Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Administration Committee Meeting, Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 1h 16m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE3MJds9d2Q
Official School Board page (FCPS): https://www.fcps.edu/about-fcps/leadership/school-board

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-28. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:02:00] Are we ready? This March 4th, 2026 regular meeting of the Fairfax County School Board Administration Committee will now come to order at 4:31 PM. I'm sorry for starting late. We will now approve the minutes from the October 1st, 2025 meeting.

[00:02:18] - I move. - Mr. Moon makes the motion. Is there a second? Ms. Anderson, all those in favor? That's unanimous for board members present with Mr. McDaniel and Dr. Anderson absent. All right, we will now talk about the school board office and school board member employee performance evaluations.

[00:02:39] Why don't we go ahead and so, just to recap, this is like one of those weird television shows that they now have where they go on hiatus and then they don't come back for two years. And you're like, what did happen on that show that I think I liked? Well, you really enjoyed the last meeting.

[00:02:57] And what we approved at the last meeting was a revision to the evaluation calendar for specific school board member school board office staff essentially the people that are unique to the school board a shift in the type about evaluation that we do so that it's not the generic operational evaluation that it's more specific to the jobs and then we made a variety of edits to those about those job specific evaluations and then we also agreed each of us took a couple people on the board to talk with

[00:03:36] and preview things for and collect that feedback and then bring it back to the committee. And so I spoke to folks and gathered that feedback and the next item on our agenda for this portion of our work and then we're done and it's just about the implementation is agreeing that the edits that I'm gonna walk through right now are good or not and we're ready to send this on to the full board for consideration.

[00:04:01] - Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question? an overarching question about a school board member specific positions. Since each board member's perhaps expectations that his or her step may be performing may be different from each other or so their level of expectation will be different. So my question is whether whatever we may propose to the full board for their consideration is they can review it and also they can modify

[00:04:40] as they sit it or are you are we going to be recommending every board member to accept for the types of positions we are adopting although you'll see we had this conversation at the last meeting and language has been included to show that there's flexibility in how a board member views the evaluation like i'm not going to see you know item number 2.1 the same way that you you will see it for your staffer.

[00:05:06] And maybe item number three is super important for Sandy's staffer, but less important for mine because it's a talent that I have or something like that. - That's the point. Some of the things, member A may not do it, might not want a step to do it, whereas member B may think that's the most important thing and put in 100% of time to that mark.

[00:05:28] - Well, I think you'll see the language that I added in makes that clear. Also, we made the rubric a suggestion in terms of, and how a board member weights things. I don't think anybody's gonna fault their employee for something that they're not asking them to do, right?

[00:05:47] So they'll be able to adjust that accordingly. But on a more specific point, in making this adjustment, board members are required, even though we have no supervisorial people above us, that if they're going to do an evaluation of their employee, it has to be the evaluation that we're providing because currently that's the case as well.

[00:06:08] It's just a different evaluation. It's the very generic operational evaluation. So we have to be consistent for the job type, which is why we're not touching the jobs that are common across the district that people could transfer in and out of. All right, why don't we start with the auditor general's file?

[00:06:33] Starting there because nobody had feedback on this And so it is unchanged from the last meeting, except for adding the word sample next to performance rubric and indicators.

[00:06:53] So this remains unchanged. Nobody had feedback from colleagues. I think we're ready to move this one on to colleagues for consideration. Without objection, great. Let's go ahead and open.

[00:07:08] Yeah, yes.

[00:07:25] All right, let's do the clerk of the school board next. - All right, this one we did have a couple items of feedback from Ms. Marin. So you'll see on the screen, the first edit there was to make clear that the clerk serves at the pleasure of the body of the school board and not for one specific board member.

[00:07:54] Obviously the governance manual indicates how that work is executed through the chair and vice chair, but this was Ms. Marin's suggestion. One second, I think that's it for the introductory language.

[00:08:10] Go ahead. - The only thing I wanna note here is that per HR, the clerk still does need to have one supervisor amongst the board, so. - I believe that's iterated in the governance manual as well, isn't it? - I'm not 100% sure, it may be something that, okay, according to Ms. Brown it is.

[00:08:26] So I just wanna make sure that we acknowledge the fact that it is, that we've set up as a structure that the chair is the supervisor. - That's in the governance manual. The other thing I would note is that this brings clarity to that function. so uh you know i think the clerk and the deputy clerks want to be helpful to all board members obviously but in terms of like major initiatives and such those are directed through the will of the board through their chair and vice chair otherwise it'd be impossible to manage

[00:09:00] anybody but we all have a say in the evaluation and so the next uh edit that miss marron suggested If you scroll down to standard two at the end, she suggested adding 2.11 and 2.12.

[00:09:21] 2.11 is oversees the effective onboarding of new school board office and school board member staff. CERC already does that in conjunction with their team, making sure that they're set up on technology and knows how to access different files and is aware of best practices for offices and how to get a newsletter out and all those types of things.

[00:09:42] The next is... Mr. Chairman, I don't know why my eyesight is not getting better, but thank you, thank you. - Welcome, yes.

