Coraggio Consulting
Fairfax County School Board Meeting, Thursday, March 19, 2026

Date: Thursday, March 19, 2026
Place: Fairfax County School Board, Virginia
Length: 4h 19m (video)
Official meeting video (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpx47gonJ7w
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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[00:00:43] The time is 7 o'clock p.m. and this March 19, 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 Lake Braddock Middle School Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Diana Chow.

[00:01:04] Pledge Allegiance to the flag.

[00:02:32] Can we have one more round of applause for our amazing students?

[00:03:30] On behalf of the School Board, I would like to recognize our student representatives in this year's Student Leadership Development Program who are attending tonight's meeting and ask them to please stand.

[00:03:48] If you would like to receive 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.

[00:04:06] Tonight's meeting is being broadcast on Channel 99 and live streamed on YouTube and our website at www.fcps.edu/livestream. Tonight's meeting is also being broadcast in Spanish on YouTube at youtube.com/atfcpsnespanol.

[00:04:28] Agenda item 5.03, Women's History Month Proclamation. I call on Mr. McElveen for a proclamation. - Whereas Women's History Month began as Women's History Week in Santa Rosa, California in 1978 to coincide with International Women's Day on March 8th.

[00:04:46] The goal of this event was to bring attention to women's historical achievements. Many communities across the country adopted this special recognition. This movement became so widespread that in 1987, Congress ultimately designated the month of March as Women's History Month.

[00:05:03] And whereas this year's theme, "Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future," expands our understanding of sustainability beyond environmental concerns to include financial sustainability community resilience leadership succession and intergenerational equity whether developing green technologies advancing economic justice strengthening education systems or building civic power women are designing blueprints for sustainable transformation through their efforts they have served as an inspiration for all generations both past and present and whereas women of all races creeds and ethnic origins have contributed significantly to the history and

[00:05:41] and development of the United States. These women include not only the notable Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks and Kamala Harris, Yuchi Kochiyama, Patsy Takemoto, Inc., Mink, Dolores Huerta, Sonia Sotomayor, Felisa Rincon de Gautier, Jovita Idar, Sylvia Mendez, but also the many other unsung heroines.

[00:06:13] And whereas women have led our country and made significant contributions to public life and the development of our county. In 2023, 26 women sought local public office in Fairfax County, with 12 being victorious to include seven members of the Fairfax County School Board.

[00:06:31] And in 2025, Virginians elected Abigail Spanberger as our first woman governor. And whereas, women play a critical role in shaping sustainable economic and civic systems by advancing financial equity, building resilient communities, strengthening institutions and mentoring future leaders.

[00:06:50] From expanding access to education and entrepreneurship to advocating for policies that promote long-term economic stability and intergenerational opportunity, women's leadership helps create systems that endure and uplift both present and future generations.

[00:07:07] Ensuring equitable access to opportunity and leadership pathways is essential to building financial sustainable families, strong communities and a thriving democracy. And whereas, Fairfax County Public Schools is committed to fostering inclusive, equitable and empowering learning in working environments where all students and staff can thrive.

[00:07:26] Through our dedication to academic excellence, leadership development, civic engagement and equitable access to opportunity, FCPS values the contributions of women and girls and strives to cultivate their voices, leadership, innovation and full participation in shaping a sustainable and resilient future.

[00:07:44] Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Fairfax County School Board hereby proclaims March 2026 as Women's History Month, and a time to remember and honor the countless women who fought relentlessly for the rights of all women in our great nation, commonwealth, and county.

[00:08:01] We are proud to celebrate these women, past and present, who work for inclusion, equity, and fairness. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Miss Lady. I will call for a vote. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, for the first time, Mr. Dannon, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself.

[00:08:25] That is unanimous for all board members present. Agenda items 5.04, School Social Work Appreciation Week Proclamation. I call on Mr. McDaniel for a proclamation.

[00:08:40] Whereas the importance of school social work programs and services is recognized in the elementary and secondary education act of 1965 in the individuals with disabilities education act and whereas school social workers are uniquely trained to support students who face barriers to academic success including disability poverty discrimination abuse neglect mental illness homelessness bullying family stressors and other challenges to learning and whereas school-based mental health services are critical for early identification prevention and intervention related to students' mental health and behavioral health needs.

[00:09:14] And whereas fewer than one in five children in need of mental health services receive them, and research demonstrates that school-based mental health programs improve educational outcomes by reducing absenteeism, dropout rates, and disciplinary referrals while improving academic achievement.

[00:09:31] And whereas school social workers, licensed mental health professionals in schools, provide essential services including assessment, intervention, counseling, family engagement, and referrals to community resources. And whereas school social workers possess specialized knowledge of school culture and climate, which is essential for effective school safety planning and student support.

[00:09:54] And whereas Fairfax County Public Schools, school social workers use their skills to remove personal and environmental obstacles, ensuring equitable access and opportunity for every child to succeed in school life. And whereas the dedicated efforts of FCPS social workers, Social Work Services staff to identify and dismantle barriers faced by our homeless and unaccompanied youth resulted in increased school stability and a remarkable 96% graduation rate during the 2024-2025 school year.

[00:10:27] And whereas FCPS school social workers are spearheading collaborative efforts resulting in reduced chronic absenteeism rates and the promotion of student engagement by fostering positive relationships and removing barriers to student success. And whereas these professionals manage vital partnerships with community providers to reduce barriers and increase access to essential community-based resources and services for students and families.

[00:10:53] And whereas school social workers serve as essential members of multidisciplinary teams, facilitating evidence-based interventions, conducting clinical assessments, offering both staff and caregiver consultations, and promoting a trauma-sensitive school climate that maximizes student learning and well-being.

[00:11:11] therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board hereby proclaims march 1 through 7 2026 a school social work appreciation week and march as national national social work month and therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county board honors the outstanding contributions and achievements of school social workers to the success and well-being of students across fairfax county is there a second second thank you mr mckelveen a call for a vote all those in favor mr Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit,

[00:11:48] Mr. Dannon, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. That is unanimous for all board members present. Agenda Item 5.05: Recognizing Social and Emotional Learning Proclamation. I call on Ms. Dixit for a proclamation. Ferris, Social and Emotional Learning is the process through which young people and develop the knowledge, skills, and attitude necessary to understand and manage emotions.

[00:12:15] Set and achieve positive goals. Demonstrate empathy for others. Establish and maintain positive relationship and makes responsible decision. And whereas SEL strength and academic learning promotes protective factors for well-being and supports safe, supportive, and inclusive school communities where every student can thrive and whereas FCPS is committed to educating the whole child and recognize their students social emotional and academic development

[00:12:48] are deeply interconnected and essential for to long-term success and whereas FCPS educators implement SEL signature practices and integral integrate social and emotional learning into daily instruction in school culture through developmentally, sorry, FCPS educator implement SEL signature practice and integrate social and emotional learning into daily instruction and social and school culture through developmentally appropriate practices, including morning meetings and closing circles in elementary schools and responsive advisory meeting in middle and high

[00:13:27] school, which builds belonging, strengthen relationship, and foster a positive school climate. And FCPS empowers student voices and continuous improvement through the SEL screeners, helping educators strengthen support and enhance to the student well-being. And whereas SEL leads in every school ensure SEL is integrated within the multi tiered system of support framework to ensure students receive proactive, equitable and responsive support that addresses academic, behavioral and social emotional

[00:14:01] needs. And whereas FCPS provides students with access to a comprehensive network of school counselors, school psychologists, and social workers, as well as evidence-based wellness programs and mental health support that promotes resilience and healthy development. And whereas FCPS invests in professional learning for educators and staff to strengthen trauma-informed practices culturally responsive instruction and strategies that support student engagement well-being and positive relationship in the classroom and whereas fcp's approach to sel

[00:14:39] is recognized as model practice at the national level by leading organization including the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning panorama education and urban assembly and fcp student and staff met with congressional staff on capitol hill representing quality student voice and sel implementation various fcps partners with families community organizations and local agencies to support student mental wellness reinforce sel skills beyond the classrooms and ensure that every student feels safe valued and supported now therefore be it resolved that

[00:15:14] the fairfax county school board hereby proclaims march 23rd to 27 2026 as sel awareness week in Fairfax County Public School and encourage students, educators, families, and our community to recognize and celebrate the importance of social and emotional learning in fostering healthy, engaged, and successful learners. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Moon.

[00:15:41] I will call for a vote. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannon, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. that is unanimous for all board members i would also like us to give a huge round of applause because i went too fast so we need to thank our social workers for being here and thank you so much for all you do for our kids i apologize i was all business tonight um agenda item 5.06

[00:16:14] recognizing the 2025 bond citizen committee and affirming the importance of a triple a bond rating proclamation i call on mr mcdaniel for our proclamation whereas meaningful community Community engagement is essential to building trust, fostering shared understanding, and ensuring that voters have clear, accurate information about investments in public education.

[00:16:36] And whereas a AAA bond rating represents the highest level of creditworthiness assigned by national credit rating agencies and reflects local government's commitment to strong financial management, prudent long-term planning, responsible debt management, and a continued commitment to transparent governance, whereas a AAA bond rating is an essential financial tool that enables local governments to fund construction, renovation, and modernization of public education infrastructure by securing the lowest possible borrowing costs, maximizing available resources to support safe, high-quality learning environments for students while protecting taxpayers from

[00:17:13] unnecessary long-term expenses, and whereas Fairfax County's status as a AAA-rated jurisdiction have saved taxpayers an estimated $1 billion since 1975, whereas the 2025 Bond Citizens Committee served as a vital bridge between Fairfax County public schools and the broader community by engaging residents, civic organizations, and stakeholders in informed dialogue about the school bond referendum, and whereas through intentional outreach, public education, and advocacy, the committee helped community members understand how bond funding supports safe modern learning environments critical renovations and long-term planning for school

[00:17:53] facilities and whereas the 2025 school bond referendum was approved by voters with 70.97 percent of those voting supporting the measure reflecting strong community confidence and continued investments in fairfax county public schools and whereas the members of the 2025 bond citizens committee generously contributed their time leadership and expertise to support civic participation and promote informed decision making now therefore be it resolved that the fairfax county school board affirms its commitment to supporting sound fiscal policies that maintain and support the county's aaa bond rating and extends its highest commendation

[00:18:33] and deepest appreciation to the 2025 bond citizens committee on this occasion for their leadership and outstanding service to fairfax county public schools and unwavering dedication to the children of this community is there a second i second thank you miss dixit i will call for a vote all those in favor mr fresh mr mcdaniel miss marron mr mckelveen miss st john cunning miss lady miss dixit mr dannon mr moon dr anderson and myself that is unanimous for all board members

[00:19:04] present i invite our 2025 bond committee and all those here in supporting or recognizing the 2025 bond citizens committee and affirming the importance of the aaa bond rating proclamation

[00:19:18] to please join the board for a photo in front of the dais we now invite our sel leads staff and

[00:20:43] all those here in support of the recognizing social and emotional learning proclamation to

[00:20:47] please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais we now invite our school social workers

[00:21:52] and social work staff and all those here in support of the school social work appreciation

[00:21:57] week proclamation to please join the board for a photo at the front of the dais we now invite our

[00:23:25] school social workers and social work staff and all those here in support of the school social work appreciation week proclamation to please join the board

[00:23:33] for a photo at the front of the dais. Madam Chair that was our last

[00:25:10] proclamation picture. Agenda item 6.01 community participation. The next order

[00:26:14] 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 at the school board's website at www.fcps.edu/schoolboard.

[00:26:34] During the signup process, community members acknowledge that they were informed of the school board's expectations for respect and proper decorum when providing comments. These expectations are also available online and with printed agenda and meeting materials at the back of the room.

[00:26:50] We ask audience members to be respectful of one another. an outburst 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 at their seats including when recording video or taking photos we are grateful to all those who have come to speak to us today and thank you for your cooperation school board members will be listening but not

[00:27:16] responding madam clerk please call the first speaker alex fetch start hello just go okay sorry Okay I'm the parent of a first grader and I'm here with concerns about the one-to-one device policy and growing amount of screen-based learning in our schools.

[00:27:47] I want to be clear that I'm not opposed to technology I grew up in Cupertino California where the iPhone in your pocket is from we had IMAX in my classroom from the time I was in second grade. Tech literacy was a core part of my public education. I strongly believe in teaching tech literacy but I'm concerned about the county's increasing reliance on and promotion of screen-based learning especially for our youngest learners.

[00:28:08] Currently, there's a one-to-one device policy for all students, including kindergarteners. Kindergarteners end up are spending significant portions of their day working independently on computers. Research does show children can learn from these digital programs, but research also is clear on something more important.

[00:28:25] Children learn best from teachers, and these programs are most effective when an adult is actively engaging with the students and the content. That's not how these programs are being used. Instead, students are left to work independently while teachers are pulled away to manage small groups or administer required one-on-one assessments.

[00:28:42] Computer-led instruction is replacing teacher-led instruction during a critical stage of development. The district is making large financial investments in these programs, yet there's no independent evidence demonstrating effectiveness, and reading pass rates for third grade have remained stagnant since its adoption.

[00:28:58] This raises questions about whether these programs are delivering meaningful results. We know screen time negatively affects children's behavior, sleep, and mental health, yet our current policies encourage daily, often extended device use, sometimes even incentivized through competitions. Resources allocated to devices and software could instead be invested in what we know works best: teachers and stronger professional support for them. These changes would improve learning outcomes and student well-being, but also improve teacher morale and retention, issues this board has long recognized. I urge the board to re-examine the one-to-one device policy and rollback policies that encourage so much screen

[00:29:34] time our students deserve developmentally appropriate human-centered learning environments and i hope you will take action to ensure that's what we provide benjamin van every thanks alex hello thank you for your attention and your commitment to the education of our next generation my name is benjamin van every i am the cto of and co-founder of a successful global company

[00:30:12] i'm testifying today to directly ask that the school board rethink and reduce the use of of technology and education this past week a member of the board said opposition to this is like cavemen being afraid of fire please recognize that the difference between opposition the difference between opposition and a request for safety and deeper understanding of side effects in 1940 the first suspension bridge was built it was an amazing engineering feat spanning a deep river valley I wonder would you be the first person to drive across it

[00:30:50] I hope not, because weeks later, that bridge collapsed on a windy day. FCPS's unfettered foray into EdTech and now policy-loose AI is driving the future of our children straight out onto that bridge. The difference?

[00:31:05] There's enough scientific research and international advocacy to know that it is not safe. Seven states have now passed laws to pare down EdTech in schools, with more on the way. FCPS has historically led the way and set national trends.

[00:31:22] Fairfax County was a magnet for well-to-do families looking for a better future for their children. Parents are now questioning, is Fairfax still that place? Thousands of families have moved or pulled their kids out of FCPS and put them in private schools in the past few years.

[00:31:40] Is it because they don't want their kids to grow up with social anxiety, a social inability to meet and keep a girlfriend or boyfriend, an utter absence of patience or perseverance, a lack of critical thinking skills? kids get one chance to be kids and one chance to get an education let's please

[00:31:58] be less cavalier with that opportunity mark Spooner in February of last year when raises for teachers who were being cut due to budget constraints this board met in a closed session and gave big benefits to yourselves the meeting was unlawful and you tried to keep secret what you had done before the meeting each

[00:32:37] of you had one staff aide in the meeting you added a second and gave them the salaries of more than $120,000, which exceeds the pay of almost all your teachers. When word of this leaked out, I emailed you three at-large members asking a simple question: Did you approve new staff positions in an open meeting?

[00:33:00] None of you would respond, so I was forced to submit a Freedom of Information request. Your division counsel, Mr. Foster, stonewalled that, so I had to file a suit in the circuit court. the hearing mr. Foster testified that there had been a closed meeting but he said you made no decision and didn't even discuss whether to add additional aids he swore that's not something you would even do he said it would be the superintendent along with the HR department who would decide if you

[00:33:39] needed additional staffers now I knew that was false but there wasn't anything I could do about it at the time but now the truth has finally come out just the your agenda materials for one of your recent meetings acknowledge that the hiring of your high-paid staffers was in fact approved at this closed meeting in february of last year budget issues should be decided with candor and tough decisions in public not with deception and

[00:34:12] self-dealing in secret meetings fairfax citizens deserve better we mark beerworth ladies and and gentlemen, it is time to assess the performance of Superintendent Reed. Over the last two and a half years, Superintendent Reed has presided over the mishandling of three major incidents. As the face of Fairfax County Public Schools, her mishandling of these incidents brings into question the

[00:34:49] integrity and stature of the school system and demonstrates a lack of competent leadership that has eroded the public trust. The 504 breach in the fall of 2023 affected our family directly. We were provided a phone number to call for more information. When we called this number, we became further frustrated as this phone number turned out to be a call center where the call center employees only read bullet points from the email and letter that we received we did not receive any details on this data breach and we're left to hope that our child's information would not be compromised any further secondly the well-known scandal at Hayfield football team became an even higher profile incident causing unnecessary negative visibility on our schools superintendent reads actions and responsibilities to this scandal are

[00:35:26] well-documented her mishandling of the scandal further put into question her leadership capabilities thirdly because of the mishandling of the Hayfield scandal superintendent Reed's knee-jerk reaction of the Fairfax high school football team scandal led to unnecessary aggravation humiliation and hardship to the school and once again brought unnecessary negative visibility to our schools these three distinct but related events demonstrate a clear and consistent failure of leadership at the highest level of Fairfax County's public schools superintendent Reed's handling of these crises have been characterized characterized by a lack of proactive leadership and failure to ensure accountability and a troubling disregard for transparency the trust of the community has been broken. With the ongoing assault investigation at Fairfax

[00:36:05] High School, I am not confident that this incident will be handled any differently than these previous three scandals. The initial communications we have received from this administration appear to follow the same pattern as the previous scandals. For the sake of our students, our schools, and the future of public education in Fairfax County, it is time for a change in leadership.

