on Mr. McIlveen for a motion pulling it up I move that the school board finds that the superintendent is in compliance with executive limitation number 12 technology. [02:49:05] I further move that the school board approve the monitoring report based on the superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive limitation 12 technology as outlined in the strategic governance manual. Is there a second Mr. Frisch Mr. McIlveen would you like to speak to your motion. [02:49:23] This is certainly a topic of ripe discussion. We've heard over the course of the past several months if we've rolled out our plans for extending AI to teachers and just listening to the community feedback. [02:49:42] As one board member, I found it very helpful and stimulating. I do think that as a board, we're going to have to get our hands around this very quickly. As I've advocated before, I think we have to do it. we do need a board retreat I know Governance Committee is working on the basis for an AI policy which I think is very necessary but overall I applaud the work that you were doing and the the thought that you've put into this and Gotham has put into this because we are leading the nation we just need to make sure that when we lead it we lead responsibly and take not only corporate [02:50:21] and their perspectives but also perspectives from other other communities so I'll leave it there. Thank you. Mr. Fresh would you like to speak to your second. Thank you. I'm pleased to second the motion and find the superintendent in compliance with executive limitation 12. I want to recognize meaningful measurable progress since our last monitoring cycle and acknowledge that the division is moving in the right direction. First we're seeing much stronger as the report notes alignment between technology investments and our equity access [02:50:58] and communications goals the launch of the FCPS mobile app which everybody should download with automatic translation into more than 100 languages is a concrete step toward more accessible family-centered communication combined with tools like talking points lightspeed parent reporting and expanded parent view functionality families have clearer ways to engage than ever second i appreciate the superintendent is working in partnership with governance the governance committee as we develop the ai policy the superintendent has taken initial steps to put structures around the use of ai in both instructional and operational settings [02:51:37] at the same time there is much work still ahead the pace of change in this space is rapid and keeping up will require ongoing vigilance as mr mcelbean said as the school division works to take advantage of these opportunities for our educators we must ensure that staff students their parents or guardians have the knowledge and support they need to protect themselves whether that relates to mental health academic integrity data privacy or other potential unintended consequences of these emerging technologies we also need to ensure that the community is actively engaged not only in these ai discussions but more broadly in the school division's technology strategy [02:52:17] and i'm confident that that is and will continue to happen perhaps in a more formal manner third the report shows real operational progress that often goes unnoticed but matters deeply and is a clear indication that our i.t staff has been extremely hard at work this year they have improved identity management and single sign-on reductions in network outages and fiber disruptions stronger cyber security practices and clearer data classification standards these are foundational systems that likely go unnoticed by many people but they are clearly stronger than they were last year and i'd like to thank the many hardworking [02:52:57] staff who have helped make that possible so thank you very much and for these and other reasons i believe the evidence before us supports a finding of compliance at the same time i view tonight's vote as a checkpoint not an endpoint and i look forward to our continued work to bring transparency to the community around this as we continue to engage thank you mr mcdaniel um i was at the meeting of the moment um ai symposium at west springfield high school back earlier later last year and one of the data points that really stuck out to me and i know some of the teachers in the [02:53:36] audience are going to nod their heads up and down was the amount of time that teachers spend on not teaching kids on doing things that's not directly teaching a kid administrative functions grading lesson planning things like that so what i'm really excited about this ai program that we're launching is how those different tools can be responsibly and intelligently and methodically leveraged to try to get more of that time not spent on teaching streamlined those activities streamlined so our teachers can do what they do best and what they love doing which is is actually teaching kids. [02:54:11] So I'll be supporting the motion, and thank you for your work on this. - Dr. Anderson. - Thank you. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out two things. As a continuing user of the product of FCPS, this year when I went to go do all of the check boxes for my kids, the single sign-on, that was revolutionary. [02:54:36] I loved having that one place where I gave permission for all of the things. So kudos to the IT team for making that happen, as well as Lightspeed. I am a very avid user of Lightspeed, and I want more functionality. So just, you know, keep expanding that, because I like to shut all of it off. [02:54:55] And I see that chart all the time, because it's one of the regular routines in our household. We open that up, and we see where you've been all week. And so thank you for that. And also the app, I just began using the app, so I can't really speak to it too much because I'm still very much early in my usage of it. [02:55:18] So thank you for all of those things that are really working to streamline and kind of make life a little bit easier for very busy parents. I want to spend a little bit of time talking about the AI rollout because we continue to hear this here from parents. [02:55:33] And I was hoping to hear a little bit more in your presentation in terms of addressing some of those issues. So can you speak to how we are going to address some of those things that have been raised, not just today, but in meetings in December? And I know that we want to be leaders in the implementation. [02:55:52] How are we going to be the leaders in the instructional impact of AI? So I think one of the ways that happens is our educators need to be more familiar with the AI tools and capacity. [02:56:08] And that's part of the impetus to be working to learn some of the tools as educators, which is the chat GPT for teachers is one of those pathways. It's at the staff level only. [02:56:25] It is not being used at the student level, that particular partnership. So I think as our educators learn more about the tools, we're going to be better able to contemplate the best and highest use of those tools, right? [02:56:41] Then we have an opportunity to better shape this educational experience than being shaped by it. And many of our educators did not have AI in their teacher prep programs or principal prep programs, right? [02:56:58] It's very new. So it's important that we learn, teach, and learn, and work with those skills as part of our professional development. I'm going to let Gautam make a couple comments as well. Absolutely. We also recognize that our families need to be engaged with it. [02:57:15] This is so new for our parents and our families that investing effort in building a learning tool and online course or holding engagement with our family engagement so we can give them insights on how your students may already be using it on their personal devices at home and how you can help them navigate that a little better. [02:57:37] I think that all helps us build capacity. We heard today that this technology is moving fast and we recognize that too. So this is truly a challenge with it is developing, designing as we are building for it. [02:57:53] Typically, technology comes, it matures over decades, and then institutions like ours, public education, otherwise start using it. This one came, everyone had access instantly, and it became real for all of us. So it's been only three years, but it's been three years. [02:58:09] And trying to catch up and keep up, our goal is to get universal literacy for all staff. Our training today is received very well by principals. We have done the same for our T-specs and S-pids. We offer training on a regular basis for our staff, and we are looking forward to partnering up on the governance strategy of what are the constraints that we must keep. [02:58:29] We have guiding principles, but we want to partner up on the governance strategy, too. Thank you. So in the teacher exploration stage, is one of the uses to create lesson plans? It could be if that's what an educator is working with their particular learning group to work on. [02:58:52] I think that there are so many possible applications, and what we're really wanting to do is have our educators, our managers, our principals, our operational staff learn more about the tools so that we can determine which of those tools really have the capacity that we want to utilize in terms of shaping experiences, either operationally or instructionally. [02:59:20] But we're also taking a very measured approach. I don't, I feel like we're wanting to try things in smaller, pilot things in smaller areas, much like our Lighthouse Schools Project. We're in year three of our Lighthouse Schools Project because we don't want to roll anything out to the entire division that we haven't worked all the bugs out with first. [02:59:41] Okay. One of the things that I think is, I won't say concern, but it's a question. teachers are utilizing again we're in the exploration stage of using AI to develop lesson plans what is the mechanism to double-check that where's the human piece because as somebody who sat and created lesson plans for years and years and years I get worried that this will be completely outsourced I mean the whole idea of PLC is to really get deep into the learning is that going [03:00:16] to go away if it's being generated no I think we are never going to replace the expertise of our educators right that's so important and our educators know our children right in the classes right so I think AI may help with the workload around and at times personalizing instruction maybe for small group work and different types of content areas I know our students and you know I know our staffs at times staff at times have taken it it can create worksheets or it It could create experiences or project goals or flashcards or notes. [03:00:56] I mean, there are so many applications, and I'm just listing probably old school ones, right? I think that staff who are working more closely with these tools, it's really incredible. The 2- and 3-D dimensional images that they're able to create on real-time projects that enable students who may be visual versus auditory learners to better understand a concept is incredible. [03:01:23] And we haven't had a lot of that technology as easily available. The translatability. Today, with our principals, I was really surprised. And Dr. King is smiling because Dr. King, Dr. Presidio, and Mr. Sethi have been working very closely on this together. [03:01:40] But today, I was really impressed there was a reading passage that you could actually change the reading level but keep the same content. So I think if we're very quickly, thank you, Miss Lady, very quickly. And so when I think about teaching, for example, a biology course and you have content and perhaps readers of different levels in the same course, there's some real practical tools that can help students access information. [03:02:05] So it's not really changing what is being taught, but it's supporting multiple ways to engage on that content. And I could see a lot of applications to helping with differentiation. I mean, this sounds a lot more effective than