[00:09:58] And the second one is oversees the organized departure of school board office and school board member staff, particularly following board turnover. We've just gone through this with Ms. Sizemore-Heiser. I think the clerk and the deputies did a great job of helping with that transition, but it's worth putting it in here.

[00:10:17] And then on standard number three, Ms. Marin suggested adding closed meetings. It was an oversight to not include that. And those were the extent of her requested edits.

[00:10:33] We didn't have any other edits from anybody else. - That's fine, Mr. Chairman. - Can we just generally give, when we are voting, can we just generally give the clerk's leave to adjust anything like hanging headers at the end of pages and things like that?

[00:10:50] And so the just sheerly grammatical and formatting mistakes and things like that, we can update, is that okay? - That's fine. - Perfect. - I don't make mistakes, but I'm just kidding. - Or updates.

[00:11:07] - Totally fine. It's not the prettiest document in the world, that's for sure. Anyways, there's no other edits. Are we fine with moving this on without objection? All right, that's unanimous. Let's move on to the deputy clerk.

[00:11:31] All right, under standard one, you'll see two added, 1.6 and 1.7. 1.6, this is for Ms. Marin. monitors the board's quorum to ensure meetings occur with calendar fidelity and respect school board member and staff time.

[00:11:52] Y'all already do that. I frequently get phone calls if I've not updated my quorum tracker, so I have no problem with including that. And then the second one was 1.7, we'll discuss. The second one for this section is 1.7, ensures proper access to and setup of technology for virtual participation.

[00:12:12] Comments, Ms. Anderson, Chair Anderson. - I'm fine with a 1.7. I'm concerned about the language in 1.6 as it is not, there is no mechanism for the clerk team to ensure that we are fulfilling our quorum tracking requirements.

[00:12:30] I will say, if you wanted to say that they are responsible for ensuring accurate attendance records on the quorum tracker, I'm fine with that. - I'd be fine, so let me be clear. Melanie didn't give specific language. She said, "I want this feedback to be reflected." so I made it, it may not be the clearest articulation.

[00:12:48] So, say that one more time. - Basically, I want, I am fine with the clerk team being responsible for maintaining the attendance records of all board members utilizing the quorum tracker and to encourage utilization of the quorum tracker, but we can't.

[00:13:11] I don't think it's fair to put that on the deputy clerks to have that be their responsibility as we have several board members that refuse to use the quorum tracker. hopefully I'm not one of those you say that one more time maintains the board's quorum tracker

[00:13:37] or maintains the board attendance records utilizing the agreed-upon document or agreed-upon system yeah she's like the clerks are maintaining the document not how are we with that I mean that's what it's in service to okay and then the second one is about virtual participation again

[00:14:15] and they already do this pretty darn well for me, I'm sure for others as well. - Can we just put in there and in line with the board's virtual participation resolution, please?

[00:14:42] - What is it called? Resolution? And is it called virtual participation resolution? All right, that was the only, oh, one more.

[00:14:58] Under standard five, she wanted something about managing AV needs at meetings, official school board meetings, not like one-off things that board members are doing, like closed meetings regular meetings etc right coordinates that's it any other edits uh without

[00:15:35] objection can we move this onto the board wonderful all right here's the big one this is the director of district board operations we have many so let's start with standard two i'm going to let people read that if we go down to standard two because it's a lot all right so the overall feedback on this one and i agreed with it was that it sounded like they were going to be like a legislative

[00:16:11] analyst for the board member when really what the job description speaks to is just keeping the board member engaged and knowledgeable about what's happening uh legislatively at varying levels being mindful of what's happening in the news etc and so uh this was the resulting edits would change this too the director briefs their school board member on various local state and federal policy matters helping to inform the school board members thinking advance their priorities uh i mean that could be everything from the budget to something happening in washington

[00:16:47] it's up to the board members discretion how they want to use that time monitors policy developments no other changes in that one the second one again changes it to policy priorities instead of legislative priorities because we don't have individual legislative priorities removes the third again updates toward policy instead of legislation updates you'll see repeated changes to policy considerations priorities of the board member etc and then if you scroll down to so everything in that particular

[00:17:25] section has been updated to reflect that general guidance and then if you scroll down that might be the only and then we do have a nugget here from uh mr moon if you go down to the very end in part five it's been 13 years part five not standard five the very end

[00:17:57] all right so this is that language i was talking about at the top staff evaluations may appear different for each school board member driven by their unique expectations and management style that should provide so when people talk to each other as we expect them to about their evaluations I mean, that's what happens in every workplace.

[00:18:21] They will be knowledgeable of the fact that it's a little different for everybody. - Can I ask a question going, and I'm not trying to flip you all over the place, but back on page two with standard two, do you think that the title of that standard adequately represents the task that we're asking them to critique on?

[00:18:43] Because right now, office operations and oversight has nothing to do with policy work. So I'm just wondering if the language of that standard doesn't necessarily match what we're-- - It could be office policy priorities.

[00:19:02] - Okay, I think that makes more sense for what we're asking for, 'cause we're not really asking staff, our staff to create oversight for our policies that doesn't match, so I like that better.