[00:36:22] Superintendent Reed bears the ultimate responsibility for all actions of our schools. Our school system cannot endure another mishandled scandal. I urge you TO CALL FOR THE IMMEDIATE RESIGNATION SUPERINTENDENT MICHELLE REID OUR CHILDREN DESERVE A LEADER WHO WILL PRIORITIZE INTEGRITY TRANSPARENCY AND WELL BE GEORGE BECERA GOOD EVENING SUPERINTENDENT REID AND SCHOOL BOARD MEMBERS UH CAME HERE FOR A SUGGESTION UH ON THE WEATHER SHOULDN'T HAVE ANYTHING PREPARED BUT I'M JUST GOING TO

[00:37:01] TALK OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD UM AS YOU HAVE A NEW BOARD RIGHT YOU KNOW WITH NOW MR DANIN ADDED IN MAYBE THE SUGGESTION OF A NEW RETREAT THAT YOU GUYS ALWAYS DO AT THE BEGINNING WHEN THERE'S A NEW TERM and the reason i'm saying that is some of the behavior that you guys have uh shown over the last couple months it's really atrocious off camera in these halls of schools i understand there's passion but sometimes passion leads into rudeness and i've seen that the first time probably in the two decades i've been on you know and i understand that passion so maybe to set up a retreat in your calendar next couple months i'm assuming let's wait for maybe the new chair and

[00:37:40] vice chair in june to set that or in july to set that up uh but but with that said too also the the game and ship that's being shown up in here you know don't forget the cameras are on even when you guys are off when conversations start here and they end up there when to go out there then another one comes another one comes you can tell where that's going and if I heard this the other day that there's no factions on this board that's a lie now two decades there's always been factions on this board if people don't know it just like the Board of Supervisors just factions you can still have what 21 out of 22 are Democrats but you can still have factions within parties and

[00:38:17] what's happening here so let's let's let's work on that okay let's let's with that betterment for our children and our families with that said also the game is just a vote if we have a seven to five faction now if one side throws up one moves on the side six six motion fails oh maybe someone moved over no that's the gamemanship of failing that motion if that wrong smaller size faction is has the motion or to seven five and some others who are on the smaller end say you know what i don't want to lose every vote so let's make it eight four let's make it nine three just to show people that's part of the gamemanship i don't want to see you stick to your morals and your beliefs

[00:38:54] vote how you always believe and always back to the thing marie maroon good evening my name is marie maroon and once again i come as a concerned parent of an fcps elementary school student let me be direct as parents we have been asking this board and school administration to include us in

[00:39:30] developing an AI policy to communicate your plans openly and to pause long enough to have a real discussion before moving forward. Instead you are steam rolling over us. You found the time to spend over two years on boundary discussions and even deliberate over naming a new school. Yet when it comes to AI in our children's classrooms, a decision of far greater consequence, there is no such patience for the community's voice. You do not test the parachute after you've jumped and that is exactly what you are doing. Three areas demand your urgent attention. First, parents and teachers deserve a seat at the table

[00:40:08] before tools of this magnitude and potential danger are selected and deployed. Second, the February 11th version of this policy lacks any mention of detailed safeguarding protocols in the classroom or beyond. We need concrete protections in place first, not weak aspirational language awaiting implementation. Third, the draft policy lacks description on what tools are approved, how student data is protected, or what happens when something goes wrong. It has no real accountability and our students will be operating in a regulatory vacuum. Pause any further AI rollouts until a tech and AI

[00:40:46] advisory committee is established. A drafted policy is open to public comment then adopted and most importantly commit to transparency at every step. Our children deserve better. Thank you. Jennifer Chang. My name is Jennifer Chang and I'm the parent of two fourth graders and a rising kindergartner. We love our

[00:41:23] school and our teachers, yet are deeply concerned about the lack of transparency, communication, and accountability from the central office regarding technology use in classrooms. First, transparency. Most parents had no idea that FCPS provides iPads to kindergarteners. Many only learned this from their children who told them that iPad time, not recess, was their favorite part of the day.

[00:41:46] Soon after, these parents began noticing changes in behavior, difficulty regulating emotions, and craving technology more at home. Research shows that reading and writing on paper leads to stronger comprehension and memory than reading on screens. And while gamified apps keeps our kids engaged and quiet in classrooms, engaged is not equal to learning. I'm requesting an evaluation of the effectiveness of iPads and laptops in a countywide survey of teachers and parents on educational technology. Second, communication. Parents were also surprised to learn that students received Chromebooks in second grade with access to Google Docs, chat

[00:42:26] features, YouTube, and a plethora of ways to play games and watch movies during class. Although filters exist, students widely share simple hacks to bypass them. When parents ask how much screen time their children receive, teachers and admin often cannot answer because there are no district guidelines. If FCPS provides these devices it should also set reasonable boundaries. I'm requesting age-specific screen time guidelines and opt-out option for families who prefer it. Finally, accountability. Parents raising tech

[00:43:02] concerns are often redirected from one office to another with no one ultimately taking responsibility. We're following the proper channels and seeking collaboration to ensure technology supports learning not distracts from it instead we feel dismissed and unheard to address this i'm requesting

[00:43:19] the career megan durst thank you dr reed and board members i'm megan durst speaking on behalf

[00:43:59] of parents countywide who've shared these concerns first the pace of ed tech and ai rollouts the one-to-one device rollout was presented as a way to ensure equal access and increased engagement which sounded great but equal does not always mean best and not every student becomes benefited from frequent device use. The burden of monitoring school-issued device use cannot continue to fall on the shoulders of parents nor the teachers who are responsible for 20 plus students and devices.

[00:44:29] We are asking for a discussion of alternatives such as computer labs not only for greater ease of device monitoring but also decreased budgetary concerns. Second, while developers measure success by engagement, engagement with a device is not the same as meaningful learning. Research shows students retain less when learning on screens they lose the benefit of physical text such as spatial anchoring and multimodal encoding and miss out on the interpersonal dialogue real-time feedback and human engagement that comes from teacher-led peer-engaged instruction third the mental health

[00:45:06] impact of increased screen exposure the stimulation and reward loops built into these digital platforms create artificial dopamine spikes leaving kids dysregulated and teachers and families like us struggling to limit screen dependence and its consequences. We're asking for responsible, intentional ed tech use and that we learned from our experience of the one-to-one device rollout. Specifically, we're asking you to develop a more comprehensive and more detailed AI policy and to form a diverse tech advisory committee. These steps ensure decisions about ed tech are made thoughtfully with proper oversight and constructive criticism. Thank you.

[00:45:46] to Lester Ricks. Please play the video submitted by Soumaz Perzada. Good afternoon. My name is Soumaz Perzada and I am a mother to a fourth grader and a kindergartner at Fairfax County Public Schools.

[00:46:20] We love our schools and we love our teachers. We value the amount of time, effort, and energy all of our educators pour into making our children's learning experience as best as possible. With that said, as my children have grown older, I have noticed that the exposure to digital media, screens, internet use at school has also grown. I come to you as our educational experts to help me understand as a parent the benefit of so much screen time at our schools. I am concerned and alarmed from what I've read about digital exposure in the developing brain and wonder if it's truly the best thing for the cognitive and social development of our children. I humbly ask that

[00:47:00] Fairfax County establish a tech advisory committee like neighboring counties in Arlington and Montgomery County composed of parents and academics, so that we can better understand the recommendations the school board puts out in terms of responsible screen use at our schools. I ask that the school board assess the effectiveness of edtech and one-to-one devices.

[00:47:19] Do they truly serve our students and help every Fairfax County child reach their full potential? What are the research and studies that support our current tech ed use? Lastly, what are viable options for parents who feel that their children are not best served through tech education exposure are there reasonable opt-out options for one-to-one devices if not can the school board make this a reality thank you very much for your time and input chair anderson that was our last public speaker thank you agenda item 7.01 student representative

[00:47:56] matters i call on miss mcconin good afternoon members of the board i appreciate the discussion during the last work session on the srnr i want to highlight several areas where i believe further clarification and policy updates are necessary first many of our current digital policies such as the student use of FCPS network and internet resources have not been reviewed in over a decade.

[00:48:18] In that time, the digital learning landscape has fundamentally shifted. Artificial intelligence, online collaboration tools, and digital platforms are now central to student learning. I strongly recommend a comprehensive review of these policies to ensure that they reflect current realities and can guide the work we are doing now. Second, I want to address academic integrity in the context of AI. Allegations of AI misuse differ significantly from traditional forms of academic dishonesty.

[00:48:42] unlike plagiarism there is no often there's often no clear burden of proof ai detection tools are inconsistent and there is currently no county-wide standard for their use as a result determinations can vary very widely depending on teacher and administration discretion i personally have entered my own type of work into a variety of popular ai detectors and gotten varying results and i know other students who have had the same experience because of this the appeals process becomes even more important i recommend that the srnr explicitly state that in cases involving alleged misuse of AI, students must be informed of the basis of the allegation and given an opportunity to respond before a final determination is made. This is a matter of procedural fairness.

[00:49:19] We cannot assume the opportunity we provided to them. We have to ensure it. If a student receives a zero for alleged AI-related dishonesty, under the SNR, this typically falls under academic grading procedures rather than the formal disciplinary appeals channels. That distinction should be clarified so students can understand their rights and options. More broadly, I recommend strengthening due process protections involving digital technology. This includes requiring written explanations of evidence, increased transparency in how decisions are made, and clear timelines for disciplinary actions.

[00:49:47] Additionally, clearer guidelines are needed on what constitutes acceptable AI use versus academic dishonesty at the county level. Without defined boundaries, both students and teachers are left navigating ambiguity, which can lead to inconsistent enforcement across schools and classes. Along with this, I recommend that the AI policy being drafted clearly directs teachers to not use AI in the and grading of student assignments.

[00:50:09] The language saying that AI should not be used for final grades was removed from the policy. Specifically the words FCPS should include a clear system for communication, when and how AI can be used by teachers, such as staff may use AI to support lesson planning and instructional design, differentiate and accessibility, administrative efficiency, but AI cannot make final consequential decisions like final grades disciplinary actions or similar high stakes cases.

[00:50:30] I think this language is important and should be included in the policy. The procedure section was struck from the draft and even that language is not specific enough to me, which concerned me when I saw that it was replaced by. The Fairfax County Board shall direct the division superintendent to ensure that staff continue to monitor key areas of concern for use of artificial intelligence by teachers and with students, rigorous approval of all tools used by staff and students, mental health and crisis protocols, instructional framework alignment, AI literacy training for students, and ongoing professional development for teachers and staffs.

[00:51:02] I believe that this language is a little bit too general to assure the community that we have AI rollout under control. We have heard time and time, including today, about how families are not comforted by what information we are giving them on the policies that will dictate how their schools are run. The use of AI in schools raises questions about transparency, bias, and accountability that we have not yet addressed and can't fully because we don't build the algorithms of the AI platforms we may utilize.

[00:51:23] At the same time, students still do not have visible centralized AI guidance on the FCPS website. The student AI guide is still not viewable on the FCPS website. We expect responsible AI use and we must provide accessible policies. Families should know what AI education their students are getting, and it should be specialized for specific age groups.

[00:51:39] I recommend the board ensures that the student AI guide is clearly published on the FCPS website, the creation of a student AI honor code aligned with SRNR, along with in-depth AI training for students that does not promote the already prevalent reliance on generative AI, and updates the policies surrounding the digital landscape, as well as the addition of AI-specific discipline rules.

[00:51:57] I also want to raise concerns about the jurisdiction over student speech in digital spaces. As more student interaction occurs online, we need clear standards for when off-campus speech falls under school authority. In particular, the definition of substantial disruption used in the SRNR should be more narrowly defined in digital context to prevent inconsistent interpretation.

[00:52:16] I recommend the development of a clear structure that includes a plain language breakdown of expectations and accountability, guidance on crisis or conflict management online, and transparency standards for leadership structure and password ownership. Finally, I would like to note continued questions about the effectiveness and support systems surrounding the current gradebook platform.

[00:52:33] The proposed gradebook shifts towards a skill-based model that, in practice, may prioritize, isolate competence over sustained content mastery. I said these exact words last meeting and I'll continue to do so. When we ask schools to implement division-wide grading overhaul once again, we have to ensure that we have strong backing, clarity and execution, and a clear process for revisiting or adjusting the model if it does not work as intended.

[00:52:53] The structure that works well with Madison works well because of the deliberate work put in over years to make the gradebook clear, clear to students, teachers, and families. We cannot achieve the same results they have in one year so many different communities in high schools. Grading reform should be deliberate and not experimental. What works for one school will not work for all. In summary, I strongly suggest the board re-evaluates the gradebook model proposed for next year, update the policies surrounding the digital landscape, as well as the addition of AI-specific discipline rules, and clear student digital participation guidelines when it comes to social media. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ms. McConan. Agenda item 8.01, Certification of Closed Meeting Compliance. In order to comply with

[00:53:32] Section 2.2-3712 of the Code of Virginia, it's necessary for the board to certify that since the Fairfax County School Board convened a closed meeting on March 19, 2026, to the best of each member's knowledge, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered by the board during closed meeting. Do I have a motion?

[00:54:01] Ms. St. John Cunning. Do I have a second? Mr. McElveen. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, I'm sorry, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself. All those opposed? All those abstaining? Mr. Dannon. Will the clerk please read the vote? The vote is 10-0-1. The motion carries. Thank you. There were no actions

[00:54:31] taken in closed meeting tonight so i call on miss anderson for a motion i move that the school board approve the additional school board members standing liaison and advisory committee liaison assignments for school year 26 or 25 and 26 member comprehensive planning and development committee tom dannon filling vacancy chair vice chair budget committee kyle mcdaniel filling vacancy member audit committee Tom Dannon replacing Kyle McDaniel liaison to the advisory

[00:55:08] committee for students with disabilities Tom Dannon filling vacancy liaison to the successful child and youth policy team skipped Tom Dannon filling vacancy is there a second second miss Anderson would you like to speak your motion just briefly I'm thrilled to have our new board member Tom Dannon officially here with us in his position this is the first opportunity to address vacancies on our board liaison and committee positions following the departure of our previous colleague from the Braddock District because we wanted to wait for the new member of the Braddock District to join us.

[00:55:47] This will mark the third time that I've been involved in the decision-making process regarding committee and liaison assignments, and I believe that I have precisely followed the previous iterations of this process throughout my time on the board, including when I filled vacancies left by departing board members at the start of my term.

[00:56:04] The decisions represented by the slate here both fill vacancies while also providing support for members who may have assumed new committee positions. I look forward to us moving forward and getting to work with Tom at our side. Thank you. Mr. McDaniel would you like to speak to your second?

[00:56:21] I will. I'm looking forward to working with Ms. Dixon in her role as chair of the budget committee. Budget is a reflection of values. It's a reflection of what we have to prioritize year after year, and unfortunately sometimes that means that we have to make decisions that are painful and in the last few budget cycles that we've had to go through have involved painful decisions and this budget cycle is going to be no different. I've spent a long time in this county around the budget process. I just moved forward a proclamation this evening affirming our rating to the AAA bond because that's how

[00:56:57] important I believe that is. This board has not brought forward a resolution ever to my knowledge affirm the AAA bond rating but I did that because I felt like it was the right thing to do in this environment because maintaining that rating is critical but that's the knowledge and skills and abilities that I bring to the table in terms of understanding the bond the budget understanding this entire process so I'm looking forward to serving in this new role and that's all I have

[00:57:29] to say thank you I call on Ms. Marin for a motion I move to divide the question into two parts the first part would be the assignments to the membership of the Comprehensive Planning and Development Committee, the liaison to the Advisory Committee for Students with Disabilities, and the liaison to the Successful Children and Youth Policy Team. The second part would be the assignments to the Budget Committee and the Audit Committee. Thank you. Is there a second? Second.

[00:58:01] Seconded by Dr. Anderson. It is moved and seconded to divide the question into two parts. This is not a debatable motion. All those in favor of dividing the question, please raise your hands. Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson.

[00:58:20] All those opposed, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Anderson, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Dannon, and myself. Any abstentions?

[00:58:36] For the clerk, please read the vote. - The vote is 4-7. The motion fails, the question is not divided. - Since the question is not divided, we will continue to consider the main motion in its entirety and not as a separate parts.

[00:58:52] Is there a discussion? I call on Ms. Marin. So welcome to our new Braddock member in order to have a really collegial sendoff I had asked the chair on Monday if we could split the motion because there are two things happening here one is filling is our new board member receiving his assignments and the other is reshuffling some assignments to fill one more vacant seat however I did not receive a response from the chair nor the vice chair to my query so I then sought this procedural move that did fail my intention was to

[00:59:27] unity on the board in welcoming our new member and determining our assignments. I cannot support, I will not be able to vote for this motion because the board member that is proposed to be the vice chair of the budget committee is currently involved with a legal matter stating that he stole money from a company. I am not confident in the fidelity of his leadership to navigate the board through this or any budget process while this is an active legal case. For just about a year there has been been this legal action pending against alleged embezzlement of $175,000 from a flight school company. As stated in the lawsuit, there was admission to, in July 2024, of misusing the

[01:00:07] company's credit cards and bank accounts for personal expenses, including a payment back of $50,000. My knowledge of the legal activity is limited to what I've read in media reports as I have not discussed this personal legal matter with him. Second, there has been a second troubling allegation concerning the member's management of FCPS resources. This regards his two staff members about whom it's been alleged to have conducted political campaign activities while working their regular FCPS business hours. Finally the member did the right thing by the board when he stepped down as budget committee chair a year ago when the embezzlement allegation was known. As it's a continued active legal matter it is troubling that the chair and vice chair of this school board

[01:00:46] put his name forward as the vice chair of our budget committee and moreover did this without prior discussion with nor notification to every school board member before having it posted this past Friday night for action tonight. As such, I cannot support the process by which this proposal was made, continuing the pattern of disregard to school board governance process and the commitment to posting new business to the public at least two weeks prior. Dr. Anderson. Thank you. I also

[01:01:21] want to share that I well first of all welcome to Mr. Dannon happy to have you here to participate as the Braddock representative and I was also hoping for a much more welcoming opportunity for you as you receive your assignments and I don't have any any reservations about the assignments that you have received but I do have lots of reservations regarding the budget vice the budget vice chair role. In addition to what Miss Marin has just shared I also feel that I am

[01:01:59] not going to be able to support this assignment because it is as a whole for prime for two primary reasons. One this is a board in which we share leadership and Mr. McDaniel is already the chair of a committee and we have other members who have not had any leadership role since they've been on this board and two others who don't have any current roles right now and so i think there's an opportunity here to be a little bit more um distributive with the leadership opportunities

[01:02:34] that are available on the board secondly the ongoing legal matters to which were referred that just creates an unfavorable light onto fairfax county public schools it serves as a distraction and this is not how we want to proceed we've had many other situations that as a board we have decided because of the unfavorable optics and the intent and the potential for reputational risk that we would move away from certain activities and this is one of them to me and i don't think we need to put ourselves in a place where we are inviting that kind of

[01:03:13] scrutiny even if it's a private matter it would be helpful to just let that matter be completely resolved which I understand it is not at current we're just adding ourselves to a quagmire which does not engender public trust and so I will not be able to support this motion today. Mr. Moon.

[01:03:35] Thank you Madam Chair I want to welcome Mr. Dannon my district school board member and I also serve an audit committee if the motion passes you'll be my committee colleague and i look forward to working with you this is my 23rd year on the school board on and off over three decades i have always given and having especially and having served as a chair for three terms five chair for three times a committee assignments is one of those things very difficult especially

[01:04:12] when there are you know competing requests you see uh you know trying to balance the needs of the school system and also seeing the individual talent you know what the individual board members can contribute and and even in those years when i did not necessarily agree with the children by church decisions on committee assignments i knew that i a as a member uh that children by leadership on the board and needed to have some latitude latitude so I have always supported

[01:04:49] in committee assignments with that set and as much as I welcome my colleague Mr. Dannon to serve on the audit committee with me uh yeah you know put some you know assignments given by chair and by chair in the motion puzzled me at this point in time so I am going to be abstaining from the motion that doesn't mean I'm not welcoming you Mr. Dennin because I do welcome you look forward to working with you Mr. McIlveen well I want to join the three previous colleagues in

[01:05:25] welcoming you to the board Mr. Dan I'm very excited to work with you in the Braddock district and particularly on the audit committee very excited to welcome you to that committee and Mr. McDaniel sorry we'll be losing you from that committee I do want to apologize that you're walking into this it's an unfortunate way to welcome you and I do want to thank Ms. Marin for working to avoid the division that is now present at the table by seeking to divide the motion. It was something that I strongly supported. I'm grateful for that effort to bring unity to this board, which has unfortunately been absent recently. So I will be voting against

[01:06:04] this motion and look forward to what Mr. Becerra very rightly called for in his public remarks, which is a resolution to this situation thank you Ms. St. John Cunning first of all welcome Mr.