Read 180, but what I would like to see kind of two things, just to really address the larger concern that we are just rushing to implementation. [03:02:34] I think we need to have a very simple to follow some sort of flow chart with some points in terms of what is it that we're doing now? This is just for teachers. This is what teachers are doing. They're exploring, and this is how we're going to evaluate the impact of that exploration. [03:02:51] Is this still good for them? Is this still good for our kids? You know, we have people who may be worried about losing their jobs because if this gets too efficient. Just, I'll take a go back to finish explaining that. Yes, ma'am, and we did talk about an upcoming work session, and the team is working on what we call our AI roadmap. [03:03:11] Often companies call it a journey map, like where did we begin, where are we headed? And so we're in the process of creating that. Further, one of the things I talked with principals about today was just the underlying leadership responsibility of change management. And we're looking at William Bridge's work, Managing Transitions, which I didn't bring a slide here but we'll share at the work session, where we have to more clearly define what's ending, what's no longer perhaps a practice we want to keep, and then what is the new beginning going to look like. [03:03:43] And right now we're in this neutral zone where we know we're never going to have a world without AI, right? It's out of the bag here. And we're not entirely sure all the ways in which we're going to shape and utilize it. So we're in this zone of very creative time, but also can be an anxious time. [03:04:01] So we haven't defined by date yet, because really that's a much larger group that needs to help define that. But I think when we have our work session, we can talk a little bit about the technology, but also the change management that underlies that. Mr. Min. [03:04:20] Thank you, Madam Chair. Dr. Reed, thanks for the presentation. I am not necessarily a technology person, but when it gets to artificial intelligence, I get excited. You know that. I do know that, yes, sir. From the last meeting, I think in your strategic plan of academic matters, as part of Ecognic Matters, we talked about FCPS, artificial intelligence guiding principles, guard layers, three buckets basically. [03:04:54] With that in mind, with that in mind, I was also looking at your report a little more closely on page 16 that has to do with artificial intelligence. And being a second language learner, I pay close attention to the verbs tense of verbs we use. So it starts with FCPS ease, establishing. So something is going on right [03:05:26] now, correct? Yes, sir. Work is going on. Yes, sir. And then sub-bullet, clear policies and expectations. It's a present tense, provide, resources provide, clear boundaries and expectations but students and staff AIUs. [03:05:47] So we already have resources that clearly, that provide clear boundaries. Is that what that means? So I think one of the things, yes, sir, we do. We do. Within a syllabus for course offerings, and I'm going to let Dr. Presidio speak to that, which is very different. [03:06:07] So let me continue on. Okay. The next supplement, it says FCPS AI Principles. Now we have sort of past perfect, were drafted. FCPS AI guiding principles were drafted last, two years ago, a year and a half ago, to be exact. [03:06:27] So there was a draft that actually being used. Is that a failed assumption? I would have to ask Dr. Presidio to comment on that because we're talking different departments. I'm going to go one more sublet. FCPS staff AI handbook. [03:06:45] This handbook provides comprehensive guidance for FCPS staff on the responsible and ethical use of AI tools. We have a handbook that does do that already. - The instructional team has put together a handbook for lessons. [03:07:03] - I wanna know whether that is being used. And one last one is FCPS student AI guide. It uses present tense, guide outlines the key rules for responsible AI use, emphasizing that students must get permission, blah, blah, blah. [03:07:25] So we already have that guideline and it's being used? In the instructional services realm. Okay, I want, could you elaborate? Dr. Presidio? Because, so we already have everything ready to go being used for students and staff? [03:07:44] I don't know that I would say everything ready to go, but these items are. i think dr persidio if you could comment on your team that's been working on this no i'd be happy to weigh in thank you for the opportunity and i think you know mr sethe kind of earlier in his remarks alluded to the fact that this is the most rapidly changing and evolving technology that any of us have ever been involved with professionally so when chat gpt was released to the world in november of 2022 people started using it immediately and teachers were really struggling with well what are the instructional implications are students allowed to use the technology [03:08:20] to support their learning or not and we're here three years later and we have not adopted student-facing tools for generative ai purposes like chat bots like we have recently rolled out to teachers right we know that we've got to build teachers capacity before we get to students but when students have a device in their pocket a phone and they go home they've got universal ubiquitous access to artificial intelligence and they're using it you know dr reed has shared some of the recent research about ways that students are using it not for instructional purposes not for learning but for things that we might have [03:08:57] legitimate concerns about developing relationships with chatbots for example so we knew immediately in response to teachers concerns that we needed to provide some guidelines so we developed some guidelines around academic integrity, and that if a student was going to use AI as part of research or an assignment, they needed to understand the implications of that and how teachers could be provided with support to educate students about the ethical issues of using AI for academic integrity purposes, just for example. [03:09:28] So we've continued to iterate that work. We've got a core set of guiding principles that we're working from right now, but we're to continue to evolve that work and we're really looking forward to partnering with the board to establish an overarching policy that will give us a framework to start to go much deeper and refine some of the guidelines tools and resources that we can provide to our teachers but it's that kind of balance of having to be responsible and responsive to something that already exists in the world and being thoughtful about the implications for what that means when when that technology seeps into the teaching and learning environments in our classrooms. [03:10:06] Okay, that's fair. That's fair. Thank you, Dr. Posidio. Is it possible for you to share with board members of those items? Yeah, we'd be happy to. I know that-- Drafted, being used, and exists, etc. Yeah, we'd be happy to provide an update on some of the resources, the guiding principles that we've been using. We could probably do that in the upcoming Friday letter okay thank you Ms. Dixit thank you Dr. Reed for the presentation [03:10:41] I actually like a few things on page six of the presentation the first one is the the summer continued learning this is really encouraging to see that our students are being able to you know not lose the what they learn over the year because math skills especially you know this it's very high chances of losing them to buy like 30% over the summer and the first quarter of the next year is like you really are just catching up and going over the stuff again. So I like this idea of like [03:11:14] is it every student getting enrolled or they just it's on choice? How does that work? Well what we really want to do is make sure that every student and family has the option. Not all students and families necessarily want a device at home during the summer but our team worked really hard last year, and I know I was preparing this year to avoid that summer slide, and there's so many resources we're able to put on the website that students could access through the summer, so the intent is to make sure that any student or family that chooses would have that option during the summer. [03:11:50] In fact, I mean, given the weather, even coming this weekend, we're encouraging students to take devices home tomorrow so they can access winter resources in the event that we have a lot of snow next week. yeah that's that's great to hear also i really like that fcps automatically enrolls all parents and sis records uh i remember that and it used to be a process like you know go to the school and get that access and and sometimes it won't work and then you have to you know call someone or email someone the main office this is really easy because a lot of parents uh don't have the [03:12:25] time to do a lot of back and forth and get access to SIS and it's really important I wanted to in the interest of my colleague Miss Lady what is zoom phone pilot and how does it help the DSS I'm sorry the zoom phone pilot isn't the report it's on the I don't remember age mr. Sethi can explain that in great detail mr. Sethi in in some detail we had a request from our DS from our DSS [03:13:05] teams where we have staff member who are in buildings at during some of the weekdays and maybe in central offices so giving them a traditional desk phone really didn't meet their needs because they are traveling and they need their phone with them what they were potentially doing were using their personal devices which also is a risk from data and privacy perspectives so So Zoom phone essentially gives them a soft phone which they can take around on the computer where they have a number so they can call out and the parent only sees the FCPS number instead of their personal number. [03:13:37] It can actually also be used for messaging so they can text message from it and the parent message backs is coming to FCPS. So this gives them a soft phone which they can take around with them and this technology exists in the corporate world. We just enabled it on our side to give to some of those staff members who don't need a desk phone and it reduces our cost because we don't have to buy the instruments anymore. [03:13:56] It gives you portability, which is tremendous. People move around all the time, and this division is so large, and they can take the phone with them. We feel there is a lot of opportunity with this technology in the future. Thank you for that information. That really helps. I just like the term, the Zoom phone pilot. [03:14:15] On the topic of AI, I've been saying this for a long time. I fully support AI integration in a responsible way, of course, And giving the tool to teachers or any staff members who can, it's productivity tool for them. [03:14:30] I don't necessarily think them as right now as them using it for replacing any teaching services. But yeah, it is a productivity. I use that every day in my work life. So it has enhanced a lot of my functioning in my business. [03:14:49] But I do want to say that until, unless we don't use AI for the education, differentiating student learning and making them global learners, they can work like, you know, they understand what this, how to use the AI and then the full extent to it. [03:15:11] I think we're still scratching at the surface here, so I feel like change is hard, like you said, change management will help, but I just want our, you know, constituents and parents to be open-minded because the world is changing very fast, and if we don't get our students ready, they'll fall back. [03:15:34] They will not be able to take the jobs which are in the market tomorrow, in the next five years. In fact, I read somewhere the software engineering jobs will be probably out in the next year or two years. I'll stop there. [03:15:51] Ms. Mary. Okay, so what I've observed and experienced is a separation of technology systems for business operations and instructional technology. So technology systems for business operations