[00:19:19] - How about office policy priorities and monitoring? Do we need the word office? That's right, it's the individual board members, which is clear in the introduction, but I mean, it could just be policy priorities and monitoring, all right.

[00:19:46] Anything else on this one? We move it forward to the next without objection. All right, that's unanimous. Up next is the school board staff aid.

[00:20:02] I believe there's one of these left. None, they're all gone. - Brown, do we still have one? Okay. - So this is minuscule. At the very end, it includes Mr. Moon's requested language about flexibility between evaluations.

[00:20:27] All right, without objection, that is unanimous. And finally, the school board staff assistant position. If you look at this one, again, part five, the very end,

[00:20:43] it includes Mr. Moon's language, okay?

[00:21:15] Summarizes information into concise reports or memos for the school board members' use. Prepares background materials for meetings, hearings, and events.

[00:21:38] Adding what?

[00:21:59] - I'm not sure I see that it fits with 3.3. Is it possible that we would need to add one in?

[00:22:15] It could also be added to 3.1 'cause that meets the need for background material.

[00:22:38] - That's 3.3. You could say prepares background and other materials as like a more of a catch-all, 'cause that could be everything from like a memo to like a sign for the front door, yeah.

[00:23:10] Any others?

[00:23:30] - To Clark's evaluation, just to point out. - Okay. - At the end, toward the end, I think we were giving a, I don't know whether we were just trying to give that as an example, when we're putting weighting of a 1.25, I think that's what I saw.

[00:23:51] - It's because it's done by all of us. There are, for the auditor general and for the clerk, we weigh them the same way we weighed the superintendent since it's all 12 of us doing the evaluation. The individual ones don't need weighting because only one person's doing the evaluation.

[00:24:11] - You lost me, so we put 1.25. - That's how we do the superintendent's evaluation as well. So to make it all together 30? - Basically what it does, it kind of balances out the potential skew from highs and lows.

[00:24:29] - Okay, could you go to clocks at the end? At the end, I'll just pretend that I understood what you said.

[00:24:47] With that said, if somebody got four on everything with a weight in 1.25, that person would have gotten, would get 30 points.

[00:25:09] All right, it's the standards, and the four is the highest you can get If you do 1.25 weighting, that becomes five points.

[00:25:25] And then just 30 points. And then if you see a ratings of scores, highly effective is-- - That's right. This was just copied from another item. So it would be-- - I don't know what that would be, but-- - It would be, okay, we will adjust this based on that.

[00:25:42] Yeah. - Okay. - So-- - I have a quick question. Does it need to be 1.25 if it's just equally weighted?

[00:25:57] Like I guess-- - Yeah, that was a point. - The first point was why if it is same weighting. - If they're all the same, if there's the same weight. - Because the board could choose, so this is the same discussion we've had about the superintendent's evaluation. The board could choose to put more weight on one of the others if they wanted to.

[00:26:16] - But we couldn't because, not as individuals. And so I guess because this is meant to be standardized across all employees, we could just state that they were equally weighted. - If that's what the board wants, yeah. but that's what we're suggesting.

[00:26:32] - Yeah, we've just never done it that way for the superintendent, so I didn't transpose it here. When I say never, I mean not forever, but for the last six years. So we can change it to one for everything, but that would be different than what we have.

[00:26:48] It probably, yes, it would, but-- - I mean, if you just make it an equal weighting, just to make a point about that being equal weighting, then you don't have to change what's below 21 to 24, but-- let's think about it if a board member never had the appetite of the board to talk about weighting different things that's probably a mass situation that the board thinks it could never come to agreement on on what the most important things are and what things should

[00:27:27] be weighed more or whatever um do you think we just take that out of the equation for the other two people on our collective evaluation circuit and change it to one and then basically imply that we're not going to be weighting anything because we don't think the board is going to have the appetite for making a choice between making one thing more important than the other yeah you just would probably have to go up to the top and change it to be that five like janet can you scroll up just a little bit eliminate the weighting altogether so you need it

[00:28:02] for the bottom like you need well you need it to determine so you're saying just make the whole thing subjective because it is right and that's how it is for the super incoming so in that sense what we'd be deciding which is what we pass that we already decided is that everything has the same weight um if that's something that we're willing to just be like by even inferring that there's weight in it doesn't matter if we put a one or a 1.25 for everything we're saying that everything

[00:28:39] is an equal weight so well but there's two different things here there's there's waiting and then there's scoring so scoring i think actually helps supervisors kind of understand where they are the same way as it would for a teacher grading is that a rubric helps keep you - I'm not saying to eliminate the entire number five.

[00:28:59] I'm saying that if we don't want to do any weighting, we would eliminate the second part there with the bullet. And then down below, the math would be changed to like four, right? - Four or five? - Four, yeah. - Yeah. - I'll go with that, I mean, equal weighting, and then let's see how the full body reacts to that.

[00:29:20] If a full body want to entertain a discussion of weighting among different standards, So we want to do that with the auditor general's evaluation as well, then I'm guessing. Any of them, I would be on board with any of them that have waiting now currently that's all the same.