[01:06:27] Dannon I'm very happy that you're on board I was really worried that your family was going to try to stay here till the end with the kids I'm glad to see that they went home I just really want to thank the chair and the vice chair for very thoughtfully going through this process I know that they thought long and hard about it and that they followed protocols that have been used in the past um and i just want to thank them for that and i respect their decisions

[01:06:59] and i will gladly support this motion i see two uh lights still on if you don't want to go back okay i don't see any more go backs nobody who didn't speak wants to speak there being no further discussion i'm gonna call on the vote on the main motion which is not quite on the screen can we fix that okay it starts at the top thank you um i'll call for a vote on the main motion which is on the screen all those in favor mr frisch mr mcdaniel miss st john cunning

[01:07:35] miss anderson miss dixit mr dannon and myself all those opposed miss marron mr mckelveen dr anderson abstentions mr moon will the clerk read the vote the vote is 731 the motion carries thank you agenda item 8.04 new sole source contract washington lacrosse umpires association

[01:08:00] girls lacrosse officials service i call on dr anderson for a motion i move that the school board approve a contract for girls lacrosse officials services and two authorize the division the division superintendent or the director of the office of procurement services to execute deliver and administer the contract on behalf of the school board is there a second second thank

[01:08:35] you mr fresh uh dr anderson would you like to speak to your motion yes briefly uh i i thought it was important to just pull this out because this is a second set of contracts of sole sort sole source contracts that we've received in as many as two school board meetings and upon further inquiry with uh miss uh burden our chief financial officer i thought it would be an important thing just to share because there are some changes that have occurred i i'm not against the uh motion i'm sorry the contract itself i just wanted to make sure that we understood what is the new occurrence when it comes to these contracts.

[01:09:11] So, Dr. Reid, if I could ask you to I don't know if yes, she's here to speak to why at this point we have the sole source contracts for activities that have been going on for years and years and years. Yes, ma'am. And it's fundamentally it's sole source because it's the only group of officials that the lacrosse league will allow us to use.

[01:09:34] So by default, it has to be the sole source. Why it's being brought to the board at this point as a sole source contract, I appreciate Ms. Burden attending to that. Our team keeps track of what each individual school spends on officials over the course annually.

[01:09:53] And this past year, the sum total of those costs eclipsed what is now required for board approval. So we decided, I believe, to combine the contracts and the total then is required to bring to you as a board for approval because, as in all things, there's a cost of living raised for officials.

[01:10:15] And when you take the aggregate cost of officials across all the schools using officials, it becomes a sole source contract. However, there is no other source. So, Ms. Burton, would you like to perhaps add to that? No, that is, you're absolutely correct.

[01:10:37] aggregate level reached the threshold where it requires school board approval and so we're bringing it to you to approve and also it's my understanding that previously individual schools would have their own their own contracts with VHSL because they're the only game in town and the other reason why I wanted to highlight this because it's always been a point of not necessarily contention but of of interest when sole source contracts are developed and I the last thing that I want to make sure that I highlight is we should now expect to see

[01:11:14] this come across all of the sports in the coming weeks is that accurate it it will depend on whether the threshold of the some cost hits the threshold for board approval which given what you've just talked about with cost of living etc it is likely because I know we've seen baseball and lacrosse just showed up here but thank you for allowing me to be able to share publicly why we are leaning into this direction with these sole source contracts yes ma'am Mr. Frisch would you like to speak to your second there's something I write yes there's something ironic about the lacrosse mom on our

[01:11:50] board asking other people to speak to this but to Dr. Anderson's point about some of the changes that have happened in recent years several years ago before the board updated the contract and and procurement policies when a contract went above didn't start at but went above the dollar figure that would trigger a board approval it didn't come back to the board for a vote that's no longer the case and so when we do approve a contract at a lower number if at some point that contract reaches the threshold that it would have required a board approval at the outset it now has to come back to our board so that's another reason that uh we're here tonight and i appreciate the

[01:12:30] superintendent for bringing the knowledge and Dr. Anderson for opening the conversation. Thank you, Dr. Anderson, for this question. From my perspective, somebody who has been in the sole source and competitive world for a long time, there are some contracts which are sole source in nature, just like Dr. Reid said, that's one source. You can waste a lot of time and money to find another source or produce one, but most likely the fiduciary duty of the contracting

[01:13:05] officer if it finalizes authenticates there's only one source they can go for it this contract is i believe for two years and four months so the annual per you know the cost is 145 000 dollars for all the schools who are participating am i right i'll defer to miss burden on the exact amount miss burden yes that's correct okay and while we are the topic at sole source what is is a percentage of sole source in all the contracting dollars we spend every year on just a percentage.

[01:13:41] So we've really worked to minimize sole source contracts over the last decade. And I know I believe we're at 14 currently for the year, some of which are, for example, this contract. And you've seen others, IB, College Board testing, like there isn't another group to sole source College Board contracting to.

[01:14:01] So, Ms. Burton, do you want to hazard a guess, or do we want to get back to the board with that percentage? Yeah, I would like to get back with the percentage amount, but you are correct. This year, fiscal 26, we have about 14, and we've made great strides in reducing the number of sole source contracts over the last few years.

[01:14:24] So, while it is not the ideal thing to do sole sources, but, you know, I've been working in federal government space for a long time, and my colleagues are too here. And there's all sorts happening all the time there too. So there is absolutely the discretion of a contracting officer to find there's only one source available and they do it.

[01:14:44] So I believe that's the case here. So I'm supportive of this. Thanks. - Thank you, Ms. Dixit. Seeing no others, I'll go ahead and call for a vote on the motion, which is on the screen. All those in favor, Mr. Frisch, Mr. McDaniel, Ms. Marin, Mr. McElveen, Ms. St. John Cunning, Ms. Lady, Ms. Dixit, Mr. Moon, Dr. Anderson, and myself.

[01:15:08] All those opposed, all those abstaining. Mr. Dannon. Will the clerk please read the vote? - 10-01, the motion carries. - Thank you. Agenda item 9.01, performance review, safety and security EL-13 monitoring report.

[01:15:26] Each year, the school board assesses the superintendent in part on the basis of the school board's, the school's division's reasonable progress towards achieving the 2023-2030 strategic plan goals in adherence to a set of 13 executive limitations found on pages 14 through 31 of the board's strategic governance manual. The superintendent provides annual monitoring reports to the board for each executive limitation. The board then votes on whether the provided report is in compliance or if a corrective action is needed.

[01:16:01] I call on Dr. Reed for the monitoring report on Executive Limitation 13, Safety and Security. Good evening, Madam Chair, bless you, Vice Chair. Members of the board and the public, tonight I'm going to be presenting Executive Limitation 13, which discusses safety and security.

[01:16:17] I do want to say before I start that I want to thank many members of our safety and security team who joined us this evening. I just want to stand up for a minute so we can recognize you, team. Thank you. These are some of our hardest working staff members in the county and their hours are often a little unusual and they put in a tremendous amount of dedicated effort to keep our students, staff and community members that are in our schools safe. A reminder that executive limitation 13 states that it's important to have plans developed to ensure students

[01:16:56] and staff are provided with a safe and secure learning and working environment that supports student achievement. In this case, I believe that, to the best of my knowledge, information and belief, we have gathered information and evidence that I believe supports compliance with the board's executive limitation associated with this topic, and I'm going to be sharing some highlights this evening. For those of you watching online, we have the full report is posted to board docs, so you can follow along on the full report or the PowerPoint. A reminder that there

[01:17:30] are seven areas of executive limitation 13 all parts of item 1 can be seen on this slide I think we had a lot of subtext when we were putting this together and the next slide shares the remaining items in EL 13 although I'm going to be sharing highlights this evening only the entire report again is on board docs so I want to begin by sharing some of the new or newly added information on the next slide thank you so enhancements have been made actually we've been very busy in our safety and security office want to note

[01:18:10] that we have new console radio software that's allowing us now to monitor and communicate directly with schools walkie-talkies which is really important not to have levels of it it has the capacity to connect to schools walkie-talkie systems because we have many schools that are adjacent to one another or proximal geographically so it now allows them to communicate with one another we're working with the fairfax county radio shop with support from the fairfax county police department to begin encrypting fcps radio traffic this new upgrade to our system provides greater

[01:18:46] security in radio communications used within the school division new public service radios were programmed and delivered to each school the new radios are wi-fi capable which should eliminate up to 98 percent of poor reception spots this is important because we want to make sure that in an emergency situation we're able to have clear reception it would not be a good thing to have gaps in a conversation and not hear every word so really appreciate the hard work of our team and we've replaced 3 500 radios assigned to the elementary schools in the last year that would be

[01:19:22] 3,500 new officer radios were added that include tracking software which enable us to see where our safety and security officers are and allocate resources more quickly especially in emergency circumstances other new information on the next slide is that as part of our ongoing commitment to strengthening layered safety and security programs over the last year we have phased in weapons detection systems across all middle and secondary schools and high schools in the school division the high schools and secondary schools were

[01:20:00] completed in September of 2025 and all middle schools were completed by November 2025 a month ahead of schedule want to share the information around our new Raptor security and the Raptor wearable emergency response buttons the ERBs are the newest enhancement in our layered approach to school safety and security.

[01:20:25] And this new emergency management system supports rapid coordinated emergency response by enabling staff to discreetly request help if standard methods of communication are not accessible. When activated, these alerts are able to alert emergency responders and on-site staff, providing location information within the school, identifying where emergency response button was activated It includes wearable ERBs for FCPS staff working at schools, and only works on school grounds.

[01:20:57] But I think another feature that is a strong positive is it's not just within the school, but also out on our fields where we often have staff and children. The infrastructure installations are now complete at all schools, and the system will be going live later this spring.

[01:21:14] Stay tuned. To ensure impacted staff understand how and when to use this, a mandatory virtual training estimated to take 15 minutes to complete was assigned to all impacted staff. The standard response protocol cards were developed to ensure a coordinated, effective response during an event and to promote consistency of the response by using a common, specific vocabulary for emergency situations.

[01:21:40] These are being issued to members of the school-based crisis management teams. Our canine detection program was established as an added layer to our comprehensive security approach. This canine detection program actually was used today in a circumstance at school because we know our resources in the county are limited.

[01:22:02] So this is a nice partnership with our Fairfax County Police Department where we're able to have Zeke, our canine, let's see, how am I going to characterize him? canine protection employee our canine protection member is able to detect firearms components ammunition and illegal drugs and for those of you watching in the community as we've had over the last couple years threats of explosives and other incendiary devices or the possibility of weapons Zeke is

[01:22:39] able to very quickly and efficiently um be able to search these so we can give peace of mind much more quickly to students staff and families and he works for um very limited kibble um which we're uh also pleased about um he does support school-based safety assessments and assists in division-wide operational safety activities consistent with fcps fall policy the canine team. We have a uniform canine trained safety and security officer with Zeke.

[01:23:12] They've completed weapon searches training at schools and now available for school requests as a follow-up and Zeke has actually been relatively busy over the last several months. Finally we're looking at the implementation phase of deploying mobile data tablets on our school buses. These tablets are introduced also as a part of phased approach to strengthen transportation safety communication and operational consistency this helps support making sure we have the right students on our buses and that we don't have non-students boarding our buses it also makes sure we're able to have rerouting centrally

[01:23:50] when we have accidents or emergency circumstances weather trees over roads etc and supports our substitute drivers with their routing it also allows drivers who might be substitutes to have a fallback failsafe so we don't have students accidentally getting off on the wrong bus stops.

[01:24:10] So this is a very important new safety feature. It's integrated with existing GPS, radio, and safety protocols, and again, these tablets represent an additional layer in our comprehensive transportation safety and security.

[01:24:27] So far we've provided our bus routes. We have over 3,000 bus routes and 45,000 bus stops to the Virginia Department of Transportation for inclusion on their geographic mapping system. And this was new in the last year, the addition of these routes and stops.

[01:24:45] And this allows the VDOT crews to better prioritize our routes and stops when conducting inclement weather preparations and cleanup. And we talked about this, really, Mr. Mewick and Mr. Lambert, Mr. Gordon, our team, Mr.

[01:25:01] Mewick worked directly with VDOT, and this is a first for a partnership to have all of our routing on their maps as well. So we're really excited to have that partnership, and VDOT has been a great partner for us this winter and honestly on a regular basis.

[01:25:18] We're grateful for their partnership. In August 2025, we published the FCPS weather safety page, again, following a comprehensive review of its prior content, and we continue to update that.

[01:25:33] In the spring of 2025, after our last report, we began implementing the school board's recommendation for an annual school traffic and pedestrian safety assessment, which is led by the OSS routes to schools program by launching an initial pilot with six schools these assessments include a data analysis based on data collected through the first annual school-based traffic and pedestrian safety assessment again this is a new process this year to identify recurring safety concerns particularly

[01:26:10] during student arrival and dismissal times this includes illegal vehicle movements unauthorized drop-off locations speeding and infrastructure limitations. I will pause here for a moment because I did meet a sixth grader at Lorton Station Elementary whose science project was to revise the kiss and ride process and she created an app actually apparently that will minimize and eliminate a lot of congestion for our kiss and ride loop. So we're looking forward to perhaps building on the work of our student at Lorton Station.

[01:26:50] Finally safe routes to schools initiated a development of a school specific walking and biking route maps Again laying the groundwork for long-term improvement. So madam chair this concludes the presentation for executive limitation 13 and Look forward to answering any questions the board has. Thank you so much dr. Reed and now call on miss lady for a motion I move the school board finds the superintendent is in compliance with executive limitation number 13 safety and security I further move that the school board approved the monitoring report based on the superintendent's reasonable interpretation of executive limitation 13 Safety and security as outlined in the strategic governance manual. Is there a second?

[01:27:31] Second. Thank you, Dr. Anderson Miss lady, would you like to speak to your motion? Yes, I would Wow, this is a very extensive You know certainly evidence demonstrates a vigorous layered approach to security characterized by significant technology upgrades and rigorous personal monitoring. So a couple of things I really want to highlight is the Raptor response buttons. I really like our little SRP cards, especially the back of them. It has the emergency contacts for

[01:28:06] so many, anything you would need. And, you know, having worked in schools for 30 years, you always have that flitting thought when something is happening somewhere else and your heart is breaking for that community and thinking, what would I do if it were here? It was my school. And go through your own where would i go and have this on my person would be is an amazing step forward i also really want to compliment the fbi wrap back program um that we were the first in the state are there other jurisdictions in the state of virginia that are doing that fbi wrap back program i will uh defer to mr lambert i believe we're the first and maybe still only but mr

[01:28:44] lambert oh i'm sorry mr solomon uh thank you for the question miss lady uh fcps continues to be the only school division in the state of virginia that is using wrap back and once again wrap back is continuous fingerprinting monitoring so rather than fingerprinting somebody one time point in time it's continuously reviewing their fingerprints we were the pilot and we continue to be the only school division yeah i i just can't say enough about that right i mean i got fingerprinted you know my goodness back in 1995 and you never fingerprinted me ever again so had i done something in my 27 years in Fairfax you would have never known and that's a

[01:29:22] scary reality and and and to think that we've got 37,000 faculty staff employees who are part of this and in us in a system where we employ that many people sadly there are going to be some things that are going to bubble up and I'm grateful that they do because we're addressing them in a very timely and efficient fashion and holding them accountable and therefore again this this endeavor this commitment is is for me among the safety and security the biggest commitment to the safety of our children initially in terms of of threats

[01:29:57] so I really appreciate that the other thing I wanted to comment on is as you did is the transportation and the relationship with VDOT mapping our routes we've had a difficult winter with snow Crete and other things and you know certainly that relationship I think has been very beneficial I also think it's fascinating you just shared a sixth grader created an app it's true sixth grader I I really really like the idea of limited screen time I'm a believer in wait till 8:00 or wait till you have a driver's license to have a cell phone

[01:30:35] people but I will tell you without putting some type of device in that child's hand she wouldn't have that creativity to create that so we I also believe for those people out there in all kinds of safety protocols but that's pretty impressive stuff and I think that also the other thing was the the bus safety tablets I think that's fantastic I know that there were times well let's put it this way I look forward to these being on every bus so that we always know exactly who is on each bus and when they when they get off given as many children as we transport on a given day I think it's essential for us to track

[01:31:14] them each individual student so I really appreciate the work by staff and this great report thank you Dr. Anderson would you like to speak to your second yes surprisingly so thank you for this information I I wanted to just kind of piggyback a little bit on the VDOT relationship I think I missed that a little bit does that mean they're going to prioritize our right our routes when it comes to snow removal yes ma'am they were the commitment was they would prioritize the routes other than private HOA areas obviously they can't utilize but of of those roads that VDOT was a party to or that they have a

[01:31:51] responsibility for there were several things one would be prioritizing the routes and to really attempting not to dump the snow piles at bus stops if they were aware of it I don't know that's probably a better way so the bus stops are going to be kind of tagged in some way so they can kind of be mindful of those intersections or locations? Yes, ma'am. Well, that is definitely optimistic news. Thank you. I wanted to ask about the canine usage or rather deployment. How is that going to be used here? Because I think I talked to you about when I worked in a school in California, there was a canine that was regularly

[01:32:30] deployed to schools on an unscheduled manner to just walk around and sniff lockers and do different things that really enhance I think security and so I wanted to ask how are you thinking it's going to be deployed in our schools here well currently Zeke has been deployed to schools for explosives detection weapons detection there are times perhaps you know there was a thought that a maybe an individual might have dropped a weapon out on a

[01:33:07] playground maybe a community member and Zeke has been the canine on the spot and has been able to utilize his training to support just that type of work we have not really contemplated at this time anything beyond that but I think as Zeke is accustomed to the work and as we see how much time we'll have of Zeke it's certainly something we could consider although I think when you and I spoke about it one of the things we discussed is often lockers were the areas that were searched and so a lot of our schools don't use lockers any longer so

[01:33:46] there's certainly there's a little different condition but we really think just the safety and security aspect is important but I I will ask mr. Lambert If he'd like to comment on Zeke's expertise kind of and what we're using him for right now because I I just think that's important. Mr. Lambert. Thank you. Dr. Reed We have him working a Monday to Friday schedule when our students are in school But Zeke does live with his handler So he's able to go out at any time and is expected to come out if something is needed. We've also started to Socialize his skills with the different principal groups

[01:34:24] particularly as we know that our schools are used for community use zeke is available to go out perhaps before the school day starts as needed to run through a school and give that comfort that although we screen students in our middle and high schools every day that zeke has a chance to run through and give that confidence level to a school and he's been used already as dr reed said ironically for a lot of loose shell casings that are found and it helps the the school quickly get a comfort level that there is not a gun nearby that bullet

[01:34:59] casing okay right and seek does not he's not limited to a 40-hour week so that was my next question does he work a nine-to-five I think gets kibble and a half if he goes over 40 hours well his handler may be limited in time though right indeed yeah can you speak a little bit more to the mobile tablets I just want to kind of picture what what I'll see. So the tablets are in front of the driver and they will have a list of all students who are supposed to be on the bus. So the tablet actually is going to

[01:35:35] function very much so like a GPS like I program into my phone actually the map and it gives turn by turn signals right ways envision ways that type of thing. So it'll give them turn by turn signals when they actually stop there's students will be issued in the fall an RFI card so they're going to swipe the side of the tablet and we did a bit of a video which I probably need to resurface here but they're going to swipe and the tablet will know who is assigned to the bus so it'll eat and it'll bring up the picture of the student so a driver can see the picture that comes up and the

[01:36:12] student to make sure that the student is the right they're on the right bus and this is particularly important for our young children in the early part of the year because sometimes they get confused and we don't want to get them on the wrong bus and it's also important for some of our adolescent youngsters who I don't know that they forget which bus they should be on but sometimes want to get on a different bus and that also make you know drivers are aware of that and sometimes it's a substitute driver right our regular drivers are so great they know our children they're professional but they're you know they sometimes have

[01:36:47] a sub who may not know. And then lastly, you know recently there was an issue actually several years ago in one of our counties in Maryland where there was a person that got on a bus who should never have been on a bus actually with a gun at that point up to no good. So this again should provide a layered safety protocol so that drivers have good turn routing and if there's an accident or the road gets closed we had the flooding on the bridge Monday Woodrow Wilson Bridge right so just it really it reroutes buses in real time and we should also better understand who's on the on the

[01:37:26] bus for sure I think it's definitely a nice layer and I think it will be very helpful particularly for our littlest writers but I'm just concerned about those kindergarten students keeping track of whatever that swipe card is regularly unless it's going to be some sort of lanyard that they'll I'll have to bring in back and forth.