include that SSO, which is fantastic, the new app. [03:16:09] light speed, the device management and functioning, making sure all of our hardware works and even the software. The instructional technology piece, I feel what I know is because I'm an FCPS parent, not because I've been presented with information as a board member. You know, I'm thinking about a presentation I attended maybe a year ago that was for educators, not by FCPS, and it was about AI, and it was literally a screen with no graphic design, a white screen that was talking about AI. [03:16:38] and I was like this is silly we should be pulling out our phone so I pulled out my phone on my chat GPT app and I'm like let me toodle around with it and as I'm sitting here I'm having that same experience I'm being told a lot of what's happening elsewhere and I don't see it I don't have a plan for it I'm not you know practicing it so I you know for the second time this evening many board members are asking you for a plan, Dr. Reed. This is information for you, and I'm really uncomfortable with the frequency with which I'm needing to ask for a plan, for details, for what's being used when, [03:17:18] the costs, and how myself and the board will be involved in this work in a meaningful way. I also, like Mr. Moon, want to understand what is where, and I've been poring over things you've sent in Friday emails, the presentation we had on October 7th. [03:17:36] this is the one article you've sent us of any kind of background from Common Sense Media, but I had asked last time about a pilot happening at 18 high schools, and you did send more information in a Friday email, so I just want to understand, confirm my understanding. It's called Foundation Building for Instructional Use of AI, and it has descriptions of work annually from 2023 to 2024 of how staff and students may utilize AI tools. So this year, the focus is AI literacy framework development and K-12 lesson field testing. And there are early adopter teachers [03:18:11] from 18 high schools. I ask again, what schools are these and how many teachers? How broadly is work being disseminated across the school? How many students are involved? And what it says here is the expectation is that these early adopter teachers will expand teacher and student AI literacy and to get feedback on specific tools, including PowerBuddy and Magic School. What is going on? Can you answer these questions? What are the 18 schools? How many teachers? How many [03:18:44] students are involved? And what is happening with Power Buddy and Magic School? So Dr. Presidio, I know your department's overseeing that. I think you can provide some of those details. Yeah, and again, I think one of the things I've really appreciated about Mr. Sethi during his tenure here is we've really collaborated across departments to merge and I think sometimes blur the operational and the instructional silos that maybe existed in the past and I think that's positioned us to be very successful. So one of the things that we've been trying to do that you [03:19:18] mentioned in the report is field test some lessons to support students with understanding some of the ethical and academic integrity issues with AI. So that's what we mean when we talk about AI literacy and it's obviously age dependent. So if you're a younger student versus a high school student obviously there's a continuum of developmental appropriateness in terms of what we would talk about but it's really important that our students understand what a is how it's how it works how the machine learning components work to make sure that they're not sharing personal information [03:19:57] if they're using AI outside of the school and again I want to reiterate right now we have not adopted any student facing generative AI tools in Fairfax yet but before we do that we have to make sure that our teachers understand how to use the technology and that there are students understand how you could use it responsibly and what the risks are because we know that they're using it in their personal lives right now so it's really important that we develop AI literacy for our students from everything from the ethical issues the safety issues academic integrity issues before we adopt any tools so we've got to have a curriculum to help students understand how to use it [03:20:36] responsibly before we introduce tools into the classroom now we have foreshadowed in the report because we've been doing work to think about what are the types of tools that we might want to be able to bring in to the learning environment when we have a policy and when we're ready to do that power buddy and magic school seem to be some of the tools right now that have a really I think the most promise for us as a school division magic school offers free tools to educators right now so educators around the country do have some experience and interest in using that tool but they're able to provide supports to teachers to be able to provide lessons that are differentiated [03:21:15] for students to be able to introduce how students can use AI to support their their research their critical thinking their analysis and problem-solving skills there's a lot of potential benefits but we've not introduced those tools yet but we are trying to foreshadow we're having a conversation here a little bit about a roadmap that's kind of what we're trying to do is paint in a executive limitation report not a you know report just on AI some of the ways that we've been exploring AI and some of the ways that we think that we might be able to use it in the future okay well thank you I still don't have answers to my questions or what are the 18 high schools and how many early [03:21:53] adopter teachers well I'd be happy to get that I don't know the 18 schools of why do I have to ask over two meetings for that information i will double check i think we we were asked for descriptions of the programs but we will identify the 18 by tomorrow because tomorrow's friday 18 schools and teachers within those schools i'll have a return turn thanks thank you uh miss lady thank you um and overall thank you for this report um i'm not going to repeat a lot of what my colleagues have commented on that are very much [03:22:27] positives within here um so i just want to share a couple examples i we kind of talk a lot about AI use. And I'm just going to share a couple that I've learned about in talking with different teachers. But, you know, I think one idea folks have used it for teachers have is almost as a thought partner for a team. You know, a kindergarten team was trying to plan a project and they wanted to generate more engaging, culminating activities for units of students. And so they also want to incorporate POC skills into the activities. [03:23:03] So they suggested activities, the suggested activities by the curriculum, which they had in front of them, did not have that variance. And so they wanted something more engaging. And so they put it in AI, and it spit out all kinds of exciting ways to engage kids. [03:23:20] And we know it's hard to keep kids' attention these days. And the way we always did things isn't working. And I'll give you another example. I believe this was a fifth-grade team doing an ecology-type report. They were studying it, and so traditionally, like when we were in school, we probably would have done some kind of written paper and handed it in. [03:23:40] But the same thing with generating different ways to examine how kids are performing, kids had choice, right? And choice is empowering. So kids could do a poster. Kids could do a patritional paper. Kids could choose to do an oral report. Kids could choose to operate and do it as a podcast. [03:23:59] Kids could choose to do it as a news show where they're interviewing their peers within the questions of ecology and they're different like people in the industry. So, you know, I think that this all excites me because I think of myself with my ADD as a child and having to sit still and do things certain ways. [03:24:19] I didn't always fit in that box and it wasn't always the way I could convey what I understood. I also, I believe that a lot of what we talk about of late at this dais is operational. And I was warned when I got on this board that I came from operations, but the board does policy and not operations. [03:24:40] So I'm very invested as a member of governance and thank Ms. Marion for her leadership. We need an overarching tech policy. We obviously need to address AI in that. I'm looking forward to that work. But just like I don't go through and comb over the combatting and tolerance curriculum, nor have I combed over any curriculum, right? [03:25:01] And teachers have always innovated, and they've done their work in their CTs of staying together. But I think this idea of a thought partner and allowing AI to generate ways in which kids can demonstrate their learning is fantastic. [03:25:17] It also helps them differentiate. And I just believe that the inclusion, the Lighthouse Schools, UDL, it all intersects. And I think we're doing great things. And I'm not saying we don't need to pay attention. I'm looking forward to seeing the roadmap. But I also trust where you're moving. [03:25:35] The last thing I'm going to say, and I won't need to go back, is that my wife's daughter just happened to say to me, I just love, I'm learning so much about AI. I'm in my third course. So I guess that we have courses within our catalog in Fairfax County for employees to think maybe a fourth-year teacher is in her third class in AI that we're producing is fantastic. [03:25:56] Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And, again, I just want to reiterate the incredible work, the collaborative work, which, honestly, interdepartmental has been critical. And Dr. King and Dr. Sethi, or Mr. Sethi and Dr. Presidio, this has been a real collaboration. [03:26:15] the team sitting behind me our IT team you know to have the systems that we have and the number of devices we support and the number of securities and students and staff and families you know we don't always notice when things just go well right and we don't celebrate that and I just want to just say how grateful I am personally for the team that supports our technology and the innovation of our teachers we've got educators that are world-class here and when they see new ideas they're gonna pounce on them and I know our our leadership we want to [03:26:54] support again what makes Fairfax special so thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this tonight I'm gonna take a quick turn and then we have a few go backs so unlike my at-large colleague I am a tech person when I was in academia technology and writing was my focus and so I really wanted to understand how technology kind of changed the way we learned. And so unlike some of the things that we've heard tonight, I actually do believe that learning happens in technology. I think that YouTube itself shows that to be true when we have people doing all kinds of things by watching [03:27:30] videos that explain how to do it. And the cool part about our schools is that technology is so integrated that we actually don't understand where it all is. Because at some point, even the projectors in the classrooms and you know every single layer of work that we're doing has technology integrated in some way and so while I understand fully and completely that I do not believe that we're early adopters here actually I actually think that we're kind of middle to the end of the pack and if I go back to thinking about that penguin on the ledge like we're we're we're in a good spot in my opinion we're making smart decisions um and now we need to do the policy [03:28:10] work, which is our job, to make sure that we can get in the right space, and I am going to advocate for creating a policy that does talk about AI or at least authorizes some other document to talk about AI, but I also want to make sure that we create a policy that supports innovation, because the issue is that the AI is just the next thing. [03:28:32] I mean, when I was teaching, it was Wikipedia, and everybody was losing their minds, and now it's just an