[00:29:38] So I believe that that's all of them. So if we just root. So there would be no .25s anywhere. No .25s, which will make life easier in theory. Yeah, the only ones that have waiting right now are the superintendent, the. I think that's a state issue.

[00:29:54] It's not. It's a guide. But I think it was on the state. - It's on the state thing, which is a sample. - Yeah, I also did have one other quick question about actually this one and the district directors and staff aides.

[00:30:14] - Give me one second. Let me just make sure that we don't have, I will clean this up before it comes to the board,

[00:30:52] but I'm just trying to reflect the edits. All right, does that look good to everybody? And then the auditor general, without objection on that change.

[00:31:12] - Mr. Chairman, I would like to give a full credit to my staff assistant for pointing that out. - Who is sitting here? - Gonna do the same thing here.

[00:31:24] Oops, all right, are we good?

[00:32:04] - I just have one thing. - On the Auditor General? - No, about-- - All right, we're not there yet, hang on a second. All, any objections on the Auditor General weighting changes thing? All right, go ahead. - Okay, so on staff assistant, staff aide, and district director, do we wanna put something in there that again reiterates no access to closed materials something because we we we talk about meetings very generally or allowed

[00:32:37] meetings or something like I just want to make sure because if I have that's like a I meant they're not supposed to be access anyway right and or something into only accessing materials that are appropriate like I don't I just don't know I think that has more to do with a school board member you're not grinding that access.

[00:33:04] One second. I believe we have something that we can tack on to. Let me just look at the district director of board operations. Go down to the end, and there's one called professionalism. So for 8.2 could be considered covering it, but we could also add to it, including, trying

[00:33:36] to figure out how you word, that's there, confidentiality of sensitive information and materials.

[00:33:56] I'm going to go through each of these and make that change just so that we, other, last

[00:34:24] one. I made that for all three.

[00:34:39] are there any other can we accept those without objection all right that's approved any other changes all right can i have a motion to send these all on collectively to the full board i so move is there a second mr mcdaniel all those in favor that is unanimous for board members present all right wonderful so to recap we've uh we are suggesting a new timeline to the board we are suggesting a new uh process and format for the evaluations to the board and we are suggesting

[00:35:12] uh job description aligned evaluation uh forms for the board um so those have all been moved on let's go ahead and back to board docs sop and we're going to be relying a good chunk on janet here okay i'm not sure how close we will be to uh wanting to move them all along but we will see One moment.

[00:35:54] So that people are aware of what we're talking about here, the clerks team, and you can correct me if I misstate anything, Janet, the clerks team is working on all of these SOPs, and there were specific ones that they thought the admin committee should weigh in on before they're finalized.

[00:36:13] And these are, generally speaking, things that relate to money and board member specifics. let's go ahead and look at the back to school night funds SOP first and so these SOPs are essentially like the policies that govern the school board office my only question about this one is that there has been some discussion about

[00:36:50] whether or not it would make sense for us to not solely allow those those funds to be utilized at the beginning of the year as we have we have uncovered some fees that are being charged the school board office more consistently now and and so utilizing it for community use and things like that it might make more sense whether or not just to make this more general throughout the year related to funds that are utilized rather than having them just be tied to back to school funds so i think the way that we can tackle this janet because we don't have the word docs is kind of like governance would where

[00:37:27] we talk about like the desired changes and then bring them back to the next meeting we'll try scheduling a some earlier meeting finalize them all maybe in okay i'll look for a date in april okay so we'll talk about these things are we tied to wednesday or is a different day of the week possible okay what i mean more for this purpose is like as we talk about it we'll suggest things that should be updated in advance okay so mr chairman i could we separate the evaluations

[00:38:06] from this in terms of sending it to our yeah that is forward that stuff's already on its way okay okay all right because i need to have that finalized so that i agree agreed no that's on my staff and then the other aspect is on all of these i would like to make sure that we have a last updated date i'm not suggesting that it echoes exactly what's done with our policies or regulations or anything like that but i would at least have like to have at the end of each one when the last time it's been updated just so that we understand that's wonderful um i'd be fine with uh none of

[00:38:45] of this back-to-school stuff is in the governance manual right no yeah it's just the practice right and so this is solidifying the practice I would be perfectly comfortable changing the title of this what was the language you used calling it something else we haven't decided as a board what we're gonna call well we're not deciding here either no I agree and so I don't think I have a recommendation for a specific it would basically be school board member funds like or school board off you know I'm trying to figure out district like each

[00:39:19] individual school board member yearly funds is how we could say it just to have it be very general but the idea here is is that rather than have it tied to a very specific activity at the beginning of the year it would be allowed to be utilized what about annual engagement funds that's perfect and then so it would be changed from back to school night throughout to annual engagement activities or even or even you know school board member support funds it could be supporting well this is where so my mind was going towards there are a number of things that we have

[00:39:57] budgeted from lobbying well not lobbying it's advocacy uh to um professional development and and this is separate from that so if it doesn't have general we want to go right like so let me let me give you a very petty example example you meet with group of community members uh you want be able to provide even bottles of water we don't have a fund for that we do not i think that would

[00:40:26] fit under engagement the thing i i would hate to think of it i i have trouble thinking of what board members might do to use the funds in a weird way but where there's a will right um i mean we'll be we'll be we'll all be accountable for the huge amount of funds well for example so like the water thing makes perfect sense to me if i'm having an event and i want to have water and cookies there or what have you that would come out of that fund right there if i'm having an event and i wanted to

[00:41:03] have a flyer that could be handed out that would come out of that fund right there so i'm like i'm thinking of like what is a broad category that sounds more specific than just calling it a fund so so that is why i said you know board member support fund so board member would be will be - What about board member activities, annual?