[01:37:44] My next question is regarding safe routes to schools. Can you speak to the pilot, which included six schools? What are some of the typical supports that are provided by central office from the findings? Yes, ma'am. That's a great question.

[01:38:00] Who would like to provide a couple of those typical supports? Mr. Lambert. Yes, thank you, Dr. Kiss and Ride is by far, far and away. The largest challenge that is faced at any school. those numbers of folks using Kiss and Ride have only increased following the pandemic, and many of our schools were built at a time inside of neighborhoods, small neighborhoods.

[01:38:25] So congestion, trying to compete with buses coming in, are the largest challenge. We have folks who regularly go out and meet with the school staff and brainstorm on ways to route the traffic and move these folks in and these folks out and where do folks sit.

[01:38:40] But far and away, it's kiss and ride issues that are the primary. - And do you also give some supports with when the kiss and ride line snakes into the neighborhoods, blocks traffic, or blocks driveways, is that still under your jurisdiction since it's a little bit off campus?

[01:39:01] - We work with the principals who are doing a great job working with their communities to try to message about ways to resolve it. Unfortunately, it's not always something that we can control, but we try to work through the communications from the principal, and most of the time that's been largely successful.

[01:39:19] There are just limits at some of the schools when you get inside of the smaller neighborhoods. And I raise that because that continues to be a significant point of concern in our neighborhood over multiple schools where community is wanting some very strong action as it's off campus and don't realize that we are somewhat limited and my wondering is are some of these supports do they include connecting with the police department to help support some of these off-campus activities yes ma'am in some instances obviously we don't want to make that our first attempt but

[01:39:58] we do work with the police department the local station particularly in instances where we find parents will park their car and get out and walk and leave it blocking one of the more creative responses that the safe routes the school team is trying to work on with some of the schools is finding parks or locations that are nearby and doing what they call a walking bus so it does two things it gets the kiss and ride away from the school but it also encourages walking to school so that's one of the techniques that when they go in into a school that they try to see if they can get support for oh that's very interesting um my next question is about the um student safety

[01:40:37] lessons that were highlighted is that done through the hpe curriculum is that health and is that also part of the opt-out for parents or everyone will receive those lessons so dr presidio you want to comment on those lessons please yeah thank you dr anderson um yes though that is part of the health and PE curriculum that's not an opt-out or opt-out is for family life education thank you i don't know how much time i have so please put me on a go back i wanted to also talk about the school visitor management system i know in the beginning of the year this was a thing that

[01:41:13] created a little bit consternation and there were some um i guess adjustments where are we now with that because it's another layer of security yes ma'am i think there are two things the volunteer management system was I think we had some fits and starts because in the wrap-back program as we were fingerprinting and running prints for 40,000 staff at the same time we were trying to fingerprint volunteers we really hit a log jam this past fall and that's more so in the volunteer

[01:41:50] management system because it's the first time we put our volunteers in a major database the visitor management system is what visitors who may just be coming onto campus need to swipe and we're transitioning to a different product with that that we will be piloting that's connected to Raptor and will save us money not having another proprietary system I think I did mean the volunteer so is that we feel like we've got a handle on that now it truly

[01:42:19] Usually the intersection of 40,000 staff being fingerprinted and moved into WRAP back at the same time we were fingerprinting a large number of volunteers and contractors has been a challenge.

[01:42:35] But we think we've moved beyond that at this time. Thank you, Dr. Anderson. Mr. Fresh. Thank you. I think we're all dying to know what collective bargaining unit is ZEKE a member of? ZEKE is not bargaining at this time.

[01:42:53] - Is he barkening? - He's begging, barkening. - All right, we'll leave it there. Zeke is much more intimidating a name than like Officer Buster. When I was growing up, my high school had metal detectors and this was just five or six years ago.

[01:43:11] And it was a transition for me 'cause I'd never had those in school before. They had it at all three entrances. We had a back entrance where cars came in, a side entrance where cars came in and students were through those detectors before entering the school. And we had it at the front entrance where kids getting off the bus went through it.

[01:43:30] This was the largest campus in Los Angeles Unified School Division. And nothing really changed with how they administered the process. But a few weeks in, student behavior about how and when they got to school changed.

[01:43:46] At the beginning of our use of these systems, there were a lot of backups at school entrances Because there were just lines. How has that evolved over the course of the year? Yes, sir. That's a great question. I We started I think as we began to learn the system and then students better understood what types of things might trigger the system for a secondary check and Therefore there's been a lot of adjustment and the lines became a lot shorter. I will also say we I'm not sure I'm supposed to talk about the intensity so I don't I think we sent letters home, right?

[01:44:25] We did shift the intensity of the weapon screener in the sense that it now actually even has a more sensitive detection. And for a while that sort of slowed us down again. But now I think we've gotten back in a groove.

[01:44:42] And I think Mr. Lambert can share the actual percentage of secondary searches because that's what slows the process down. But Mr. Lambert. Thank you, Dr. Reed. And you're right, Mr. Frisch. Student behavior did change. i was out at westfield very early on and talking to then principal dabari and he was telling me that previously you know students rolled in and walked through the door as the bell rang and they quickly adjusted to arrive and park their cars and come in quicker and so students really are the most adaptable and they adapted extremely quick quickly to it what we're doing that i would

[01:45:17] want to share is each of those devices gives us data for each school and by each tower and we have have each tower like labeled so we get a report every morning when the high schools and middle schools have loaded in and we can see by school what percentage of people are actually alarming and so that enables us and Steve who's here took that on as a project and went out to schools that were having difficulty to help refine their process and sometimes that was technical you know we're too close to an electrical area but that data really allows us to focus on areas for improvement so that we get all schools

[01:45:53] more moving toward the lower detection rates and while I got the microphone I have to say you know Miss Kearns at Lake Braddock is processing more students in a single day through weapon screening than any school in the United States of America I was gonna say I bet you can also measure how many fish are swimming through the stream in a given day and what the volume is over time it's fascinating and you know i'd be i'd regret not mentioning that we we don't get too specific during our conversations about this because we don't want to telegraph anything to the public

[01:46:28] but speaking generally um can you describe at a high level how the division evaluates whether the overall safety strategy is working obviously it's hard to prove a negative right so we're seeing you know real or false positives etc but it's hard to prove a negative how do we determine If we have the appropriate level of redundancy or effective measures, if it's a difficult thing to measure when you're not necessarily having incidents.

[01:47:03] Yes, sir. And I think the difficult, well, I'll just use March Madness, for example. When the officiating is amazing, no one notices them, right? You just notice the game.

[01:47:20] And when our safety and security team is at its best, no one notices because everything runs smoothly. And we don't often hold big celebrations and big banner events to announce things are running smoothly.

[01:47:36] We just don't do it. But they do. And we've certainly found weapons over the course of this year. And we haven't, knock on wood, had a major weapons incident this year. but Mr. Lambert, do you wanna elaborate at all on how the team evaluates effectiveness?

[01:47:58] - Sure, and you're asking a very valid question. It is difficult to prove. I would say that we haven't had a firearm come into our schools this year, which we had had in previous years. There is some evidence from some other school divisions who had some data that they were able to look at.

[01:48:17] Jefferson County, Kentucky, They had 28 firearms found in their school in the 22-23 school year to four in the school year after. I think one of the things that was kind of informing for us is when we looked at some of the data regarding firearms is to think about TSA, which is something everyone can relate to.

[01:48:38] And in 2005, there were 660 guns caught at a TSA checkpoint, a place you know that you're going to be screened. Again, 660 in '05. In 2023, that number was 6,737.

[01:48:58] And so I think that you just have to look at the possibility that somebody could have a weapon coming in when you have that many going to an airport is a compelling reason that you would want to add this layer of security.

[01:49:17] - And I accept that that was a sports metaphor that I'll talk to Miss Lady later to understand. I'm curious if we do have this data about these, you know, for lack of a better word, alarms or what have you. What are we doing in the culture in the school to ensure that schools where this is happening, people don't feel the need to bring something like that, whether for safety or for other reasons?

[01:49:42] So I think this evening you did a proclamation around social emotional learning and curriculum materials. I think that's a huge part of the conversation. We also appreciate all the families in Fairfax County who secure their firearms.

[01:49:58] We know that 85% of school shootings occur with a weapon a student has brought from home. So we appreciate our families who secure their weapons at home in our county. I do think that we also have, I think, the most incredible staff in the country, our educators, our support staff, our drivers who know our students, our support staff, our custodians lunch our educators we honored our social workers this evening who spend countless hours with families and students so i think you know the best prevention is a you know a healthy

[01:50:37] school and community culture and as we are able to provide activities whether they're middle school after school activities athletics theater music robotics career and technical ed the more things our children are engaged in um i think the better in terms of uh an educational experience that's free from violence i appreciate you mentioning uh secure storage of firearms several years ago our school division became the first in virginia to require the annual notification of families reminding them of their legal obligations and thankfully two of our former colleagues lord

[01:51:14] jane cohen in the house of delegates stella pikarski in the senate passed legislation this YEAR THAT WILL REQUIRE THAT STATEWIDE SO I'M GRATEFUL TO SEE THAT WE'RE CONTINUING LAST QUESTION A FEW YEARS AGO THE BOARD REQUESTED AN ANNUAL TRAFFIC AND PEDESTRIAN SAFETY ASSESSMENT SIMILAR TO THE CIP I KNOW THAT'S SOMETHING THAT'S BEEN IN THE WORKS THIS YEAR WE WERE GIVEN A PREVIEW OF HOW THAT PROCESS WOULD UNFOLD OVER THE LAST YEAR ARE WE CLOSE TO BEING READY FOR THE first uh issuing of that that assessment yes sir i believe we did six schools um this past year

[01:51:50] um and was that i'm sorry mr muick mr lambert which one of your offices conducted that mr lambert okay yes ma'am in the spring of 2025 we did the sixth school pilot and then this current school year the 25 26 school year was the first year of that iteration and so we let the schools get acclimated during the month of September October was data collection month where we also sent out templates to the schools to solicit feedback from their community as well as principals filling out surveys we partnered with V dot to take some different vehicle counting machines to some different schools

[01:52:28] November and onward was an analysis section then they looked at a select group of schools to focus on with the goal of producing a report and meeting with V dot f f dot and others to talk about the common themes that are being developed but to pick about the ten worst schools to focus on every year and then by June memorializing the report so it it is meant to be a October through June cycle where we would give you something around June with the this year's action I think what mr. Lambert meant was the ten schools that perhaps

[01:53:04] had the most congestion around them yes very much appreciate that news that is an example of work that's happening because of compromise I had initially wanted to have an assessment for one of my elementary schools miss omasia former board member said I've talked to board members and they all have something like this in their school why don't we do it for everybody and so brought forward a forum topic to lead to something like this and grateful to hear this is coming kiss and rides were brought up and in Providence district ARE SEVERAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS WHERE KISS AND RIDES RESULT IN HUGE BACK-UPS IN NEIGHBORHOODS AND

[01:53:41] IT IS A CONSTANT REFRAIN AND I'M GRATEFUL TO HEAR THAT WE'RE MOVING FORWARD WITH A REPORT THAT'S LOOKING AT HOW WE CAN PRIORITIZE THE WORK TO ADDRESS THOSE THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANKS FOR THE PRESENTATION TALKING ABOUT KISS AND RIDE I THINK I WAS AT A ELEMENTARY SCHOOL yesterday in and and there after early release i mean i'm sure this happens every day but long long line of parents and others picking up i just couldn't believe how long that was

[01:54:18] getting onto the uh a little you know larger a street not just one's directly going into the school so uh i immediately felt that something something needed to be done you know it is it's not going to be just that particular elementary school but perhaps throughout the county creating a lot of traffic jam and and also felt that might also create a safety issues as well so with that i i want to ask you some questions regarding weapons detection systems i think some

[01:54:52] of the questions were already asked by mr frisch and appreciate that weapons detection systems we have that in all our middle and high and secondary schools place it correct yes and that required obviously us you know investing our financial resources to that I mean this is a resource allocation is for me first of all of course saving you know preventing any any tragic incident is a most important saving a people's lives is you know I mean money cannot compensate that but at

[01:55:32] same time we are putting in not just for the hardware but we are putting in steps time to step the weapons detection system where students go through every day every morning and every afternoon wherever people come they go through that so when do you think you would feel as a superintendent comfortable enough comfortable enough not to staff at those weapons detection system as much

[01:56:09] as we are currently doing because that is taking a lot of time away from what the staffs normally used to do whether they are administrators or their counselors counselors who could be using their time to meet with the students for their a academic counseling or college advising or post graduation plans and etc so those are some of the things I was hearing from you know students and others so again I want to know I want to know when what

[01:56:45] would you use to gauge your point about recommending to the school board to reduce or do away with the weapons detection system so it's a great question I at this time I think there's also a benefit for staff to greet students every morning it reminds me of my principal days we our admin staff was out you know meeting buses greeting high school students I think there's a benefit to that you get to see students first thing in

[01:57:23] the morning and you get a sense of how the day might go in some cases I think that schools have latitude in how they choose to staff the open gate in the morning and it's true it is taking more time but I also think that the benefit of that layered protection is important so I don't think I will be recommending removing that anytime soon I so I think that would be my answer right now but I'll certainly give it some thought Mr. Moon you know Dr. Reed perhaps I should give you

[01:58:01] give you a little time to think about this and get back to us later yes sir thank you yes sir Ms. Dixon thank you Dr. Reed for the presentation um I actually uh have seen the the the cards the raptor cards um in the school getting the installation done and and um I think this is like the best thing possible for the safeguarding of our students um in case of emergencies getting that information out? Because I know sometimes the brain doesn't work, right? You get like a

[01:58:39] brain freeze in some situation and just knowing that you can press a button and something will happen. So I wanted to actually know about this Raptor's technology. Is it going to provide it to key personnel, persons in school like principal or all the staff members? The Raptor technology?

[01:59:01] Yeah. So the Raptor technology is really for every staff member in the school. And we did a test. Was it this morning or yesterday? I think it was this morning at one of our schools and a test also for us. Right. I have all the schools on my Raptor app. So when there is an alert, there's a text that comes across my phone immediately from whatever school and it comes across Mr. Lambert's phone and other key people who have that.

[01:59:32] alert on their phones even as it goes directly to law enforcement but I'm gonna let mr. Lambert who knows a lot more about it than I do but the idea is that anyone anywhere could activate this mr. Lambert thank you dr. Reed this thinks that we're very excited about it because it's going to put knowledge and the ability to call for an emergency into all the employees staff at a school so pick whatever school you'd like if somebody starts that alert everybody who's in that school should they choose to have the app or on their FCPS computer it notifies them immediately for example Brian Lambert

[02:00:08] has just pushed the button everybody else from that school can then have communication in the app and understand what it is that's happening and so just to give you a comparison right now if a principal were to put a school into lockdown for example the teachers in the rooms don't know what's going on they just know that they're in a lockdown this provides an opportunity for real communication where they can communicate hey you know this is what I saw or this is what is happening and as dr. Reed said key leaders can choose which schools that they want obviously myself dr. Reed and others will be getting the alerts

[02:00:44] for all of the schools and we did do the test today it's like an amber alert so it's not like you're gonna be focused in a meeting and miss it 30 minutes later it lets you know that something has happened thank you for sharing so I know know parents are very concerned sometime in you know seriously happened Maryland school when no incident happened can this technology be used to inform the parents also there's an alert system so I know Brian or mr. Lambert's gonna answer that in a minute but I do believe there's a feature is one of the

[02:01:18] things we want to do is real-time communication in interval fashion so mr. Lambert yes ma'am and I believe I just read recently that at one of the unfortunate incidents in Virginia that a parent was able to get some information about what was happening at their child's college or university as a result of it the the product actually has so many features to it that we're going to be unpacking over the next year reunification being one of them that it provides in there so it is a very adaptable tool and we are very

[02:01:54] pioneering and how we used it this tool was actually built as a lockdown tool and we went to the manufacturer and said we don't we don't want a lockdown tool we want an emergency tool because an emergency takes many forms and you know one response of putting everybody in a lockdown may not be appropriate for the emergency that you're seeing and so the company was adaptive and built it to fit Fairfax County Public Schools and now other school divisions are looking at how

[02:02:21] we are amending it. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. The other thing about this, obviously we have the great weapon detection system right now. And like you said, it has stopped live firearms. We have protecting the high schools, I understand with this technology. Our vulnerable population is our elementary schools. We don't have full-time SRO, I believe, in our elementary school either.

[02:02:52] So is it a possibility of extending this to elementary or is it too difficult of a system to bring it to our elementary schools? So the Raptor system is in the elementary schools. No, sorry, I meant to say the weapon detection system.

[02:03:10] The weapons detection system, we want to make sure that as we look at data, also the number of firearms generally that a student would bring is a very very low percentage given 143 schools to outfit with that equipment but raptor allows that early detection i do know we're looking i'm going to let mr lambert respond to that we're looking at some other layered safety features for elementary sure and raptor was of course something big for elementary schools because we recognize they don't have as many resources there's a lot of

[02:03:50] talk about AI over cameras and I am excited to share that the technical security team is in a pilot right now where they are have AI over some of our lenses that look for things not just weapons but slips falls things that are out of order and like the large language models do it takes several weeks for them to see an area and learn from it and so we believe that foundationally weapon screening is best done through the laborious task of open gate but we believe like other people are that using the tools that we have and Fairfax

[02:04:29] County has over ten thousand two hundred unique views right now from cameras that that is a frontier for us that we are looking to explore and we're piloting that right now okay thank you thank you for sharing that and lastly I'll just say about Zeke that I'm looking forward to meeting him and one of the schools may be welcome to the board meeting where we all can meet Officer Zeke and I do have a German Shepherd which could be a friend to Zeke if they ever get to meet each other.

[02:05:01] I think Zeke is flying solo at the moment. Thank you, Mr. Exit. Mr. Dannon. Thank you very much and thank you all for the earlier welcome on the school board. I'm very excited to serve with you all and I'll share more later.

[02:05:18] But I wanted to state for the record that I do believe that Zeke is a very good boy. And if your dog and Zeke and our foster dog, Coda, would like to have a play date sometime, let us know before he gets adopted. And a couple of questions.

[02:05:34] One was around the ERB devices. Can you just share your sense, what you've heard from staff? I recognize that they've all been trained, or most of them have been trained on these devices. What's the sentiment that you've heard from staff, positive, negative, neutral? Yeah, thank you, Mr. Dannon. At this point, the ERB devices have not yet been fully rolled out.

[02:05:52] The training has been, but the devices have not. They're currently a limited division-wide feedback from teachers and staff because they haven't been fully rolled out. That's going to be later this spring. During planning for this, staff raised questions focused on privacy and implementation, including how personal data is managed and whether staff have to install the app on their personal devices.

[02:06:15] These questions helped inform the rollout approach with an emphasis on clear communication, privacy protections and options for staff. So as the implementation progresses, we're going to get more substantive feedback, which the team will monitor and adjust for. I appreciate that.