integrated part, and what happened didn't actually, what everyone was afraid of didn't actually happen. I am not suggesting anyone that's ever watched a movie about how the computers are going to take over the world, and the machines are going to kill us all. I get it. I understand why there's fear, but I am going to say that I think that we need to suspend our disbelief just a little bit and recognize that there is not a teacher in our schools that doesn't want safety for our kids first. And they are using this [03:29:08] anyways. And we watched that happen with social media already. And so I do not think that we can sit back and not think that our staff and our students aren't already using this. So we might as well make sure that they're using it in the way that we're asking them to, or we're using it in the way that we endorse and support and redirect behavior that may not be conducive to make sure that we protect student information and make sure that we're protecting intellectual property in our county. And so we cannot sit back and just think that if we don't use it, it won't be there [03:29:47] because that's not what's going to happen here. And so I am extremely grateful for the work. The fact that we are able to talk not only about the work that we're doing in AI, but also that we created an app this year. I think that we are doing amazing things in addition to all the work that the IT folks are doing related to just making it work better for parents to be able to do the things that they need to do. So I really appreciate the entire team. We're going to go back with Mr. [03:30:15] McElveen first. Thanks. Last night I was at the SHAC meeting and for the past few meetings there have been discussions of educational technology and how it's impacting our students. One question came up about Lightspeed which was that there were concerns about whether staff would have access to the reports that are generated in Lightspeed so that they could monitor them for any concerning behaviors or [03:30:50] suicidal ideation things like that and it was conveyed that that currently does not exist but we we learned that Falls Church City allows for that and maybe other jurisdictions do so something to look into yes sir is that mr. Sethi I'm not sure what the settings are on that it will be another technology we can add to the stack but it's the process of the technology that we have to work through but we can partner up on that and look into it yes I thought that was a good suggestion I appreciate that we'll take a look and get back to you on that [03:31:26] Thank you. Just to offer some clarity, and I appreciate Dr. Presidio, there's no student-facing AI tools. Right now, they're just in the AI literacy world trying to evaluate, trying to understand what we're going to essentially roll out to the larger system. [03:31:49] Can you speak a little bit to how are we evaluating the efficacy of the pilots that are happening right now with the teachers? Light speed, not light speed. Lighthouse. Lighthouse, thank you. Lots of light. Lots of lights. Lighthouse, we are in the third year. [03:32:07] What is that evaluation? What are we finding with that engagement? Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. I mean, really what we've done is more kind of qualitative research with the pilots that we've launched, we haven't tried to correlate necessarily some of these user experiences to, you know, quantitative data like increases on SOL test results, for example. [03:32:32] We're really looking with the AI work to try to determine what are some of those use cases? What are ways that those innovative teachers that we have in our classrooms that are asking, hey, you know, how can I use AI? How can I use it to increase my productivity? How can I use it to increase my effectiveness in terms of really providing targeted personalized individualized resources that students individualized learning needs what are ways that I can use it to increase my understanding of the most effective practices and how can I use it for research how can I use it for data analysis how can I use it to improve the feedback that I'm providing to students [03:33:09] right so we've really been collecting more information about some of the use cases that we're identifying and ways that we can find those those use cases that are going to have benefit and how can we scale those those types of experiences up more systematically in the future by providing more targeted you know training and professional development around some of the things that we're seeing that are having more benefit and those pilots come with the opportunity for teachers to be trained and discerning like this is a good resource or this is not a good resource or these resources meet the standard and rigor of fairfax county it takes me back to what you talked about going into classrooms you're seeing worksheets [03:33:48] that are all over the place and some classes have a second grade worksheet like how are we ensuring that it is meeting standard yeah we're not using the technology to generate worksheets for example because we want to you know create lessons that are really going to get at those portrait of a graduate skills that are really going to push problem solving critical and creative thinking not just necessarily you know more practice problems for example right that was just an example to kind of talk about the inconsistency across but but we are trying to use artificial intelligence and some of these technologies to get more resources that are more targeted to individual student learning needs for [03:34:27] example right so when students aren't having as much success with the tier one curriculum materials that we purchase for all of our students and for all of our teachers students may be you know multilingual learner students that you know are struggling with you know accessing the academic language how can artificial intelligence take some of the existing resources that we have and create additional supplements and materials that are going to support the instruction right how can they support teachers in developing some of those you know graphic organizers for students to help them really understand the main ideas the key vocabulary that we want to teach in a lesson for example so it's [03:35:06] really more about differentiating materials so the teachers don't have to do all of that work necessarily on their own like that's one of the productivity use cases that we're talking about I think I'm gonna save the rest of my inquiries for that work session when we're talking about the roadmap because I think absent that kind of perspective we're all over the place at least I know I am I'm all over the place I want and I said this before I think two things can be true at the same time I can be excited about the possibility here, but I also can be concerned about some of the things that have come out in [03:35:40] very reputable publications regarding the harm that could be caused if this is done unchecked. And I don't think we've fully articulated for our public, at least I don't have that full articulation, in terms of how are we going to achieve those things. So I will wait until that journey is outlined, but I did have one last question regarding the SAT and ACT online administration. Now, I know one is no longer available on paper, and one is, I guess we're [03:36:17] taking some steps. Which one is it? Is it the SATs that are no longer available? They're only available digitally? I believe that. That's correct. Last year's administration was the, Last fall, I think it was October, was the deadline where they switched over to only electronic computerized assessments. [03:36:34] So we had to kind of move on that. But the ACT, we are taking the steps to do that electronically. Again, I'd have to triple check on the ACT. I'm not sure that there's a paper-pencil option for ACT right now or not. [03:36:51] I'd have to check on that to be sure. We have a very small percentage of our students who take the ACT in comparison to the SAT. We offer SAT in-school day testing for all students free of charge. I just wanted to differentiate in my mind's eye which one is our innovation and which one is just, you know, this is where we are. [03:37:09] Well, I would suggest that it certainly was not our innovation, but we had to spend a lot of time and effort to make sure that what we didn't want is to have a large group of students show up to take the SAT and not have the Wi-Fi supported or write. And so it was a significant lift. [03:37:28] And there were a number of schools around the country that actually had real glitches on their first few administrations. And when students pay to come in, you know, arrange all their plans to be there, we want to make sure it works. So I was very proud of the team that we really didn't have some of the issues that other divisions had. [03:37:47] Ms. Mayor. So I want to return to the topic of instructional technology at large because I do think after reading a lot and starting to work on the AI policy, I just don't think that the school board is meaningfully and appropriately engaged in the work regarding technology in our school division, particularly what's used for instruction. I want to understand what's being used and why, what's proven effective. The board being involved in curriculum development work is not operational. It's at the core of what we're here to do, to be sure that what children are learning meets the values and expectation of the community is based on high standards and research. Staff tonight have talked [03:38:26] about developing curriculum. Our policy, 3003, four instructional materials, last updated in June 2014. Here's what it says under responsibility. The identification of instructional materials for curriculum planning, design, and implementation is a joint function of the school board, departments, and local schools. Basal materials. If you can all recall, the basal literacy material, We review that. We are presented about it. That has not happened in this curriculum development process. Supplemental materials, it talks about print and non-print instructional materials approved for classroom use. Scope and procedures, instructional materials that are used to implement [03:39:04] curriculum programs include all audiovisual material, instructional technology, and texts. We have not been meeting this policy that is pretty much ancient. Okay. If I could comment, And I think part of why you haven't approved them is they haven't been brought forward because you're still piloting them to determine which ones will likely be ones that we would bring forward for board review. [03:39:31] I'm not talking about AI, though. And then I reviewed the list that you had agreed on October 7th. I asked for the list of all the instructional technology, and it was to be in the EL-12 report. You did provide it, but it was in a Friday letter, which, again, is not transparent. Well, we were asked not to put it in a public-facing document because of the cost connected and the bid process for some of those tools. [03:39:54] So we did not place it in a public-facing document. That's the first time I've heard that, and I was the one that asked for it. Regardless, it is so tough to talk about these big topics in this short amount of time because we're getting information that not everybody has. [03:40:10] I'm picking it up. This is not a fulsome conversation. anyway the last thing if I could your EL report says nothing about our school board policies and that is a condition of the EL process we put it in the EL policy so there's so much more that needs to be said and I find this not compliant. Thank you Ms. Barron seeing no others we're going to go ahead and call for a vote on the motion that is on the screen all those in favor Mr. Frisch [03:40:46] Mr. McDaniel Mr. McElveen Miss St. John Cunning Miss Lady Miss Dixit Mr. Dunn or I'm sorry Mr. Moon and myself all those opposed Miss Marin Mr. Moon you already yes those opposed Miss Marin and dr. Anderson with mr. Dunn away from the table could the clerk please read the vote so just confirming mr. Moon was a yes correct okay then the