[00:41:28] - I was thinking annual community engagement activity fund because the idea here is that it's very specific to engagement with the community. It's not necessarily, I wanna be very careful that it doesn't sound like it's things that we can utilize for ourselves.

[00:41:43] That's not the point here. The point is it's to facilitate our engagement with the community. It's if we need translation services, this is the fund it would come out of. It's right now, we don't have anything identified within the school board office that would allow for individual members to do those things.

[00:42:00] And as long as we stay within the amount that we decide on as a board, I think that it works, but it would be targeted towards external engagement. - Since Madam Chair just mentioned a translation services, as I was thinking about some of these, I felt very baffled about the fact that We, as an elective school board members, have all these obstacles for us to be able to perform our jobs as elected officials who will make ultimate decisions

[00:42:41] on allocation of something bigger than it. - I don't think it's barriers. - What I'm saying is the fact that we have to discuss in length about setting aside $1,000 for certain things And we have to pay for use of our own school facilities and all that.

[00:43:09] And I also have to pay for translation services. - But the superintendent's office does as well. - Every office does the difficulty, right? Is that we only get so many dollars as a, what do they call it? - And these are fee-based organizations. - Well, this is a program budget.

[00:43:27] We have a program budget for the school board in the same way that every element of the division has one. And so we have some flexibility, but if we don't count the pennies, like them not charging us for something doesn't mean it's not coming from somewhere, right?

[00:43:48] So for the purposes of this, I don't disagree that we should have a conversation about these other things, but I'm inclined that the public wouldn't know what the school board's actually spending money on if we didn't track it from the school board office side.

[00:44:08] And if we track it from the school board office side, it only makes sense that it would come from our budget. So generally speaking, are we in support of aligning this particular SOP to annual, as opposed to being finite at the beginning of the year and calling it something along the lines of an annual community engagement activities fund?

[00:44:38] Or would it be a board member's annual community engagement activities fund? So that it doesn't imply that it's just, there are a number of places in this SOP that we'd have to strip out the language about back to school night and the timing of these things and when things have to be spent by, but all the other stuff about how to get reimbursed and whatnot makes sense.

[00:45:03] - And I apologize, it was after we determined that we had excess area, we had excess funding that school board members didn't use at the beginning of the year that we had room that we could utilize them for things where we had people that wanted to run activity or community events that we wanted to make sure.

[00:45:21] But yeah, I did talk to the superintendent about whether or not these are the same types of things that she's utilizing? - Along the same line, in the past, even for professional development funding that each board members gets allotment for, that access fund or unspent professional development funding could have been accessed, was accessed by some other board members who might need additional amount besides the allotment.

[00:45:59] They were like, I am $200 short to attend this and you're not using $2,000, were able to use that fund in the past. That flexibility used to be practiced.

[00:46:18] - I would love us to get back to the point where we are understanding that we're a team working together. I think that that's a lovely thing. Unfortunately, every time we've talked about this up to this point, we haven't had that type of agreement. So I'm very eager to get us back to the point where we acknowledge the fact that some of us are doing things that others aren't.

[00:46:36] And I mean, one thing that I think is possible here is that if we start getting closer to a fund that you can utilize how you deem fit, as long as you are meeting the requirements of having professional development every year, and you're having, you know, that you can use the funds that you have allocated for your office for these things.

[00:46:56] And if you wanna hold more community events and you aren't going to as many conferences, then you have the flexibility to be able to use that funding how you want to. - Before we dive down this rabbit hole, This is not the focus of this SOP. I don't believe it's the focus of the other SOPs that we have in front of us.

[00:47:13] That doesn't mean it's not a topic worth discussing. I think we have a budget conversation with the clerk in June or April, I don't remember, in which case we can talk about that there. We did previously adjust the PD, hadn't been adjusted in like more than a decade, despite the costs of the conferences and transportation going up.

[00:47:38] Anyways, are we good with those requested changes to further discuss at the next meeting? - I am fine. - Any objections? All right, we can revisit the tape of the tape, like somebody's videotaping this.

[00:47:53] We can revisit the recording if we need to for more notes. All right, let's look at closed meeting attendance, including committee meetings. Janet, you wanna talk to us about this one? - This one actually came out of Kyle's request, so glad you're here today, sir.