[02:06:32] And then the second item was around school safety and security specialists, so separate from the SROs. Most of us know that having a trusted adult can make a huge difference and is a big part of that layered approach as we've talked about um so far uh can you talk a little bit to the training and um support that those personnel are given um both on the outset i know they get a few days training um when they start but is there any uh ongoing in-service training to help them with forming relationships and so forth in schools because um again as part of that layered approach a child that you know learns that there's somebody giving tattoos in the bathroom or

[02:07:08] or something like that is much more likely to come to a trusted adult like those personnel. So can you just speak to how we're working and training up those personnel for that? Yes, sir. The school security officers are actually school based staff who work under the leadership of the principal. So they do report directly to principals.

[02:07:26] Their role is actually intentionally designed to balance safety and relationship building to your point, Mr. Dan and the role supports enforcement of school rules while also serving as consistent trusted adults within the building and honestly relationship building is a core expectation of this role these officers are encouraged to engage with students in non-enforcement settings this always cafeterias participation at school events and their collaboration with counselors and administrators they do receive initial and ongoing training within the first 60

[02:08:03] days, they must complete certification through Fairfax County Public Schools under the authority of the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. This certification requires ongoing education, including professional development that focuses on strengthening relationships with students and staff. They're typically assigned to a single school to ensure continuity and build sustained relationships, and some schools also incorporate advisory and mentoring roles.

[02:08:31] Regarding the staffing, their school based positions and the coverage during absences can be a challenge because of that, because we don't have a substitute pool. But we're exploring other options like regional approaches to sharing of staff.

[02:08:46] I appreciate that. Keep us posted what you need as far as a substitute pool, because I recognize having staff that are familiar with at least a few schools and not just to mention the students, but also the school itself. It would go a long way towards that later approach. Thank you. Yes, sir. Mr. McElveen.

[02:09:04] Well, thank you for the report, and thank you so much to the security team for all the work they do, day in, day out, at all hours. And I think it's not hyperbole to say that we are receiving more and more notices than we ever have in the past about security issues, employee issues.

[02:09:24] So, really, we do appreciate Mr. Lambert and all his team does. You know, I think about the detector devices the same way historically we thought about the security cameras.

[02:09:41] So back in 2013 when Mr. Moon and I were here debating whether we should have security cameras in schools at the high school level, there's a lot of community pushback. And similar to what we kind of heard about having metal detectors in schools, but over time people realize the importance and necessity of having them and they just become part of our overall package of preventative work. So I think ultimately they are a necessity unfortunately in these times but without spending much time on it I would just say I echo Mr. Frisch and Mr. Moon

[02:10:21] and the concerns they've raised I think we're all hearing them just in terms of staffing and other issues that hopefully over time uh we'll be able to work out and I know you know as chair of audit committee um we have had an audit on our security issues um and my understanding is we'll be bringing that to a closed meeting soon so we can discuss some of the specifics of that so um I look forward to that and certainly the help of um Mr. Lambert and his team in that audit process um to talk a little bit about safe routes to schools I know we had a um a change in that office uh and I heard

[02:10:57] initially a lot of community concerns about a lot of the historic efforts that had gone into that work whether it was organizing bike trains or things like that do you have a sense of how has that improved are we still having issues yes sir that i remember that too as soon as you started talking about that i uh mr lambert uh thoughts on that because i do recall we had a staffing transition in the safe routes to schools office so yes ma'am yes sir around the time i arrived there was a there's a bit of movement of where it where it rested and it came over to the office of

[02:11:33] safety and security and since that time the senior manager was able to onboard actually a former sro and police officer who has a passion for it and two part-time students who recently graduated from college and so the four of them together have been very excited very energetic they're doing a lot of creative things beyond just the the training that they do when i was prepping for the session they're somewhere north of 700 bicycles that they are moving around the county getting to schools getting children trained on on how to ride them appropriately getting them to children sometimes

[02:12:11] who need them running uh donation programs for people who are getting rid of their their bicycles finding volunteers who refurbish them during the summer they initiated a thing called puzzle hunt which was a creative way to get families out together looking for different things in the community and and and to win prizes as dr reed mentioned in the outset they're also going through the different regions and mapping out each school and putting together like hey these are some good walking and biking routes um to do as as a family so they're they are uh very very busy um and i

[02:12:47] think dr reed may share with you today i think one of the really special things is they sit over the sideburn facility next to robinson and they worked today with groups of children who were special education and getting meaningful jobs and they worked today to pack the bags the trailers to get the bikes ready to go out for some different training that they're doing and it was a special way that they were able to connect with that program at robinson that's great to hear um that never rises to our level so it's good to know um and i think that um you know that's

[02:13:26] one piece to the um kiss and ride issue right is getting people trained on bikes so that's that's great work but another piece to the kiss and ride issue is vdot and the police department um we continue to have um and you know as a parent advocate in the past um just uh unresponsiveness from vdot when we bring concerns to them through the supervisor's office getting you know we at my elementary school for example we worked for several years just trying to get some speed bumps installed um wincomatics and the best vdot would do for us would be was to repaint uh existing

[02:14:05] crosswalk um and i think that's a story here over and over and over at our schools and i know you're you're developing a deeper partnership with VDOT on snow removal and other things. So I really do hope we can get a better partnership with them on these things. Yes, sir. We'll work on that.

[02:14:22] And it also reminds me, we probably should do maybe a strategic plan update on what's happening with Safe Routes to Schools because I think the team is working really hard, you know, with the routing, so make a note of that. Ms. St. John Cunningham.

[02:14:38] Thank you. First of all, I think that I guess our most popular security asset now is Zeke, and Luna will be on that schedule for a play date, I guess following my two other board members' requests.

[02:14:55] So one of the things that I actually do want to talk about, too-- I mean, a couple of things. When we talk about how kids are coming through the weapon detectors, I've been at schools at the beginning and where we've progressed.

[02:15:12] And everyone's like, when are staff not going to be there? Or I don't want to say staff, certain staff members. The reality is it's a staffing issue. I mean, if we had monitors, the monitors would be there instead of the counselors. And we need people there, and we don't have money to fund them.

[02:15:32] I mean, that's just the sad truth. The other thing I want to talk about is Kiss and Ride that has been brought up by a lot of people. And our schools were not designed to support Kiss and Ride.

[02:15:48] And I know the safe walk to schools is a way to try to encourage parents to not do that. And I just don't know security-wise, because I know security has worked with me on several of our schools where we've had issues and VDOT. And, you know, they just say, this is not the expectation.

[02:16:06] These kids should be walking to school. Or maybe they're missing their bus or don't want to be on the bus. But our schools were not designed to handle that many cars coming to drop off kids. And I just don't know how we can solve that situation because we need community support with that.

[02:16:29] And we need parents to be able to understand what the true options are and feel safe and secure with that. I guess that's just a statement, not a question, because, you know, if anybody can put their heads together and figure out how we can do that, that would be something that would be very workable.

[02:16:45] I do want to commend all the work that's being done. Like Ms. Lady, I, when I first got into the county, I was fingerprinted, was never fingerprinted again until I got this job. And I think that that has been one of the best things that we've ever done because I know that through that process, we have gotten a lot more information.

[02:17:05] And I have seen the iterations that have been happening in terms of all the security features. And kudos to getting all the, you know, metal detectors done early.

[02:17:21] But my question goes more to when when are we going to see the completion of the best vegetables? Because I know you still have some schools in my district that don't have those and I get questions about that. And I know it's a process and I know there's a queue.

[02:17:37] What what does that look like? Yes, ma'am. So we I believe have been the commitment was to continue that work in phases. And I know we just approved a recent phase and I'm going to ask Mr. Gordon where we are. on our current vestibule queue.

[02:17:56] Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Currently, there's a five-phase program. We're currently getting ready to start the third phase of it. We've completed roughly, I think, 40 vestibules, and this current phase will have 21. I think phase four will have additional 20, and the fifth phase will have roughly 16, so a total of 98 vestibules will be done.

[02:18:17] And how are they prioritized by who gets? I think there's a, so the prioritization, so it's an even spread across the regions. So if I look, you know, if you include phase three, region one will have 11, region two will have eight, I think region three will have nine complete, then region four will have 10, region five, sorry, region four will have 12, region 10 will have 10, and then region six will have seven.

[02:18:49] And so it's a fairly even spread across that. And prioritization was done basically -- it was an architectural, you know, analysis that was done and put forth. And I can't give you the specifics on what was done more so than what screening criteria, but I can look into what kind of screening criteria was used to develop that prioritization list.

[02:19:14] Yeah. Mr. Gordon, it's new this year. I do know that there was some collaboration early on in the development of the CUBE by looking at some of the community data in terms of safety within certain communities across the county with some nod to wanting to make sure that there was some priority schools that occurred sooner than others but other than that then it you know it really defaulted to making sure we brought all regions on board similarly thank you I just really want to you know commend the team

[02:19:48] Because I think that at least with my tenure and what I've seen, you know, oh, I'll just it's OK. I just want to say thank you. You guys are doing great work. And I think we are doing the best we can to mitigate any kind of issues.

[02:20:04] And then our kids are safe. Our kids and our staff are as safe as they possibly can be. Thank you, Miss St. John Cunningham. And I know there's been there have been some recent narratives out there about our schools maybe not being safe in terms of the recitation of some of the adults over the last several years that have made bad decisions, made criminal decisions.

[02:20:25] And I would say that the wrap-back is one of those features that enables us to know immediately. And even with those extraordinarily disturbing circumstances, with 40,000 staff, that still represents less than 0.03% of our staff that have engaged in those behaviors.

[02:20:46] So I also want people to understand that we are proud of our professional staff in all roles and we're an extraordinarily safe school division with professionals who care deeply about what's best for our children. I'm going to take a quick turn.

[02:21:04] I just wanted to say that along with my colleagues, I am extremely impressed with the number of things that we've been able to accomplish as quickly as we have. That is in no small part to your direction, and I appreciate the work that we've done to ensure the safety of our students.

[02:21:21] The other thing that I love about what we're doing is that we're diversifying the type of investments that we're putting forward towards different things across the division that is the layered safety. It doesn't negate the fact that we still need our kiddos to do exactly what they need to do and listen to us when we tell them how to keep themselves safe, which as a parent is always the most difficult part.

[02:21:43] So I would ask, though, one of the questions that I have is related to the Raptor system, because I know that we're about to come online. How are substitutes being included in both the training and the availability of the cards?

[02:21:59] Like, is that something that we'll give them with the same badge that they receive in order to do the rest of their work throughout the day? So it's a great question, Madam Chair. And I will defer to Mr. Solomon in terms of how substitute teachers will be involved in the ERB or Raptor and or Mr. Lambert.

[02:22:19] I know Mr. Solomon's office oversees our substitute teachers and Mr. Lambert, the Raptor. So honestly, one of the successes, too, is just the the working across departments. It's been so important. So whichever one of you wants to take that. thank you dr reed substitutes we will eventually have a pool of them at the front desk so that when you arrive for the day that you would be issued one training would take place in the same way that the my pde but we were focusing first on the the core 25 000 teaching staff wonderful i think that that's absolutely the layered approach that we need to take i would definitely make sure that

[02:22:59] particularly when we have professional development days at schools where we may have more such substitutes in the building that substitutes are an important aspect to make sure that we're we're able to do what we're trying to do so I just again I appreciate I and I agree with you that watching our staff work together with the issues related to how to keep our kids safe from everybody from facilities to our chief operating officer to you know obviously security but also HR so I really am just wholeheartedly impressed with how we're working together on this and I know that we're increasing the safety for our kids, so I appreciate it.

[02:23:36] We are now going to move to Ms. Maconan really fast, and then we have a go-back. Thank you so much for the work you're doing on this. Following the other three board members, I can throw my puppy Angel in there. I'm not sure if she's invited. I think I've seen students get a little bit exasperated with the security system and try to bypass it, and I've also seen students not open the door for them.

[02:23:59] It's actually very funny to witness, so good on us. I think the Raptor system is wonderful. I have questions about the elementary school safety thing. I know we're not really predicting that a second grader is going to come in with a weapon. But my thing is for the visitors to those schools, would the A.I. lenses be used as a substitute to that?

[02:24:18] And would they have the same reaction time as the weapons detective system or the Raptor? So it's a great question, Miss McConaugh. And I appreciate that our students care about safety, right, to not open the door. I think we have there's a high interest on our students part about that so i appreciate you sharing that mr lambert do you want to comment on the pilot that the very limited pilot we're doing with the ai perhaps in the lenses sure it's a an amazing tool that does give real time if it once it learns what it's looking for and it gets used to the environment a notice to whoever you've set

[02:24:56] up that somebody has it like any tool it is just one layer and so it has its own limitations it obviously can't detect something that's concealed it would you know pick up something that's that's openly displayed but just to speak about how quickly that technology is changing just 15 months ago when I took the job most of the business cycles were set up around AI that it had to go to a call center where somebody in the middle had to interpret what they were seeing and notify the school and companies have quickly evolved that so that it's coming immediately to the school so in other words if it were an elementary school and ai were employed

[02:25:35] the school office itself would get the result and not wait to go through a third party thank you would you guys be looking to implement the sort of weapons detectives detection system that we have at like the high schools in the elementary school at the elementary school or is that something that's not really are you referring to the open gate weapons detection yes i i think right Right now, from a budget standpoint and cost-benefit, I'm going to always trust our security experts, number one.

[02:26:05] And number two, we have to look at what are the most effective interventions for elementary school, right? And I do agree, it's more often than not been someone who's come to the school who's not one of the children assigned to the school. But Mr. Lambert, do you want to speculate or do we not want to speculate on that at this time?

[02:26:27] think right now we're still focusing on we've still got some work on the middle schools to do and sit back and evaluate that and the technology is developing so quickly you know what's over the horizon next may be something even better and I just want to end with something to think about I was remembering this when mr.

[02:26:45] moon brought it up earlier I remember when TJ students came here and they were saying how the weapons detectives detective detective I'm a little bit tired guys detection system was overwhelming the staff to the point where counselors who used to be able to meet with students in the morning were not able to do that and it was to the point where one of the TJ students, one of the ones we met with actually on the MSA meeting, was telling me about how one of those counselors was actually thinking about stepping down because of the overload of commitment and that's just something to think about just like Mr.

[02:27:14] Moon was saying because I do see the positive I really do like having me personally at my school having my teachers and administrators greeting me in the morning saying hi but also at certain schools it can be a bit of a

[02:27:24] burden on them. Yeah I appreciate the I appreciate that and I do know that it would be great to share that workload too right so that different staff have an opportunity to be supporting that system. So I think that they're clearly there can be more conversation on that so I agree with you. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Anderson for go back. Thank you not to put a damper but this is the part where I talk about the bad calls since that was your example earlier with the with the referees.

[02:27:56] Yes, just a couple of just a couple of points. I think one was raised just a little bit earlier regarding the vestibules. I also think that I'm hoping for a little bit more thoughtfulness with the vestibules because originally when that was done with the prior board, it was to really spill the visitors into the office.

[02:28:18] And we've had some vestibules and Mr. Lambert has been very responsive, which I very much appreciate that kind of did not get a chance to do that. And I understand in places like this building where it's really, really challenging, but there were some other opportunities I think were missed at some schools that I'm not going to name here for the purposes of security.

[02:28:40] But when you are not installing that direct path into the office, that second layer is not provided. And I would also be remiss if I didn't talk about some of the security concerns regarding our use of technology. We've heard about it from parents tonight.

[02:28:55] we heard about from parents last time and we are getting emails as we're developing our own policies regarding ai or technology just ensuring that we have systems in place before we move into implementation i think that's a point that has to be raised one question that i did have regarding the risk and threat assessments in the report one of the concerns that has been raised to me over pretty much multiple years since I've been on the board are our schools that have a greater share

[02:29:31] of risk assessments and threat assessments. And anybody who's working in the building will know that very often those activities not only take a lot of staff resource, but they kind of shut down the day for certain individuals. It could be the administrative staff. It could potentially be a teacher, a case manager. How is that data when it is collected and it's evaluated that a school has multiple assessments across a given year are they provided with additional support additional personnel because not having the time to do your job because you you know to do the job that you

[02:30:07] want to do on a daily basis and being responsive to the things that you have to be responsive it leaves a gap so threat assessments are part of the job for staff i do think that the central office does provide support in that area i'm going to ask dr presidio how sometimes those central office teams come out to help support schools in those circumstances dr presidio yeah absolutely i mean i think it starts with the central office provides an oversight

[02:30:43] committee that does look at the overall processes and how well they're working in our schools and that's an interdisciplinary team that's got folks from safety and security intervention and prevention services counseling psychology services legal counsel as well so we do look at that and we are responsive to supporting the schools not just with the training but if there are additional needs that they need assistance with in terms of conducting threat assessments risk assessments or following up on the actions we do have staff available to support schools with that i think

[02:31:19] that was my time thank you dr anderson i will see no others i'll go ahead and call for a vote which for the motion which is on the screen all those in favor mr frisch mr mcdaniel miss marron mr mckelveen uh miss st john cunning miss lady miss dixit mr dannon mr moon and myself all those

[02:31:53] opposed dr anderson will the clerk please read the vote the vote is 10-1 the motion carries thank you annually the board will review each executive limitation at the time of the monitor at the time the monitoring report is provided to determine if revisions are needed.

[02:32:12] School board members may offer amendments to executive limitation 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 to which it's to be considered. At this time, no amendments have been submitted in advance of this meeting.

[02:32:30] So executive limitation 13, safety and security, was placed on the consent agenda for the later approval tonight in tonight's meeting and to maintain the current language for the year ahead. At this time, the board is going to take a few minutes to document their individual feedback. So we're going to go ahead and take a 10-minute recess, but a real 10 minutes.

[02:32:49] And so I will see you guys back here at 942. Board members, please take your seats.

[02:45:35] Members, please take your seats. Okay. Kicking things back off. Agenda item 10.01,

[02:46:50] Fiscal year 2026 third quarter budget review. I call on Dr. Reid for a presentation on the FY26 third quarter budget review. Thank you, Madam Chair. It's my pleasure to have our world-class Chief Finance Officer, Miss Lee Burden, to present our third quarter review this evening.

[02:47:09] So, Miss Burden, enlighten us, please. I will. Good evening, Chairman Anderson, School Board members, and Dr. Reid. The third quarter review offers an opportunity for revisions to the fiscal 26 budget based on revenue or expenditure changes after mid-year was completed in December.

[02:47:26] The purpose of the quarterly budget reviews is to provide the school board with information about the funds under their control and allow an opportunity to review all school department and centralized budgets to determine if any adjustments are needed. Typical changes are on the revenue side with accompanying expenditure adjustments and some Some examples of that would be like new large grant awards, large increases to existing grants, any unanticipated revenue increases, and some examples of those would be like FEMA, insurance settlements, projected changes in state revenue, those kinds of things.

[02:48:04] But for this third quarter, we do not have any large new or increased grant awards or any other unanticipated revenue or changes to expenditures, so the third quarter review in front of you is very simple and the fund statements in the appendix reflect the same data that you approved at the December meeting when we did mid-year. I do want to say that the lack of third quarter budget changes is testament to our accurate budgeting for revenue and so great job budget team and we convey this information to the county for inclusion in their third quarter packet

[02:48:40] to the Board of Supervisors. That's it. Thank you Miss Burden. I don't see any lights, but I may in a second, but I'm going to go ahead and take my turn really fast. I do want to say that I am incredibly impressed with the fact that we're doing a great job in terms of recognizing where our funding is going to come from and actually figuring out how we're going to execute it and then following through with that plan.

[02:49:03] So I commend you and your staff for all the work that you do with that, and I am extremely impressed with how things are going. So thank you for all your hard work. Thank you. Mr. Moon. Thank you. Thank you. I want to congratulate financial staff and superintendent for being able to predict exactly where we're going to be at the end of the third quarter.

[02:49:29] Well, we're not at your end yet, so. But at the same time, at the same time, I have never seen no adjustment for any of the fund categories. Me neither. Straight down, any time, any time.