vote is 8201 the motion carries thank you annually the board will review each executive limitation at the time of the monitoring report is [03:41:26] provided to determine if revisions are needed board members may offer an amendments to executive limitations at any regular meeting, provided they send the final amendment language to the board and clerk at least 48 hours in advance of the meeting at which it's to be considered. At this time, no amendments have been submitted in advance of this meeting. Executive limitation 12 technology was placed on the consent agenda for approval later in tonight's meeting to maintain the current language for the year ahead. [03:41:54] Board members have access to the Yale feedback forms, and you can provide feedback via the form either electronically or by using the hard copy provided to you agenda item 9.01 fy 27 2027 proposed budget i call on dr reed for the fy 2027 proposed budget all right it's uh you know the team is here 11 o'clock you guys have been really really good um so um this evening i just uh want to say good evening and thank you for the opportunity to present the fairfax county [03:42:31] public schools fiscal year 2027 proposed budget this is critically important work as we need to balance our commitment to our children and the future of fairfax county with our accountability to the hard-working uh taxpayers here in fairfax county public schools i'm gonna wait just a moment [03:42:50] so this gets set up please i think that's the first page and thank you tech team are we ready we ready okay so for our broader community this evening it's really important that our broader [03:43:29] community really note that we are being incredibly fiscally responsible and we're focused on the greatest needs of our division and the statute requires that i bring to the board a needs-based budget in other words what we believe what i believe we need to function to continue to sustain excellence here in Fairfax County Public Schools. I want to start by centering ourselves [03:43:55] in why we have a budget and what budgets fund so let's go ahead and play the video please. All right [03:45:01] I'm just going to say here in Fairfax County our young people are exceptional and our young people are exceptional because of the strength of our staff our educators our support staff our families and our programs and services our strong partnerships with families and the support from our entire community maintain and the excellence of this community's come to expect our students continue to outperform their state and national peers on a number of measures as well as our global peers on measures including sat scores graduation and most recently our 37 [03:45:41] increase in national merit semi-finalists year over year i can't say enough about how hard working our students and staff are in every role that they're in and i'm just really pleased to have an opportunity this evening to provide a budget that i believe will support and continue the excellence i also before i go any further want to thank our chief finance officer lee burden alice widginton and matthew norton and our entire budget team they have done a tremendous amount of work in preparing this budget and again we're just so blessed to have such a strong [03:46:18] business and finance department i want to remind our board that the strategic plan will guide our budget as it guides our work the strategic plan was developed by and for our community and our students staff families and all community members with or without children in Fairfax County Public Schools were a part of this work because we recognize that strong schools equals strong community as we look at the budget priorities for this year the proposed FY 27 budget recognizes the ongoing financial challenges we've experienced in Fairfax County as many [03:46:55] families have been deeply impacted by significant reductions in the federal workforce and other economic factors this budget focuses on the essentials we've heard our community and we are making sure that what I am bringing to you as a budget tonight absolutely focuses on exactly what we need to sustain excellence in Fairfax County Public Schools this includes adjustments to compensation as part of our collective bargaining agreements strong educators and support staff are the cornerstone of student success we remain committed to leading the region in attracting and retaining the best [03:47:35] talent for all positions in public education we've also listened and acted on our staff's request to explore an alternative provider for medical benefits because we know that competitive compensation is not just about salaries and I want to thank our benefits team and all of those in HR and business that have made that transition smooth we were able to in spend a significant amount of time to run an RFP for a different provider that has been able to keep our costs down in comparison to many other divisions around [03:48:10] the country. We do continue to be future focused exploring 22nd century solutions that will shape our students experience as they prepare for careers that don't yet exist. I also want our community to know that we have spent a great deal of time working on ways to be more efficient with the funds and trusted to us and be good stewards of the financial resources that we're provided to support education here in Fairfax County the FY 2027 proposed budget reflects both new and ongoing funding challenges and the impact of [03:48:47] federal funding on the state budget and the state underfunding evidenced by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission the JLARC study given the economic uncertainty that we have faced there are no new resources that were considered in other words back several years ago departments came forward with lists of new ideas and new resources required we didn't do that this year because we know there aren't new resources so any new ideas and programs and plans that departments are planning were instructed to reallocate existing funds in other words we need to stop doing things to start doing new things [03:49:26] so we want our community to know that that's the posture at this time and that we're being very thoughtful with the funds entrusted to us. Recall that we had significant reductions in our budget that were required to balance the FY2026 approved budget and these reductions totaled 121 million or 3% of our total budget last year. We continue to look for additional opportunities to maximize our resources, increase our efficiencies, and invest in high-impact programs and services. [03:49:57] So, the FY27 budget will total $4.1 billion, which is an increase of $197 million, or 5%, over the FY26 approved budget. As mentioned, the proposed budget is needs-based and focuses only on the base requirements of the division, including competitive compensation and multi-year investments. The transfer that we will be requesting from Fairfax County is we will be requesting $138.4 million this year and that's 5.1 percent over the FY26 transfer. It is important [03:50:37] to note that this is 48 percent less than last year's requested increase. In other words we're asking for 129.8 less, 129.8 million less than we asked from the county last year. I believe that this is a very reasonable budget. It's appropriate and it allows FCPS to sustain the excellence that residents have come to expect. Our county partners also prioritized K-12 funding during a recent legislative public hearing and we are very excited to continue partnering with our county leadership and board of supervisors as well as our county executive I'm also [03:51:17] pleased to say that one of the reasons we were able to ask for such a lower county transfer is that our state colleagues increase the funding from the state we were able to realize a savings in our VRS retirement structure as well as the re-benchmarking of the Commonwealth so we appreciate the support of our state delegation as well as the continued partnership and support of our Board of Supervisors. I will say that of the 138 million that we're [03:51:52] asking if we can go back one slide at the fiscal forecast recall that we were told I think that our our portion if you will of the current or of the revenue projection this fall was I think 116 million which leaves a 22 million dollar However, as we discussed, the fiscal forecast did not include the meals tax anticipated revenue, and that anticipated revenue was, I believe, quoted as about $60 million for a half a year, which would be $120 million for a full year. [03:52:30] so we believe that that gap of 22 million between the 116 and 138 that my the superintendent budget is requesting would be less than a quarter of what is projected to be collected from the meals tax we feel that's a very reasonable bill a gap filling resource so next page we are in this budget honoring our collective bargaining agreements which for FEU will be 163 million and the [03:53:05] recently ratified FCF PSA adjustments at 17.7 million we've also been able to save 2.3 million in benefit rate changes as a result of the work on the new RFP we continue our collective bargaining work and we're committed to that as it's critical in our ability to retain high quality educators and support staff this year we're just very pleased to see a number of factors that are able to contribute to a very reasonable County Transfer Act ask overall we expect a [03:53:44] net decrease of the 2.3 million due to benefit rate changes which include a decrease in the VRS employer contribution rate offset by the increase in health care premiums the next slide I think is a board and as a school division and community we can be very proud of this slide the progress we've made in the master's lane beginning teacher salary we've gone from in 2024 being seven out of eight to fy 2026 being second out of eight and one of the things that this has resulted in is that our retention rates [03:54:23] have surpassed 90 percent over the past two years which exceed pre-pandemic retention rates so we're very proud of that and I think when we have high expectations as a community and as an organization high support has to be part of that and we have world-class results and I appreciate that the board has supported world-class salaries for our educators and staff the baseline adjustments that are included in this budget is that we are going to last year we added 1.0 to the class size [03:55:01] this budget pulls that back to 0.5 so we are mitigating half of the part of the class size edition this budget fully funds elementary special ed department chair positions and contractual and recurring baseline adjustments as well as fully funding the advanced academic resource teacher positions and as a board your commitment was clear on those positions i also when i met with principals in our association this afternoon our elementaries had to be very [03:55:38] creative and just worked extraordinarily hard this year we allowed a use a more significant use of carryover which is no longer available because we used it as one-time dollars so this budget puts those positions back in the base and we believe they're important and necessary for the work of our elementary educators next slide we also made commitments multi-year investment commitments our family liaison position conversions this is the third year of this work [03:56:13] so our family liaisons not our part-time family liaisons but our hourly family liaisons will now have contracts this is the last i want to say batch but it's the last grouping the last year of our commitment and that means that many of our family liaisons who've worked here for years and years who were not previously eligible for retirement benefits for example will be so i appreciate the board's commitment to that work there's some of our hardest working staff members in the county we're also committed to finishing out stipends in the athletics and [03:56:48] activities program the fine and performing arts stipends this year is the last year of the build out our athletic trainers this is year four of our commitment we're looking to expand k-12 robotics as an equity and access