[00:48:13] This happened to be a question about who is allowed to attend closed meetings, including committee meetings, and who is not, and if there was any sort of guidelines to it, and so we wrote this in thinking to keep it more like audit committee, and just in general that, you know, permission is given, and NDAs are signed if they're committee members, and just making sure that the attendance is known in advance, so that there's no question about whether or not that person was able to come to the meeting and that everyone agreed that it was a good idea for them to come since we do talk about

[00:48:53] some kind of dialogue that topics enclosed. - I thank you for raising this. I forgot this was a suggestion. So where this originated was actually at a CPDC. So when I took over CPDC, I discovered going back through meeting minutes that community members from FPAC had attended closed sessions of CPDC for various reasons.

[00:49:22] So the question then became if that, what the practice was, if they had to sign NDAs, similar to what audit committee has to sign to be able to participate in that. So glad to see some consistency around that.

[00:49:37] The only question I had was whether or not in the last section under guidelines, board members may also ask fellow board members to leave the room and recuse themselves if it's determined that the board member has a conflict of interest I from my general understanding that is not legal a function that the board can actually ask someone to do so I am concerned I don't think it's in line with the overall board policy so I'm concerned about including it here just to clarify

[00:50:13] the board can't compel somebody out and it really is a judgment call of the individual and they would be informed in the moment whether their presence because of a conflict poses a legal or financial risk to the school division, and then it would be up to them to make that decision because there's nobody that can enforce it.

[00:50:38] We just need to update that accordingly. Just quickly, I believe there's a policy regarding this that we had to use 1420.

[00:50:56] Is that a policy or regulation? That's a policy. With funds and property? 1420?

[00:51:19] I think maybe that's not the one, but there is one that we had to use. Let's double check in if it is one of our policies, and let's make sure that we, quote, have it cleared by legal. Well, not only have it cleared by legal, but also give it. One of the main questions that I had with this is how many of these things need to be codified in the governance manual before we can put it in an SOP.

[00:51:42] The SOPs are just a way we're going to be doing things. It's not necessarily a place to set our guidelines fully. and so if there are things that we need to have in the governance manual that are part of this then i think that we need to make sure that we do that that's it raises an interesting question because what is the role of the school board office in this suggested sop i feel like this would be a governance manual thing this whole this whole sop i agree because this is not this

[00:52:17] is directing board member activities not inner office operations except for the fact of the portion where it talks about the timeline required for community members to be included in an outside meet you know in a closed meeting like there are some school board office aspects of this and so what I would like it is that's like a meeting prep thing it is and so I would I would like to see us because then we can point to it as the guideline but again I'm still wondering if that's for a portion of that is what needs to be in the governance manual particularly related to standing committees because they're only any standing committee can can have a closed meeting for some reason.

[00:52:55] They can, but it's, yes, I got you. Okay. But in theory, if this was part of the governance manual minus what the staff does to effectuate it, staff would be thinking, well, how are we going to effectuate that? We better have an SOP for how we actually execute on the governance manual's rules that the board has set for its committee.

[00:53:14] Just like they do, I know that there's an SOP that you all created for how do we run a meeting, a regular meeting, right? All the different things that have to happen to make that successful, including bringing people in for virtual and not or whatever. So in my head for this one, we should divorce those two things, maybe send part of this for a governance manual edition.

[00:53:37] And then once that's done, they can create an SOP for it. - Yeah, what I would say is that we absolutely can update, I mean, PEC updated the governance manual for the portions that were appropriate related to the community advisory group. So I think that that would be perfectly in line something for us to take on to do rather than having it i didn't know if you were recommending having it sent to governance uh no we got plenty to do any other thoughts on that one before we

[00:54:09] are we all agreed to do that okay no objection up next i went to the oh i hate board docs leave this one is straight from uh atlas and kind of what we do in practice and then um what was in an atlas under all the HR requirements for leave.

[00:54:36] - Just a moment, I'm pulling it up, leave. Mayor Anderson. - The only question, I have a couple questions. First, I do not believe the school board student representative has authorized leave.

[00:54:54] So I think that that whole sentence at the last portion of that on the back side, on the second page, can be removed because it's not necessary because they're not approved to have leave. And then the second one is actually something that we're gonna be talking about as a board under the guidelines, we can't use a hyperlink with here.

[00:55:19] It needs to be that the doc, that's the new ADA compliance issue. So we need to make sure that we're outlining what it is that we're linking and then link that thing. So that's just an update that I noticed that in a couple of different spots. So we just need to make sure if it was, you know, guidelines and useful tips for using my time, just hyperlink that portion of it and take the here out because that's an update coming quickly yeah all of these were done in november so before the ada stuff came out these are they're just minor

[00:55:52] corrections anybody else all right why don't we move it along as it adjusted for the next meeting non-exempt employee overtime this one came out of the consensus in the 517 retreat regarding uh not

[00:56:30] using overtime as much but this is if you were to have overtime this is the process

[00:56:49] in the guidelines section do we need to define because we don't we very much don't want to make this or give the impression that this usurps what the HR guidelines are for sure so I don't think we need the first paragraph in there because we don't define what the overtime rate would be so we don't need to define what the standard rate would be so I just don't think that we need the first paragraph under guidelines is yeah because if they're eligible for up to 40 hours and I figured I just yeah so I don't think we I very much don't want

[00:57:28] us to replicate HR and that's one of the things that I was gonna mention with all of the SOPs if we are pulling information from another and we've done this in a couple of spots but if we're pulling this information from a reference document I think it's really important for us to link to where people can find the reference document not necessarily because I expect all links to stay perfect but even if it's what to search for on the FCPS website I think it would be helpful to get people in the right spot.