[02:49:47] Nope. as if like it's like I made them numbers, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, just do you want to do any adjustments just put all the zeros down as if not even on not even a single cent left or right. Wow. Yeah, we do not have any changes. I know it's it's it's unprecedented. Yeah, just incredible I find because I you know I was I was going I did ask my staff because I just couldn't believe these numbers and that never once did have we had anything like this not to

[02:50:25] my knowledge thank you mr frisch thank you i turned to dr reed and i said i don't think this has ever happened in my time on the board and for mr moon to say that i mean that's like the history of the elected school board right there so my question is um you probably didn't need to give a report if there was no change but i think it's a testament to the work of your team the superintendent the school division that we're at this point can you speak a little bit to the discipline and foresightedness that is required to get to a point where a third

[02:51:03] quarter budget review is static yeah because there is quite a bit of work that goes into this point I may let Ms. Wigington speak to that because she's a lot closer to the to the actual work that's done on it but I do know that all of the budget staff spend a couple of weeks reviewing each department each line item um projecting what we think we're going to spend to the end of the year um alice do you want to sure elaborate on that a little bit um yeah so um despite there not being any adjustments i'm sorry mr fish i'm short and

[02:51:42] so i'm over here but um we do monitor every single fund um on a quarterly basis throughout the year along with our program managers we review trends they give us a heads up about anything that might be forthcoming that we might need to recognize and so i mean this year we are managing everything within the budgeted funds that we currently have which is why you don't really see any adjustments but the monitoring is continuous throughout the year for the current year while we're also developing the budget for the next year thank you i just one more time thank you for this i i know that this is

[02:52:22] NOT NECESSARILY SOMETHING THAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN EVERY QUARTER BUT I THINK WE SHOULD CELEBRATE IT AND PARTICULARLY THE HARD WORK THAT WENT INTO IT THANKS DR. ANDERSON THANK YOU AND ALL THE TIME THAT I'VE BEEN ON THE BOARD I DON'T THINK I'VE SEEN THIS EITHER SO I DID WANT TO THROW THAT IN THE CONVERSATION AND I DO APPLAUD THE WORK THAT'S BEING DONE TO MAKE SURE THAT WE ARE AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE BUT I THINK A SIDE EFFECT OF THIS OR RATHER AN unintended consequence it's because very often adjustments are made because of additional grant monies that are coming in and those other adjustments so that's

[02:52:59] kind of a negative that we're not having anything new coming in or adjusted or bumped up can you speak to that a little bit yeah we do have some small grants that changed but we maintain as all school divisions and counties do we maintain a grants reserve in the budget which is a dollar amount for that set aside for revenue and a dollar amount that set aside for grant expenditures so if when we get little small grants that have increased that are coming in we can use that grant reserve to go ahead and fund those because we have an appropriation for those numbers as part of the larger budget it's really only

[02:53:39] the big grants that come to you all for approval because they're they're too large to fit within the grant reserve because I do remember in years past we've had some changes and primarily ace you know six hundred thousand dollars here seven hundred thousand dollars they've come in because of again of adjusted titles and block grants so I kind of worry that not even having those changes it it's that part is not positive the the last couple of years actually the last three or four years, we have handled any changes to ACE at year end.

[02:54:15] Thank you. Thank you. Agenda item 10.03. Oh, no, 10.02. Sorry about that. Strategic plan update. Madam Chair, I had my light up for a question. Oh, okay. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. Thank you. So, I can address my comments to the superintendent if she walks up. Okay. So, regarding the mid-year budget you know I appreciate that the accuracy in this this new occurrence I

[02:54:49] was thinking about in October of 25 when we looked at EL5 for financial planning that was one that I found not compliant because there wasn't enough forward planning to really be financial planning I think we need as a board to spend more time looking at you know expenses and where we could be saving money there were a few things I wanted to ask the superintendent about you know and using this opportunity as a time to say review what we're spending on technology you

[02:55:25] know we seemingly have over 700 resources and are all of those worth their money you know I heard from parents last night in the South Lakes pyramid that there are so many different platforms and there's confusion and parents are trying to navigate parent view insists and Google and Schoology and they still can't help their kid at the end of the night.

[02:55:45] So, and I did just see that Schoology, the contract is through June of 2026. What's the status with that contract? Are we, is there a process in place now to actively extend it as is allowed, I think, for two years?

[02:56:02] Or are we seeking a new RFP for that? So, I think, I'm sorry, anyhow, I, in terms of, I know you emailed today and asked about the Schoology.

[02:56:18] contract I believe dr. Presidio we have a response to that I think it's up in June 26th it was a response we provided and I know there's a process for out years to add to the contract and I'm not sure what the exact plan was I know that was a contract developed prior to my arrival so I wasn't entirely sure what the working plans and we haven't had a chance to talk about it since the email just came in today yeah that was just right before the board meeting when I SAW THAT SO I DON'T HAVE ALL THE CONTRACT INFORMATION WHAT I CAN TELL YOU IS THOUGH WE'RE GOING TO REVIEW THAT

[02:56:53] WE'LL PROVIDE A RESPONSE TO MS. MARIN AND TO THE BOARD MEMBERS IN TERMS OF TIMELINE AND PROCESS SO WHAT I'M HEARING IS THERE ISN'T INFORMATION TOP OF MIND BY THE SUPERINTENDENT AND CHIEFS ABOUT THE LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM CONTRACT THAT IS DUE THAT IS EXPIRED IN JUNE WELL IT'S NOT TECHNICALLY expired I believe Dr. Presidio has indicated that there are there were agreements in the original contract to have add-on years but I don't want to make it up tonight on the spur of the moment with very little notice so I want to make sure that we provide accurate information to the board if I

[02:57:30] can clarify I'm aware that the contract is through June 2026 I'm aware that the contract has two one-year extensions and I appreciate your quickness in responding to that my question is it seems that the superintendent and chiefs are not able to speak to whether the intention is to extend Schoology and if we have the budget to do that or if we will going through a new RFP process.

[02:57:53] In other instances, like when we were recompeting health care, I can remember our chief financial officer talking to us in advance and letting us know that this was coming. So again, this is an example of how when we do quarterly reviews, it's an opportunity for us to talk about our expenses and given everything that's been shared tonight by parents and such about tech, I would like to know more about the spending on that.

[02:58:17] So but we need to know if we're going to be recompeting Schoology or not. So we will provide that information. This came in this afternoon as a request, so we'll provide that information. Excuse me, but next Friday, if I could finish my statement, please said that we were going to provide that next Friday and the weekly update.

[02:58:37] It's very possible the answer already is sitting within the department. just wasn't prepared this evening to present on that. I'm aware you sent me a response. I've already thanked you for that. You've told me two or three times that you got the question this morning. The thing is, if there is a contract for the learning management system of this board that is up for reconsideration by June, we should know post haste what is happening. Please do not put it in a Friday letter. This is what the public discussion is for. Friday letters are not public.

[02:59:08] Thank you. Ms. Dixer. Again, we're talking about contracts. I'm just going to mention that Schology contract has two years option on it. So if this contract doesn't end in this year, right? So you have to see the whole length of contract. That's what we were doing with the previous contract, sole source one, that it was two years contract or three or two years and four months. So I don't think we can just go in and cancel in the middle. There's a whole

[02:59:44] uh issues with that and the whole system will crash what we are trying to educate our students we can discuss this and continue to discuss this until the uh next two years then the contract can be renegotiated that's how it works in the contracting world but because people can actually cause problems and like you know say that you guys breach the contract to us as well so the the vendors so i think uh you know having a contract just one option you're ending in june

[03:00:17] is not the end of the contract just wanted to state that miss baron you still have your light on would you like a go back uh sure thank you just to clarify i'm not suggesting the contract end to be clear our contract has a date of 2026 on it with two-year options i've worked in procurement I run federal grant programs I get it I know how contracts work what I don't know is if the superintendent plans to continue Schoology or if she intends to recompete the

[03:00:51] proposal for our learning management system and if she if she wants to do one or two years since last night I listened to parents tell me how difficult Schoology was and how inconsistently it is used this is very top of mind for me so while we're talking about budget I thought it was an opportune time to ask that question further. I welcome the opportunity for us to discuss it at length. Thank you. Dr. Anderson for a go back. Thank you. Just kind of reflecting back on other major contracts that have been switched since I've been on the board. One of the conclusions

[03:01:29] that I'm coming to and you don't have to tell me if I'm right or wrong is that we would not be moving from Schoology at this time because we're already in March and if this contract is ending at the end of this year particularly having to move things over that takes a little bit of time.

[03:01:45] So I would anticipate exercising at least one of these additional options for an extension even if you were planning on moving elsewhere because we still need a we need we still need some time for transfer of data of training and all of that.

[03:02:04] So it would just be my conclusion that these options would be exercised in the very near term just because we are already in March of 2026 I just want to share that thought I'm not asking for a confirmation I would just offer that a decision of that magnitude the learning management system for an entire school division would not be a unilateral decision and there is a process for that I also want to make sure that I have that I'm thoughtful and measured and responding publicly about that because I know

[03:02:41] our department that works with Schoology likely has information that I want to make sure I go back and check in with them prior to providing more public comment on the on that particular contract sure absolutely that kind of leads me to another inquiry my wondering is how do you and not being unilateral about that decision making who are the stakeholders who would be involved in providing feedback to help inform the decision obviously those who are in-house in the technology space

[03:03:18] is there a space for parents to give feedback teachers to give feedback onto its usability and you know user friendliness etc. I am not entirely sure who was originally again I wasn't here when it was originally selected Dr. Presidio do you want to elaborate perhaps on the stakeholders or the groups perhaps that gave feedback or how that process might evolve yeah so again this is a multi-departmental collaborative initiative it includes the instructional services department

[03:03:51] the technology department financial services with procurement the RFP process is many months long where we begin the process with gathering our user requirements for what we need the particular product to do so we solicit feedback from all of our stakeholders to do that we did that with the original contract we would do that again we would use that information to build our user requirements and then there would be a committee that would work on the RFP process supported by financial services who would handle all the contractual negotiations and everything in response

[03:04:29] to the bids that we receive but it is a lengthy process to be sure so again given that none of these things have been initiated i can kind of just signal at least to myself where i think we're heading but i do want to just take this opportunity to just plug in um just doing an evaluation of schoology and its usefulness and i i know that um the schools at least where my children go teachers are constantly pushing parent use of Schoology as an opportunity to remain informed of what's happening in their classroom and to

[03:05:05] check in and I think we've even said that here but there's a lot of gaps and I would welcome an opportunity for an evaluation yes ma'am I know dr. Presidio and I talked about that this evening as we were reviewing how to best respond to the questions posed agenda item 10.02 strategic plan update I call on dr. Reed Thank you, Madam Chair. I am thrilled to present our strategic plan update for March.

[03:05:34] And as a reminder to our public, each month we share an update on our work around the strategic plan to highlight the efforts in FCPS as we pursue our strategic goals. Excuse me. I know. Thank you.

[03:05:50] I am really thrilled tonight to have two of our key members of our fine and performing arts staff here, Erin Stratton, our senior manager for Fine Arts, K-12, thank you Erin for being here, and Tara Taylor, our educational specialist for theater arts, and they are both going to be phone-a-friend colleagues this evening, and I told Tara she might even need to sing a response if we, if we're really, what, yeah, so, and you know, I just want to say that our theater, our Fine and Performing Arts staff are some of our hardest working staff, the evenings, the connections,

[03:06:29] with children and young people the safe spaces for our young people to take risks and learn new skills it's amazing the work that's done and I honestly think Fairfax County Public Schools that is one of our most serious points of pride so I'm just I'm very proud of the work that they lead so this evening we're going to connect our update to goal 2 which is this supported included and empowered goal and really this conversation around inclusion and a sense of belonging and I love that we talk about each of our students have what

[03:07:08] we call our Friday night lights right and the thing that makes them shine and be excited about school and for many it's theater and I have the opportunity to many evenings throughout theater season to have a chance to see the work of our young people and the many many adults that are behind these enormous productions and it's fabulous to see students behind the scenes in front of the scenes on the stage doing the sets it's pretty incredible we're one of the few divisions nationwide to offer a comprehensive middle school theater curriculum actually, which is very important.

[03:07:47] We have approximately 4,500 students enrolled in middle school theater courses during the school day. And we have more than 4,000 students participating annually in extracurricular programs, which include music, short plays, drama clubs, theater arts trips.

[03:08:03] And these programs develop foundational performance and technical skills, confident student leaders, and they strengthen the pathway to high school theater excellence. It's really just an amazing community. So I'd like for the clerk, for us to have a chance to see the impact of our middle school theater programs, let's actually hear from some of our middle school students who participate in them.

[03:08:28] Madam Clerk, please play the video. - Good afternoon.

[03:08:50] - Theater is so special for me because it's a place where you get to express yourself through the eyes of a character, connect with who they are, and step into someone else's story. And the amazing part of theater is that it is so much more than just performing on stage.

[03:09:05] It's a place where you can be your truest self without feeling judged. You can make lasting friendships just by singing or dancing together and bond with others over one shared passion. I never really wanted to do theater, but my mom pointed it out at the chorus selection sheet and she said it'd be fun.

[03:09:24] So I was like, why not? But because I've done theater, I feel like I've had so many more skills and opportunities I wouldn't have done. Like, learning both the technical theater and theater appreciation side of things has helped me become a better person, whether it be more outgoing or being more productive.

[03:09:42] Theater has helped me in school by helping me find my people and the community that I would like to put myself in. It's made me look forward to school more, and I'll be really sad when the school year ends. But I know that I will have friends within theater that will always support me.

[03:10:02] It has helped me with self-advocacy, confidence, and me trying to put myself out there for new opportunities. I saw Tech Theatre and I said, "That looks fun," 'cause I kind of have stage fright and I don't like really being on stage, but I thought that would be fun to be part of the magic that happens backstage.

[03:10:18] There's so many people backstage working to make sure the show runs smoothly, and it's just like, I never knew that before. Theatre has just helped me be happier overall as a person, and my school programs have also helped me reach out to community theaters, community churches to help out with programs in there, which helps me make new friends and meet new people that will help me continue theater.

[03:10:42] - We do have shows throughout the year. For middle school, we have one in the fall and we can participate with the high schoolers for one in the spring. And then we have a summer show. We also do courtyard of our show, which is where a bunch of kids come together, we make our own skits.

[03:10:58] It's definitely helped me strengthen my social skills, problem solving, making friends. All the people there are really inclusive and they're like really open to new people. A full-time theater teacher in public schools is not a common occurrence.

[03:11:14] That's what makes Fairfax County Public Schools truly unique. Theater builds communication, collaboration, creative and critical thinking skills, but most importantly the opportunity that theater provides to a student is to put themselves in another's shoes to learn a story to learn about another culture to empathize and what i love about fairfax county is that we believe that that is a skill we want to promote and continue to cultivate with our students which is going to make a better world for all of us excellence equity and opportunity yeah you know

[03:11:53] what um that right there is some that's magic right that is magic every day i particularly love young man whose mother saw it and thought it was a great idea kind of uh rub back some memories um but anyhow this is uh our strategic plan report uh march 26th will um well let me look here april 7th uh is our next equitable access and opportunity goal for work session and we'll be talking about goal two um on march 26. so madam chair that concludes this month's uh strategic plan update

[03:12:28] thank you uh we're gonna kick things off with mr frisch first uh thank you to the amazing team that's here with you tonight dr reed um people may not know this but they do more in this room than just hold school board meetings um last year i had the the pleasure of attending a production of mean girls here at luther jackson middle school um complete with the use of ardeus as part of the set and exceptional work Stacey Jones the theater arts teacher here is a gift to our school division

[03:13:07] this year in the first semester they had Alice in Wonderland here and more than 900 people came to see Alice in Wonderland and if you're thinking gosh I'm so sorry sorry I missed that the Wizard of Oz is coming up in April April 30th I believe here at Luther Jackson so go to the Luther Jackson Middle School website if you want to attend one of these opportunities and one thing that's really great is seeing the thread of the middle school students who really catch fire in theater and in middle school and continue on into high school where we also have incredible

[03:13:44] productions every single year so thank you for being here on behalf of all the educators who make our middle school theater arts programs run we couldn't do it without them and you know we We encounter the students here at Luther Jackson every week, it seems like at the beginning of the year as they're practicing on this stage in the hours before the public meeting here starts and they're always enthusiastic and it's fun watching them get into character.

[03:14:10] So thank you. Thank you. Ms. Dixit. Thank you, Dr. Rear, for the presentation again. As a theater mom myself, wait, I'm not Rachna. Oh. Nice.

[03:14:26] So, I wanted to say something else though. I recently went to Rocky Run a middle school after school program and they were practicing for this play and the room was just so you know engaged and in their learning and it just makes them whole middle school experience I think very very fun for students because it's a very quick two years and I think events were going to middle school they're like looking for a place to belong, and I think one child said that, my people, and you find your own

[03:15:03] people in different clubs, and theater of course is the biggest club other than like volleyball I saw that day, and I'm looking forward to their show, which is going to be next couple of months, so I appreciate the team here, and thank you for all the hard work you do for our students because I know each and every students enjoyed them thank you so much Dr. Anderson thank you that was fantastic to watch and I particularly like the fact that not only where were front of the house kids featured but the back of the house kids were featured as well

[03:15:43] because we often do not see them as part of the core theater program but they are the the crew counts just as much. Two quick questions. One, are all of our schools as you've gone and evaluated theater, well not evaluated, and observed theater programs, are they all similarly positioned to do a fall, a spring, and I heard a summer program for the school that was featured here. Do we have any disparities across our programs that must be shored up? So that was an interesting example because that was a student from hayfield so they have the luxury of the secondary school we're in

[03:16:22] the same building where they can have i'm so sorry gotta use my theater voice uh that direct collaboration um but thankful to the school board and leadership and the implementation of the stipends over the past few years yes there's a shared expectation that every middle school program does a short play or dramatic piece than a main stage musical which is often a junior most all of our middle schools are doing some sort of an improv club and then many of them do offer some summer opportunities or collaborations with the high school to build that recruitment

[03:16:57] and vertical articulation but our secondary schools are very specially placed okay thank you i thought that was unusual and you actually captured my second question mr moon thank you madam chair uh dr taylor wow i knew you were good but i didn't know you were that good with the teaching dancing you know growing up one thing that i never had was moving with my body somehow my body person never never would cooperate with my teenage thinking so uh well you know just to

[03:17:35] put it i'm the theater and dance specialist so if you need some lessons let me know so i should take a lesson from you uh with that since a doctor doctor rin mentioned equitable access uh a few A few years ago, I happened to be at one of the high schools in the county, and they had a special program for ESL students, ESL students.

[03:18:01] We have many ESL students from different parts of the world who may be struggling in learning the language, but they may have a passion, they may also have a talent in acting and singing and dancing as well, but when they are competing, when they are auditioning with native-born you know students they may not be always successful in getting the roles. So this school created a special program for ESR students and that was very touching. I think you know more and more of our school should be you know should provide such such program for the ESR students

[03:18:41] and students with disabilities as well. I love that you brought that up Mr. Moon. Thank you. So that was actually Annandale was our first school to do that. It was called Theater with - That was where I went. - Yeah, wow, thank you. And it was created by an ESOL teacher in collaboration with the theater teacher.

[03:19:03] And as we've tried to build more accessible, inclusive classrooms and our programs throughout the district, it's been really interesting to see where we've been able to pinpoint the schools and communities where those particular programs were really helpful. We also created a planning and pacing guide that was built for our teachers to support ESOL inclusion that we've made available and provided teachers with.