option across all k-12 schools and putting money in for educator math credentialing as we need more educators with higher math credentialing needs and we need to invest in that so those are what the budget is funding next slide so the county transfer again the revenue [03:57:25] adjustments is 138.4 million let me go back to my notes here I think I've read things so many times I haven't you needed my notes but the projected revenue for the operating fund again totals 4.1 billion the net increase is 5% our request again is 138.4 million from the county we are projected to receive additional state funding based on the governor's 26 to 28 introduced budget the state budget includes projected increases related to additional sales tax revenue additional state aid resulting from a lower local [03:58:03] composite index and compensation supplement and routine benchmarking costs for standards of quality and other direct aid programs finally the reduction of 12.4 million and other funding available is the result of our commitment to long-term fiscal sustainability by transitioning to a structurally balanced budget that doesn't rely on a one-time beginning balance partially offset by additional funding intuition revenue so this is the these are the revenue adjustments and as I mentioned the state revenue that certainly is improved year over year this year one of the things that we [03:58:43] felt was important to put in a budget presentation is that should we receive more budget funding because the new General Assembly has not wrestled with the budget as yet we're still working off of our former governor's budget if we were to receive further funds or if our county chose to overfund our transfer then we would look at restoring the complete class size not just half a student but the full student we would look at elementary stem our inclusive [03:59:21] pre-k expansion and oh my goodness our major maintenance backlog we have professional technical partnerships and apprenticeships as well as looking at the possibility of world language expansion so those are topics we would look to fund if indeed we receive more funds than we have planned for restoring fully restoring our staffing model is again a significant priority so here's how you can stay involved whether you're a staff member a student or a community [03:59:56] member we have a variety of events occurring recalling that learning happens best in community we invite the community to follow our budget process the Fairfax County budget process and the state budget process all of which are happening right now and will continue in the coming weeks there are a variety of ways you can share your feedback which are all included here on this slide and will be posted online as part of this presentation so these are the next steps we're gonna have a work session on February 10th where I'll actually be answering questions from the board rather than just making a presentation [04:00:33] and the board will be holding public hearings of course on the two dates in February and then another work session and then the advertised budget will be adopted on February 26th so try to make this presentation as tight as possible and end with again why we have the budget we have and what we hope to continue as a result of this so if we can play that please some futures are [04:01:07] written by circumstances, not ours. In our schools, our futures are written in the moments between the bells. They're written in the classroom, in the lab, in the code, on the stage, and on the field. This is a story of excellence, of belonging, and it's the story [04:01:41] of what's next. We don't just prepare for the future, we are building it. There will always be numbers, but they don't tell the whole story. We will. We are proud of our success we celebrate our achievements and we are ready for the future we are fairfax county public schools so the young people of today are the architects of tomorrow and fcps is dedicated [04:02:17] to equipping them to thrive in a world we cannot imagine today talked a little about it tonight with the skills to not only adapt to a changing world but to shape the world we appreciate our county board of supervisors and our state legislators for their partnership and for working with us to deliver on the power and promise of public education nothing more important their continued financial support enables fairfax county to provide our young people and our entire community a strong future for those watching tonight whether you're a parent staff member [04:02:52] resident community member partner student alum i thank each of you for supporting fcps and helping us continue to not just be the heartbeat of our community but also the economic engine of fairfax county with that i thank you as well and i look forward to the feedback and our journey forward thank you thank you dr reed um we have a full work session planned for this for february 10th so i am not suggesting that we need to exhaust everything but we have a few lights on that for folks and we're going to have our budget chair, Ms. Dixit, go ahead and kick things off. [04:03:32] Thank you Dr. Reed for your presentation for the FY27 Superintendent's proposed budget. I would like to thank the FCPS budget team Lee Burden and her staff for this hard work to make this make sure the budget is delivered on time and is accurate and understandable. The superintendent's budget reveals a modest request that focus on the basic strategic needs of the school systems and honor FCPS collective bargaining agreement with the unions or overall the FI27 superintendents [04:04:07] proposed budget request 5% increase in the funding from the previous year it should be noted that the county revenue projection for the FI27 fiscal forecasts were preliminary and FCPS will know will not know if the county revenue prediction have changed until the county executive introduced his budget on February 17th. And just want to remind everyone about the budget session, work session on Tuesday, February 10th, and then public hearing on February 10th, 11th, [04:04:42] and the 11th public hearing includes included in case the number of community members and staff who would like to comment on the budget are significant and cannot be handled in one evening. The final budget work session is scheduled for Thursday, February 19th. Adoption of the FY27 A SCHOOL BOARD ADVERTISED BUDGET IS SLATED FOR FEBRUARY 26TH AND I JUST WANT TO ALSO THANK MY COLLEAGUE WHO IS NOW A SUPERVISOR FOR BEING THE BUDGET CHAIR AND DOING EXCELLENT WORKING WITH THE TEAM AND I'M VERY THANKFUL AND LEARNED A LOT IN THIS PROCESS AND I AM [04:05:20] REALLY EXCITED FOR THIS BUDGET AND HOPE WE GET FULLY FUNDED THIS YEAR. THANK YOU. DR. I will save most of my questions for the work session, but I did have one thing in which I was confused. [04:05:37] The partial class size restoration, is that referring to the staffing formula adjustments? Because that's what we had last year. Yes, ma'am. Why is it titled differently? Trying to be clearer. Okay. [04:05:54] Because I think that was one of the questions that I asked last year. Is the staffing adjustment not a class size impact? And we had a very long conversation about it not necessarily being the same, because you were changing the formula, which would have some impact in some places, where a class size reduction would have impacts in all of the places. [04:06:15] So I will make sure we have the correct semantics. We were trying to be clear, but it is the staffing formula. Okay, thank you. That's the only thing I wanted to get my mind around in preparation for this. And I guess a statement that I want to make is I was very optimistic that the passing of the meals and beverage tax would yield something for us, particularly since I think we lobby for this. [04:06:43] How many years now, Ms. Burden? Multiple. And I'm not super encouraged based on the response we'll receive at the fiscal forecast. So I just want to leave that there. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. I told our team we're going to stay in the light. [04:07:01] believe that this is a reasonable ask. Mr. McElbeen. Staying in the light, I want to thank you for the very succinct presentation. I think this is well received here, and I hope it was received throughout the division. Just a few clarification questions. So I see we are rolling out robotics, which I think is a positive step, K-12. Can you give us a sense of what that looks [04:07:33] like we have written a four-year plan to increase the robotics opportunities not just within the classroom but also competitive robotic opportunities with first believe it's first Lego or first Lego League because right now we have a very we don't have as many schools participating as we could and it's a really we don't have access for students across the elementary middle and high schools uh for that competition so we currently are looking at a four-year plan and um it's [04:08:10] something that is again a collaborative effort between dr presidio's office dr ponce's office and dr king's office as we look to make sure equitable access is part of the work that's great and i know we've enjoyed our visits with joey at hayfield he's gonna be he's been part of drawing up great the plan so I know in past years we've worked to extend science Olympiad math Olympiad to every school right so that remains I did see kind of in your last slide about potential things we could do and [04:08:46] included the work on steam and flex and world languages more broadly and I know in past years we had talked about that being a priority to make sure that every elementary school has either FLESS or STEAM so I guess just a question in my mind is it seems like robotics might have jumped the queue in that sense or are we still is it is it a well we're looking at that as honestly a part of elementary stem as well right so it's kind of it's a I don't know if it's it's not exactly a stem teacher but it's a program to provide at least on a much [04:09:22] less budget you know it's a very modest point three it's $300,000 it's a very modest amount in a budget so it's not paying for a lot of people it's more paying for stipends and equipment so it's getting us launched unless we actually do receive more funds in which case then it would enable us to move towards more people okay great I just don't want us to lose sight of that bigger goal of making sure we have STEAM and foreign language and then the final question for tonight and we'll do more later is on student athletics and activities can you unpack what that 1.9 million is I believe it continues [04:10:01] stipends and also we're expanding middle school sports again next year as well as adding JV boys volleyball and building out I think girls wrestling has a few more options next year so it's making sure that we have activities at the middle and high school as well as have competitive stipends for our athletics and activities and at some point in this budget process will you announce what the next middle school sport will be yes sir in fact I don't even know that the teams have been working on it Dr. Ponce and our middle school principals but as [04:10:38] soon as we know you'll know well thank you again look forward to further discussion this was a very pleasant surprise thank you Mr. Moon thank you Thank you for the presentation. I just want to make one quick point for your consideration and also my colleagues' cogitation. [04:10:58] You probably remember that one thing, I guess one of the most important things that I did request this budget cycle round is start preparing earlier rather than waiting until the last minute to make adjustments. [04:11:18] I am hopeful that we'll get more funding from at least the state, we'll get more funding from the state. And I'm glad that you laid out some of the things that we might consider if we got more funding. But many of those might require preparation, start preparing earlier than waiting until after final adoption of the budget in May. [04:11:45] So that's something I want you to start thinking about it. And we can perhaps have some conversation at the work session. yes sir thank you miss lady