[00:58:02] - Anything else? Governance Committee. - I just wanted to speak up about the fact that the Governance Committee is working on creating a style guide related and once we update that policy, then the board will be able to authorize that.

[00:58:29] If that's true, then we probably need to reference the style guide in this document as well. So that way on some of the other things and the other aspect that I wanted to put or mention under timeline is that I would like us to make sure that we are generic in the references to the outside organizations that we're affiliated with, just to make sure that we don't have any affiliations that may change over time.

[00:58:52] So right now we reference in May that we are looking at the VSBA information. So I just think it's important for us to keep that more generic depending on whether or not our source documents may change.

[00:59:08] - Wondering if this should be, I think this is good because it's tailored to what the SBO is responsible for.

[00:59:30] - And if that's the case, do you think that it's policy process for the school board office support of the Governance Committee? Like changing the title of it would indicate-- - Could be, but it's not necessarily, this is why it's tricky, right? What if it's a policy that's being tackled?

[00:59:46] That rarely happens. - Well then it wouldn't be Governance Committee. - Yeah, no, nevermind. - But the other thing we could say, really the whole timeline is based on what the Governance Committee is doing. So I'm okay in this case with allowing it to be because it's really talking about what we should be doing to work on something ahead of time so that the governance committee is set up for success in the future year.

[01:00:14] - Yeah, this has been, the superintendent's seen it and it has been talked through with the governance committee chair as well. So some of the suggestions in here do align with what is in the style guide and the eventual edits for the directives.

[01:00:31] - Right, we just wanna make sure that we reference that style guide as the, because if something changes, the style guide is where they should be going. And then the other aspect of it is, is that the only concern I have is, this is very much about the current governance chair setting the work up for the next governance chair.

[01:00:49] And if someone, I mean, oftentimes we're responsive to things that are occurring within the division, and also it doesn't provide leave for the current governance chair to set their own agenda.

[01:01:04] So I'm a little bit worried that it's gonna be a lot of work for the outgoing governance chair to set up and have it be that the incoming governance chair decides not to take on those items. So just to keep in mind.

[01:01:21] - Theory, if the governance manual says we have to have something done on a certain cycle, we need a process for that, right? One would hope that we pick governance chairs who help make that happen, right?

[01:01:39] As much as their committee will let them. Right, professional development. So right now the legislature defines professional development as things that professionally develop.

[01:02:02] So we have a ton of latitude and since we've not officially defined board, what we interpret that to mean could literally be anything. So when we provide funding by board member, I don't think this even curtails or strictly interprets what professional development is.

[01:02:28] So let's board members make the ultimate determination on certain guidelines. But for people watching at home, the state requires board members to participate in professional development. It doesn't say how much.

[01:02:44] It doesn't say anything other than that it has to be done annually. And it doesn't define what it is. So we typically use VSBA events or other conferences. Some board members have gone to legal things.

[01:02:59] Some have gone to specific education conferences to try and use that as the professional development. with no guidance officially from the board or from the clerk's office other than really helping to facilitate us getting that development.

[01:03:17] So that's what this is designed to do is put a little bit more meat on the bones. Because we have some things in here that are also including in compliance training, I would just want to make sure that we put that in the title as well. And then the other, I had a few questions. Did we create a professional development compliance report form?

[01:03:36] Because I've never seen that. No, it's just that on Standard 5, which is about it, it just says the clerk has to say you're in compliance. So we don't have anything about it. I think it's a work in progress because each year she just kind of signs off on, "Yeah, you're in compliance."

[01:04:00] Yes. Oh, so this would just be a compliance form that we would say, "Yes, we have been professionally developed this year." If you want to have it say that, yes. Okay. think that that makes sense and it serves in line so it's all about us tracking our compliance for different requirement estate requirements I would want to have it be more in line with what the actual language in the standard is so that way you know did you do this yes we did it I just don't I always look at the titles as important because if somebody searching for something that's the way they're gonna find it again and so I just want to make sure that annual

[01:04:37] requirements for training or professional development are included in the in the title because we do talk about FOIA and the other one conflict of interest anybody else have feedback all right school anniversary proclamation recognition we just did this one this was built to kind of give some guidelines for how the day

[01:05:17] would go I definitely would go back and readjust some of the guidelines and

[01:05:23] timelines on this. Anybody else? Comments? Student Discipline Appeals. This one and

[01:06:18] the next one come directly from what we do and from policy 2611 so they're kind of tied to that policy for timelines and things like that. This is just a little bit more what our offices do in coordination with other offices in the division to make sure that we all are in agreeance on when things should be delivered and things like that and how but with you know there may be some changes to this with changes to the policy