[03:19:26] So that's helped a lot. The adaptive theater curriculum that we've been working on has been a big ask from schools over the past three years. So we have seen particularly at the high school level, a more demand to provide adaptive theater courses that we're looking to provide more resources for.

[03:19:43] - You know, that particular night at Ann and the High School, I also saw school community spirit right there, completely supportive of these ESL students performing.

[03:20:00] - Mr. Dannon. - Thank you very much. And I just wanna echo everybody's thoughts that we appreciate all the work that you do. I think in a world where social media and technology are having the effect of pulling us apart, these programs teach kids critical life lessons, critical thinking, creativity.

[03:20:20] And I use this word purposely, they're essential, right? And so I also appreciate Mr. Moon bringing up about equity concerns, and so I'd love to talk at a later time about where you see those gaps and what we can do as a board to help support you because -- and I appreciate, again, you bringing up adaptive programming.

[03:20:38] I'd love to hear more about that as well because I'm very glad to hear that. So I also got a chance to see Mean Girls at Robinson. My first time ever -- I never saw the movie, so I got all those references. And I like to think I'm a cool dad, not a regular dad. But thank you all very much for all the work that you do.

[03:20:55] I really, really appreciate it. Mr. McIlvain. Thank you Dr. Reed. Thank you Dr. Taylor. I got my drama start at middle school on the same stage where you taught Dr. Taylor under the direction of Linda Clagg who preceded you by a couple decades maybe but it right but middle school drama was such an important program for me. It taught me confidence. It was really a place where those who didn't necessarily fit in other places could fit in and find find their people so just as we heard in the

[03:21:32] video so that was so powerful I'm also so grateful to you for including my dad in your productions over many years and I'm sure he's watching at home tonight and I'm very happy to see you there so thank you all for all you do thank you missing John Cunningham so I am a drama mama all of my children were very involved in theater and actually one went on to major in musical theater and is in New York right now and it all started at the schools I was really

[03:22:07] lucky to have my kids attend Rose Hill Elementary that has had a elementary school play for years and so they actually started an elementary school and I would love to see the expansion of theater in elementary schools and I understand that disney is now offering grants for elementary school theater programs uh so that's something that we can look into um but i really want to thank you for your work and i know we featured um theater but my other daughters were also involved in band and choir um tried orchestra

[03:22:44] but that didn't work out so all of the performing arts are just critical and i really want to thank you for the work that that you do because not every you know the kids feel safe and supported in these kind of programs and sports is not always the answer for everyone and i was one of those that sports wasn't the answer for and the fact that they have these outlets and the fact that i know my neighbor was a tech person in at edison high school and now that's his business that's

[03:23:17] what he does and I know that some of our kids are on Broadway right now so the confidence what it does for our kids what it does for our communities how it brings parents together because these productions don't happen just with the staff I mean that the parents are bringing in props they're doing costumes they're helping with all of that it is such a community builder and I just really want to thank you for all the work that you do I know that my kids are very artistically inclined and it skips a generation that's and and i say it skips a

[03:23:54] generation because you do need people to be in the audience you know you need people that cannot perform and i am one of those uh and a huge supporter and just thank you i know that across the board and i would love to see this in elementary schools i was just at rose hill's play friday and i know another one of my schools is also doing a play at um branconi elementary and again what it does for those kids what it does for the community thank you i i just can't thank you guys enough miss lady thank you thank you tara um we've known each other a long time we've come a long way

[03:24:33] haven't we it's fantastic i was a drama mama myself with my kids at marshall um and the talent and uh i'm just also going to highlight uh what my new colleague uh recognized which there's no devices in their children's hands when they're doing this nor nor in music orchestra or band And I bring this up because as families move from middle to high school, something happens to our parents where they suddenly think, oh, high school's the real thing.

[03:25:02] We've got to take the real, like the impressive to college electives. And I just want to tell everyone out there that four years of marching band or four years of band, four years of orchestra, four years of theater, four years of the arts, fine or practical, colleges absolutely love.

[03:25:19] They love you in the arts because you are doing all of the things, including ensemble work and creativity and collaboration and standing and delivering a line. All the things you have to do in life without, you know, off script because you've learned it.

[03:25:34] So I think that's fantastic. And I also just want to reiterate because I've gotten some inquiries around the arts and some advocacy not to cut the arts. And I can stand here and tell you that I will never vote to cut any of our arts programs. But I just want our parent community to understand that the children pick the classes.

[03:25:53] And so we need students to select choir or select theater to justify a full-time position as opposed to sharing perhaps a position between two schools. Because as we've talked about before, fiscally we're in some rough shape.

[03:26:12] And we have to run classes at 30, 31. And just so keep that in mind, which means 150 students in middle school need to pick theater for a full-time theater teacher so I I hope that happens I just advocated for that to happen I believe that the arts are amazing and I've just seen in my years of with my own children but also supervising performing arts the success that those students meet with is just is just phenomenal so again thank you for what you do keep doing it appreciate you thank you all so much moving on to

[03:26:48] agenda item 10.03 academic matters I call on Dr. Reed all right madam chair I am thrilled to provide an update on our walk to read program which is a targeted early literacy initiative currently operating as a pilot program it's focused on strengthening our grade 3 literacy outcomes and our project momentum early literacy schools are where we're piloting this instructional model it's not new materials it's not new any kind of technology it's about a

[03:27:23] structured approach to how we're grouping students and responding to data in real time this work reflects our continued commitment to ensure that every student is reading proficiently by the end of third grade so just want to share for a minute it's a skills based grouping model that really enables and has all staff all hands on deck within a third grade grade level students participate in a dedicated 30-minute intervention block separate from core instruction and the walk part means they actually walk to different locations

[03:27:59] different classrooms within the building to receive instruction that's aligned to their specific reading needs while all schools provide structured literacy interventions walk to read differentiates their approach by implementing this coordinated grade-level model that actually pools all instructional staff. If the intervention model operationalizes collective responsibility, which is really important when we're talking about our children.

[03:28:26] Staff with more expertise in reading intervention are assigned to students that have the most intensive needs or the most ground to make up. Students are grouped using multiple data sources including benchmark assessments and ongoing formative data the intervention groups are formed around the common skill needs not class rosters and so that enables students below grade level to get targeted skill specific instruction the intervention group size is generally more it's intentionally smaller where the needs are

[03:28:59] the greatest we have if you had a chance to walk through one of these schools recently you'll see their data boards where each student in third grade has a data tile that the staff routinely and weekly review they regroup students regularly based on skills and the skill growth schools use these visible data boards like the one in the slide to track student progress so what we want to see is students moving into that green section and I know when I'm visiting schools and our

[03:29:35] leadership team has recently been out visiting schools we've had an opportunity to sit with staff and review their data boards and this is just another way to think about progress across the course of a year that isn't sort of snugged into a computer file so if we could for a minute let's take a look at walk to read in action at holland meadows and i know dr king and i both were recently there visiting with our principal Hasibi Cruz and her staff and wow they are knocking it out of the

[03:30:08] park so let's take a look at Holland Meadows, Madam Clerk. FCPS elementary schools provide 30 minutes for daily intervention in addition to core reading instruction. Walk to Read intensifies this intervention block for schools needing support to reach the strategic plan goal of reading by grade three. Let's take a look at this approach in action at Holland Meadows, one of the 29 schools that have been using walk to read for the past three months. We take all the data from the assessments and then go over it together as a team and kind of

[03:30:43] decide if students seem to be moved you know around from group to group and kind of make sure that their group is fitting their needs better. Recently in a data dialogue we had we were really excited about these students who were showing moderate and high risk in their academic screeners and now are showing success in meeting and exceeding expectations in their reading. We know what they need and we you know got all the humans we needed to make it happen and so there's just there's no way for us all to be able to do that with just the classroom teachers alone the teacher is not feeling torn by working with students at a small group and then having to worry about managing students that are sitting at their desks

[03:31:22] doing other tasks everyone's engaged in the same skills and learning. The administration came up to me and said hey we need as many people as we need to help with our third graders. I said, George, not a problem. I love our kids and I want to help. And I started working with the reading specialist and she was helping me learn what I needed to teach my group. I talked with the other teachers and they told me about the kids that I would be working with and what would help and trying to do what I can. Well, I think what Walk to Read does is catch students before they fall or before they're marginalized and left behind.

[03:32:02] So basically, it's when people start walking to other classrooms to learn more about maybe other stuff that they're teaching, but they're not teaching their own classrooms. So before we walked to read, I could like spell only like five sentences, but now I can spell like a lot.

[03:32:23] Since I started Walk to Read, I was having a little bit of trouble reading words that have very hard stuff. But when I first came to Walk to Read, she helped me sound them out.

[03:32:42] She teached me new tricks, so that really helped improve my reading very well. So that was really helpful. I noticed it when I started seeing, oh, that's really easy now.

[03:32:58] Instead of calling it Walk to Read, we could almost call it Run to Read because I feel like as soon as it's time for Walk to Read, the kids are like running out of the classroom, ready to go to their group. They're just super enthusiastic and excited about this transition during the day. They get to work with different students and different teachers, and I think that that's been a huge thing for a lot of them.

[03:33:17] I love the collective and the shared responsibility that Walk2Reading has created for our team. I also love that we get to interact with students across the grade level. I remember us feeling at the beginning of the school year, like, how are we going to meet this wide range of needs?

[03:33:36] I think they're really excited. They love sharing what they've been learning in their groups. And I feel like it also has built their confidence with the core instruction. like some of my students who were feeling less confident in reading are able to access the tier one instruction the whole group instruction and feel more confident in that setting. As teachers I'm giving my tier one instruction and it's really helpful knowing that all students including the ones that have reading plans or ones that don't they're all getting the help that they need and especially those ones on reading plans my two students that you saw earlier they have gone from high risk to on the grade level. Walk to read

[03:34:13] has really helped with planning because you are focused on one group and one skill and you're not trying to pull from all over the place so it does kind of relieve some of the burden of planning when you're focused on one and meeting one group in that time of the day. Now we're rocking and rolling with Walk to Read and I'm so happy to say that 10% more of our students are reading on grade level which is aligned to the initiative that we have as a county with all students are reading by third grade so we are tracking that progress connecting everything with the reading plans and just making it all work as a team the teachers feel empowered anybody working with the kids can see the difference

[03:34:52] well I think everyone's really loving on each other's kids and we're like it's sort of like a I guess a happy third grade family I think it has brought people closer because we come together we look at data for all the kids and we're all moving their names around and just checking their progress together and we all celebrate when kids are making really great growth and so what oh nice thank you Dr. Ponce I do want to throw out a big shout out to Marine Lemon and Dr. Ponce and Miss Neal and I'm gonna say a number of our leadership

[03:35:31] team Mr. Smith Dr. King Miss Neal Miss Hunstad many people have gone out to look at programs and walk through classrooms and our principal Miss Cruz that you heard from our principals are really they're just doing a fabulous job working with our educators in this and I couldn't be prouder of the efforts so as we look at this is just a pilot in a subset of our schools but you can see here that the percent increase of students that are already at end of year expectations are above would be the early literacy folks we've had an 11.9

[03:36:08] percent for example decrease in students below grade level 11.9 percent that our mid-year expectations are above and we really believe that this program is growing the green at a similar or faster rate than the division overall so we are thrilled with the progress and i also want to thank the schools this was extra work a couple months ago when we said we really think this structure could support stronger outcomes for children and so i really want to thank the staff that took this on and made this a really i think a positive

[03:36:47] project right now so i'm happy to answer any questions madam chair thank you dr reed we're going to kick things off with dr anderson thank you just a couple of basic questions to start with you mentioned all hands on deck who participates well every child is part of this and in terms of I guess the adults who are the hands. Yes ma'am. I'm going to let Ms. Lemon respond since she I know we had a few conversations about this and the team rallied to train 29 schools

[03:37:22] worth of staff in a staff work day. So I'll let Ms. Lemon talk about that. That's been so crucial that we have had two planning days with principals in schools to make this very clear and aligned across all 29 schools.

[03:37:40] And because third grade is our target, that is where all the resources go. You'll probably hear some schools say, we've expanded to second grade or we've expanded to all of our grades, and we've given permission to do that as long as they can make third grade still be the priority. And the staff supporting at third grade are the classroom teachers, typically the reading teacher some staff use the librarian the AART sometimes even a instructional coach so there's definitely staff to spread up around to make sure that we have all the children covered and then based on the children's needs there

[03:38:18] might be smaller sizes and teachers with more specificity we've also used the high-impact tutors so that they can get targeted instruction and is this daily yeah this intervention block is daily every day if you could speak a little bit to where does it fall into the reading block because I know very often I've worked in schools my entire career sometimes in order to offer the intervention block the time has to come from someplace else is it part of the reading block or are we kind of taking some time outside the reading block so the reading block still remains 90 minutes and then it's outside the reading block so then that time must be coming from writing or science or

[03:38:57] something else because this year we've asked elementary schools to have an intervention block during the day so it's that we're taking that specific intervention block and how does this connect with the reading plans because I know we received the report last year where some schools had thousands and thousands of reading plans can you talk a little bit in terms of how that dovetails yes so every child that has a reading plan automatically has things updated in their MTSS SIS plan and this is additional support so the children already have a reading plan and then what we can do is use what's in their reading plan to provide targeted support some of the things that are in

[03:39:37] reading plans are more long-range goals and oftentimes this could be a long range goal but it could also be a short skill based upon like the benchmark unit they just took and analyzing that and seeing a child has a need for this specific skill and then we teach that specific skill during walk to read thank you and are you finding that this kind of targeted work is unlocking the black box that often comes with when you're speaking with staff in terms of why student is struggling with reading knowing whether is it fluency and is it because they are having issues with encoding or decoding or is it comprehension is it a matter of making connections or summarizing sometimes it's

[03:40:16] hard for teachers to kind of pinpoint you know what the issues are where the weaknesses are are you finding that this is helping to provide that deeper level of knowledge I would say yes for two reasons one because we're progress monitoring so often it's really building the capacity of the staff to do that analysis and to see like okay we think it is decoding so we're going to put this lesson in place for two weeks to do did it work right and then if that we're showing overall growth and yes it did and we can continue that path and if it didn't then it helps us go back and look and examine again as a team to think where's our next

[03:40:56] path uh the other thing i would say just the data that dr reed just shared from the vowels for mid year we are showing an outpacing growth compared to the rest of the district so that makes me feel really good that we're on the right pace for getting accelerated growth and reading and i was glad i'm glad to hear you say that um this is um really targeted and the other thing that i i'm a a big fan of that I saw here is the data wall I think having that visual representation and reminder of where students are it just really helps to I guess increase the sense of urgency that is around this work I give kudos to

[03:41:35] Dr. Reed for that suggestion having it visual and not in a computer screen but being having it tangible and being able to move the magnets it makes a world of difference because you can't hide from it but the thing that I just almost lost my train of thought with that I appreciate you sharing was that regular evaluation opportunity because very often intervention intervention intervention and nobody monitors is that intervention working but taking the opportunity to stop after an appropriate period to evaluate is really key because otherwise you can't determine whether you need to do something else and you can't move on to a different skill because you don't know how what you are intervening

[03:42:15] ABOUT HOW IT'S WORKING. THE LAST PIECE IS THE DATA THAT YOU TALKED ABOUT IN THE LAST SLIDE. IS THAT VALS OR IREADY? I GOT A LITTLE CONFUSED. I BELIEVE THAT IS VALS DATA. OKAY. BECAUSE THE SLIDE SAYS IREADY GRADE LEVEL PERFORMANCE.

[03:42:34] LET ME DIVEL CHECK THAT. THEN THAT WOULD BE IREADY. BUT WE'VE TALKED SO MUCH ABOUT VALS. WE'RE SEEING SIMILAR RESULTS WITH VALS. ALL RIGHT. VERY GOOD. THANK YOU. MR. DANNAN.

[03:42:51] THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS. I REALLY APPRECIATE THE EFFORTS that you all have made to get kids reading by third grade, which we all know is absolutely critical. Related to some related to Dr. Anderson's question, as I heard, this is a very people intensive program. Do you have enough resources to continue this?

[03:43:09] And, you know, if this pilot works, what else would you need from us? So great questions. Essentially, right now, the focus is third grade and the people involved are in the school. We're just saying that we need them to do this for this 30 minute period.

[03:43:25] right and to the point that Dr. Anderson was talking about as well it's so difficult for a teacher who may have 25 children to differentiate effectively every day for all 25 when they're potentially behind if that makes sense. So the idea about having these very locked in groups where that's the one thing they're working on with that group of children every day we know that direct explicit instruction is going to make a difference and it is so to expand that to other grade levels requires scheduling to be done very thoughtfully master schedules at high schools i

[03:44:02] think are complex schedules for elementary schools are i think even more complex in some ways i think we could always use more resources but at this time in our budget world i think we're trying to make the most of what we do have so i think stay tuned um but uh think the more intentional the time that we can spend with the children the better the results are going to be that's just how it works and even if we retain it at the or expand it at the third grade level amongst the entire division is there an opportunity or a need for us to engage with groups like grant involved or ptas whatever to get more folks in i understand not for the more

[03:44:41] advanced groups but um you know i'll defer to uh miss lem and i think when i mention all hands on deck like we sometimes have admin we have you know like so i don't know miss lemon thoughts about grant involved pta you know i think it is really about training because we have a lot of high impact tutors doing this and they participated in several hours of training to be able to run some of the programs other research-based programs we're asking them to do to really effectively be able to support the students and to be able to collect the data that we need to make sure

[03:45:17] the children are learning. I would love to I would just say I would love to have more retired teachers. Yeah. We've really had some retired teachers come back to give time because it's a limited amount of time during the day and a smaller group. But some of our retired teachers have been some of our most amazing small group instructors. So if you're watching the board meeting and are retired or if you have a friend that is we would love to you know talk about you coming back and supporting. No I spoke with a really great group at Woodley Chase and they were very excited got everybody perked up about getting help

[03:45:54] out in the school so recognizing again this is this is a pilot what do you learned regarding students with disabilities and separately multilingual learners and how can we make sure they're included and supported. Well if they're in third grade and the school has a program in third grade they're in it so Marie do you want to talk a little bit about that and you know again I don't want to miss the point of being able to say we actually now have materials benchmark express materials for multilingual learners so we're thrilled that we can use those summary yes so no matter what your need is your

[03:46:31] needs are going to be met during walk to read and I think the real benefit of this is we've tiered the students based on different criteria like vows or I ready to say like did they start the year kind of the low grade level or on grade level or above but what we're doing is every two weeks we're looking at grade level standards so even if you came into the school below grade level or you're you're on a plan because you're you're not where you need to be right now we are still making sure you're accessing grade level material and you're working towards those grade level standards and we're actually

[03:47:08] assessing you on those grade level standards and we're really thinking that is going to continue to support closing the achievement gap thank you yeah I haven't just asked dr. King I know you were at Holland Meadows and dr. King dr. Ponce dr. Presidio miss Neal are part of our closing the achievement gap team what were some of the things you socks I know you came back kind of excited honestly yeah it was well organized students were excited about the opportunity to go and learn with different classmates and just like the two students that were in the video students were able to understand why

[03:47:44] they were why they were moving from class to class and what they were able to accomplish during that time i really enjoyed it not only at at that school but um at high blood valley as well thank you i'm going to take a very fast turn um so i heard about this originally when i was talking to you about another concern that i had um related to some of our special education kiddos and you talked to me about this was something um that you kind of had pushed the team to try which i love um And what I appreciate is that I said, I really want you to tell the board about this.

[03:48:23] And you did. So you came and talked to us. And what I see this doing is a couple of different things. When you have teachers that are working with small groups, oftentimes you have to figure out how to keep other kids entertained in the classroom in order to be able to do that work. And some of the time, that's where a little bit of the screen time often can come in.