uh thank you to the budget team great work i'm very excited and optimistic about this budget um i do feel confident that the board of supervisors will give us the 22 million above what their fiscal forecast was um and that'll come from the meals tax so i'm very optimistic about that um i just want to make three points one is um the salary [04:12:22] catch up to get from second to from seventh I'm sorry to second in the master's lane is is incredible and we cannot ever get behind again sadly for me I lived through a bunch of freezes apparently I should still have stayed working because I would be doing pretty darn well right now but I'm excited for all my friends colleagues and the people I work with now who are in our great system to benefit from closing that gap. [04:12:50] And the retention of staff at 90-plus percent, folks, that is unbelievable. That is not happening anywhere in this country. So kudos to the work. And, again, very excited, the 0.5 class size in terms of staffing formula, the ARTs and SPED, that allocation to be funded from Central. [04:13:10] And then I'm excited that you provided with us slide 13, which is if we get more from whatever revenue source, because you create a needs-based budget. Well, we need the 1.0 put back in the staffing model, but you did a 0.5, and I appreciate that, but I just want to elevate the fact that we need the 1.0 back, and also we need STEAM in every elementary school and the other things that were listed on the slide, and for me, I ran on pre-K for all, so I just really appreciate the hard work in here. [04:13:45] I hope we get to slide 13. I hope we're going to get excited that we can actually do some of these things on slide 13. So I look forward to the work session. And thank you so much for this optimistic budget. Thanks. Mr. Frisch. Thank you. [04:14:02] I've enjoyed hearing you roll out the budget, the proposed budget. If year one of our collective bargaining agreement was about making history, I think year two for FEU about building momentum and showing that this can work and obviously with year one for FCF PSA as well I also think that there are probably some savings that we will realize out of change in Richmond you know I I've spoken to many of our our delegates including our new delegates given the [04:14:38] volume of change and leadership and folks joining the Spanberger administration and they're all committed to finding ways to bring more revenue into our schools including advancing uh work around jlark so I'm hopeful there and obviously we can't count our chickens before they hatch but I'm grateful to see that you're at least thinking about that additionally our legislative program this year one of the priorities is making changes at the state level that would help the state board of education become more collaborative with local school divisions and less adversarial [04:15:16] and having an adversarial state board of education will often make staff work in non-efficient ways to be responsive to our partners in Richmond and so more efficiency will create more opportunity and less opportunity cost and I think that'll be good for us and finally I think fewer politically motivated goose chases designed to get law enforcement officials on cable news will probably save us some significant money as well. And all of that can be reinvested in student success and [04:15:52] our educators, because I think that's what our priority always needs to be. And so this is the beginning of this conversation, which never really ends, but this is the beginning of the formal conversation. I look forward to continuing the conversation with my colleagues about this as it goes forward with our educators and staff as we encourage folks to fully fund our our budget and consequently our collective bargaining agreements and I will be right with them in Richmond we many of us were going to be in Richmond on Monday it doesn't look like that's going to happen anymore I'm not making any predictions but weather forecasters certainly are [04:16:30] and I appreciate the work that's gone into this by Ms. Burden and the budget team by our budget chair Ms. Dixit and look forward to engaging in the future. So I'm not going to take a full turn because I know we have a work session coming up but I just want to say thank you so much to you and your team for all the work being where we were last year where we had to make some really hard decisions and knowing that the states and state and county are all in the same position largely impacted by many of the things going on around the world. [04:17:04] I just want to say thank you for the thoughtful approach that you took and the work that you've done to make sure that you reshaped the way we were spending money in order to realign our priorities with what we said we were going to do. And I want to make sure that everybody understands that this is a needs-based budget. [04:17:23] This is nothing fancy. This is just keeping us going the way that we're going. And we still were able to meet our obligations, and we also were able to put the things back that caused the most heartburn last year for not only us, like internal, but within the community. [04:17:41] So I really appreciate the work that you and your team have done to take a thoughtful approach here and use a scalpel instead of a hatchet. So thank you very much for all the work that you did. We're going to go ahead and move on. Hold on, Doctor. You're not done. Agenda item 9.02, strategic plan update. [04:18:01] I call on Dr. Reed for a strategic plan update. And I am so excited about this strategic plan update, so I could not wait to share this with you. So thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. I am thrilled to present our January update, and I'm thrilled that Paul Andrade, our transportation director, is here with me tonight, even though he's got to be up at 4 in the morning. [04:18:24] So thank you, Paul, for being here. This is connected to Goal 2. Tonight's strategic plan report is connected to Goal 2. And the measure we're particularly addressing is positive school climate, safety, and sense of belonging. So our transportation team is committed to ensuring every bus ride reinforces a positive school climate where staff prioritize student safety and fosters belonging. [04:18:52] For many of our students, our transportation staff are the first staff members to greet them. in the morning and the last to say hello in the evening so our transportation department plays a critical role to ensure safe reliable and welcoming transportation and tonight i want to talk about our new advanced vehicle technology our tablets gps and cameras for operational awareness we're also going to talk a minute about the here comes the bus mobile app and the bus delay notification system both of which are more and more important as we continue through this winter this winter we begin deploying advanced [04:19:30] vehicle technology including radio frequency enabled tablets for real-time navigation instant route adjustments and verification of student identity and location tracking with full implementation by the end of the school year and these are really important safety features onboard camera systems remain fundamental ensuring safety and accountability and the technology going to enable unprecedented transparency for our families so the here come the bus app and bus delay notifications should be providing real time tracking and immediate alerts that respect family time and eliminate [04:20:09] unnecessary waiting some of the technology that we've been using with our bus app has actually created some glitches recently so I think these new tablets and the new software connections should minimize any of these glitches moving forward. [04:20:28] Our drivers remain key partners in student well-being and their training is focused on building positive, respectful relationships with students and ensuring that every driver helps to foster a secure and trusting environment. [04:20:43] Transportation staff also empower our students to be peer leaders through safety patrol programs And by focusing on both staff capability and student leadership, we're ensuring our transportation system is a seamless and supportive extension of our schools dedicated to student well-being. [04:21:01] Just transportation by the numbers is unbelievable. The fleet transports, honestly, a staggering 131,931 students daily. That's the population of a major city moves safely and reliably twice a day. [04:21:19] Currently, we're operating 1,398, almost 1,400 buses across a service area of over 391 square miles. And you can see the other data points on the screen. Quite frankly, the other data point I think that's not there is that we have 40,000 stops. [04:21:35] And I want to say that actually 45,000 bus stops right now. And I am so proud of our transportation team, Mr. Muick and Mr. Andrade. Our Virginia Department of Transportation, our VDOT folks who do all of our inclement weather, sanding and plowing, they have co-mapped all of our routes and bus stops to make those a priority and also to not be, to the degree possible, moving snow onto bus stop sidewalks. [04:22:08] and I just think that's incredible to map 45,000 stops so props to our team that took a lot of work and they did it this summer so that we're ready and when Mr. Lambert, Mr. Muick and I were on the call this afternoon with the Virginia Department of Transportation they are ready and they're connected to our team and we're looking forward to making sure things are safe. So to see this work in action let's take a look at our transportation team in action. Madam Clerk please play the video. [04:22:38] Every morning, FCPS buses are the first classrooms of the day. [04:22:55] Transportation staff set the tone for learning by ensuring every student arrives safe, supported, and ready to succeed. We call this the bus of the future, where innovation and safety come together. Tablets with new routing software give drivers real-time updates to keep routes accurate and efficient, and they also improve communication with schools and families. [04:23:18] Our new camera system takes safety to the next level. Parents and students can feel confident that their ride is secure. So let's say, for example, we are at the first stop on this road. They will show you all the students assigned to this stop. [04:23:33] This student, they come to the bus. They'll scan their RFID card. Also, there's a button showing this student currently on board right now. So it turns to yellow. And the number of the students on board has been updated. The best part of the system is it can show you when and where the students get on and off the bus. [04:23:52] And eventually, the parents will also be able to track the kids through their app in mobile devices in real time. This isn't just technology for technology's sake. It's about equity and safety, making sure every student has the same reliable and supportive experience. [04:24:09] The core of that experience will always be relationships. This is something technology cannot replace. Our student patrols play a key role in that experience. They guide their peers, build responsibility, and strengthen the sense of community on the bus. [04:24:26] So the front patrol comes out and makes sure that everyone comes out safely. And the back patrols have to go out and tell the kids to sit in school and make sure they come out safely. This year, not just one, but two of our student patrols were honored by the American Automobile Association, AAA, as a safety patroller of the year. [04:24:51] We're so proud of our student leaders. But where the rubber meets the road is, and always has been, is with our amazing team of skilled drivers and attendants. Our drivers do more than transport. There are mentors, role models, and trusted adults. [04:25:07] When a student feels seen and supported before they even enter the school building, it changes their whole day. Bus drivers might seem like a small thing that we do, taking them back and forth to the school, but I think that we are like some of the foundations of the school system. [04:25:24] I would like to tell all the parents that I've