[01:06:47] anyone didn't discipline expulsion same deal and again we'll pick these all up for moving on to the full board at the next meeting and then student leadership

[01:07:19] development program this helps put some meat on the bones around the work that Kevin and the clerks do facilitate the program I think what was important this one was tightening up the timeline because I think there's been some confusion about that in particular and so that's kind of what our goal was for

[01:07:51] that though holistically what I will do after we collect the feedback for this conversation that we've just had is we'll share these out again to committee members in the scheduling of the meeting in April letting them know that we'll be having that discussion and hoping to send these on to the full board at that meeting and if people have further edits they'd like to discuss they should best practice do what we did previously and submit those to me and to the clerk

[01:08:28] team so that we can have those ready for the board's discussion obviously we'll discuss anything that people want to but it'll make it easier for all of us that we have it in advance so we'll work on getting word or Google Doc versions of things that people can play with language and such so mr. chairman I - I remember hearing about, from next year, which board members are picking two.

[01:08:58] - I've heard similar ideas being thrown around. - Is that part of this? - No, this is how the first office functions, not how the board members do things. - Okay, so that's gonna be a discussion coming from where? - I don't know that anybody's initiated it.

[01:09:14] I think what happened was we had our big kickoff, and people commented, it'd be great if we had two people, because so many people applied. I don't think anything-- So that is not currently being discussed by any committee or committees or-- - No, I think that if I had to guess, the student leadership program could probably handle or be utilized in a larger handbook as to how we do those, who do utilize that with a little bit more information to codify what we've been doing up to this point.

[01:09:51] I think this is a great general framework. And I'm also wondering whether or not, again, in the same position where this is actually something that needs to be put in the governance manual and whatever handbook we create as to how to run that program is actually what lives in the clerk's office and so it's just something to keep in mind that it may be that the goal of the you know explaining the goal of the leadership program and that is something that the board does I think it may be a little bit easier to deal with that way rather than have it just be because it's not as much I do like the fact that the general timeline is in here, I just wonder if some of this information needs to actually be put in the governance

[01:10:30] manual. We'll share out editable versions and a meeting will likely be a partial closed meeting to discuss grievance process.

[01:10:53] Final comment from me is, you know, going back to the number of students who can participate through this leadership program. year for this particular year in number of applications 400 400 it just shows that tremendous interest on the part of the students wanting to participate in the program and then looking at you know applications a lot of highly qualified deserving students that whether whether there is a good reason for us just a

[01:11:29] limit to a one per board member when students are wanting to do participate in this, so if, you know, Chairman, Madam Chair doesn't know at this point in time whether any committee is discussing this, then I would like to have an opportunity to have that discussed and make a decision.

[01:11:50] I agree, and I think that the best place would probably be PEC to start, also because they're already doing work to determine whether or not, I would say the same interest lives to be a school board representative and so I would I think it's in there the two are in line with each other and I would be very interested in in encouraging our partners on PEC to go ahead and continue to look at that in relation and it kind of works with the public engagement portion of what they're so would you be

[01:12:24] communicating with the PEC to see whether they're gonna be or I would love to make suggestion i'm not going to direct you but this committee deals with staff and things of that nature this committee is not going to direct any action of the board because of course not or this or the or the chair or or the vice chair but i guess what i'm asking we have consensus for its interest to having that's just from one-third of the board or from 25 of the board

[01:13:03] governance manual lists a variety of ways that board members can have something happen If somebody wants to bring a forum topic, I think it would be expeditiously sent over to PEC immediately. I am very open to the idea of having two or three people added, but I do have -- So, Madam Chair, I will contact PEC Chair to see whether they have any intention of discussing it and putting recommendations to the board.

[01:13:29] If not, I would encourage both PEC Chair to consider that, if not, then I can bring a forum topic. i would also like to make sure that we're talking to the clerk team to see whether or not we can what the bandwidth is the bandwidth i said that would be the part of the discussion right if i if if a school board office needs additional support to be able to carry that out versus yeah school with the office you know says that's impossible i mean we have an entire leadership academy at lewis i wonder what function they might play in in facilitating a leadership program

[01:14:06] Many of us also have two staff members now, so it could be that our own staff can help support this in a little bit better way than we have. There's a lot of different things, but I just want to make sure that we're staying focused on the staffing aspect of the program as opposed to the function. Again, I'm going to give a full credit to my school with the assistant right here to take copious notes and make a request to a pet chair.

[01:14:29] Also, we are now recording these meetings and streaming them on the Internet so that people can take notes at their own leisure. You could watch this in double speed. You don't have to sit through the whole thing we just sat through. You could watch it in triple speed if you wanted to. We sound like the chipmunks. All right.

[01:14:45] I said what we're doing next time and the time after. Anything else? Quickly, I do have other SOPs that I was writing for the medium list, which were coming after we looked at the high priority. So I don't know how many you want for me to have ready of those for the following meeting.

[01:15:02] If you have things ready, just give them all to us. Okay. I will work on it. All right. I will give 45 minutes back. - Move to adjourn.

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