[03:48:40] So what I loved about that is all those kids were engaged with adults in the building, and they weren't on a screen. They were all just working on different things. So I think that we're absolutely paying attention to those things across the division and looking for opportunities to make that happen. The other thing is we're creating more trusted adults within our buildings for our kids.

[03:48:59] And that cannot be understated because it could be that maybe you're fine in second grade, but you need more help in third grade. And understanding that the reading specialist or somebody or you you miss a concept in fourth grade that you need a little bit of help to get back back with.

[03:49:16] understanding that those are adults that are there to help you is is a significant thing within our schools because we know how it's creating that community even faster so i just want to say that i'm really impressed with how this has kicked off i'm looking forward to seeing whether or not this is just a promising practice in particular schools or whether or not it's a best practice that we can roll out across the division so i'm really excited to see where we we go from here. So thank you. Agenda item 11, consent agenda, are adopted rules of parliamentary procedure. Robert's rules provide for a consent agenda listing several items for approval of

[03:49:54] the board by a single motion. Many items have gone through a board review and documentation has been provided to all board members and the public in advance. Items may be removed from the consent agenda at the request of any board member prior to the meeting. The The consent agenda items are on the screen.

[03:50:11] Is there any objection to approving the consent agenda? Hearing and seeing no objection, the consent agenda is approved. Agenda item 12, new business. The following are new business items. There will not be a vote on these items this evening, but action is scheduled at a future meeting.

[03:50:27] Agenda item 13, board committee reports. I call on Mr. McElveen for a report of the audit committee. Thank you. reviewed our annual audit report and we heard some business process audit updates and as I conveyed earlier tonight we will be bringing to the full board in a closed meeting an update on a security audit.

[03:50:51] Thank you. I call on Mr. Frisch for a report of the administration committee. At long last the administration committee completed its work around a redesign of the annual evaluation process for school board office and school board member staff that will be coming to the board for consideration in the very near future. Ms. Marin for a report on the governance committee. This past Tuesday the governance committee reviewed two really important hot topics. One is AI policy which could also be being refrained as instructional technology

[03:51:31] or innovative innovation in instructional technology and the committee further reviewed the version that the superintendent provided in February and talked about a different version and how else to work on that. And the superintendent will be coming back on the next meeting on our April 14th with feedback from that discussion.

[03:51:52] And we also talked about the calendar policy and the board, excuse me, the committee will continue to discuss that. So basically we're going to keep talking and considering and gathering feedback so that when we return on April 14th, we'll be able to talk about those two policies more in depth.

[03:52:07] Thank you, Miss Marin. Agenda item 14, Superintendent Matters. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think I'll be relatively brief this evening. Just a lot of school visits since last we met.

[03:52:24] Community conversations, employee conversations, and just a lot of fun activities with students, some theater And just I hope the staff enjoy our three day weekend. There is no school tomorrow and next week.

[03:52:42] It's hard to believe, but it'll be the last week prior to spring break. So anyhow, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Reid. Agenda item 15 board matters. Next on the agenda is board matters. And I will call on each school board member to speak. We're going to kick things off with Dr.

[03:52:57] Anderson. Yes, Mr. Moon was just asking me, are my kids excited about the day off tomorrow? Yes, they are. Yes, March is Equity in Education Month and I want to take an opportunity to share that this would be a time to continue our increase of awareness and support for an education system that embraces diversity and ensures equitable opportunities and uplifts every student.

[03:53:27] And advancing equity in education is particularly important for students that are impacted by economic hardships and other barriers to learning when the inequities are reduced or eliminated the effects extend beyond schools improving workforce readiness community quality of life and the community's long-term economic vitality this month offers us the opportunity to be reflective on our progress and to share our successes and collaborate in ways to drive meaningful change I also would like to take this opportunity to recognize Glasgow Middle School's band director

[03:54:05] Mr. Andrew Sherrock who is a recipient of a Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts Grant. This grant provides the unique opportunity to commission a composer who will create original composition for the students to perform as a world premiere on their at their concert in June.

[03:54:26] Glasgow students will also have the exciting opportunity to work directly with the composer. Congratulations to Jeremiah Nelson from Annandale High School for winning the VHSL 6A High Jump State Championship. And also congratulations to another Adam, Darling Saravia, who is the VHSL girls wrestling state runner-up in her weight class. Go Adams!

[03:54:53] Congratulations to Paul's middle school counseling program for earning the RAMP designation for the American School Counselors Association, which is a wonderful designation and very rigorous and robust process.

[03:55:09] This designation recognizes schools that are committed to delivering a comprehensive data driven school counseling program in an exemplary educational environment. I do want to lastly say congratulations to the students who were awarded as this year's Student Peace Awards for Fairfax County for their work to bring kindness to the world around them.

[03:55:33] Our students are doing wonderful things to try to seek peaceful resolutions to challenging issues and using their own personal stories to drive what they are embedding in their schools. it was wonderful to be there with many of colleagues that are on at the dais tonight to congratulate them and i have to highlight from anandale high school lily rumpf from false church high school gabriella henriquez and from justice high school the student journalist including andrew budenbeck my very last thing is a reminder for families to please register for the vip summer

[03:56:12] camp for middle schools it is five weeks for rising middle school students it will be taking place for the mason district schools at glasgow middle from july 1st to july 30th transportation is provided and it is a really really good fee at a hundred dollars for those five weeks which includes field trips and lunches thank you good night mr moon thank you madam chair i was happy to join Dr. Anderson at the Peace of Words, a presentation, and along with Marcia St. John Cunning, and also Sima Dixie, Mr. McAlvin, and Ms. Lady. Am I forgetting anyone? Okay,

[03:56:52] it's good. Dr. Reed, I want to report one thing to you. It's on Tuesday, a couple of days ago, I think that was a Tuesday, or was it yesterday, I was at Performing Arts Center at the george mason university you know seeing seeing hundreds of hundreds of our third through fifth graders uh enjoying a music and other presentations from fairfax symphony orchestra i think that is a really good partnership we are having with the fairfax symphony orchestra

[03:57:26] that i saw you know how those adult musicians right adult musicians were engaged in the young students. We did sing-along, we did a play-along with the recorders, and we also did move-along, which was basically dancing, and they also was introducing opera and other, you know, major symphonies and et cetera. And, you know, coming out of that, coming out of that that day, you know,

[03:57:59] in even for a county like ours, Fairfax County, there are a lot of students who may not have a chance to go listen to major symphony orchestra and major performances and and and then seeing how Fairfax Symphony was working with a title one scores basically and giving that opportunity to our students who may not otherwise you know get to see those that I think I brought this up to your attention some time ago at least a couple of times is long long ago when we had you know

[03:58:38] all our fifth graders be able to go to wolf trap yeah and where many of those kids never have a chance to go to wolf trap and then we do provide we did provide we used to provide in working with the wolf trap that those opportunities for our our young students i think i am i'm hoping that and not too far distance in the future that we'll consider working with a place like Wolf Travel Gate.

[03:59:13] Since we're gonna be losing another performing arts center in Washington DC soon, and consider that as a alternate venue to continue giving our young students of an opportunity to experience a performance at a venue like that, thank you.

[03:59:36] - Mr. Dannon. - Good evening. So I'll start with just some logistical items. First, we've got a new principal coming to Irving Middle School, so stay tuned for an announcement and welcoming them. We've got a whole slew of upcoming events. If you missed a theater production or if you want to get another one in, we've got upcoming events at Annadale High School, Fairfax High School, Lake Braddock, Lewis, Robinson, West Springfield, Woodson.

[04:00:01] So if anybody wants to join me, let me know. We've also got several high school pyramid art shows coming up. Again, I'll put all this in my upcoming newsletter. I'm grateful that my first votes were very easy ones to recognize Women's History Month and school social work appreciation. I'd also like to wish a Ramadan Mubarak to everybody who is celebrating the end of Ramadan.

[04:00:21] I had the chance to fast for two years when I was overseas in Morocco, and it was one of the most beautiful experiences I've ever had. Wishing as well a happy Persian New Year to everybody celebrating that tomorrow and a happy spring break coming up in a couple weeks here.

[04:00:38] A number of Braddock Bravos, several students received 2026 U.S. Presidential Scholar candidates from Lake Braddock. We've got Joshua Lee, Mines Piri, Tzela Rangaro, from Thomas J. I'm sorry, T.J., Moira Clark, Ibrahim Hartich, Peyton Morris, Ethan O'Hara, and Rachel Truong.

[04:00:59] Congratulate students to you all for your nominations. And then we've got 79 students from Annadale High School, Fairfax High School, Lake Braddock, Robinson and TJ and Woodson are participating in the 2026 regional science and engineering fair so kudos to them and I also want to share I was really grateful to have my very first I'll be at a unofficial school visit to Annadale high school with my colleagues dr. Anderson and mr. moon and if you've never been an adult high school you walk in the vibes are very very good it is a really great school and I got to go witness fan quest which is really great event showcasing the importance of inclusion and it was just such a

[04:01:38] beautiful thing to see the kids working with each other and and cheering each other on and the gymnasium was rocking and it was great so I'm grateful to you all for your kind words this last few weeks few months getting started extremely grateful to all the work the staff has done to help get me on board I'm gonna try and be very thoughtful of all my questions so I don't overburden you all and I just I'm reminded lastly of my predecessors words and I'm I'm grateful for all for work it's funny a year ago I approached this board on the other side and I did it the same way I'm hoping to do here where I want to

[04:02:17] stay focused on the kids I know having spoken with all of you that you all feel the same way and we're gonna have disagreements and so forth but I do feel in my heart that we are all working hard to put our kids first and seeing events like at Annadale High School was a great reminder of why we're doing this and so um thank you everybody for the time miss dixon so i'd like to start from there i would like to welcome our new bradock district school board member tom to the board i look forward to collaborating and working together as we continue to serve our students and our community i also

[04:02:54] want to take a moment to recognize the outstanding women leadership throughout our school system during this woman history month it is especially meaningful to acknowledge the women who lead mentor, inspire every day, including FCPS staff, my fellow board members, and all those who continue to break barriers and shatter glass ceilings.

[04:03:16] It has been a tremendous month for the student achievement across our school. So I'm not going to go to all the specifics, but I'm here to acknowledge, appreciate all the students who have achieved in all the schools. And I do want to give a special shout out to Westfield High School Boy Basketball team for the incredible state championship last week.

[04:03:39] Congratulations to the player, coaches, and the entire Westfield community. Also, I want to congratulate, especially today, for the Oakton Girls Wrestling Team, who are the 2026 state champions. Thank you very much. Good night, everyone. And yeah, Ramadan Mubarak.

[04:03:59] Missy John Cunningham. Thank you. So I'm just going to go over some of the things I did this week. We have not done a lot of board matters, so there's going to be a lot missing. But on Friday, I was able to go see the Rose Hill Players at Edison High School with their original musical, Rock Bottom, which was really a blast.

[04:04:21] The Rose Hill Rockets definitely rocked it. I really want to do a shout out to Danny Adams, who directed all of my daughters when they were in elementary school and also directed this play. I think he's been there for 38 years, and he really is. such a big part of that community.

[04:04:37] I want to shout out to Key Middle School, their theater class, and the theater arts director, Ashley Promsel, for performing a preview of their student-written play, The War of the Winter at Gatehouse. School visits that I had this week were Quandah Road School, Island Creek, and Hayfield Elementary School.

[04:04:59] And I also was really happy that I had the opportunity to visit with Principal DeBerry at Hayfield introduce him to Supervisor Rodney Lusk. We had a very productive meeting. I was happy to join Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchak last night for a Spanish language budget town hall.

[04:05:18] It was really encouraging that we received a variety of questions from our Spanish-speaking community and I was really thankful and grateful for this engagement opportunity. I hope that we can have more of these kinds of um outreach opportunities in different languages so that people can ask questions in the language that they're comfortable with uh i want to highlight a very special scholarship opportunity that is earmarked for lewis high school students it's the irene rosenbaum memorial scholarship it provides five thousand dollars per year renewable for up to

[04:05:53] four years to lewis high school students to support their post-secondary education the The application deadline is April 17th, and more information can be found on the FCPS Scholarship website and in my newsletter. And Mrs. Rosenbaum was a community volunteer at Crestwood Elementary for many years and the mother of one of our staff board members, and this is very generous of her to leave this kind of legacy -- generous of her family to leave this kind of legacy.

[04:06:27] I'll be attending the Gala tomorrow their theme is courage for a cause and they're very integral in how they help support our students and empower our underserved youth and families and have really helped with mentorship and with reducing chronic absenteeism in our school so I want to give them a shout out.

[04:06:50] I also want to say that on tomorrow or not tomorrow Saturday March 21st there's going be a free STEM Fest at Newington Forest. It's a free event that people can go to from 11 to 1 p.m. Also our student leaders are going to be doing their watershed cleanup with FCPS from 10 to 12 and I'm really excited about that. One last thing I mean there's a lot more that I have but one last thing that I want to say that I'm really excited about is I am going to be a judge at the Edison Culinary School Chopped Challenge so that's going to be on Wednesday

[04:07:28] so that's going to be a lot of fun with that I'll say good night and for all of those that celebrate Eid Afetar this three-day festival that marks the end of Ramadan and it is the Ramadan Monthly Hall of Fasting so that's it good night. Mr. McElveen. Thanks I just want to address some I didn't get to go back during the safety conversation, so I don't expect the answers.

[04:07:56] But Dr. Anderson had raised the issue about the volunteer management system, so I'm left with the question, are we going to try that again, and when is that going to be implemented? So if you could let us know that. And then secondly, just along with the staffing concerns with the open gate system, are the staffing concerns with bathroom monitoring staffing staff being pulled out and during their planning periods and other things to do that and along with that issue the issue of locking bathrooms just yesterday I was in a school with mr. moon walking around trying to get into a bathroom and I

[04:08:34] couldn't and so if I'm having that problem I know our students are having that problem you know historically we've had had those situations where coming out of the 80s and 90s the solution was to remove the stall doors in the bathrooms and you know I have my whole advocacy history on that but you know the solution should never be to lock bathrooms or to remove stall doors or to do anything that impedes our students rights and privacy and ability to access necessary facilities so I'll leave it there hope to have that

[04:09:12] conversation again. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. McQueen. Mr. Fresh. Thank you very much. Eid Mubarak for all who celebrate. And I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to provide our families and staff the time to celebrate this with their families. I've had a busy couple weeks here in providence district i was able to read hey little aunt to miss jilde's third grade

[04:09:50] class at mosaic elementary school for read across america week which was fantastic as it always is anytime you get to read with kids it's great especially a book like that is open-ended it doesn't have an ending to it so they kind of get to write the own destination that we end up at that was fun um and the school by the way thank you fairfax county taxpayers it's almost done and dr asty cannot wait to be finished i also attended with dr reed the mantua elementary

[04:10:23] school pta basketball finals which was fantastic and watching all of our mantua elementary school students work their hearts out was really delightful even getting to hang out with the mascot our our raccoon um was great um we had the providence district budget town hall meeting we had about three dozen people there it was fantastic conversation about uh the budget and the needs of our schools many educators came out to ask questions and and talk about how we should be

[04:10:58] investing tax dollars in our students and and the success that that we owe them in our schools and then this morning I attended the Virginia School Board Association hot topics conference in Charlottesville on AI and cyber security so got to participate with school board members from around the Commonwealth and then hop in my car and drive quickly back to Northern Virginia for tonight's meeting some congratulations are in order for Providence district students Eshane mohanty and uh is a fourth grader at mosaic and spreehug mohanty is an eighth grader at luther

[04:11:37] jackson here they both were third place winners in their age groups in the national park service frederick douglas oratorical contest so kudos to them emmanuel be cool a ninth grader from mclean high school was the grand prize winner of the seize the moment student ai innovation challenge for his project my compass and a powered bot designed to support users through cognitive behavioral therapy janice uh mahony an 11th grader from oakton high school was named a 2026 fairfax county student peace award recipient for his outstanding work with the

[04:12:15] oakton pantry and allison hagen a 10th grader at oakton won the vhsl class 6 girls wrestling state title in her division so a lot of great things coming up in providence district that i can't wait to see people out and about as we head towards our next meeting, which is next week.

[04:12:34] Thank you, Mr. Fresh. Miss Lady. Thank you. I want to welcome our new board member, Tom Dannon. It's a pleasure to have you, finally, and I hope you enjoyed your first meeting. Also, because I know there's a pool over there in terms of what time this is going to end, there are 57 Drainesville students who are recognized with the science fair awards from Herndon, langley marshall mclean thomas jefferson westfield and false church i'm going to bear to a very dramatic reading of all 57 names just kidding um but i will say congratulations to the durainsville grand prize winners who are eligible to complete in the regeneron international science

[04:13:10] engineering fair in may uh langley high school winner lang shuang and llms know when we are watching a lightweight framework to quality evaluation process bennett huang and jason pond harnessing methagasmotene epigenetic defense modulations through an autonomous robotic precision spraying system for targeted pest control uh marshall high school polina uh anfilof agent-based modeling of alzheimer's combination therapy in the hippocampus hippocampus and then thomas jefferson and we needed jack jackow um tour site transitioning from tornado detection

[04:13:49] to prediction through pre-tornado signatures so dr reed you might want to get in touch with jack from TJ for future early closings. Also on the athletic fields and on the mats, congratulate Langley High School Boys Swim and Dive for their state championship.

[04:14:05] Also Westfield Boys Basketball for their state championship. And we've had several individual winners for wrestling and track and swimming events. So congratulations to them. I've been out and about. I certainly enjoyed attending the Student Peace Awards.

[04:14:22] I think that is one of the most uplifting things that we do, to look at what our students are doing, what they care about, both locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. It's very impressive, the awards and the things that they enjoy, how they enjoy helping in their community and making a difference.

[04:14:42] I certainly enjoyed reading to Alderaan Elementary School classes earlier this month. I've been meeting with multiple constituents, as I indicated before I attended the Science Fair Awards ceremony, which, by the way, when these finalists get announced, it's like winning a district title. And it is exciting.

[04:14:58] So if you haven't been before, it's very exciting for these kids. Also attended a meeting with the MCA Education Youth Committee. Looking forward to tomorrow night for the Eddie Futuro Gala. Mr. Moon, if you're going to be there, perhaps we can get a dance together.

[04:15:16] I'll be attending the Drainsville Budget Town Hall on Monday. And the last thing is that I sent out to a lot of folks, but Fairfax County's Department of Transportation, there's a survey where each magisterial district wants you to share your prioritations on potential new pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure projects.

[04:15:36] Many of these projects are near our schools, so the survey closes March 31st. Please make time to fill that out. Thank you. I'm going to take a rare moment, and I apologize. But I'm going to go ahead and after a long line of elections within the Braddock District, we finally have our new school board member.

[04:15:59] And it is my distinct honor to to welcome Tom to the Fairfax County School Board. So you join I know you join us with a lifelong connection to public education in lots of different ways. And I appreciate your beginnings within Fairfax County as related to leadership with the PTA because I came from the very same route.

[04:16:25] And I love all the stories that you share about your time in the Peace Corps. And so I think that you are going to be an incredible addition to our board. Stepping onto a school board, particularly at this moment, is a significant commitment. And it's one of the most impactful ways that you can serve your community.

[04:16:44] So I am thrilled to have your voice, your expertise and your passion for our students added to the board. So I cannot I cannot tell you how excited I am to be able to finish out our term together. I did a lot of things over the last couple of weeks and it's been a very busy time and I'm not going to rehash them all because you all want to go home.

[04:17:06] So at 11:16 p.m. we are adjourned.

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