had on my run that I honestly care about your children. It gives me a really great sense of pride in my job to see my drivers excel and provide excellent transportation for the students and the families. [04:25:46] That is the number one thing that brings me into work to make me want to be there for the drivers is so that they supply, you know, good trips and experiences for the students and families. So it's opportunity. [04:26:03] All right, Madam Chair, that concludes this month's strategic plan update and a big, big thank you to all our drivers, mechanics, routers, supervisors. Our transportation team is amazing. [04:26:19] I mean, 131,000 of our kids every day. Thank you, Dr. Reed. Mr. Frisch. Thank you. Anytime I mention buses, my partner reminds me that in elementary school, he was in student patrol. so um he still kind of polices our transportation um uh first i i can't believe that mr andrade is here at this hour when he's going to be up at four o'clock in the morning which might be no it's not earlier than the superintendent but it is very very early um i have to say that mr andrade is [04:26:57] extremely responsive um far more responsive than you would expect from somebody as busy as he is and it's always insightful and always helpful, no question goes unanswered. So I very much appreciate the clarity that you helped bring to our constituents because sometimes the questions are complicated about why a bus stop is here instead of there, and it's always treated with the thoughtfulness that it deserves. [04:27:23] So thank you very much for your hard work. In December, just after Thanksgiving, I had an opportunity to -- I've been doing some shadowing of FCPS employees over the last several months libraries custodial work and I had an opportunity to do a ride along on one of our our school buses and got to see you know up close and personal how much care and attention our bus drivers have for our students and the relationships they build especially with the student patrol students Mr. Spalding was the [04:28:01] driver that I got to shadow and he was charismatic he knew the kids by name and they were very well behaved for the most part there were a few kids that had to sit down but the student patrol had them under control so I appreciate the new technology I know that it is not easy to adopt new technology especially when you're trying to do it while doing something else at the same time so i know that it's going about as well as we can expect and and we'll we'll learn a lot more in [04:28:38] the year ahead so i appreciate that as well and i appreciate the broader update these employees work extremely hard and we need more of them so if you are watching this we are hiring um and you just have to come to fcps.edu uh i think slash jobs or careers will take you to find more information about becoming a bus driver in fcps and we'll help you get licensed so thank you miss mary yeah thank you i was remembering that i um joined my daughter when [04:29:13] she was patrol on that patrol training when the bus was on its side and they had to exit like that could be something cool for the board to do again like one of these hands-on things to see experiences there's just like so much um to to understand and you know to that point i just i just want to say you know it's okay for us to change our agenda this was a huge this is a monstrous meeting and i know i had asked if this could be put on another agenda i i just i don't find it appropriate or comical that our staffer is here and has to work in four hours and if we're [04:29:49] supposed to be emulating wellness and safety we cannot operate like this you know I mentioned this as well with all the community engagement staff who are at all of these meetings late we just have a duty to be healthy and how we do things so I just wanted to share that I hope we can not have staff here who get up in a few hours in the morning again dr. Anderson thank you I'm so don't you look great in that video by the way quick question how many electric buses [04:30:24] do we have of the 1398 I always think it's more than what it actually is no it's about third was about 33 30 why did I think it was a hundred I thought we oh now I know why never mind okay so about 30 thank you so much the tablets are they already on in use somewhere I am NOT feeling secure in terms of what I understand about that over winter break we started doing the implementation of the tablets and those tablets we approximately have about 500 tablets of [04:30:58] those 1398 in service now next week if the weather cooperates with us we're gonna have a big training with all the drivers so they'll be fully implemented and understand the full functionality of the tablets so we're well on our way to our goal for next school year with the 500 tablets and they're attached to the bus not to the driver per se that's correct and so it does it come off when they go to park the bus no it stayed it's secured in it's locked in I see okay thank you so much and my last question this is mostly for this one is for dr. [04:31:36] Reed just going over this presentation one of the things that you outline here on page two is the equity commitment which is amplifying student voice to inform their approaches honor students identities etc how does that show up in this part of of the work I'm curious well I think what it shows up in the training that our drivers receive and I think that was one of the things that our drivers talked about in the video as well that they really take seriously [04:32:09] being that first classroom for 131,000 children right that they see each child that gets on the bus they develop a connection to those children their experience on the bus their safety and well-being they create a climate and culture within the bus I think that really is a climate and culture that's safe supported included and it enables our students who are on buses to start their day in a very positive way before they ever get into the school building which I think is very important in our training that mr. Andrade oversees as [04:32:45] well as our drivers just their perspective and commitment to their work well thank you for that you know I missed my companion question with the 500 tablets that are going to be rolled out do the students have the ID badges that I saw that they were tapping on the side there when is that going to be rolled out not yet currently but we're looking to have that go in for next school year okay wonderful thank you so much right the RFI cards are the feature for the students but the drivers are going to get used to the tablets and the turning and the all those features while we pilot some of the RFI cards but by [04:33:24] fall students on buses will have the rats are going to be preloaded so no one will get lost when there's a substitute driver yes ma'am that's correct mr. moon thank you madam chair by the way I have many friends who work for oil transportation department and they have a lot of huge compliments for you know how they are treated uh in your office so uh kudos to you uh 391 square miles we don't cover 15 square miles of [04:34:01] water within fairfax there was there was there was a joke that was a joke oh you know fairfax county is 406 square miles and we are covering 391 out of 406 and 15 happens to be water so uh but Tony, so don't we also, you know, for some students, don't we also transport them to out-of-county locations? [04:34:34] Yes, that's correct. When we have students that have programs that Fairfax County doesn't offer, we do transport students to Montgomery County and other different counties to support their education. So we may be covering more than really 391 square miles. That's correct. [04:34:49] Okay, thank you. Okay, seeing no others, I am going to say that I am super excited for the bus derby this year. So I really, really hope that you guys invite me or invite all of us again because that was super fun. You know, I can't even parallel park my car, much less some of these buses. [04:35:07] We actually, the funny part is that I actually took my mother last year because she loves all of that stuff and she was thrilled. So thank you so much for being here tonight. Agenda item 10, consent agenda, are adopted rules of parliamentary procedure. [04:35:25] Robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval by 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. [04:35:44] The consent agenda items are on the screen. Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Hearing and seeing no objection, the consent agenda is approved. Agenda item 11, 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 12, board committee reports. I call on Ms. Marin for a report on the governance committee. Okay, well I just sent an email to everyone about the six facilities policies that are currently in the mix. Three that we moved tonight, but there's also three that came from [04:36:20] governance. We are doing the AI policy, so wow, that's huge, and certainly welcome talking, meeting, there's all sorts of ideas for engagement I also will be doing more advanced notice about the policies that are coming up and we'll welcome the input sooner than later so we can incorporate that into our governance committee so that we have as informed policy development as we can so please check your email and do let me know if you have comments forthcoming thank you thank you agenda item 13 superintendent matters I call on dr. Reed for [04:36:56] superintendent matters. So given the hour, I will pass this evening. I'm sorry. I'm trying to remember. There was one thing. Oh, the email that went out to families. This would be about the snow possibly. Okay. What I do want to mention is that this evening we did send out a note to our families about the potential inclement weather that's coming. And I apologize for the late timing, but Microsoft was experiencing some challenges this afternoon, which I think challenged [04:37:34] all of us. But we will be visiting this weekend. Our team will be working with the Department of Transportation, and we'll be looking at the conditions and likely making a decision on Sunday. So we will make sure we're going to get some kind of communication out to families. Tomorrow, [04:37:55] We're encouraging students to take home their remote devices or their iPads or division laptops and any other books that they might want to read or work with in case we are snowbound for a few days. [04:38:14] so I want to recall though that we are not moving to remote learning but that learning happens in all kinds of spaces and we also want to enjoy snow days as well as link to winter resources on our division website so we encourage families if we are ending up with students at home to link up to those resources there'll be a lot of activities that our students might be able to connect to if they are home. So thank you. Dr. Reed, I think you were also going to mention something about the updated revised names for the western high school. Oh, that's correct. That was the other [04:38:53] piece. So I just want to remind our community that I did amend and update the names, the choices for the new high school in the western part of the county. And there were a couple reasons why. one our student advocacy was what continued and the students really advocated for the the name sky view to be added which was the really the most popular student name so I did add that to the recommendation which was amended at our last presentation that was posted and also the WH s was confusing [04:39:32] And because we have Westfield High School as a WHS and Western High School would be a WHS. So given those two pieces, the student advocacy and that potential confusion, I did add Skyview High School as a possible choice. [04:39:48] So just want to make sure the public knows that and that has been posted. So that'll be reviewed by our board. So thank you. Thank you, Dr. Reed. Agenda item 14, board matters. In accordance with the board's consensus due to the late hour, we are skipping this item for this evening. The meeting is now adjourned at 11.55 p.m. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Coraggio Consulting ยท aguyonx.com